Bullz-Eye continues its look back at every James Bond film, 007 One by One, as part of our James Bond Fan Hub that we’ve created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Bond film.

You’ve seen “Skyfall,” now how about taking a look at the other best James Bond movie you’ve never seen?

Ask a hardcore Bond aficionado what his favorite 007 entry is, and there’s a very good chance the answer will be “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”

We don’t necessarily want to make bold claims as to what the best Bond movie is, as it differs from person to person, but “Majesty’s” should be Top Five material for any die-hard fan of the franchise. The film is littered with all kinds of “firsts” and “onlys” — both in front of and behind the camera — but the most obvious is of course its lead, George Lazenby, and it’s with Lazenby that, for better or worse, most talk of the film begins (but should by no means end).

In the year 2013, we take for granted the changing of the lead actor within the Bond series, as we’ve now had a half a dozen different 007s, but back in the late sixties there was only one James Bond, and his name was Sean Connery. During the production of “You Only Live Twice,” Connery decided to exit the franchise that made him a household name (though as we now know today, he’d return to the character not once, but twice), however, quite understandably, the producers of the series weren’t finished telling their stories, and the public seemed far from tired of 007’s adventures.

So there was really only one option and that was to recast. The search was extensive, but in the end Bond producers decided on a complete unknown – Lazenby – a model with virtually zero acting experience. Regardless, Albert Broccoli was certain he could transform the man into his new James Bond.

The debate has raged for over 40 years as to whether or not the recasting was successful, with many schools of thought on the matter. Having viewed “Majesty’s” numerous times, we feel confident in saying that it’s a shame Lazenby didn’t give it at least one more go in the part (the decision to not return was, amazingly, his own), because as it stands, he cannot help but be somewhat swallowed up by the richness of his surroundings. One thing is for certain: Lazenby in no way ruins it, or keeps “Majesty’s” from being the best film it can be. “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” is a fine, fine movie, and one that deserves to stand on its own, away from the greater picture of the whole franchise, and Lazenby – as any lead would be – is at least partly responsible for its artistic success.

The Plot: “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” relies heavily on Ian Fleming’s original text, the last Bond film to really do so until 2006’s “Casino Royale.” The story is two in one: the first is about Bond’s hunting for and eventual finding of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and the second is about Bond falling in love and getting married (yes, you read that right) to an initially suicidal young woman named Tracy. Her father, Draco, runs a crime syndicate, and has info about Blofeld’s whereabouts, which James requires. Turns out Blofeld is posing as a high-profile allergist in Switzerland. Bond tracks him there, and infiltrates his organization by posing as a genealogist. Once the jig is up, all hell breaks loose, and Bond finds himself on the run, and only one person can help him…

The Girls: Blofeld’s mountaintop Swiss hideaway, Piz Gloria, stockpiles quite the cache of babe-alicious flesh – including a very young Joanna Lumley (“Absolutely Fabulous”) as well as the lovely Catherine Schell (“The Return of the Pink Panther”). Odd then that James zeroes in on the homeliest looking one of the bunch, Ruby Bartlett (Angela Scoular). But then again, this is also that unique Bond flick wherein James falls in love, and perhaps going for runt of the litter was the only way for him to rationalize cheating on his beloved Tracy.

Bullz-Eye: An obligatory question to start out: how did you find your way into “Banshee”?

Ivana Milicevic: [Places palms flat on table.] Will, let me tell you.

BE: Please do.

IM: I read the script – ‘cause I was reading millions of scripts, because it was pilot season – and I was, like, “Wha…?!?”It was so good. I loved it. And I was madly in love with Greg Yaitanes because I had done an episode of “House” with him. Like, a season-finale “House” episode that was really fun to do, and he was so fun and easy to work with. And I had been touch with him because of…he was getting me on Twitter in the early days. This was, like, five years ago. But I loved “Banshee.” I had to go in a lot of times. I had to fight for it. I met Antony, we had this instant chemistry that just…

BE: That’s what he said.

IM: He said that, too?

BE: Yeah. In fact, I think he even made the same hand gesture to indicate “instant chemistry.”

IM: [Laughs.] Did he really? That’s so funny. But we do! It’s kind of true. We get along, but we’re also like black and white. So that makes exactly what you’re looking for: a polarity. It just worked. And I think that’s how come I got the job. And then I was really happy, Will, because… [Drops voice down to a whisper.] I had to play it. I had to play this part.

BE: You don’t say.

IM: I did! Because I get to be a mother, so I get to love my family. And I love my real family, so I just love to play that. And I get to be in love…with two men! [Laughs.] And I get to kick ass. And I get to be sexy. Because if not now, Will, when? When?

BE: I hear you.

IM: Because I’m European, and I like that sexy stuff.

BE: Well, Americans are rather fond of it, too.

IM: Well, sure. Who isn’t? [Laughs.]

BE: When I talked to Antony, I told him it struck me as very much a guy show, since it has sex, violence, and action, but he was just as quick to argue that it was a romance.

IM: [Laughs.] But I think it is! Let me put it this way: I watch “Sons of Anarchy,” I watch “Homeland,” I watch “Game of Thrones,” so to think that maybe a girl isn’t going to tune in to this show…I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I think they will, because we watch all these other things now! You know, girls are just tougher and stronger. And the women in “Banshee” are not portrayed as weak little ladies in distress, tied to a railroad track, are they? So certainly a girlfriend is going to enjoy watching it with her boyfriend. One thousand percent that. And, y’know, we may get a couple of ladies up in there that are…I mean, look at Ant. What lady isn’t gonna watch Ant?

BE: Well, sure.

IM: I mean, he’s some hot stuff. He’s fricking liquid dynamite up and down that screen.

BE: Antony “TNT” Starr, that’s him.

IM: It is! [Laughs.] But, seriously, isn’t he? Wait ‘til you see. Wait ‘til you keep watching him, and you see all his vulnerabilities…

BE: Well, I’ve seen the first two episodes.

IM: [Excitedly.] Did you like it?

BE: I did.

IM: Okay, well, if you keep watching, you’ll see that he’s just such an interesting hero / anti-hero. A good guy, a bad guy…whatever he is, he’s so in love, so you love him. He’s so emotional. He’s not just, like, a macho man. He’s, like, a thinking man’s action hero. Or at least that’s what I think, anyway.

BE: Speaking of the action hero thing, Antony was surprised when I said that “Banshee” often reminds me of an ‘80s action movie brought into 2012.

IM: Oh! I see exactly why you would say that!

BE: Because, y’know, there aren’t really a ton of those tropes, per se, but you can still imagine the overly dramatic voiceover saying, “He’s an ex-con turned sheriff who loves his lady…”

IM: [Laughs.] Right! Yeah, you know, I can see what you mean, because it’s so lo-fi, a la “Road House” or something. But that’s one of things that I like about our show and what I think it makes it work: it’s so lo-fi, yet it’s still very much present-day.

BE: The term “hyper-reality” came up in our discussion.

IM: Oh, I’m just saying lo-fi in terms of…it’s not, like, iPhones or whatever. There’s no tech office somewhere. [Laughs.] I mean lo-fi in that way. But hyper-reality, absolutely. Because it’s not all the way Quentin Tarantino pulp. It didn’t cross that line all the way there. But it’s somewhere in between that and straight drama, y’know? I love it. It’s my favorite thing I’ve ever done. Because…well, I think you already talked to Greg (Yaitanes), and I’m sure he used the words, “It’s got balls.” Frankly, it’s got three balls.

BE: I don’t know if he actually used those words. He may have just danced around it.

IM: [Forcefully.] “Banshee” has balls. There. If he didn’t say it, then I’ll say it. [Laughs.]

BE: Thanks. I always enjoy a good pull quote.

IM: [Laughs.] You’re welcome.

BE: Okay, so I always enjoy dragging skeletons out of people’s closet, as far as discussing things from their back catalog, but before doing so, I really have to say that you’ve had an absolutely fascinating career as far as the things you’ve popped up in.

IM: [Laughs.] “Popped up” is so the right way to put it.

BE: I mean, you were on “Seinfeld,” for instance.

IM: Yes, I was. It was my first job!

BE: And you were on “Friends” as well.

IM: [Laughs.] Yep.

BE: Those are nice feathers to have in your cap.

IM: Well, as I say, “Seinfeld” was my first job, which is a really good first job to have, because…that was, I want to say, the second-to-last season of that show, and they were a tight-running ship. But they weren’t a tight-running ship like they were phoning it in. They were still, even at that point, constantly trying to keep the jokes fresh, even kicking them up a notch on the night you were shooting. They never got lazy. They never relaxed. Their work ethic was incredible, and it was really good to be a part of that, to see that. So all the shows I worked on after that, I was, like, “Oh, well, this show isn’t like ‘Seinfeld,’ so that’s why it isn’t as tight…or as good.’” [Laughs.]

The second runner up, though, would be “Friends.” They were also super-tight. Nothing like “Seinfeld,” but that’s because “Seinfeld” was its own crazy thing. So “Friends” was different, but it was still a really close second as far as how tight they were…and, y’know, look at the success of that show, too! You could be, “Ah, it’s comedy, it’s just a sitcom,” but you have no idea how hard people work on these things…and, believe me, I saw the difference between shows where they do work hard and shows where they don’t. So that was good. And, of course, it’s just amazing to have been on those iconic shows. I still make money from them…which is beautiful, because you know Mama needs a new pair of shoes.

BE: Of course she does. I have a wife who’s a mama, so I’m aware of this phenomenon.

IM: [Laughs.] And she needs some shoes, doesn’t she?

BE: Well, I’m not out here doing interviews for my health. Speaking of my wife, though, she was a big fan of one of your earlier series, albeit one that didn’t last terribly long: “Love Monkey.”

IM: Oh, she did like that? That’s so great!

BE: I’ve interviewed Tom Cavanagh at past press tours…

IM: Isn’t he lovely?

BE: He’s a mile-a-minute talker, but, yes, he’s wonderful.

IM: I know! I couldn’t do what he did on that show. Like, he could really talk fast. I don’t even know how he remembers all that stuff. I’m more into stares and pauses. [Laughs.] You’ll see. Keep watching “Banshee.” But I loved working on “Love Monkey.” That was in New York. The only downside was that it was New York in the wintertime. And there’s no reason for wintertime. Not after Christmas. After Christmas, it’s time for summer! But that was just such a great group of people. And I’m still really close friends with Judy Greer from that show, and I love that. And I love that your wife loved that show!

BE: And I’m a music geek, so as far as the guest stars, I was, like, “Ooooooo, Aimee Mann!”

IM: Omigod, right? And did your wife watch the rest of the episodes on VH-1?

BE: She did.

IM: Great! She found us! [Laughs.] I think we were on the wrong network. If we were on ABC, I bet we’d still be on the air. You know, think about it. It’s CBS. And there was nary a dead body in sight on “Love Monkey.”

BE: I can’t help but notice that there are actually some elements of “Love Monkey” in ABC’s “Nashville,” although “Love Monkey” was more focused on the inner workings of a label.

IM: Right, exactly. How’s “Nashville” doing? ‘Cause I saw that pilot, and I thought, “I think this is going to be a hit.” Is it?

BE: It’s doing okay. I don’t know if it officially qualifies as a hit or not. But it’s a show that my wife and I both watch, for what that’s worth.

IM: Oh, that’s awesome! Did your wife see “Banshee”?

BE: She didn’t. I didn’t get them in time for her to watch it.

IM: Oh, okay. I wonder if she’s going to like it with you…

BE: She may. She likes “Game of Thrones,” and that’s got plenty of sex and violence, too.

IM: [Laughs.] Exactly. That’s what I was wondering. ‘Cause our show certainly doesn’t pussyfoot. It’s not trying to appeal to everybody. Either you’ll love it or you’ll hate it. It’s definitely a dividing-line show.

BE: So you mentioned that you were reading a bunch of pilots when “Banshee” came into play, but you’ve also appeared in several decidedly high-profile movies as well, most notably “Casino Royale.” Do you prefer the regularity of doing a TV series, or do you like to mix it up?

IM: I prefer good stuff. [Laughs.] The cool thing about a movie, obviously, is that often you go to amazing locations, and, of course, you work with great people. But you can with series as well. Nothing’s a guarantee of anything, anyway. We’re hoping we get picked up for a second season. I think we will. I do not know that, however, and I’m hoping I don’t find out on my way back to North Carolina that we’re not! But it’s kind of nice to live somewhere for six months out of the year, and I really liked it down there.

BE: North Carolina’s nice. I live in Virginia, which, being next door, is not dissimilar.

IM: Do you have fireflies there, too?

BE: We sure do.

IM: We also have them in Michigan, and I just love them. I’m so delighted by fireflies. I thought, “God was real creative that day…” [Laughs.] They’re just the best. So, yeah, I love working in Charlotte, like I love everything about the show. We care about it so much. We all worked so hard on it. And it’s one of those special sets. You know how sometimes people are, like, “Oh, yeah, it’s great work,” but then you hear stories…? We have one of those sets where everyone is so happy to be there, everybody loves working together…it’s really good.

BE: Okay, so I’ve got to ask you about working on the unaired HBO series, “12 Miles of Bad Road.” I interviewed Lily Tomlin a few months back…

IM: Oh, you did? [Hesitates.] For something else, obviously. Obviously not for “12 Miles”!

BE: Yeah, I’d love to tell you that they’re releasing it on DVD, but…

IM: I know! God, she’s so good in that.

BE: She told me.

IM: I love her. Did she say that? [Laughs.] Was she, like, “I’m fabulous in that”?

BE: Well, you know, she said it was a really good show, but she couldn’t really explain…like, she knew why it didn’t make it on the air, but…

IM: Yeah, it was, like, political stuff, when (HBO President of Entertainment) Chris Albrecht got fired and everything. I wish they would release it, though. Leak it, whatever. That’s what so interesting to me. Because six episodes were done. And it was so good. What’s funny is that I didn’t know she was a part of it, and I didn’t really know what to do with the character on that, so I kept turning it down and turning it down. But then finally I said, “Okay, I’ll take a meeting.” And then when I was in the meeting, I suddenly had this idea what to do with it…and I made the character, like, Bosnian. Like, with an accent. I don’t know why, except that…it was a one-hour dramedy, basically, and I just couldn’t find a way into the character. So then all of sudden that happened, and they were dying laughing, and they offered it to me.

I remember playing kind of hard ball with the deal, but then I got it and was, like, “Cool!” And then my manager said, “Oh, Lily Tomlin’s in that!” And I was, like, “Thank god I didn’t know that before, because I would’ve taken 25 cents!” [Laughs.] I love Lily Tomlin so much, and she’s so lovely and divine. I loved working on that show. I was kind of the character that one nobody liked, so I didn’t get to have that many scenes with her where she wasn’t being mean to me all the time on camera, but I love her. She’s awesome. And she’s great in it. God, why don’t they release that? Dammit! It’s really good. It’s, like, “Dallas” meets “The Sopranos” meets comedy.

BE: I’ve literally seen, like, 45 seconds of it. I think that’s how long the one clip of the show I could find was.

IM: Seriously, they should just leak it. The owners of it should. Linda Bloodworth Thomason and Harry Thomason. [Hesitates.] I might text them and tell them they should do that. You see all these things turn up on YouTube. Why not split it into a few pieces and put it up? It could become an internet sensation!

BE: I wanted to ask you about the fact that you’re in two Cameron Crowe movies, “Jerry Maguire” and “Vanilla Sky,” although you don’t appear for very long in either of them.

IM: [Laughs.] I am. And you’re right, I’m not!

BE: I presume one led to the other…?

IM: Well, Cameron Crowe…I mean, yeah, kind of, because he remembers actors. He is the greatest person in the world to audition for. There’s not an actor that leaves the room that doesn’t feel like they just did the greatest job. And it’s funny, because a friend of mine dates him now and has for some time, and we’ve talked about it and she’s told me about it, but…he’s always felt that actors give so much that you can’t just be, like, “Okay, thanks.” It’s amazing how giving he is. And I’ve read for him more times than I’ve worked for him, but I love working for him.

BE: I met him a few TCA tours ago…

IM: Isn’t he lovely?

BE: He is. I was totally geeking out, saying, like, “You were totally my inspiration when I first started writing, and I just wanted to shake your hand.” And he said, “Thanks, man, I really appreciate it!” Totally made me feel like he hadn’t heard that a thousand times, even though I’m sure he has.

IM: This is exactly what he’s like. And he does mean it. He’s just a great human being. And the nicest guy in the world.

BE: Clearly. Because, y’know, I’m just the press. Lord knows he didn’t have to be nice to me.

IM: Right. [Laughs.] But, you know, I tend to forget that, too. I mean, I like people. And I’m enjoying this. But, of course, it’s easy, because I’m not trying to make up something about something I’m not proud of. I love this, and I’ll talk about it all day long. And everyone’s been nice, and so far everyone seems to at least not hate it. So it’s easy that we can just hang out and be people, y’know?

BE: Keepin’ it casual.

IM: Keepin’ it real caszh. [Laughs.]

BE: Do you have any favorite project you’ve worked on over the years…

IM: “Banshee”!

BE: …that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved and has actually had a chance to get love? Come on, at least let me finish the question.

IM: [Laughs.] Well, “Love Monkey” would certainly qualify. I also think that “Mind of the Married Man” qualifies. I feel like a lot of people really loved that show, but for whatever reason, critics did not like it. And the crazy thing is, when that show was on the air, there were two distinct groups of people that would always come up to me saying they loved it: African-American males, and then just boys in their early twenties in general. It’s almost like…it was marketed like a family drama, but that’s not who wanted it. Single guys were the ones who watched it. Which is interesting. So that one did not get love. And there’s also this movie I did called “Head Over Heels.” It was around the year 2000, and it was with Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Monica Potter. It’s just one of my favorite things I’ve ever done. It’s also one of the first movies I did, or one of the first that I had a lead part in. But it was another one of those amazing experiences where we had a wonderful summer in Vancouver, a bunch of girls who loved each other, and we couldn’t believe we were getting paid to do this. But I often can’t believe I get paid to do this. But it was just such a fun thing to do. I loved it.

BE: I’m not sure that anyone else can say that they were in both “Casino Royale” and “Witless Protection”…

IM: No, they can’t!

BE: I expect, however, that you’re going to be just like everyone else and tell me how incredibly nice Larry the Cable Guy is.

IM: Because he is. [Laughs.] He is! You know, his comedy’s not necessarily what I would go searching for on YouTube, per se, but he is awesome. I love him. It’s amazing, though, that…y’know, I have a lot of comedian friends, and they just can’t stand that he’s done so well, but, hey, I’m glad that somebody nice is doing well. If people love him, then let him be!

BE: Lastly, what are your recollections of working on your first film, “Children of the Corn III”?

IM: [Laughs.] I was…an acolyte, I think is what I’m credited as. That was part of some reshoots. A bunch of model friends and I – ‘cause I was, like, 18 when I did that – were friends with this director, Tony Hickox, and he was doing the extra scenes for his brother, James Hickox. And he called us, and he said, “We need more babes dying!” So a bunch of us came over, and…Charlize Theron is in that movie, too! She gets killed by some wild corn. I get killed by, I think, a scythe. But you know what? This is fun. What I do is fun. I take my job very seriously, and I take things seriously when I need to be serious. But when it’s done, I’m back to my goober self. So there you go. But I think maybe that doesn’t do well for my character. Maybe people won’t take me seriously if they find out I’m really a dork. Maybe they need me to be all, like… [Very clipped and precise.] “Yes, I’m very serious. And I’m also very rational.”

BE: And yet the sheer variety of work you’ve done over the years kind of speaks to there being something a little bit off about you. Although I mean that in the best possible way.

IM: [Laughs.] I wouldn’t take it any other way. So I’m a little different. What’s wrong with being a little bit different?

Bullz-Eye is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first James Bond film with look back at every Bond movie, 007 One by One, along with a series of features about the Bond franchise, all laid out in our James Bond Fan Hub.

As the worldwide spy craze peaks, the James Bond series settles in for the long, tongue-in-cheek haul with this often maligned but very enjoyable entry, introducing the world to both ninjas and the original Dr. Evil. It also might have been the final appearance of Sean Connery as 007, except that it wasn’t.

“You Only Live Twice” (1967)

The Plot

A United States space capsule is hijacked, killing one astronaut. Naturally, the Americans assume the Soviets are at fault and world war seems a real possibility. There’s only one thing for the level-headed English to do: Stage James Bond’s death and send him on an undercover mission to Japan to expose SPECTRE head Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s plot to dominate the world by partially destroying it.

The Backstory

With enormous success comes enormous pressures and change was very definitely in the air as “You Only Live Twice” began production. Now one of the world’s most bankable stars after the mega-success of “Thunderball,” Sean Connery was contractually on board for only one more film and starting to be seriously fed up with all the 007 insanity.

Behind the camera, original Bond director Terrence Young had had his fill and “Goldfinger” helmer Guy Hamilton was unavailable. Editor and second unit director Peter Hunt, who had been instrumental in the series’ creative success, badly wanted to helm the project, but producers Albert “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman apparently weren’t ready for a first timer for Bond #5. Therefore, a new recruit was sought out to join the small fraternity of James Bond directors.

An old hand at period pieces and war films, Lewis Gilbert was hot off an Oscar nomination for a classic-to-be about a compulsive womanizer who could give Bond a run for his money. “Alfie” starred Connery’s good friend, fellow movie spy, and now award-winning box office rival, Michael Caine.

Lewis Gilbert also brought along one of the very few directors of photography who could have reasonably stepped into the very big shoes of series regular Ted Moore. Freddie Young had won the first of his four Oscars a couple of years prior for David Lean’s visually stunning 1963 70mm masterpiece, “Lawrence of Arabia.” For the sake of keeping things consistent, all the other key collaborators, were back on board in their regular roles, i.e., composer John Barry, credit designer Maurice Binder, and production designer Ken Adam. For once, they’d all have a nice budget to play with, too.

The script, however, was an issue. The novel “You Only Live Twice,” was the last Bond book published in Ian Fleming’s lifetime and the story was problematic for more than one reason. For starters, it was actually the third and final installment in what literary Bond fans call “the Blofeld Trilogy.” EON’s original intent had been to film the books in their original order. That way Blofeld, who had been teased as a character starting in “Dr. No,” would get his long-delayed onscreen introduction in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” and finally suffer James Bond’s revenge in the follow-up, “You Only Live Twice.” Unfortunately, logistics made the ski chalet setting of “Majesty” impractical for the summer release EON and United Artists had their hearts set on.

The other problem was that the plot of Ian Fleming’s novel, which involved Blofeld setting up a lavish sanitarium for wealthy suicides, just didn’t seem to be the stuff of a James Bond movie. It also ended with Bond fathering a child with Kissy Suzuki. Only a few elements from the book would remain in the finished movie, most notably the Japanese setting, love interest Kissy, and friendly spy boss Tiger Tanaka.

There was also a problem with finding a writer. Richard Maibum, who had worked on every Bond up to this point, was deemed unavailable. A rumored screenplay by renowned author Kingsley Amis had been reportedly dismissed. Another script was commissioned by writer Harold Jack Bloom, but little of his work would remain in the finished film.

The final choice of screenwriter turned out to be an interesting one. Decades after his death, Roald Dahl remains one of the world’s most popular children’s writers with such film-friendly classics as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” “The Witches,” “Matilda,” and “James and the Giant Peach” all too his credit. He might have seemed a far likelier choice for writing an adaptation of Ian Fleming’s children’s book, “Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang,” the gig that was apparently keeping Richard Maibum busy. Nevertheless, Dahl had written his share of adult thrillers and had actually performed wartime espionage and been friends with Fleming. Scads of 007-inspired spy spoofs were upping the humor ante and this would be a somewhat more tongue-in-cheek Bond. Dahl’s dark sense of humor would be a plus.

The main thrust of the film’s new plot was apparently invented by Cubby Broccoli, however. Upon seeing a dormant volcano while scouting locations, he came up with the idea of using it as a giant villain’s lair. With the U.S.-Soviet space race at full swing, the Russian-Chinese split a topical news item, and terrorism on the rise, the idea of SPECTRE hijacking spacecrafts in order to start a world war on behalf of Red Chinese clients seemed like a natural.

The Bond Girls (Rule of 3 + 1)

Once again, 007 does the espionage nasty with three beautiful women on his Japan adventure. Shockingly, however, the movie’s main love interest is not one of them.

Ling (Tsai Chow) — This lovely lady of Hong Kong engages in mildly racist pillow talk with Bond and then reveals herself to be an accomplice in the spy’s elaborately faked death. Though her part is small, actress Tsai Chow was already a recording artists and a major star of the London stage in “South Pacific” and “The World of Suzie Wong.” Her very long film career would include parts in “The Joy Luck Club,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” and the 2006 Bond reboot, “Casino Royale.”

Helga Brandt (Karen Dor) — The latest Bond villainess with preying mantis-like tendencies, the dangerous Ms. Brandt is the secretary/in-house assassin of the wealthy SPECTRE operative, Mr. Osato. She has her way with Bond, then fails at killing him. It’s only natural that she winds up a victim of SPECTRE’s signature approach to personnel management, which in her case means being fed to the CEO’s pet piranhas. Actress Karen Dor has enjoyed a very long career in German films and television that continues to this day. She also appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s unsuccessful spy thriller, “Topaz,” and the modestly titled horror flick, “The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism.”

Aki (Akiko Wakabayashi) — The lovely Aki at first appears to be an enemy agent, but quickly turns out to be an able helper and a willing Bond sex partner, until her untimely end. Actress Akiko Wakabayashi is known to genre geeks around the world and not just for “You Only Live Twice.” Monster mavens know her for appearances in two films by “Godzilla” co-creator Ishirō Honda: “Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster” and “King Kong vs. Godzilla.” The name of the lead character was changed from Suki to Aki at her request.

Kissy Suzuki (Mie Hama) — Unusually virtuous by Bond girl standards, Kissy never actually gets to home plate with Bond, at least not during the actual movie. Nevertheless, this student of Japanese spy chief Tiger Tanaka proves an able aid to Bond, assisting in his not-so-believable transformation into a Japanese peasant and in foiling SPECTRE’s evil plans.

Actress Mie Hama was originally assigned to play Aki/Suki and was nearly let go from the project because of her difficulties learning English. As the story goes, Hama suggested the shame of being fired might force her to commit ritual suicide and the producers buckled. Her part, like that of nearly every other foreign player in an early Bond film, was eventually dubbed by another performer. Other roles include appearing alongside Akiko Wakabayashi in “King Kong vs. Godzilla.” She also made waves by promoting “You Only Live Twice” via a nude appearance in Playboy.

Friends and colleagues

Dikko Henderson (Charles Gray) — The avuncular, kimono-clad representative of MI6 in Japan only lives long enough to get Bond’s most famous cocktail preference wrong. The late actor, Charles Gray, was a wonderfully distinctive presence in well over 120 films and television productions. Today he is mainly remembered as the narrating “no neck” Criminologist who taught the world to dance the Time Warp in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” — a film musical he claimed to have never seen. Gray would also have the rare distinction of being killed by SPECTRE and later heading it. He would return to the Bond series as none other than Ernst Stavro Blofeld in “Diamonds are Forever.”

Tiger Tanaka (Tetsurō Tamba) — Bond makes a new friend who, for a change, survives the film. It makes sense as the bold but crafty head of Japanese intelligence has a personal subway train and routinely forces guests to arrive via trap door as a precaution. Actor Tetsurō Tamba was a venerable presence in sixties Japanese cinema and had also worked in England, making him a natural leader among the Japanese cast. With 242 credits listed on IMDb, he has appeared in a number of films well known to Western cinephiles and cultists including “Pigs and Battleships,” “Harakiri,” and the notoriously gory and campy 1991 midnight-show staple, “Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky.” Also noted for his work as a spiritual teacher, Tamba passed on in 2006.

Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) and M (Bernard Lee) — Bond’s unimpressed boss and his partner in flirtatious byplay return, this time dressed in full UK navel regalia. The comic business aboard one of her majesty’s atomic submarines is spry but brief, though they make an unusual appearance in the film’s final scene. Moneypenny/Lois Maxwell, we should say, looks adorable in uniform. We understand, however, that her hairstyle was thoroughly non-regulation for the English navy. Shocking.

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) — With gadgetry now a major part of the series, an appearance by the irascible armorer is now mandatory. This time, the perpetually annoyed Q finds himself forced to trudge to Japan to deliver “Little Nellie” — a thoroughly souped-up and tricked out autogyro. If Desmond Llewelyn’s irritation seems believable, it might have helped that the actor disagreed with director Lewis Gilbert’s costuming choices. Japan might be a warm country, but Llewelyn wasn’t thrilled with the military-style shirt and shorts he was given to wear. He didn’t think the very proper Q would permit himself to wear anything other than his standard business attire

The Nemesis

Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) — After being teased for years, the face of Bond’s most intractable enemy finally appears onscreen in “You Only Live Twice.” He is, of course, as diabolical and likely to feed an underperforming employee to carnivorous pets as ever. Sporting Blofeld’s trademark white Persian cat and a nasty scar on his right eye, the great character actor Donald Pleasence was already familiar to movie fans for hits like “The Great Escape” and “Fantastic Voyage.” He went on to even greater recognizability to horror fans for his portrayal of the heroic Dr. Sam Loomis in the “Halloween” series of slasher films. By the time of his death in 1996, Pleasence had racked up well over 200 film and television credits.

Lesser Bond Baddies

Assuming they aren’t personally killed by Mr. Bond, the hench people in “You Only Live Twice” have somewhat greater longevity than they did in “Thunderball.” Still, SPECTRE’s personnel practices remain below industry standard.

Mr. Osato (Teru Shimada) — Helga Brandt’s industrialist SPECTRE employer tries to have James Bond killed innumerable times, with predictable results. He manages to avoid the pet piranas that finally get Miss Brandt, but he still winds up getting a surprise bullet in the chest from Blofeld. Japanese-American actor Teru Shimada had recently appeared in 1966′s “Walk Don’t Run” with Cary Grant, but was actually nearing the end of a decades long career that began in the early 1930s.

Hans (Ronald Rich) — Blofeld’s gigantic body guard is repaid for his loyalty and diligence by being allowed to live long enough to get killed during the final battle. English actor Rich’s career appears to be a short one, but TV geeks should note that he did appear as the giant alien Trantis in the 1965 season of “Dr. Who” and in various roles in the 1968 run of “Benny Hill.”

SPECTRE #3 and #4 (Burt Kwouk and Michael Chow) – It would be easy to ignore these two very minor characters if it weren’t for the interesting guys playing them. You may remember that Burt Kwouk, the very talented performer who brilliantly portrayed manservant Kato opposite Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, also appeared in a similar, slightly larger, role in “Goldfinger.” As for Shanghai-born character actor and citizen of the world Michael Chow, he is best known in the West as a classy restaurateur. The first Mr. Chow location opened in London in 1968, followed by editions in Beverly Hills, New York City and, eventually, Miami and Las Vegas.

License to kill

Bond’s career in extra-judicial killings of often disarmed enemies began with the unlucky Prof. Dent in “Dr. No,” but it reaches a new high here. Admittedly, there are several moments where the morality of the situation might be vague — or where we’re not sure whether Bond has actually killed an assailant or merely subdued him. Bond very definitely instantly slays the killer of his MI6 contact, Dikko Henderson (Charles Gray), however. True, the man’s act was cowardly but, morals and legality aside, it might have made more sense to keep the assassin alive and find out what was up. He also immediately dispatches both Aki’s poisoner — before he even knows what the intruder is up to — as well as the quickly disarmed would-be assassin who assaults him with a bo (a Japanese quarterstaff) in the ninja dojo.

The gadgets

Production designer Ken Adam, efx man John Stears, and the whole EON team attempt to create an airborne companion to Bond’s Aston-Martin with “Little Nellie,” a tricked up autogyro that’s a sort of cross between a helicopter and a toy plane. The film version is equipped with enough armory to take out a banana republic with machine guns, flamethrowers, and missiles. Minus the fancy weaponry, it was the very real and serious creation of designer Ken Wallis, a retired RAF pilot.

Many other gadgets are so casually integrated into the “You Only Live Twice” storyline you might almost miss them. Below are some of our favorites.

* Ninja cigarettes that eject bullet-like projectiles.

* The water-proof sarcophagus used to stage Bond’s “burial” at sea

* The “Bird 1″ ship, with a front opening used to capture U.S. and Soviet spacecraft.

* Trap doors that both Blofeld and Tiger Tanaka use to create unwelcome surprises for coworkers.

* A giant magnet on a helicopter deployed by the Japanese to pick up a car filled with SPECTRE henchman and drop it in the nearby Pacific. (Since it seems unlikely the occupants could have lived, we wonder if Japanese secret services also have something like Double-O authority.)

* Mr. Osato’s spiffy X-ray desk for spotting concealed weapons.

* A pocket safecracking doodad which would come in handy if Bond ever decided to go full time to the wrong side of the law.

Note: Both the Murphy bed used in Bond’s fake assassination and Tiger Tanaka’s personal subway are sometimes considered Bond gadgets. However, since both were examples of what was very common mid-sixties technology, we don’t think they qualify as Bondian gadgetry any more than would a blender or an electric can opener.

The exotic locales

With the exception of the opening, just about all of “You Only Live Twice” takes place in Japan and the film’s exteriors were shot largely in the then-emerging economic powerhouse. Producers Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, director Lewis Gilbert, and cinematographer Freddie Young spent considerable time scouting Japanese locations. Their work paid off both in terms of visuals and, at least in the aforementioned case of the dormant volcano which became Blofeld’s lair, story ideas.

The outrageous villains’ lairs and good guy haunts

With the Bond films established as a series of reliable blockbusters, resident production design genius Ken Adam was allowed to go to town with a series of extraordinary sets, which meant more work and frayed nerves than ever. Adam has said that he and his staff were all but “living on valium” during the production of the film.

The most overtly spectacular set was obviously SPECTRE’s volcano-based super-bunker. Featuring a crater lake on top as camouflage, a rocket launch pad, and an internal light rail system, the Pinewood Studios set was very possibly the largest interior built for a film up to that point and one of the most expensive at $1 million. Ken Adam reportedly bragged that more steel was used in the set’s construction than in the London Hilton.

A more modest Adam classic is the lattice-work dome in which hot-headed U.S. and Soviets are persuaded to put off worldwide thermonuclear war while the intelligence boys at MI6 do their work. The design seems to have been influenced by R. Bunkminster Fuller’s then trendy geodesic domes.

Moving on, we’re also impressed by the apartment of the short-lived MI6 contact, Henderson. It’s a cheerful mix of British and Japanese design cliches. Tiger Tanaka’s underground office is, however, more up to the minute. Clearly, the EON team had noticed Japan’s increasing fascination with futuristic technology which was fueling the nation’s post-war economic renaissance. Similarly, the offices of bad guy Mr. Osato are an angular, half-insane variation on an ultra-modern mid-sixties interior.

The Opening

The “You Only Live Twice” pre-credit sequence is a departure from the “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball” openings in that it is not actually a Bond mini-adventure. Instead, it’s a more complicated variation on the opening of “From Russia with Love”; it’s primarily a prologue designed to set up the story and tease us with another fake Bond death. Bond doesn’t even try to kill anyone. (He’ll make up for that later.)

We begin in outer space as a mysterious vehicle snatches an American space capsule, murdering an astronaut in the process. Next, we are in some kind of super-high level diplomatic meeting room in which the calm, thoughtful British must mediate between jingoistic Americans and nasty Soviets to avoid a rush to global thermonuclear war. Finally, we are in a garish Hong Kong boudoir as Bond has finished making love with the seemingly treacherous Ling (Tsai Chow). She traps Bond in a Murphy bed, where he meets an apparent quick end at the hands of machine gun wielding thugs. Afterwards, a police officer who appears to have known Bond philosophizes that, at least, Bond met his demise “on the job.”

A close-up of a shot of (presumably fake) blood fades out into an animated design reminiscent of a Japanese umbrella and we’re off for another striking credit sequence by Maurice Binder. As the lyrical title song plays, we are given Japanese-inspired abstract designs, shots of lava flowing inside a volcano, and the usual female silhouettes. Once again, we are being promised adventure, a bit of tasteless exoticism, violence and, naturally, sex, sex, sex.

The Music

By now, it was a foregone conclusion that composer John Barry would provide both the score and the title song. Barry’s “Goldfinger” lyrical collaborator, show tune specialist Leslie Bricusse, returns for one of the better songs in the Bond cannon. Barry seems to have decided to abandon the brassiness of “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball” for a more romantic tune along the lines of “From Russia with Love,” only better.

Nancy Sinatra and her famous father, Frank, were friends of the EON team. So, it was only natural that she was brought on to perform the song, even though an earlier version had already been recorded by English singer Shirley Rodgers. The only difficulty was that the younger Sinatra, whose recent recording of “These Boots Were Made for Walking” had been a monster hit, was much more a rock and roll singer than a polished classic pop chanteuse. As Nancy Sinatra herself tells it, it took countless takes and a lot of editing to produce the sexy and charmingly wistful “You Only Live Twice” title track.

As for the instrumental score, composer Barry adds a bit of Japanese beauty to the mix, but it was the cosmos that inspired the most influential work. The haunting and majestic “Capsules in Space” is a definite influence on John Williams’ music for “Star Wars.”

Action Highlights

“You Only Live Twice” was instrumental in popularizing Asian martial arts in Western films and also for establishing ninjas as go-to pop culture badasses. The final battle, in which hundreds of ninjutsu-trained operatives invade Blofeld’s mega-lair, is certainly among the most spectacular fight scenes in the 007 cannon. It’s also probably responsible for a number of increasingly elaborate, you might even say overblown, Bond finales to follow.

An arguably even more thrilling set-piece, however comes much earlier in the film as Bond and Aki are pursued at the Kobe docks by a number of local SPECTRE henchmen. In a bold move, director Lewis Gilbert and camera-great Freddie Francis film part of the fight via a thrilling aerial shot of the ongoing action. Speaking of aerial shots, the airborne battle in which Bond and Little Nellie fend off “improper advances” from four machine-gun equipped aerial helicopters is an enjoyable blend of exciting aerial footage and back projection close-ups.

For those who enjoy a bit more hand-to-hand combat, we’re somewhat fond of a relatively brief but delightfully brutal fight between Bond and a sword wielding opponent, portrayed by uncredited Samoan-American pro-wrestler and fight choreographer Peter Fanene Mavia. Mavia, who unfortunately passed on at age 45, is today best remembered as the grandfather of wrestler-turned-action star Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson.

The ninja camp training sequence is also an enjoyable spin on the “Spartacus”-inspired SPECTRE training camp in “From Russia With Love.” It was probably the first time a truly gigantic Western audience was exposed to Asian martial arts in a major motion picture. It also contains a surprisingly faithful homage to the fight scenes in the Japanese samurai films that were then being discovered in art houses throughout America and Europe.

The one-liners

James Bond (Prior to making love to the evil Helga Brandt): The things I do for England!

Hong Kong Policeman #2: [finding the fake-deceased Bond in Ling's Hong Kong boudoir] At least he died on the job… he would have wanted it that way.

Kissy Suzuki: No honeymoon. This is business.
James Bond: [pushing aside a plate of oysters] Well, I won’t need these.

Mr. Osato: You should give up smoking. Cigarettes are very bad for your chest.
Helga Brandt: Mr. Osato believes in a healthy chest.
James Bond (observing Brandt’s upper torso): Really?

Tiger Tanaka (showing Bond a projectile equipped cigarette): It can save your life, this cigarette.
James Bond: You sound like a commercial.

James Bond: Well, if I’m going to be forced to watch television, may I smoke?
Blofeld: Yes. Give him his cigarettes. It won’t be the nicotine that kills you, Mr. Bond.

James Bond (having just dispatched an adversary into Blofeld’s piranha-infested indoor pool): Bon appetit!

Tiger Tanaka: You know what it is about you that fascinates them, don’t you? It’s the hair on your chest. Japanese men all have beautiful bare skin.
James Bond: Japanese proverb say, “Bird never make nest in bare tree.”

[About to have his chest hair waxed so he can pass for Japanese]
James Bond: Why don’t you just dye the parts that show?

James Bond (greeting Q, who has brought Little Nellie to Japan): Welcome to Japan, Dad. Is my little girl hot and ready?
Q: Look, 007, I’ve had a long and tiring journey, probably to no purpose, so I’m in no mood for juvenile quips.

Cocktails and other beverages

Bond’s drinking is more under control than usual here, though the super spy gets to show his knowledge of the finer points of Japan’s native beverage, the rice wine known as saki. It’s usually served warm — 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit, he reminds us. Bond seems considerably less enthralled with some Siamese vodka. Most famously, 007 politely endures confusion regarding his cocktail preferences by the soon-to-be-slain Dikko Henderson. The MI6 man offers him a vodka martini “stirred, not shaken,” in an incorrect Tom Collins glass, which Bond accepts without complaint. At another point, he is tempted into some morning drinking by a bottle of Dom Perignon 1959.

Random facts

* There are a number of jokes about cigarettes and cigarette smoking in “You Only Live Twice.” Considering the historic U.S. Surgeon General’s Report definitively naming smoking as a serious health risk had only come out in 1964, the same year heavy smoker and drinker Ian Fleming had died at age 56 of a heart attack, it was a highly topical subject. (To this day, you will find more smokers on film sets than elsewhere.)

* Donald Pleasence was actually a last-minute replacement as the first fully on-screen Blofeld. Czech actor Jan Werich was originally cast in the role and shot a few days worth of scrapped footage. The EON team decided that the bearded thespian’s grandfatherly appearance was too benign for the ultra-ruthless super villain.

* For whatever reason, Ernst Stavro Blofeld would, from this point on, be played by different actors with radically different looks in each film. Future Blofelds would include the relatively hulking “Kojak”-to-be Telly Savalas in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” who at least was as bald as the somewhat diminutive Donald Pleasence had been in the role. Blofeld would miraculously sport a full head of hair, however, when he was played by the aforementioned Charles Gray in 1971′s “Diamonds are Forever.”

* Donald Pleasence’s appearance and manner as Blofeld is pretty obviously the primary inspiration for Mike Myers’s Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers series. (Evil’s speaking voice is just as obviously inspired by “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels.)

* Fans trying to put together a complete biography of Bond have made much of the ever humble 007′s reminder to Moneypenny that, “You forget, I took a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge.” This is a contradiction with the novels, where Bond was ejected from Eton College for an unsurprising infraction with female cleaning personnel and had to finish his education in Scotland.

* “You Only Live Twice” is actually the second time that Sean Connery, as a pre-coital Bond said, “The things I do for England!” The line was also shot during the filming of “Thunderball.” It made it into that film’s promotional material but was cut from the actual movie. Being too good a line to waste, it was re-used and included here.

* Ironically, screenwriter Roald Dahl’s World War II intelligence experiences were in some ways more Bondian than those of Ian Fleming. It was, in fact, his youthful gift for starting affairs with prominent women that seems to have attracted the attention of British spies working in North America trying to draw the United States into the war prior to Pearl Harbor. His most famous conquest in England’s service was playwright and conservative Republican politician Clare Booth Luce, the wife of the founder of Time magazine.

* When Mie Hama was unable to swim for her scenes, she was doubled by Australian actress Diane Cilento, an able swimmer who was married to Sean Connery at the time. Cilento, who passed on in 2011, is probably now best known for her supporting role in the 1974 cult classic, “The Wicker Man.” She also appeared in such notable 1960s features as “Tom Jones,” “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” and “Hombre.”

* Some have mistakenly said that the title, “You Only Live Twice” comes from a poem by Basho, Japan’s most famous poet. It’s actually from a not-quite haiku Bond attempts to compose in Basho’s style in Ian Fleming’s novel.

“You only live twice
Once when you’re born
And once when you look death in the face.”

Leslie Bricusse’s lyrics for the song, “You Only Live Twice,” equate the second life to falling in love. Much more romantic.

* By all accounts, Sean Connery and Diane Cilento had a pretty miserable time making “You Only Live Twice.” Spy mania and an aggressive Japanese press in particular seems to been a huge problem for the star and his bride. By the time “You Only Live Twice” was released, Connery had made it public that he would cease playing Bond. It turned out to be the first of three times that would happen.

The Romantic Ending

“You Only Live Twice” is, we think, the only Bond entry where the main romance seems to have gone not much further than passionate necking. Kissy abandons her resistance to Bond by the end of the film, but they are interrupted by an inopportune submarine and Moneypenny seems only to anxious to cut off any more funny business. All the more tragic as it looks like Bond and Kissy might not be allowed to see each other again.

“James Bond Will Return”

“The end of You Only Live Twice but James Bond will be back On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” read the final titles this time around. A similar credit was originally included at the end of “Thunderball” and later removed. In fact, James Bond did come back, but he would be George Lazenby.

Critics and filmmakers may prefer “From Russia With Love” and “Goldfinger,” and many complain about those long underwater sequences but, to a lot of fans, Bond #4 remains the ultimate in spy action, intrigue, gadgets, and girls, girls, girls. It also remains the all-time box office record holder of all the Bonds. It’s also only the second, and so far final, Bond film to ever win an Oscar — for special effects of course.

“Thunderball” (1965)

The Plot

Unperturbed by the 007-related deaths of Dr. No, Red Grant, Rosa Klebb, and countless other operatives, the amalgamated baddies of SPECTRE return with their most diabolical plot yet. The plan this time is nuclear blackmail, as SPECTRE Operative # 2 takes possession of two hydrogen bombs and informs England and the U.S. that they’ll either part with £100 million or kiss one or two of their favorite cities goodbye. Without any viable strategy other than complete capitulation, the only respectable option for the free world seems to be sending Bond to kill, copulate, and skin-dive his way to victory over nuclear terrorism.

The Backstory

With the series chugging along at the rate of roughly one movie a year and a worldwide spy craze underway, an observer might well have expected that the James Bond phenomenon had peaked with the blockbuster success of “Goldfinger.” Then again, a lot of people in 1965 were also figuring that those flash in the pan teen idols, the Beatles, had peaked with “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

The EON Production team led by producers Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman knew that their hot streak was still very much in play. They cannily chose to triple-down with a budget roughly three times higher than the already relatively high ($3 million!) “Goldfinger” budget and all-out marketing and cross-promotional blitz. As luck and skill would have it, the most eagerly anticipated Bond film would ultimately top the box-office success of “Goldfinger” by $20 million with a worldwide take of $141.2 million — not quite enough cash to satisfy a Bond villain, but getting there.

The amazing part is that the film was ever made at all, as the project had been plagued by legal difficulties for years. “Thunderball” began life as a screenplay that James Bond creator Ian Fleming developed with, among others, screenwriter Jack Whittingham and producer Kevin McClory. Fleming eventually tired of the complexities of getting a Bond movie on the screen and abandoned the project. He nevertheless used a great deal of the abortive script’s story in his 1961 novel of “Thunderball.”

Things got complicated when producers Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman entered the mix. Broccoli and Saltman’s EON team originally initially saw “Thunderball” as the best kick-off for the Bond series, even if its action would have to be scaled back considerably to fit their budget. A lawsuit brought by Kevin McClory nixed the idea, even though writer Richard Maibum had already completed a screenplay.

The suit was eventually settled out of court by an ailing Ian Fleming. With Fleming having passed on and an obvious cash cow of enormous magnitude before him, victorious rights holder McClory agreed to an EON-produced film of “Thunderball” on certain conditions, including that he be the sole credited producer.

With McClory on board, it was time to reassemble the Bond team. Though flush with success, “Goldfinger” director Guy Hamilton pleaded exhaustion. In his stead, original Bond director Terrence Young was induced to return for one final outing, while such key personnel as editor Peter Hunt, director of photography Ted Moore, production designer Ken Adam, stunt man/action choreographer Bob Simmons, and composer John Barry all happily returned. As per the writing MO on the early Bond films, the work of American screenwriter Richard Maibum was given a more English make-over by a Brit, TV scribe John Hopkins. To handle the considerable challenge of filming underwater, EON turned to nature film specialists Ivan Tors Productions, who had achieved great success filming aquatic material for television with their hit shows,”Sea Hunt” and “Flipper.”

As for the stars, while the pressures of true superstardom were starting to weigh on Sean Connery, he was still on board and not yet ready to kill the golden but increasingly painful goose that was Bondage. For his leading lady, EON passed on three actresses soon to become superstars — Raquel Welch, Julie Christie, and Faye Dunaway — before settling on their final choice. More about that below.

The Bond Girls (Rule of 3 + 2)

Bond keeps up his sexual batting average with his usual three trips to home plate in “Thunderball.” Oddly enough, while more than maintaining his rascally ways when it comes to women, he manages what appear to be purely professional relations with two of the film’s five “Bond girls.”

Madame LaPorte (Mitsuoaka): The part was uncredited, and we never find out much about the French operative who assists Bond’s revenge mission against Jacques Bouvar in the opening sequence. Even so, the subtly exotic Madame LaPorte definitely lends an air of intrigue to the opening adventure. The French-Eurasian actress, Mitsuoaka, born Maryse Guy, was a former stripper who seems to have spent a lot of the sixties riding the spy wave around Europe, having already appeared in such early sixties capers as “License to Kill” and “Agente 077 Missione Bloody Mary.” She passed on in 1995.

Paula Caplan (Martine Beswick): Bond’s gorgeous “island girl” assistant appears to be an entirely competent MI6 operative. Even though we’ve barely seen them even flirt, Bond is clearly upset when she meets an unpleasant but honorable end under the custody of SPECTRE — though not so upset that he can’t handily boff an attractive enemy operative. Very much a cult star in her own right, this marks either the second or third and final Bond-girl appearance for actress Martine Beswick. She had also played one of the feisty-but-affectionate Gypsy women in “From Russia with Love” and might have appeared as one the dancing silhouetttes in the “Dr. No” credit sequence.

Patricia Fearing (Molly Peters): The well-intentioned physical therapist who rescues Bond from a wrenching encounter with a fitness machine is repaid for her trouble by Bond exercising his license to sexually harass. Since it’s still the mid-1960s, Molly quickly gives in to the manhandling, leading to a relatively explicit encounter in a sauna which reveals what appears to be her naked backside through a glass screen. Bond softens up towards her later, massaging the cute-as-a-button beauty with a mink-lined glove. Although she introduces a note of Doris Day-like spunk to her part, “Thunderball” proved to be pretty much the end of the movie line for Molly Peters.

Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) — James Bond might have a stunning track record of getting antagonistic women to switch teams, but Ms. Volpe turns out to be an impossible nut to crack, though not so difficult to get into bed. We first see her luring her lover, an unsuspecting NATO pilot, to his doom. She later offs her ex’s lookalike replacement (Paul Stassino) as he, in turn, is trying to kill James Bond. In this case, however, sex or no sex, the enemy of Bond’s enemy turns out to be an enemy. When a seriously irritated Bond uses her as a human shield against SPECTRE bullets, it’s an easily one of the most indelibly brutal kiss-offs in the Bond canon.

Luciana Paluzzi lost out to Claudine Auger for the lead role or “Thunderball,” but she clearly relished playing her joyfully irredeemable villainess and remains one of the most exciting of the early Bond girls. Though Paluzzi never became an international superstar, the actress racked up a total of 83 credits between 1954 and 1978.

Dominque “Domino” Derval (Claudine Auger) — In the novel, Bond’s first appreciative reaction to meeting the mercurial and seriously rude Domino Vitali is to smile and utter the word, “bitch.” Her French filmic counterpart has a sweeter disposition but is still the “kept woman” of Emilio Largo, a wealthy older brute who is hiding his true nature as an international supervillain. Like the character in the book, she proves to have a dark and nervy side of her own, especially when it comes to avenging crimes against her family.

Scores of talented actresses vied for the part of the woman originally written as Dominetta “Domino” Palazzi, but the gently beautiful Claudine Auger wound up with the part, and she is as sympathetic and alluring as she needs to be. (Even so, EON felt it necessary to soften her French accent by dubbing her part.) Auger had argued that she could relate to the role of Domino, who is under the romantic thumb of a much older man, because her career had begun after marrying 41 year-old writer-director Pierre Gaspard-Huit at age 18, and her scenes with Adolfo Celi as Largo do benefit from a hint of psychological realism. Her best known films — at least to English-speaking film geeks –are probably the fact-based World War II espionage thriller, “Triple Cross,” also directed by Terrence Young, and “Black Belly of the Tarantula,” a well-regarded Italian horror-mystery giallo from 1971 that united Auger with fellow Bond girls Barbara Bouchet (the 1967 Bond spoof “Casino Royale”) and Barbara Bach (1977′s “The Spy Who Loved Me”).

Friends and colleagues

Felix Leiter (Rik van Nutter) — The shape shifting ways of 007′s opposite number at the CIA continue as the avuncular everyman Cec Linder of “Goldfinger” is replaced by prematurely grey, suavely macho Rik van Nutter. If DVD commentaries are to be believed, the EON team was pleased enough with van Nutter’s stiff but watchable performance that he was signed to a contract for more appearances as Leiter. The story goes, however, that the writers could not figure out a proper role for Leiter in the next two Bond films. When the CIA man finally reappeared in 1971′s “Diamonds are Forever,” he was once again played by an entirely different actor. Van Nutter also appeared in a number of Italian action films under the name Clyde Rogers, but his post-”Thunderball” movie career seems to be mostly nonexistent.

Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) and M (Bernard Lee) — Bond’s stern boss and his eternal partner in flirtatious byplay are back again. The comic business with both is fairly limited this time; there’s nuclear terror to be dealt with and not much time to spare.

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) — With the success of the gadgetry in “Goldfinger,” it was only natural that the part of the gizmo-bearing quartermaster would be beefed up further in the fourth 007 outing. So we have an extended and extremely funny sequence as Q, dressed like a typical British tourist with a tropical shirt and sporty fedora hat, gripes that he finds it “highly irregular” that he be forced to travel to the Bahamas to bring Bond the dangerous toys 007 clearly does not properly appreciate. Bond doesn’t seem particularly happy to see Q either. Oh, the buddy action comedy these two guys could have made.

The Nemeses

Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Anthony Dawson and Eric Pohlman) — The cat fancying supervillain is back and more dangerous than ever, especially if you work for him. Once again, Blofeld’s face is left unseen. As in “From Russia With Love,” his lower body is once again supplied by Anthony Dawson of “Dr. No” and his dialogue comes courtesy of actor Eric Pohlmann. Audiences would have to wait until the fifth Bond film before finally beholding the face of SPECTRE’s #1.

Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi)– An up-and-comer within the SPECTRE organization, Largo is Bond’s primary “Thunderball” antagonist, both in his attempt at nuclear blackmail on a massive scale as well as for the affections of Domino. Compared to the pirate Blackbeard by Ian Fleming, the film version of Largo sports an eye patch and a bit of piratical swagger. He is also a chip of the old Blofeld block when it comes to slaughtering his SPECTRE colleagues should they fall short.

Sicilian actor Adolfo Celi appeared in over 100 films, including a number of English language films where his performances were routinely looped on account of his thick accent. (In “Thunderball” he is dubbed by voice actor Ronald Rietti.) A fine performer who, for whatever reason, doesn’t quite manage to be as memorable as past Bond villains, Celi also appeared in the notorious Bond spoof, “Operation Kid Brother” with Neil Connery (Sean C.’s real life younger brother), as well as John Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix” and Mario Bava’s Bondean comic strip fantasia, “Danger: Diabolik.”

(Short-lived) Lesser Bond Baddies

“Thunderball” features numerous disposable crooks and henchman. Not all of them rate a mention, but the memorable ones include…

Jacques Bouvar (Rose Alba/Bob Simmons) — An assassin very much in touch with his feminine side with whom Bond tangles in the pre-credit sequence.

Quist (Bill Cummings) — A would-be killer whom Bond regards as a “little fish” to be thrown back into the criminal sea. He soon meets a much bigger fish, Emilio Largo’s pet shark.

Count Lippe (Guy Doleman) — The aristocrat with ties to SPECTRE and Chinese Tongs tangles with Bond at Shrublands and is roasted in a sauna for his trouble. Surviving that unpleasantness, Lippe’s luck fails to improve as he later winds up being charred to a crisp in his car, thanks to a kill-order from Largo and the well-aimed bullets of Fiona Volpe.

Angelo Palazzi (Paul Stassino) — You spend years studying to fly, undergo painful plastic surgery to turn you into the exact double of a NATO pilot, ruthlessly murder him and all of his crew, steal two atomic bombs. Then, basking in afterglow of a job well done, you ask for a little raise. Next thing you know, the airhose that’s keeping you alive underwater gets cut with a knife by your supervisor, who leaves you behind for fish food. Working for SPECTRE sucks.

Vargas (Phillip Locke) — Probably out of respect for his skills as an assassin, Largo actually does not kill his apparent right hand man. He does, however, embarrass him in front of James Bond by somewhat mentioning that he avoids all distractions, neither smoking, nor drinking, nor “making love.” In any case, it’s Bond who ends up killing Vargas with a spear gun after Vargas’s bullets fail to do in the superspy, adding insult to terminal injury with a not so witty quip.

License to kill

After the cold blooded murder of the craven Prof. Dent in “Dr. No,” Bond was on relative good behavior in “From Russia with Love” and even more so in “Goldfinger,” generally only offing bad guys in fairly clear-cut cases of self-defense. “Thunderball” is a different story right from the start; the opening climaxes with Bond successfully completing his mission of death by very deliberately breaking the neck of Jacques Bouvar with a crowbar. Later, it appears that Bond intends to assassinate Largo when Domino, furious at the news that Largo has killed her NATO pilot brother, begs Bond to kill him for her, and 007 responds with a passionate kiss. (Of course, it’s Domino who eventually performs the deadly honors.) Later Bond saves his own life by using the extremely treacherous Fiona Volpe as a human shield against a SPECTRE assassin. Although most of the other killings we see are in self-defense, the biggest Bond film yet has its hero racking up by far the largest body count of any of the films so far.

Interestingly, the original novel is almost a pacifist tract in comparison. The scene where Domino requests Bond kill Largo has Bond confidently informing his new girlfriend that such things don’t usually happen, but that any SPECTRE agents captured are likely to get life in prison. It’s enough to make you imagine the literary Bond might have considered voting Labour from time to time.

The gadgets

A great deal of the financial success of “Goldfinger.” both at the box office and in terms of marketing tie-ins, came from the enormous appeal of the gadgets. No surprise, therefore, that “Thunderball” makes maximum use of all kinds of gadgetry, starting with the opening sequence in which Bond flees from his assassination of Jacques Bouvar with the use of a jet pack, setting off a 100 million youthful fantasies that someday we’d all be flying to work. Though that never happened, the jet packs were not miniatures, as you might assume, but very real military prototypes flown by actual test pilots.

The opening sequence also featured a return appearance of Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, presumably a different iteration than the one that got trashed in “Goldfinger.” This version includes a bullet-proof shield and handy water cannons. That’s only the beginning as Q arrives in Nassau with a plethora of devices and others appear out of nowhere, including:

- A waterproof wristwatch with a built-in Geiger counter, perfect for detecting underwater nuclear bombs.

- An pocket sized “rebreather” providing a few minutes of air when other sources of oxygen are unavailable or impractical under water. The U.S. military found the device so believable they were reportedly disappointed to find out that the production team could not provide details on how to make one work.

- A flare gun in a convenient pocket sized canister.

- A “harmless,” just slightly radioactive, homing “pill” which Q wants Bond to swallow immediately. A reluctant Bond waits until much later to do so. No word on whether Q ever got this gadget returned to him.

- Infrared camera with a built in Geiger counter, perfect for revealing your spy status to a cruel supervillain.

- A water jet, perfect for rapid underwater propulsion and leaving a trail of bright yellow gas behind it; clearly it wasn’t created with camouflage in mind.

- A tape recorder hidden inside a hollowed out book.

- A massive skyhook.

Not to be entirely left out, SPECTRE also has some gadgetry of its own this time around. Spiffiest of these is the electrified, retractable conference room chair which conveniently kills theiving and/or incompetent agents with a gigantic electric shock. It then conveniently drops down into the floor and disposes of the body, returning as a clean and seemingly harmless chair. Also noteworthy, and definitely the largest gadget in the film, is Emilio Largo’s yacht, the Disco Volante. It’s actually becomes two boats in times of high duress and also features a smoke screen and built in machine guns.

The exotic locales

“Thunderball” certainly doesn’t fall short on the scenery. The main setting for much of the film is the colorful Bahamas city of Nassau and and the nearby resort, Paradise Island. (Some additional material was shot in and around Miami.) In Nassau, the filmmakers went the extra step of asking the locale residents to re-stage the yearly Junkanoo, a Mardi Gras-like street parade usually held on Boxing Day (December 26). With Bond-mania in full-swing, the residents complied almost too enthusiastically for the production team: some of the floats and groups of marchers were James Bond-themed, presenting a challenge for the production team.

A bit less exotic but no less visually arresting, the pre-credit opening sequence featuring the death of Jacques Bouvar and Bond’s airborne escape is set at the spectacular Château d’Anet. It’s a massive renaissance era construction, originally built for the mistress of England’s Henry II, 50 miles outside Paris. The chateau remains both a private home and a tourist attraction to this day.

It might not qualify as “exotic,” but the Shrublands Health Clinic, which is given an amusingly satirical treatment in Ian Fleming’s novel, was a real sanitarium. Nevertheless, the visually impressive buildings used in the film actually belonged to a suburban aluminum company.

The outrageous villains lairs and good guy haunts

We suppose the great production designer Ken Adam can only take partial credit for the amazing interior of the Château d’Anet, but it’s still pretty outrageous. On the other hand, the secret SPECTRE boardroom, located inside the prosaic offices of a faux charity, is pure Adam insanity along the stylized, ultra-mod lines of his war room in “Dr. Strangelove” and the famed rumpus room from “Goldfinger.” Full of clean lines and exaggerated ultra-modern furniture, we find just how uncomfortable a chair can be as an untrustworthy SPECTRE member is given the electric sack by Blofeld and disappeared via a retractable chair.

Even more spectacular is the MI6 conference room where M and various dignitaries hold forth. With an oblong table where Bond sits with the other, mostly unseen, 00 agents and absurdly gigantic tapestries replaced by giant maps in later scenes, it’s a Fantasyland version of an English government building. Just as over the top, in its way, is the Nassau offices of local MI6 contact Pinder (Earl Cameron). The character of Pinder has little to do other than appear vaguely competent, but his office is more interesting and a good example of Ken Adam’s sense of humor. It’s an intelligence center in an island nation trying very hard not to look like an intelligence center, and so it winds up looking kind of like a U.S. based Tiki bar.

The Opening

The death of SPECTRE assassin Colonel Jacques Bouvar (spelled “Boitier” in the credits) is one of the more cleverly designed of the James Bond openings for a number of reasons. For starters, it appears to be another entirely disconnected James Bond mini-adventure while actually being partially connected to the main plot — Bouvar turns out to be a SPECTRE operative — and even foreshadowing later scenes.

It opens with the funeral of the seemingly dead Bouvar in a lavish French chateau. As Bond and his beautiful local contact, Madame LaPorte, watch a funeral, the nature of Bond’s assignment is made clear when he admits that he’s sorry Bouvar died of natural causes. Still, all is not as it appears as Bouvar’s beautiful widow — first played in a bit of a cheat on the audience by actress Rose Alba — turns out to be Bouvar himself, played in turn by James Bond stuntman #1 Bob Simmons. The fight, one of the most well-choreographed of the series, turns out to be literal bone-cruncher as Bond dispatches Bouvar by breaking his neck with a metal poker from a fireplace, throwing some nearby funereal roses on the corpse for good measure. Then it’s on to Bond’s escape from the chateau, which he accomplishes with a conveniently placed jet pack and his waiting Aston Martin DB 5′s handy-dandy bullet-proof shield and water-jets, which humorously impede Bond’s pursuers while cuing the aquatic themed credit sequence.

All in all, the opening sets the tone of “Thunderball” as the series entry which fully ups the ante on the James Bond formula following the huge success of “Goldfinger.” There’ll be more kills, more silliness, more blatant sex, more everything.

The Credits

Maurice Binder, who designed the credits on “Dr. No” as well as the iconic 007 gun barrel intro is back with one of the more visually beautiful Bond credit sequences. This time, silhouettes of bathing beauties and armed scuba divers blend with underwater imagery and bursts of fiery color. From this point on, Binder would design every EON Bond title through 1989′s “License to Kill.”

The Music

John Barry had established credibility as a pop songwriter as well as a film composer, and then some, with the massive success of the “Goldfinger” title song and soundtrack album. Originally re-teaming with “Goldfinger” cohorts singer Shirley Bassey and lyricist Leslie Bricusse, Barry and his collaborators took a cue from the oft-quoted Italian nick-name for James Bond with a sinister yet swinging ditty called “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.” A reasonably killer version was recorded with Bassey but, for reasons which remain vague, her appropriately dramatic vocal stylings were replaced by the more subtle, jazz inflected approach of the very up-and-coming American songstress, Dionne Warwick, best known today for such Burt Bacharach-Hal David standards as “Walk On By” and “I Say A Little Prayer.”

Frankly, Warwick’s understated approach didn’t quite click with the song, though Barry was apparently satisfied. Even so, the word came from on-high at MGM that the “Thunderball” title track should actually contain the word “Thunderball.” The only problem was that the songwriters were stymied by the title, which didn’t seem to lend easily lend itself to pop lyrics.

Nevertheless, 27 year-old lyricist Don Black was enlisted to cobble together some couplets which may have been intended to describe the character of James Bond, but which could almost as easily apply to bad guy Emilio Largo. So odd and slapdash were the lyrics that emerging pop superstar Tom Jones was a bit baffled himself when tasked with singing the song. Following instructions to “sell” the song as hard as possible, Jones is said to have fainted as he completed the very lengthily sustained final note.

The result was was easily the campiest of the early Bond themes, but a memorable hit nevertheless. The song, its lyrics, the final note, and Maurice Binder’s “Thunderball” credit sequence were all spoofed very nicely by none other than “Weird Al” Yankovic in a 1998 music video for his theme for the Leslie Nielsen spoof film, “Spy Hard.”

Action Highlights

Simultaneously the most remarkable and the most widely criticized aspect of “Thunderball” are the lengthy underwater action scenes, particularly the colorful final battle in which armed frogmen from the U.S. Coast Guard and SPECTRE face off, including Bond and Emilio Largo. Without a doubt the fights are well staged and, especially in the recently restored Blu-Ray/digital version, visually splendid. Nevertheless, the argument has been made by many that they slow down the film and it’s hard to disagree. In fact, editor Peter Hunt had fashioned a shorter version of the climactic final battle, but was asked to lengthen it to include more of the spectacular footage the various photographics units had assembled. The completed version of the sequence ran roughly nine minutes and “Thunderball” was by far the lengthiest Bond film up that time, with a running time of 129 minutes.

Of course, “Thunderball” also features numerous land-based action sequences; so many that at times it feels like a frenetic modern-day action flick. Additional highlights include the opening fight-to-the-death with Col. Bouvar, the car chase that ends with Fiona Volpe’s destruction of Count Lippe, an on-foot chase through the junkanoo parade, and the final exciting hand-to-hand battle between Bond, Largo, and assorted henchmen aboard the Disco Volante. As with the final big hand-to-hand fight from “Goldfinger” and “From Russia With Love,” staging the final fight meant weeks of work for the cast, the director, and especially stunt man/coordinator Bob Simmons.

The one-liners

Though the story has a slightly serious atomic age edge, the silly side of Bond that had emerged in “Goldfinger” continues. “Thunderball” gives us more of those famous James Bond movie one-liners that are often witty but also often strike a precarious balance between cleverness and groan-inducing stupidity, not that there’s anything wrong with that. For example…

Bond (having just shot Vargas with a spear gun): I think he got the point.

Fiona Volpe (getting out of her car): Some men just don’t like to be driven.
Bond: No, some men don’t like to be taken for a ride.

Bond (deppositing the bullet-ridden body of Fiona Volpe with a dance club bystander): Do you mind if my friend sits this one out? She’s just dead.

Bond (after making underwater love to Domino): I hope we didn’t scare the fishes.

Felix Leiter: Well, James, did you kill him?
James Bond: You know me better than that.

Bond (depositing his jet pack): No well-dressed man should be without one.

Bond (having just made sanitarium whoopee with Pat Fearing): Keep in touch.
Pat Fearing: Anytime, anyplace, James.
Bond: Another time, another place.

Bond (leaving “irrigation therapy”): See you later, irrigator.

Cocktails and other beverages

With a city or two on the edge of annihilation and the fate of the free world at stake, there’s only a little time for boozing it up. Bond has a martini or two, but he never bothers to explain how it should be prepared. Moreover, if you look closely you can see Bond whipping up what appears to be a martini served on the rocks for himself and Felix Leiter and, indeed, in the book they do drink them that way. Cocktails aficionados may find the thought of Bond and Leiter drinking martinis in this heretical fashion disturbing, but we must present the facts as they are.

Also, Emilio Largo is nice enough to serve Bond a Rum Collins. Bond, who was very specific in his drink requests with Auric Goldfinger, is too busy trying to intimidate Largo to fuss about the brand of rum or to insist on fresh lemon juice and simple syrup rather than Collins mix.

Random facts

* “Thunderball” is the first film in the series in which Bond habitually introduces himself as “James Bond” and not even once as “Bond, James Bond.”

* Despite the fact that the movie of “Thunderball” is a pretty straightforward adaptation of Ian Fleming’s novel, the legal settlement with McClory meant the film had to be credited as based on a screenplay by Jack Whittham and a story by McClory, Whittingham, and Fleming. It would have been more true to say it was based on a novel drawn from work by Whittingham, McClory, and others.

* The scene where Bond and the other 00 agents are told about Operation Thunderball was originally supposed to feature silent cameos by a number of other actors who were portraying assorted international men of mystery of film and television fame, of which there was an ever growing number. The gag was dropped as being overly broad and difficult too negotiate.

* Speaking of overly broad gags, fans of the Austin Powers series will notice a number of familiar moments in “Thunderball,” starting with the plot of “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.” After having a number of his diabolical, but seriously outdated, plans dismissed, old-time spy supervillain Dr. Evil relents. “Oh, hell, lets just do what we always do. Hijack some nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage.”

* The success of “Thunderball” left Kevin McClory hungry for more and so his renewed lawsuit became endless fodder for entertainment news stories through the seventies and on into the 1980s. As the conflict escalated, McClory threatened to start a second Bond series of his own, even though he only held the rights to “Thunderball.” He eventually did make his own Bond movie and with Sean Connery in it to boot, the 1987 “Thunderball” remake. “Never Say Never Say Never Again.” McClory’s threat to continue remaking “Thunderball” in a series of Bond films fortunately never materialized, however. A 2008 book about the affair,”The Battle for Bond” by Robert Sellers, was itself caught up in legal issues with the Fleming estate.

* “Thunderball” is so far, one of only two Ian Fleming James Bond stories to have been remade. The other is the first James Bond novel, “Casino Royale,” which Fleming sold off the rights to separately.

* Efx wizard John Stears won the second and final James Bond Oscar. He would go on to win two more Oscars for the film we now call “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.”

* According to Robert Sellers, prior to settling on “Dr. No” as the first Bond film, the Bond producers approached Alfred Hitchcock, who seriously contemplated adapting “Thunderball” into the first Bond movie. Ian Fleming, apparently mad with enthusiasm to get the movie made, enthusiastically entertained the nation of having Hitchcock favorite James Stewart play Bond. We know, it sounds like the premise for a bad SNL sketch, but there it is.

* Despite the fact that Bond had badmouthed his rock and roll band in “Goldfinger,” Beatle Ringo Starr was apparently seen hanging around the “Thunderball” set. He had recently finished filming the Beatle’s somewhat Bond-esque follow-up to “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help!,” which was also largely made in Nassau.

* Rik van Nutter may have been cast as Felix Leiter, it appears, as something of a favor and/or money saving move by Cubby Broccoli to appease van Nutter’s then wife, actress Anita Ekberg. Sex symbol Ekberg had been the female lead of the EON produced Bob Hope comedy, “Call Me Bwana.” A poster for the film featuring Ekberg had appeared in “From Russia With Love” and casting van Nutter may have been in lieu of an appearance fee.

* Most film productions employ a second unit or two to gather additional film material such as action sequences and inserts. “Thunderball” employed as many as seven units at various points in the production.

* A question for anyone who’s seen a real atomic bomb. Do they really have “Handle like eggs” written on them?

* While the song “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” was left out of “Thunderball,” parts of the melody appear in the score and the song was on the original soundtrack album. There is, however, another unissued “Thunderball” theme that never got included on anything relating to the film. Country music great Johnny Cash took a wack at entering the 007 mythos with a theme song reminiscent of his version of “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” but it was rejected. Cash’s “Thunderball,” was not officially released in the United States until 2011, eight years after Cash’s passing. It would never have worked in the film but we kind of dig it, On the other hand, Cash’s song creates the incorrect impression that “Thunderball” is the name of the vehicle carrying the atom bonds.

* Director Terrence Young left “Thunderball” during post-production to work on another film, essentially leaving editor Peter Hunt as the creative head of the production. Like an awful lot of critics, Young also apparently felt that the finished film was slowed down by too much of the underwater footage.

* Ricou Browning, who directed the underwater footage for Ivan Tors Productions, is better known to entertainment obsessives as both the creator of the “Flipper” television series and the aquatically skilled actor who portrayed the monstrous title role in “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

* Kevin McClory’s best known non-Bond film was the highly successful and Oscar-winning, but not so critically respected , spectacular, “Around the World in Eighty Days.” The massive spectacle was overseen by mega-producer Mike Todd and starred Ian Fleming favorite David Niven.

* Probably because of the rushed editing of the film, it appears that there were small differences and inconsistencies in various theatrical, television, and home video versions of “Thunderball.” Eagle-eyed fans have, of course, had plenty of fun spotting the discrepancies.

* Fans have also spotted numerous apparent continuity errors. Many of these “errors” are actually quite deliberate. Editor Peter Hunt was a master of figuring out creative ways to move the story along more quickly. That often involved changing the order of scenes or doing other bits of cinema sleight-of-hand which create the appearance of an accidental error when, in fact, the error was highly calculated.

The Romantic Ending

In keeping with the more action-packed tone of “Thunderball,” Bond and Domino don’t waste any time cannoodling in the rubber raft they end up after the destruction of the Disco Volante. Instead the embracing pair is quickly whisked away via skyhook.

“James Bond Will Return”

This is noticeably absent from nearly all extant versions of “Thunderball” though the original version promised that 007 would return in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” Since the next film in the series was later changed to “You Only Live Twice,” the graphic was removed from most prints and never replaced.

The beautiful women from the James Bond films have intrigued us in many ways over the years, but seeing them join in on the action wielding all sorts of guns definitely added to the sex appeal. Above you’ll see a slideshow of some of the sexy Bond girls holding their firearms, starting the the sexy Tanya Roberts from “A View to a Kill” sporting her big hair from the 80s. Next we have an action shot of Olga Kurylenko from “Quantum of Solace” and then the elegant Daniela Bianchi pointing a gun at Bond in “From Russia with Love.” Michelle Yeoh handles some serious firepower in “Tomorrow Never Dies,” and then another action shot with Naomie Harris from “Skyfall.” The slideshow finishes up with three lovely Bond girls posing with their guns – Carey Lowell in “Licence to Kill,” Catrina Skepper in “The Living Daylights” and finally badass Grace Jones in “A View to a Kill.”

Barbara Bach points a gun at Bond in “The Spy Who Loved Me.”

Plenty of girls with guns in “Octopussy”

Bullz-Eye continues its look back at every James Bond film, 007 One by One, as part of our James Bond Fan Hub that we’ve created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Bond film.

The third Bond film is more than one of the most enduringly popular movies in the series and the final template for James Bond movies from that point forward. In many respects, it actually set the pattern for actions films in general. It was also perhaps the first modern-day blockbuster in that it was intended as an event as well a movie — complete with mega-bucks generating merchandizing opportunities. Sadly, it’s also the first movie in the series that Bond’s 56 year-old creator, Ian Fleming, didn’t live to see completed. He could not have conceived of how insanely popular his creation would become within months of his passing.

“Goldfinger” (1963)

The Plot

007 locks deadly horns with a mysterious millionaire known for cheating at gin rummy, golf, and the exportation of gold. That naturally turns out to be only the tip of the iceberg as James Bond discovers a diabolical plan aimed at destroying the economy of the free world and making portly Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) the world’s richest man. The aptly named, gold-obsessed supervillain’s target is, of course, Fort Knox.

The Backstory

With the back-to-back success of “Dr. No” and “From Russia With Love,” the money conscious EON producing team of Harry Saltzman and Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli were ready to spend what was actually pretty big money in early 1960′s movie production terms — $3 million! (The 2008 Bond entry, “Quantum of Solace,” had a reported production budget of $200 million.)

Dashing director Terrence Young, who had launched the series so ably with “Dr. No” and “From Russia With Love,” smelled the cash and held out for more money. True to form, EON decided to go with a more thrifty option and brought in an accomplished journeyman director who was, nevertheless, a new hand when it came to staging elaborate action scenes, Guy Hamilton.

American writer Richard Maibum was back on board, this time with an assist from British screenwriter Paul Dehn. A very probable inspiration for the dashing English spy played by Michael Fassbender in “Inglourious Basterds,” Dehn was a former film critic and admitted World War II assassin. His next gig was, ironically, helping to adapt John le Carré’s specifically anti-Bondian espionage classic, “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.”

Most importantly to the financial bottom line, Sean Connery had made himself synonymous with 007 and was also on board for another go round, though he wouldn’t appear on set until he finished off his highly dramatic starring role in Alfred Hithcock’s “Marnie.” Connery was starting to worry a little about this whole business of being typecast as a veritable superhero; he would continue to go out of his way to remind the public he could be someone other than Bond.

In any case, everyone working on the film seems to have understood what kind of opportunity “Goldfinger” represented. That bigger budget meant one thing: more — more action, more gadgets, more violence, and an extremely fast pace by the standards of its day. It was just the kind of wretched excess that could lead to a film so enormous it could launch what has to be the longest lasting and most consistently successful franchise in movie history.

The Bond Girls (Rule of 3 + 2)

Bond keeps to his usual score of three sex partners per movie. However, as befits the more lavish “Goldfinger,” we actually have five legitimate “Bond girls” this go-round. It’s just that Bond respectfully keeps his hands off of one and apparently never quite reaches home plate with another. To be specific…

Bonita (Nadia Regan) — She gets kissed while naked at the end of the pre-credit sequence, but it appears that actually doing the deed with Bond was never in the treacherous beauty’s plans, and she ends up with only a nasty bump on the head for her trouble. The adorable, Serbian-born Nadia Regan was actually on her second Bond go-round, having played a very brief kittenish role in the just-prior, “From Russia With Love,” where she was the Turkish secretary/girlfriend of Ali Kerim Bey (Pedro Armendariz.)

Dink (Margaret Nolan) – This lovely bathing beauty and amateur masseuse appears to be Bond’s very temporary girlfriend during his very short vacation at Miami Beach’s ultra-lux Fontainebleau Hotel. In true super-sexist style, he dismisses her with jovial rudeness and a smart smack to the backside when his American colleague shows up. Actress and model Margaret Nolan would go on to appear in a Playboy pictorial and several entries in the “Carry On” series of British sex comedies.

Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) – Bond wastes little time in seducing the bikini clad Masterson, who has unwisely taken a job helping a certain highly suspicious gold broker cheat at gin rummy. The superspy clearly takes a liking to the spunky, frankly sexual Masterson. He is devastated when he wakes up from a clubbing-induced slumber to find her suffocated to death by being painted completely gold from head to foot. It’s a tragic death, but it gave the movie its poster and one of the most creepily memorable and iconic images in the Bond lexicon. Shirley Eaton, already a busy working actress in the British film industry, would go on to star in a number of mostly not-so-distinguished films before retiring in favor of motherhood in 1969. She came out of retirement three decades later with a memoir, Golden Girl.

Tilly Masterson (Tania Mallet) – When Bond gets his first good look at the vengeance-seeking sister of Jill Masterson, “Discipline, 007!” he reminds himself. Still, though Bond clearly sympathizes with her need for justice, there’s simply no time for romance. In the book, Bond’s chances were even worse as Ian Fleming made it more than explicit that this Masterson sister played for the other team; she was more interested in hooking up with Pussy Galore than any man. The beautiful and sad, but also somewhat remote Tilly was played nicely by model Tania Mallet. That sadness was probably assisted somewhat by the tragic real-life death of her longtime boyfriend prior to filming. After “Goldfinger,” Mallet mostly abandoned acting in favor of her more immediately lucrative career as a model. Her only other significant role of any sort was a 1976 episode of “The New Avengers.”

Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) — The ultimate Bond girl with the ultimate Bond-girl name, Ms. Galore is the closest thing Bond meets to his female equivalent in any of the early Bond films. Goldfinger’s personal pilot also has something going for her in that she’s not immediately attracted to Bond. In fact, careful viewers might notice that she’s not immediately attracted to men in general. Pussy Galore’s name raised enough hackles with censors and the filmmakers weren’t about to risk a total ban with an avowedly lesbian leading lady. The film plays her inclinations — and that of the other beautiful members of her fellow pilots in “Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus” — on the down-low. Ian Fleming’s novel did not play them down, however. In fact, horny homophobe Fleming threw in an overt flirtation between Tilly Masterson and Pussy — in the book the leader of an all-lesbian criminal gang called “The Cement Mixers.”

Honor Blackman was already a fairly big acting name, having preceded Bond-girl-to-be Diana Rigg as the leading lady on the popular English spy series, “The Avengers.” Blackman brought real class and grace to her portrayal of her oddly named character and, while she was typecast as Pussy for much of the rest of her career, she enjoyed success as a singer and a busy working actress of stage and screen. She continues to work both as a performer and a political activist, campaigning to eliminate the British monarchy, a cause of which we are certain 007 would not approve.

Friends and colleagues

Felix Leiter (Cec Linder) — Bond’s CIA opposite number from “Dr. No,” returns, but it sure looks like he’s had a very stressful two years. Cec Linder looked considerably older than the stolid Jack Lord (“Hawaii Five-O”), who originated the role and preferred not to return. The 42 year old Linder was actually slightly younger than Lord, but he played Leiter as a wry, very middle-aged older brother to Bond and something of a subtle comic sidekick. From “Goldfinger” on, Leiter would become a shapeshifter, being played by completely unrelated actors of varying physical types and races from movie to movie.

Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) and M (Bernard Lee) — MI6′s most beloved secretary is back once again to flirt madly with Bond while boss man M once again cuts the flirting short so the plot, and the necessary exposition, can keep barreling forward. M gets more comic business this time around, especially during a dinner with Bond and a bigwig from the Bank of England. However, he has to make way for the first really substantial appearance by another beloved member of the growing Bond movie family.

Q (Desmond Llewelyn) — The armorer formerly known as Major Boothroyd had actually appeared in both “Dr. No” and “From Russia With Love,” but he had only been played for the first time by Desmond Llewelyn in Bond #2. Since “Goldfinger” was the first film in the series where the gadgetry took center stage, it was natural that Q branch would also have a lot more to do. So, for the first time, the man known as Q grew a discernible personality. The new film would provide Llewelyn an opportunity to show his comic chops and introduce one of the series most well loved running jokes: Q is permanently annoyed with Bond for breaking all the great toys with which he regularly presents him, and for not being particularly sorry about it. Llewelyn was so good at being irritated by 007′s flippancy that he appeared in every EON-produced Bond film until his death in a car accident in 1999.

The Nemeses

Auric Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) – Goldfinger is, next to Ernst Stavros Blofeld, the most archetypal of Bondian supervillains. Along with his diabolical master plan and his lavish abodes, Goldfinger really knows how to stick to a theme. He keeps a staff of blonde pilots, owns a golden Rolls Royce, and he carries a gold pistol. When it comes time to do away with the lovely Jill Masterson, he has her killed by painting her body completely gold, resulting in “skin suffocation.” In the novel, he wears golden underwear and sleeps only with gold painted prostitutes.

German actor Gert Fröbe was seemingly born to play the role, but he was not yet an English speaker and his voice was provided by actor Michael Collins. Nevertheless, the tall, portly actor’s grim yet oddly humorous presence was crucial to the film’s success. He continued to make sizable contributions to a number of movies, including the epic comedy, “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” and the big-budget children’s musical, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (loosely based on an Ian Fleming novel and also featuring a gadget-filled car).

Oddjob (Harold Sakata) – No Bond villain ever had a more memorable henchmen than Goldfinger’s Korean bodyguard/manservant/paid killer. Oddjob says nothing, but his body language is killer, especially when he is flings his deadly derby hat, a sort of flying Frisbee of death. Along with his imposing presence and martial arts skill, Japanese-American Harold Sakata brought a great deal of ironic humor to the role, making the silent killer as oddly likable as he was deadly.

A former Olympic weightlifting silver medalist, the Hawaii-born Sakata came to the attention of Bond producers as a “bad guy” wrestler named “Tosh Togo.” Not at all a bad guy in real life, his good-natured, easygoing personality and work ethic made him a favorite of the “Goldfinger” cast and crew. Being Asian and more than a little bit gigantic, Sakata wound up being typecast and he was never quite free of Oddjob. At least he was able to star in our pick for the most awesome cold remedy commercial of all time.

(Short-lived) Lesser Bond Baddies

Wantonly doing away with one’s colleagues is a hallmark of any great James Bond villain. Even so, Auric Goldfinger has what has to be considered an itchy trigger finger and ends up knocking off every minor villain in the movie. First, he uses nerve gas to do away with an entire roomful of gangsters gathered at his home, while Oddjob is tasked with shooting the uncooperative Solo (Martin Benson) and having him crushed inside a Lincoln.

While invading Fort Knox, Goldfinger — wearing an U.S. Army uniform — shoots his previously trusted Red Chinese contact, Mr. Ling (Burt Kwouk), in order to blend in as G.I.’s retake the compound. Anglo-Chinese actor Burt Kwouk was, by the way, the gifted performer who portrayed Inspector Clouseau’s long-suffering houseman/sparring partner, Kato, in “The Pink Panther” series.

License to kill

Bond is on some of his best behavior here and never really uses his 00 authority. Every bad guy Bond kills here is in pretty inarguably in self-defense. Even Goldfinger dies not die at Bond’s hands but, in the style of silver age comic book supervillains who weren’t allowed to be killed by superheroes, the movie’s big bad gets conveniently sucked out of an airplane window. Interestingly, while Bond in the books tends to be less violent than in his film incarnation, in the novel Bond loses control of his anger and actually strangles Auric Goldfinger.

The gadgets and the car

No small part of the success of “Goldfinger” was the fact that it was the first film to really bring the gadgetry front and center. In this case, all those gadgets were mostly housed in one place — the world’s coolest automobile. So it was that Bond’s old Bentley was replaced with the more up to date Aston Martin DB5, as customized by production designer Ken Adam and efx genius John Stears.

An early example of the practice we now know as “product placement,” the Aston Martin company supplied a single car (another one was later purchased). As legend would have it, the auto was originally only to have a smoke screen device, but crew members began suggesting so many other nifty devices that James Bond becomes visibly irritated as Q informs him that describing them all won’t take more than an hour.

And what devices they were. Director Guy Hamilton had been plagued by parking tickets, so he was attracted to the revolving license plates that had been mentioned in the novel. Hamilton’s stepson suggested the auto-ejector seat that caused Bond to exclaim, “You’re joking!” There was also the bullet-proof windshields, the oil slick release mechanisms, and, of course, the left and right front-wing machine guns. Not technically built into the car as a practical effect, but created largely through the magic of editor Peter Hunt, the car also came equipped with a wheel-based tire-destroying device. That idea was a more or less direct lift from the killer chariots featured in the hit 1959 biblical epic, “Ben-Hur.”

The car was, of course, a huge hit with audiences and played no small part in the enormous commercial success of the James Bond series throughout the 1960s. Corgi’s model of the Q branch Aston Martin DB5 became the most successful toy of 1964 and one of the most iconic merchandizing opportunities of all time. (It was also maybe the first toy to be aimed at children from a movie containing material thought inappropriate for kids.) The Corgi DB5 was a key part of a worldwide merchandising bonanza that would prefigure films like 1977′s “Star Wars,” financed largely on the back of its built-in merchandising possibilities. David Worrell’s out-of-print 1993 book about the DB5 was aptly entitled The Most Famous Car in the World.

The exotic attractive locales

If “Goldfinger” skimps in any area, it’s the settings. While reasonably spectacular, they really aren’t as exotic as usual. We have the pre-credit sequence set in an unnamed Latin American country, presumably Mexico; a brief sojourn with M, Moneypenny, and the Bank of England official in London; and a memorably tragic visit to Goldfinger’s compound in the relatively mundane nation of Switzerland. The rest of “Goldfinger” takes place mostly in the United States, specifically semi-exotic Miami Beach and not-at-all exotic Kentucky, near Fort Knox. Nevertheless, the film does make use of a truly spectacular post-credits aerial shot of Miami’s Fontainebleau Hotel, then the last word in opulent accommodations. It also makes use of the more mundane aspects of Louisville and is probably the first major film to give a plug to a new fast-food franchise called Kentucky Fried Chicken. Felix Leiter, in particular, seems to be a fan of what we now call KFC — though the actual restaurant where the scenes were shot was in Florida.

In reality, the bulk of “Goldfinger” was made back in England at Pinewood Studios outside of London. Sean Connery, in particular, never set foot in the U.S. during the production, leading to a lot of rather obvious process shots during the Fontainebleau sequence. Still, what the film lacked in exteriors it more than made up when it came to its interiors, which leads us to…

The outrageous villain’s lairs

Production designer Ken Adam had taken a break from the Bond films with a spectacular job creating the cavernous White House “war room” and other hugely memorable settings for Stanley Kubrick’s epochal black comedy masterpiece, “Dr. Strangelove.” His return to the series on “Goldfinger” turned out to be at least as much of a career high for Adam. Quite apart from his brilliant work tricking out the Aston Martin DB5, these sets rank easily among the most famed in movie history.

Most famous of all the “Goldfinger” sets is the enormous rumpus room located in Auric Goldfinger’s not so old Kentucky home. Looking a little bit like a hunting lodge gone ultra-modern, with a gigantic pool table that turns into a control panel operating a number of devices, it houses equally gigantic models of Fort Knox that literally come out of the woodwork. This was a few decades before PowerPoint, and these models make memorable visual aids as Goldfinger partially explains his evil “Operation Grand Slam” to a group of skeptical crime kingpins.

The room later turns out to also be a giant gas chamber in which the supervillian will kill the criminals he has just worked so hard to sell on his plan. Goldfinger clearly enjoys explaining his diabolical plans to people he plans to kill even more than most Bond villains.

On a serious note, many commentators have noted an especially disturbing side to the gas chamber designed by Adam. A German Jew, Ken Adam had come to England as a young wartime refugee and eventually joined the Royal Air Force (RAF), serving with notable heroism. Though Adam denied any conscious associations, it’s hard not to imagine that the genocidal crimes of the Nazis weren’t on his mind on some level as he designed the room.

Other notable villain-lairs include the Latin American drug silo that Bond blows up in the pre-credit sequence, Goldfinger’s ultra-posh Fontainebleau suite where Bond seduces Jill Masterson in record time, and the laser room where Bond nearly comes to an unpleasant parting of the ways. Finally, though it’s not a villain lair, we have to at least give a shout out to the film’s imaginative and striking depiction of the interior of Fort Knox. Fort Knox is so secure and super secret not even the U.S. president is allowed inside of it, so of course the film makers were not allowed to see its interior. Adam later admitted that he was glad to have no reference, as he was able to make up his own idea of what the place looked like inside.

The Opening

“From Russia With Love” had already used the then-unusual device of a pre-credit “teaser” opening, but “Goldfinger” took the idea one step further. While the opening of the prior film was fairly similar to the “cold open” of a sixties TV drama, in that the action hinted at the main story to come, the opening of “Goldfinger” amounts to a miniature James Bond adventure.

Though completely unrelated to the main story in terms of plot, it brilliantly sets up the more overtly tongue-in-cheek nature of this film right away: Our hero snorkels his way into a heroin processing compound, camouflaged by a drenched stuffed duck attached to his head. Almost without breaking a sweat, Bond places some plastic explosives in a silo housing a drug lab. In perhaps the sequences most famous shot, he removes his wet suit, revealing an immaculate tuxedo. The ever meticulous Bond even has a small rose ready to use as a boutonniere. Entering a nearby cantina to greet his contact, he is the only person not to react to the gigantic explosion he has set off — an early version of the “cool guys don’t look at explosions” phenomenon. Later, an intimate encounter with Bonita, a dancer in the bar, comes to a deadly end as a reflection’s in her eyes (have you ever seen a reflection in an eyeball?) reveals her true purpose. For the first — but definitely not the last — time, Bond uses a treacherous woman as a human shield to survive an encounter with a would-be killer, whom Bond then dispatches with the first of his famously groan-inducing post-mortem quips.

The overall message of the opening is clear and simple: prepare for big fun and, whatever you do, do not take any of this too seriously.

The Credits

Designer Robert Brownjohn returns for his second and final Bond credit-sequence outing, using the same process as he used in the “From Russia With Love” credits. As the title song plays, scenes from the film are projected on a scantily clad female body, but this time it’s a golden painted one. As strong as Brownjown’s visuals are, however, what really makes those credits is the greatest of all Bond theme songs…

The Music

John Barry had proven himself far more than able in various musical capacities on the first two Bond films. So, even though he had never before written a pop hit, he was finally allowed to write the music for the opening song, and what a song it was.

The brassy opening bars of “Goldfinger” announce melodramatically that we are in for an adventure of vast proportion and the music is jazzy yet almost operatic in scale. The lyrics, from the theatrical songwriting team of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, were inspired by Bobby Darin’s unlikely hit version of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil’s “Mack the Knife,” (the only megahit we know about a thief, murderer, and rapist). As Barry had no problem admitting, the astonishing, hell-bent-for-leather vocals of singer Shirley Bassey were crucial to selling the outrageous lyrics, a warning that gold-obsessed millionaires may not be good boyfriend material. The song was, of course, a tremendous hit. It remains easily the greatest Bond theme and, for all its near-camp excess, one of the greatest movie theme songs of all time. The rest of the film’s score isn’t so bad, either.

Action Highlights

Though it might feel a bit leisurely next to frenetic modern day action flicks, “Goldfinger” has the most action of any Bond film up to that point. That action is underlined by the ace work of editor Peter Hunt, whose “crash cutting” style propels the film ever forward and even makes a golf game exciting and fun to watch.

Easily the most famous action sequence in “Goldfinger” is the final face-off between Bond and Oddjob inside Fort Knox. Harold Sakata, Sean Connery, and stunt double/stunt coordinator Bob Simmons performed some of the most bruising action of the entire series during a fight which very nearly one-ups the spectacular fight sequence with Robert Shaw in “From Russia with Love.” Connery apparently sustained some kind of back injury during the Fort Knox fight, which Connery’s representatives are supposed to have used as a bargaining tool when negotiating his salary for the upcoming “Thunderball.”

Harold Sakata reportedly sustained a more serious injury during the moment when he is “electrocuted.” Apparently, something went wrong and Sakata’s hand made direct contact with burning pyrotechnic material. Such was Sakata’s commitment, he held on to the bar tenaciously until director Guy Hamilton yelled “cut!”

Another battered “Goldfinger” star was, of course, the Aston Martin DB5 which received plenty of “wear and tear in the field” during the Switzerland sequence. First, there is the encounter between Bond and the mysterious armed woman who turns out to be the revenge-seeking Tilly Masterson, in which Bond gets the upper hand via the “Ben-Hur”-inspired tire destroyer. Most of the car’s other devices get used during a later chase through Goldfinger’s home offices as he evades scores of North Korean and/or Chinese henchmen as well as a little old lady armed with a machine gun — a touch none other than Alfred Hithcock openly envied for its black humor.

Finally, Bond and Pussy Galore’s final confrontation with Goldfinger on board his private jet deserves some mention for visual bravado and questionable physics as a gun shot causes the plane to depressurize and plummet. While uberbaddie Goldfinger meets an undignified end, somehow Bond and Galore manage to escape with parachutes…how?

Speaking of physical action and Pussy Galore, the two have a famous/infamous tussle in the hay in one of Goldfinger’s horse barns, which naturally ends in romance. It was something of a cliché in fifties and sixties movies for the man to force a kiss on an initially resisting woman who, after a token struggle, passionately returns the hero’s affections. Today, of course, this kind of behavior is deemed sexual harassment at best and rape at worst. Intriguingly, Goldfinger’s seduction scene actually comes across more playful and a lot less offensive than most scenes of this type, perhaps because Pussy is arguably Bond’s equal in many respects. When she kisses Bond back, we’re pretty sure it’s not her weakness or fear, but her suddenly awakened feelings that are driving her. Pussy is nobody’s doormat.

The one-liners

Though the early Bond films certainly didn’t lack for a sense of humor, “Goldfinger” is the movie that really embedded funny and/or groan-inducing one-liners and quips into the Bond canon. Some are witty, some are dopey, some are snobby and intriguingly dated, but they are all a huge part of the fun of “Goldfinger.”

Bonita (annoyed by Bond’s gun): “Why do you always wear that thing?”
Bond: “I have a slight inferiority complex.”

Bond (surveying the freshly electrocuted corpse of his would-be killer): “Shocking, positively shocking!”

Goldfinger: “Choose your next witticism carefully, Mr. Bond, it may be your last.”

Bond (watching a deadly laser beam get ever closer to his crotch): “Do you expect me to talk?”
Goldfinger: “No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.”

Radio: “At the White House today, the president said that he was entirely satisfied…”
Bond (postcoitally canoodling with Jill Masterson): “That makes two of us.”

Bond (noticing his champagne has lost its chill:) “My dear girl, there are some things that just aren’t done, such as drinking Dom Perignon ’53 above the temperature of 38 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s just as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs.”

Pussy: “My name is Pussy Galore”
Bond: “I must be dreaming.”

Bond: “You’re a woman of many parts, Pussy.”

Cocktails and alcoholic beverages

Just as it ups the ante on action and sexiness, “Goldfinger” keeps the drinks coming. Not long after the tragic aftermath of that insufficiently chilled champagne, Bond gets into a colloquy on a “disappointing” Cognac with Colonel Smothers of the Bank of England. Bond offers a prompt diagnosis: “I’d say it was a 30 year old finé, indifferently blended, sir,……..with an overdose of Bon Bois.” Neither 99.9% of the audience, nor M understands what the hell Bond is talking about and Bond’s boss is clearly not pleased. (Bon Bois, it turns out, is a portion of the Cognac region of France whose grapes are considered slightly less fitting for a truly superior brandy than some others.)

Later, for the first time in any movie, it’s Bond himself who makes the most famous drink order in movie history. You’d think Bond would request a very strong coffee after awakening from a tranquilizer dart-induced sleep, Instead, he requests strong drink from one of Goldfinger’s prettier minions. “A martini, shaken, not stirred.” Without going into an extended colloquy on the debate among mixologists and cocktail connoisseurs, it’s interesting to note that the movie Bond usually orders a vodka martini with this suggestion, a somewhat less controversial choice than ordering a gin martini shaken, which he also does. Apparently Bond, like Ian Fleming, liked all his martinis to be shaken whether they were gin or vodka based.

Speaking of Fleming, in the books, Bond imbibed at least as much good old American bourbon as anything else and “Goldfinger,” with its rural American setting, gives Bond a chance to quaff what might be his actual favorite spirit. Indeed, he specifically mentions to Pussy that he understands the “bourbon and branch water is rather splendid here in Kentucky.” (“Branch water” is water from a stream, ideally the same stream where the bourbon manufacturer gets its water.) Later, Goldfinger offers Bond a “traditional, but satisfying” mint julep and Bond politely requests his be “sour mash, but not too sweet, please.” (Sour mash is a process using previously fermented material that is thought to result in somewhat sweeter tasting whiskey.) Later, Goldfinger checks to ask if Bond’s beverage is tart enough for his taste. The politeness between Bond and his supervillainous hosts can be quite touching.

Random facts

* It sounds modest by modern standards, but “Goldfinger” generated over $51 million at the U.S. box office. (Adjusted for inflation, it’s the 41st top grossing U.S. release of all time.) “Goldfinger” was, however, a worldwide box office bonanza by any definition. It escalated the already growing worldwide vogue for espionage films into the highest end of the movie stratosphere, generating endless knock-offs and spy spoofs made all over the world. The next film, “Thunderball,” generated even more cash, though “Goldfinger” may remain the most widely seen of the early Bond films.

* “Goldfinger” was one of only two Bond movies to win an Oscar. It went to sound effects editor Norman Wanstall. It received no other nominations.

* The most obvious plot change from Ian Fleming’s novel in the film version resulted from a point raised by many critics. Goldfinger’s original plan of simply robbing Fort Knox was physically impossible. As screenwriters Richard Maibum and Paul Dehn have Bond point out himself in the movie version, it would take weeks for even a large team of robbers to remove most of the gold from the Kentucky compound. Therefore, the diabolical plan in the film is to explode a relatively small but “very dirty” atomic bomb inside Fort Knox, making the gold deadly for nearly a century and therefore drastically raising the value of Goldfinger’s gelt.

* One of the most widely noted flubs in movie history occurs when Bond needs the help of an expert to disable Goldfinger’s atomic bomb at the end of the Fort Knox sequence. Bond says “Three more ticks and Mr. Goldfinger would’ve hit the jackpot.” However, an insert shot of the bomb indicates that exactly “007″ seconds were left on the counter before Bond and company would have been blown to nuclear bits. The visual joke with the timer was a last minute addition, and apparently nobody bothered to have Connery re-loop the dialogue.

* The name “Goldfinger” might sound made up, but Ian Fleming seems to have largely modeled his bad guy after the very real Erno Goldfinger, an infamously humorless avant garde architect with pro-Soviet sympathies whom Fleming despised. The real Mr. Goldfinger was, naturally, none too happy at the prospect of receiving endless prank calls and was ready to sue prior to the publication of the book, but pop-cultural disaster was averted with an out-of-court settlement. Ian Fleming had threatened to use an alternative title: “Goldprick.”

* Speaking of names and genitalia, the monicker “Pussy Galore” was just as problematic in 1963 as you might expect. “Dirty words” with double meanings were less commonly used and understood in the early sixties, but the non-feline meaning of “pussy” was the same then as today. TV promotions routinely failed to mention the name.

* “Goldfinger” was reportedly banned in Israel for a few months because Gert Fröbe had admitted in an interview to having been a member of the Nazi party before World War II. The ban is supposed to have been lifted after a Jewish family publicly thanked the actor for helping them to escape from Hitler’s Germany; it was possible that the actor had used his party membership to help smuggle a number of Jews out of the country. Fröbe, also a lifelong violin virtuoso died in 1988. In 2000, his image appeared on a German postage stamp.

* Other actors considered for the role of Auric Goldfinger included Orson Welles and actor and singer Theodore Bikel. The legendary Welles was rejected for asking for too much money, and his literally and figuratively outsize presence might have thrown the film off-balance. Screen tests reveal, however, that the relatively trim Bikel would have been a very reasonable choice.

* At the time of filming, Jill Masterson’s death-by-paint was believed to be a feasible method of murder. Indeed, just as described by Bond in the film, a small area of Shirley Eaton’s body was left unpainted to keep her safe. (A doctor was also on call.) Today, we know that any deaths caused by being painted head to toe are caused by heat exhaustion and certainly wouldn’t kill a person quickly enough to suit Goldfinger and Oddjob. Nevertheless, an obviously false urban legend arose that Eaton had died during the filming.

* The money conscious EON Team was forced to pay for one of the two Aston Martin DB5′s featured in the film. After the massive success of film and the notoriety of the car that resulted, it appears that Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman never had to budget for a car again.

* “Solo” is the name of the go-it-alone gangster who winds up compressed inside a compacted Lincoln. It’s no coincidence that the superspy played by Robert Vaughn on the hit American spy series, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” is named Napoleon Solo. Ian Fleming suggested the name to the producers.

* “Goldfinger” was not only a free advertising bonanza for car manufacturer Aston Martin, the Ford Mustang driven by Tilly Masterson was also one of the legendary American car’s first film appearances. Apparently, Ford was more product-placement savvy and also supplied other cars, including the aforementioned Lincoln.

* Though he claims to have seen the movie only twice — at the premiere and many years later at the urging of his daughter — Sean Connery owes his lifelong love of golf to the film’s lengthy golf game sequence.

* “Goldfinger” plays down the part-time lesbianism of the “man-hating” Pussy Galore and her all-female flying circus, and makes a complete mystery of the proclivities of Tilly Masterson. In the book, however, the same-sex proclivities of Pussy and Tilly provide Fleming a chance to editorialize as Bond mediates on what he perceives as a growing and dangerous energy-sapping breakdown in traditional gender roles. (Bond seems to trace it all back to women being given the vote.) Similarly, Oddjob in the novel is not just a bad guy who happens to come from Korea, but is seen as being somehow typical of the Korean people. Fleming was not considered an enormous bigot by the standards of his time and place, but modern readers need to be prepared for some pretty outrageous sexism, racism, and homophobia.

The Romantic Ending

If “Goldfinger” is the model for modern action films, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic espionage thriller-comedy, “North by Northwest,” is the model for “Goldfinger.” If you’ve seen it, you know the ending essentially finesses it’s climactic literal cliffhanger with a bit of editing panache; Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are transported by the magic of cinema from the side of Mount Rushmore to a cozy train compartment.

In terms of sheer editorial bravado, the ending of “Goldfinger” one-ups Hitchcock as we move from Bond and Pussy in a rapidly plummeting airplane with no apparent hope of escape, to the two of them on what appears to be the nicest, safest looking island in the Atlantic with a couple of spent parachutes nearby. How the two were able to get into those parachutes and out of Goldfinger’s now-exploded plane in time to escape safely remains an eternal cinematic mystery. Clearly, Bond and Pussy owe their safety entirely to the skill of editor Peter Hunt.

When Pussy tries to signal to a search plane above, a perfectly relaxed Bond dissuades her. “Oh, no you don’t. This is no time to be rescued.” Ever mindful of his privacy nevertheless, Bond pulls one of the parachutes over the two of them as they consummate their relationship in the magic land of off-screen sex.

“James Bond Will Return”

“Goldfinger” continues the practice, begun in “From Russia With Love,” of teasing the title of the next film in the series. This time, the title card reads: “The end of ‘Goldfinger’ but James Bond will be back in ‘Thunderball.’” It appears that, probably owing to the ongoing legal dispute over “Thunderball,” the original UK title card, however, actually teased another Bond novel title, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” It would eventually be filmed without Sean Connery in the lead in 1969.

There are plenty of reasons to watch the James Bond films, but the Bond girls definitely keep many fans coming back. There have been many of iconic moments over the years involving these beautiful women, and many of them naturally involve bikinis.

In putting together the slideshow above, choosing the first image presented a tough call. We decided to go with the incomparable Halle Berry who looks absolutely flawless in this orange bikini from “Die Another Day.” She barely edged out the stunning Ursula Andress who started it all as Honey Ryder in the first Bond film, “Dr. No.” Andress set the standard for all future Bond babes with her memorable scene as she emerged from the sea.

The third photo has Claudine Auger in another beach scene from “Thunderball,” and then we have a promo shot from “The Man with the Golden Gun” with Maud Adams and Britt Ekland hanging out with Roger Moore.

In pic #5 we have the lovely Izabella Scorupco from “GoldenEye” striking a pose, and then Caterina Murino riding a horse from “Casino Royale.” Jill St. John lounges around in her bikini in “Diamonds are Forever” and we finish up with Shirley Eaton from “Goldfinger” before she meets her demise from a coat of gold paint.

As a bonus, here’s Roger Moore in a promo shot from “For Your Eyes Only.” It’s good to be Bond!

Italian model Daniela Bianchi stars as Tatiana Romanova in the second James Bond film, “From Russia with Love.” Romanova is a loyal Soviet operative who thinks she’s working for the Soviets in an operation designed to pass false information to MI6. It’s her job to meet James Bond and play the role of a love struck defector. Bob Westal points out that her Italian accent was dubbed out of the film and replaced by the voice of English actress Barbara Jefford. The stunning Bianchi was Miss Rome and a Miss Universe semi-finalist but definitely pulls off the look of a Russian blonde beauty.

We continue our look at the film adventures of the world’s most beloved killer spy with the James Bond flick many critics and fans consider the best movie in the series, based on probably the most well regarded of Ian Fleming’s spy novels.

“From Russia with Love” (1963)

The Plot

After the death of their operative, Dr. No, SPECTRE is one rather peeved diabolical organization bent on world domination. Also, they could use some cash. The villains’ collective therefore devises a plan to steal a hugely prized Lektor decoding device from the Soviets by using the superspy responsible for No’s demise as a pawn. Endgame: Sell the device for a huge sum and kill James Bond. The bait will be the defection, with the Lektor, of a beautiful and unknowing Soviet operative working out of the Russian embassy in Turkey. She is another pawn, a loyal low-level agent who is tricked into cooperating and told to develop a romantic fixation on Bond. The proposal is such an obvious trap, and the Lektor such a desirable prize, that there’s no way the British secret service can possibly resist going to Istanbul for a look. It all wraps up in a sexy and violent trip on the legendary Orient Express and an exciting and dangerous (for stunt men) boat chase.

The Backstory

Following up on the success of “Dr. No,” the EON production team of Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli and Harry Saltzman elected to follow the lead of the series’ most famous fan. President John F. Kennedy had singled out Ian Fleming’s novel, From Russia with Love, as one of his ten favorite books in an issue of Time Magazine. Despite nearly 100 opening pages in which Bond does not appear, the story was more or less tailor made for a movie, and the rest was a matter of bringing back “Dr. No” writers Richard Maibum and Johanna Harwood to make the story more Hollywood friendly.

First of all, the relatively simple Stalin-era plot of the original novel was updated and complicated to avoid controversy. In light of the more morally complex Khrushchev era and the recent Cuban missile crisis, many viewers were likely to disagree with Ian Fleming’s extremely hawkish, if somewhat tongue-in-cheek, take on the Cold War. And, so a story about ultra-evil Russians trying to take out the West’s most effective counterspy with maximum collateral PR damage, became a tale involving SPECTRE’s desire to grow its cash and power reserves while manipulating MI6 and the KGB into a costly and unnecessary battle. Seeing as the production code was growing weaker even as the Bond budget was growing larger, the sex and violent action quotients was also bumped up considerably from the novel.

Along with newborn superstar leading man Sean Connery, dashing director Terrence Young returned for his second Bond outing after the success of “Dr. No.” Aside from allowing the talented Young to firmly set the tone for the series, bringing him back proved to be a wise choice. Often described him as something of a real-life James Bond, Young was the kind of steady hand the difficult shoot would require.

The challenges Young would face included several changes in locations, numerous reshoots, plus lots of difficult and dangerous stunt work. A scene involving hundreds of rats proved especially tricky because English law permitted only the use of white rats. When the animal wranglers placed cocoa powder on the rats to give them a less hygienic look, the rats were distracted, licking the tasty cocoa powder off themselves and each other. The scene wound-up being shot in Spain.

Murphy’s law was certainly in force on the second Bond film, but director Young took events in stride. He was reportedly back at work within hours after being involved in an apparently minor helicopter crash, though we’re not sure how a helicopter crash can be anything less than a big deal. More tragically, Young also had to deal with the news that key actor Pedro Armendáriz was terminally ill. (More about that below.)

The Bond Girls (Rule of 3 or, in this case, 4)

Yes, an apparent threesome boosts Mr. Bond usual number of consummated movie affairs. The “From Russia with Love” Bond girls are…

Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gayson) — Bond’s Chemin de Fer opponent from “Dr. No” returns. Trench was supposed to be an ongoing liaison in each of the films, but her lakeside tryst with Bond was to be her final appearance. We’re guessing that even a hint of sexual repetition was seen as too much of a hindrance to 007′s womanizing ways. Ironically, Gayson had originally tried out for the longer-lasting but more chaste role of Moneypenny.

Vida and Zora (Aliza Gur and Martine Beswick) — Bond watches with interest, and some concern, as a pair of extremely jealous Gypsy girls stage a to-the-death fight over a man,  but are interrupted by a sudden violent intrusion by a group of Russian-paid Bulgars. After Bond helps save the day for the Romany, it is strongly hinted that the hot blooded trio spend the rest of the evening making love, not war. (In the novel, Bond is more of a passive observer of some kinky bloodshed.)

As for the talented and lovely ladies who played Vida and Zora, Aliza Gur was a former Miss Israel and Miss Universe semi-finalist. She would later appear in such spy-themed TV shows as “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” and “Get Smart.” The Anglo-Jamaican Martine Beswick, who may or may not have been one of the dancing silhouettes from the “Dr. No” credits, would return to Bondage as Paula Caplan in “Thunderball” and enjoy a lengthy career as a busy working actress. A supporting role in 1966′s “One Million B.C.” would be followed by such low-budget productions as 1967′s “Prehistoric Women,” 1971′s “Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde,” and 1980′s “The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood.” More upscale roles from the eighties and nineties included “Melvin and Howard,” “Miami Blues,” and the 1993 version of “Wide Sargasso Sea.”

Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) — An idealistic operative who thinks she’s working for the Soviets in an operation designed to pass false information to MI6, Tatiana finds it easy to play the role of a love struck defector when she meets the dashing James Bond. Though her loyalties may be divided, her attraction to Bond is undeniable.

Since her character was described as resembling 1930s film star Greta Garbo in the novel, it was a sure bet that former Miss Rome and Miss Universe semi-finalist Bianchi would be lovely and charismatic, if not quite up to the acting standards of the great Garbo. Ms. Bianchi does, however, deliver a credible and very sexy performance, though her Italian accent was removed with a total voice assist from veteran English actress Barbara Jefford. Unfortunately, her best remembered non-”From Russia with Love” outing remains the notorious Eurospy spoof, “Operation Kid Brother,” which starred real-life Sean Connery kid brother, Neil. (Check out this slideshow for more pics of Daniela Bianchi)

Friends and Colleagues

M (Bernard Lee) and Moneypenny (Louise Maxwell) are both back for more banter. By this point, the pattern is being set for the character’s inevitably fun but equally exposition-heavy scenes throughout the series: It’s Moneypenny’s job to provide some flirtatious silliness and M’s job to make sure the frivolity doesn’t eat up too much screen time. The business with Bond throwing his seemingly unworn bowler hat on the hat stand makes a return as well. However, “From Russia with Love” gives us two additions to Bond’s onscreen colleagues, each in their own way legendary.

Ali Kerim Bey — Jovially ironic and cheerfully vice-ridden, the Istanbul station chief has produced enough sons with a variety of women to populate the entire Turkish branch of MI6; he is clearly a man after 007′s own heart. Indeed, in the movie he seems to be one of the very rare male characters who could be described as an actual friend of Bond. (In the novel, Bond’s ongoing admiration for Bey reads to modern eyes like an out-and-out man-crush.) The character was reportedly inspired by Ali Nâzım Kalkavan, an Oxford-educated Turkish shipowner connected to the English film industry whom Ian Fleming met while researching the novel.

Film acting great Pedro Armendáriz might have hailed from parts significantly west of Istanbul, but he had just the right playful, larger-than-life presence to embody Ali Kerim Bey. The American educated Armendáriz had stumbled into a career as major star in his native Mexico as a handsome youth. He also appeared in a number of north of the border films in Hollywood, and it was none other than the legendary director John Ford who suggested the half-Anglo Armendáriz to Terrence Young for the part of the half-English Kerim Bey.

The actor had costarred with his good friend, John Wayne, in Howard Hughes’ notorious epic, “The Conqueror” — a film many believe to be “cursed” by radiation from early atom bomb tests. Whatever the cause of his illness, Armendáriz, a smoker, learned just before production began that he was suffering from terminal cancer. He decided to make the film, perhaps mainly to help support his family after his death. Reports about the precise sequence of events differ, but it appears he returned to Los Angeles and the UCLA Medical Center after his illness grew too debilitating, where he killed himself with a bullet to the heart. Terrence Young used doubles to complete the film. Armendáriz’s son, actor Pedro Armendáriz Jr., would appear in 1989′s “License to Kill.”

Major Boothroyd — The armorer, eventually known simply as Q of Q Branch, actually did appear in “Dr. No,” but don’t feel bad if you missed blink-and-you’ll-miss-him original Boothroyd/Q Peter Burton; we did too. Unable to return because of a prior commitment, veteran working actor Desmond Llewellyn replaced Burton in the second Bond film. Though Llewellyn’s debut lacks any humorous by-play, the production team apparently realized they had something with the droll actor. Things would be different next time.

The Nemeses

“From Russia With Love” is distinguished by a group of genuinely distinguished and fascinating bad guys who were, in turn, played by some of the most fascinating performers in the Bond cannon.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld — The cat loving, human hating, head of SPECTRE makes his first film appearance here, though we won’t be seeing his face until “You Only Live Twice.” The hand which pets the pretty white kitty is provided by Anthony Dawson, who portrayed the unfortunate Prof. Dent in “Dr. No.” The voice is by Austrian actor Erich Pohlmann. Perhaps partially because of ongoing legal wrangling over “Thunderball,” which first introduced SPECTRE in the Bond novels, the credits only list his name as “?”

Kronsteen — The brilliant chess player who develops the original plan is able to defeat a chess opponent in a matter of a minute, even while risking death by not immediately answering SPECTRE’s call. Nevertheless, he eventually falls prey to Mr. Blofeld’s very strict personnel policies. Kronsteen was portrayed by Vladek Sheybal, a Polish-born newcomer chosen for his memorable face and performing style. He would remain a consistently interesting and watchable character actor in English productions until his death in 1992.

Rosa Klebb — In the novel, the toadish Klebb is the depraved and, naturally, lesbian operative of the Soviet SMERSH. In the movie, she has defected to SPECTRE, but that fact has been kept hidden by the Kremlin, making her just the person to deceive the communist but otherwise innocent Tatiana. With the poison tipped knife in her shoe (SPECTRE standard equipment, it seems), Klebb is a figure of pure bile, yet believably human.

What many Bond fans don’t know about Rosa Klebb is that the woman who played her, Lotte Lenya, would be an important figure in world culture if she had never appeared in a single film. A world famous cabaret performer and the wife and muse of German-emigre theater composer Kurt Weil, you can hear Lenya being name-checked in the classic Bobby Darin and Louis Armstrong recordings of Weil’s best known melody, “Mack the Knife.” Her other notable film roles include an Oscar-nominated turn in 1961′s “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone” and as a Klebb-like sadist of a masseuse who humorously tortures football star Burt Reynolds in 1977′s “Semi-Tough.”

Donald “Red” Grant — The utterly cold-blooded killer who meets his end after one of the famous hand-to-hand battles in movie history is a pure psychopath or perhaps, as we’re told, a homicidal paranoiac. The novel goes into some detail describing his apparently inborn propensity for murder and cruelty, but from the pre-credit sequence on, the movie makes that clear enough. The film subtly establishes the emptiness inside Grant by making him silent throughout the film as he shadows Bond and helps keep him alive long enough for SPECTRE’s evil plan to take hold. He finally speaks, but not as himself, when he meets Bond under the guise of a recently deceased MI6 contact. As in the novel, his repeated use of the English boarding school expression “old man” becomes a bit of a tip-off to Bond. He also conveniently explains the entire plan to Bond before trying to kill him, which is always helpful behavior in a villain.

Young Bondians are often astonished to learn that the gigantic, strapping, red-haired Grant is the very same human being who portrayed the scrappy, not-quite-gigantic brunette seaman, Quint, in “Jaws.” Shaw was clearly one of the better actors tasked with killing James Bond and Grant was far from his only memorable movie bad guy. He was the chillingly ruthless Doyle Lonigan of “The Sting,” the uncompromising subway hijacker, Mr. Blue, in the original 1974 “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three” and the most imposing Sheriff of Nottingham ever opposite Sean Connery’s middle-aged Robin Hood in “Robin and Marion.” Between those films and his Bond gig, Shaw won an Oscar for his portrayal of King Henry VIII in 1967′s “A Man for All Seasons.” The master thespian was also a novelist and playwright, perhaps best known today for the play “The Man in the Glass Booth,” inspired by the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann. He died while still at the height of his movie fame in 1978.

Lesser Bond Baddies

With such a large and notable cadre of bad guys, you’d think we’d have the notable bad guys covered. However, we should give at least a nod to the Soviet paid Bulgar assassin Krilencu, whom Kerim Bay does away with as he is looking out of a poster for an upcoming Bob Hope/Anita Eckberg comedy. The assassin was played by the late Hungarian-born actor and stunt man, Fred Haggerty.

License to kill

After the fairly wanton killing of Prof. Dent last time around, Bond is on slightly better behavior. He does, however, offer to perform the cold-blooded assassination of Krilencu. Instead, Kerim Bey performs the honors in what is arguably a case of “all’s fair” in the war between the two men. We suppose you could make a case 007 doesn’t actually have to garrote Red Grant to death at the end of the fight in the train, but we’re willing to chalk that one up as reasonably pure self-defense and some justifiable anger for messing up an enjoyable evening.

The gadgets

The really elaborate doodads will be making their debut in “Goldfinger.” However, Boothroyd/Q does give Bond an extremely nifty and useful briefcase which the spy describes as a “nasty little Christmas present.” It features a folding AR-7 sniper rifle, hidden rounds of ammunition, a throwing knife that pops out of the side, an innocent looking can of talcum powder that holds a tear-gas canister, and hiding places for 50 gold sovereigns, always handy for potentially life-saving bribes. Believe it or not, with enough cash you can purchase a suitcase claiming to be the actual Bond case from the firm of Swaine Adeney Brigg. We’re wondering if those sovereigns would cover the cost.

The exotic locales

After the success of “Dr. No,” the famously thrifty Cubby Broccoli was prepared to spend a bit more on travel-related expenses. However, while many sequences were filmed in Istanbul, Venice and elsewhere, a surprising number of sequences were actually shot in Sean Connery’s native Scotland and at London’s Pinewood Studios. Again, director of photography Ted Moore does a fantastic job of creating a sumptuous look on a relatively lowish budget, give or take some of those inevitable obvious early sixties back-projection shots.

The outrageous villain’s lair chess room

Befitting the reputation of “From Russia with Love” as the most straightforward Bond film made in the 20th century, the sets are, on the whole, a bit more restrained than in future entries. However, even with legendary production designer Ken Adam taking a break from the series, they range from beautiful to spectacular. Syd Cain had worked in an accidentally uncredited capacity as the art director on “Dr. No” — rather than expensively redo the credits, Cubby Broccoli gave Cain a solid gold pen instead — and he was more than up to the task of production design.

Still, the villain’s lairs get upstaged this time. Yes, there is Blofeld’s rather lavish office on his yacht, but it’s a relatively restrained affair. Even his aquarium is normal sized and only houses three ordinary Siamese fighting fish. The oft-spoofed SPECTRE Island training facility, with its live shooting galleries and deadly dojos, is suspiciously similar to an elaborate multipurpose silent film set used to comic effect in, believe or not, “Singin’ in the Rain.” Easily the most spectacular set this time around is the room where Kronsteen wins his chess game. The huge Venetian frescoes that adorn the room remind us of where we are and spice up what might have been a somewhat dry scene.

The Opening

By the early sixties, teasers were a common technique used to persuade the ever-growing TV audience to sit through commercials, and so it seemed like a natural way to “hook” a movie audience right away. Producer Harry Saltzman had come up with the idea that the second film should open with the apparent death of James Bond. Furthermore, Stanley Kubrick’s Oscar-winning film of “Spartacus,” had given the filmmakers the idea of an extremely rigorous SPECTRE instructional camp where death was the equivalent of a non-passing grade.

Thus, the thrilling James Bond movie pre-credit sequence, which eventually became as much a part of the series as the girls and the guns, was born. This time, we meet psychopathic, eerily silent professional killer Donald “Red” Grant who encounters the apparent Mr. Bond in the spectacular garden of an English mansion and dispatches him with the help of some garroting wire secreted in his watch. We quickly realize the entire thing is a very deadly war game when one of Grant’s superiors pulls a mask off the body, revealing a mustachioed man who should have considered the dubious employment practices of SPECTRE.

The Credits

Like production designer Ken Adam, “Dr. No.” credit designer Maurice Binder was not on board for “From Russia with Love.” He was very ably replaced by the imaginative Robert Brownjohn, who borrowed an old avant garde film technique and projected the credits on and around the bodies of dancer, setting the sexy, male-gaze friendly tone of the production. Brownjohn would employ a variation of the process in his next and final Bond outing, “Goldfinger.”

Action Highlights

With a bigger budget came more frequent and more elaborate action sequences. Undoubtedly the most famous action scene in “From Russia with Love” is the climactic fight in Bond’s private room on the Orient express. The fight, rather brutal by the standards of its time, wowed audiences but it took a lot work as the use of stunt men was limited, allowing for a greater degree of realism than audiences were used to. The scene must have given Broccoli and Saltzman at least a touch of indigestion and it is supposed to have taken some three weeks to choreograph and film — enough time to shoot an entire movie. The effort certainly paid off, however. A later boat chase was more even more dangerous to film, though perhaps less effective for jaded modern viewers.

The Music

John Barry might not have gotten the credit he felt he deserved for the iconic James Bond theme he conducted and arranged for “Dr. No.” Of course, it was Barry, and not credited composer Monty Norman, who was asked back to score the second Bond film. Even so, the extremely talented 30 year-old still had to play second-fiddle when it came to the theme song. Since Barry had yet to write a pop hit, the producers instead turned to songwriter Lionel Bart, who had just made a smash in London and on Broadway with his songs for “Oliver!”

In our opinion, Bart is not quite in the same musical league as Barry (we’re not big fans of “Oliver!” either) and his “From Russia with Love” is not one of our very favorite Bond melodies. So, the film wisely leads off with an instrumental rendition arranged and conducted by Barry, leaving a vocal rendition by Matt Monro for later. Barry adds elements of quasi-classical dramatic film music and jazz, transforming Bart’s somewhat bland melody into an exciting composition that properly sets the tone of romance and adventure.

Perhaps trying to get a bit of his own back, Barry also created his own “007 Theme.” While the original Bond theme emphasizes danger, violence and mystery, Barry’s new melody, which would become a staple in Bond films for decades to come, strikes a playfully martial note. It sounds almost as if it might have been composed for a classic Hollywood adventure along the lines of “Gunga Din” or “Beau Geste.”

The one-liners

The enjoyably groan-inducing Bondian witticisms are, to the relief of some, few here. However, after Tatiana saves Bond from the poison-tipped hidden shoe-knife of Rosa Klebb, Bond says of the late Miss Klebb that “She had her kicks.”

At another point, Bond risks a movie-related in-joke, which has become very “in” indeed. After shooting down a SPECTRE helicopter, he quips, “Looks like one of their aircraft is missing.” This is a reference to “One of Our Aircraft is Missing,” a once popular World War II-era propaganda film from cinephile favorites Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (“The Red Shoes”). Sadly, the film in question fell into public domain and has rarely been seen in any but the most battered prints for decades.

The cocktails and beverages

There is some booze, but no actual cocktails this time. Bond — who actually seems to prefer bourbon over martinis in the novels — seems to be in more of a caffeinated mode. He orders his super-strong Turkish coffee “medium sweet” while hanging with Ali Kerim Bay, and later requests from room service that his morning wake-up beverage be “very black.” Nevertheless, Bond and his new buddy, Bey, drink an allegedly “filthy” Turkish liquor called raki at the Gypsy camp.

Later, Bond is disturbed when Red Grant, masquerading as Bond’s contact, orders a red wine with his fish dinner. An especially tragic faux pas as it was Grant’s last meal. (Actually, oenophiles inform us you can pair red wine with fish as long as you know what you’re doing. Grant clearly didn’t know what he was doing.)

Random facts

– The poster that soon-to-be deceased assassin, Krilencu, is looking out of shortly before his last breath is for the Bob Hope, “Call Me Bwana.” Not surprisingly, the film happened to be another movie produced by Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman’s EON Productions. If you’re going to give a movie free advertising, it really should be your own.

– “From Russia With Love is one of numerous thrillers to include trains in general and the Orient Express in particular. A few of the films Terrence Young and company might have had in mind as they were shooting the train sequence were Josef von Sternberg’s “Shanghai Express,” 1934′s “Orient Express,” Alfred Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest” and “The Lady Vanishes,” as well as Carol Reed’s “Night Train to Munich,” which had a somewhat Bondian-leading man portrayed by Rex Harrison. Although Agatha Christie’s novel, Murder on the Orient Express was first published in 1934, there was no film version until America’s Sidney Lumet made an Oscar winning film version, costarring Sean Connery, in 1974.

The Romantic Ending

Fans who saw both “From Russia with Love” and “Dr. No” might have spotted the beginning of a pattern. Bond and Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) wrap up in the first movie engaged in some heavy movie-style petting in a small boat. Bond and Tatiana end the film engaged in some goodness-knows-what in a Venetian gondola. Whatever they’re doing  may or may not be legal under Italian law, but Bond probably has license for that as well.

“James Bond Will Return”

One last tradition began in “From Russia with Love” and it was the promise of another 007 adventure before the end credits. In keeping with the tendency of films of that era to get a bit cute with the closing “The End” title card, here it’s followed by “Not Quite the End” and then, “James Bond will return in the next Ian Fleming thriller . . . ”Goldfinger.” And so he did.

There have been many iconic moments in the James Bond films over the years, but Ursula Andress emerging from the ocean onto the beach in the first Bond film, “Dr. No,” may be one of the most memorable. In her portrayal of Honey Ryder, Andress set the standard for the beautiful Bond girls, and the producers smartly made sure to live up to that standard time and again.

We have a clip of the scene below, along with a slideshow with Ursula showing off her bikini body. Check back as we’ll be featuring all of the Bond movies along with many of the best Bond babes from all the films.