Dr. No (1962)
9/10
Sean Connery is the perfect actor to bring Bond to life...
24 February 2000
Warning: Spoilers
At the Chemin De fer, European Bacarat, Bond has his back to the camera and remains unrevealed until that precise moment when the very first Bond girl, Sylvia Trench portrayed by Eunice Gayson, uttered her first line of dialogue, "I admire your luck, Mr. ...?" and he is seen for the first time lighting his cigarette and announcing himself as "Bond. James Bond."

Bond has dark, rather cruel good looks and a slight scar down one cheek... Tall, handsome, well-dressed, exquisitely mannered, and enormously charismatic, Sean Connery had all the bravura of Ian Fleming's secret agent... He has powerful sex appeal, and is a real lady killer... He drinks a lot of Smirnoff vodka, but prefers Dom Pérignon'53...

Bond—licensed as 007 by his superiors to kill—is an embodiment of pure fantasy... He frequently travels under his own name, making no effort to hide his taste for luxury rivals, and his loves for sensual pleasure... He continually provokes his superiors, and ignores common sense and danger in his combat with villains...

Characterized as a cultivated gentleman and good officer who knows his wines, paintings and weaponry, Bond must often take a back seat to the super-spy hardware with which he is equipped... The technology exhibition play an important part in any Bond films...

With an essential Chinese look, Canadian actor Joseph Wiseman brought to life Dr. No—the first megalomaniac super villain of the atomic age…We first see his black steel hands when he pulls back the bed sheets covering a sleeping 007—Bond's code name… Wiseman looked the perfect combination of crippled scientist and criminal: From his heavily staffed underground base and using atomic energy, Dr. No—on behalf of the SPECTRE organization—was operating a device on the tropical island of Jamaica that massively interferes with the critical rocket launchings from Cape Canaveral...

The plot concerns a British agent, John Strangways, missing in Jamaica... Bond is sent to investigate… He discovered that Strangways was on the track of a certain Dr. No, owner of a mine on the nearby island of Crab Key… The locals avoided Crab Key, believing it haunted… Bond landed there, but instead of ghosts, came upon a girl named Honey on the beach… He was soon caught up in a deadly battle of wits with Dr. No, who planned to destroy the entire US space program…

Ursula Andress coming out of the water on Crab Key, dressed in a skimpy bikini, is the most famous introduction for a performer in screen history—paralleling Omar Sharif's arrival on camel in David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia," the same year…

Jack Lord was the first to portray CIA agent Felix Leiter...

Bernard Lee established himself as the perfect authority figure in the first eleven James Bond movies...

Anthony Dawson had the memorable role of Grace Kelly's attempted murderer in Hitchcock's 1954 thriller "Dial M For Murder." As the chief agent of 'Dr No,' this lean-faced Scottish character actor planned numerous assassination attempts to eliminate Bond...

Lois Maxwell is the tall, distinguished-looking woman who portrayed M's secretary, Miss Moneypenny, in 14 James Bond films...

Eunice Gayson is the extremely sexy brunette Sylvia Trench who seduces our hero...

Zena Marshall is the seductive Miss Taro, who appeared fresh from the bath, wrapped in a towel in the hallway of her Blue Mountain cottage... She is the quintessential enemy agent—voluptuous, deadly and expendable...

Peter Burton made his one and only appearance as armorer Major Boothroyd who replaced Bond's gun, the .25 Beretta by the Walther PPK... In following films, his character was renamed 'Q' and was given to Desmond Llewellyn, who made the role his own...

If you really like mystery spoof, this is your chance to see the first and best adaptation of an Ian Fleming spy fantasy, mixing sex, violence and campy humor against expensive sets and exotic locales...

"Dr. No" had great Calypso ballads: the romantic, "Underneath The Mango Tree", the animated "Jump Up Jamaica", and the calypso version of "Three Blind Mice" to introduce the three blind beggars...
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