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.

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.

The girls, the gadgets, the stylish violence and absurd deeds of derring-do… It’s no wonder that the handsome and ruthlessly heroic James Bond has been an icon of masculine wish fulfillment and feminine desire for 50 years. Harry Potter and “Twilight” films might sell more tickets at the moment, but Bond belongs to an elite group of internationally popular, impossible to kill, long-running heroes.

One thing that distinguishes Bond from your Superman, Batman and Sherlock Holmes types is that, with three quirky exceptions, the Bond character has been exclusively handled by the same small, family-owned production company which has maintained a tight creative grip on the franchise since the very first Bond movie. This has led to a remarkable degree of consistency, which can be a mixed blessing.

Keeping things fresh is surely a concern on the upcoming 23rd entry in the series, which was intelligently rebooted with 2006′s “Casino Royale,” but it’s been an issue since the Bond craze first kicked into overdrive with “Goldfinger” and “Thunderball” in the mid-sixties. In fact, there’s something enjoyably ritualistic about the Bond films, which repeat the same elements with just enough variation to keep fans returning film after film, even as they might grumble that the series hasn’t been the same since Sean Connery stopped playing Bond. Without the Bond girls, the amazing stunts, the pre-credit sequence and elaborate credits, and especially the theme, Bond just wouldn’t be Bond.

And so, we at Bullz-Eye will be looking at 007 film by film, with a special emphasis on those key ingredients in the Bond martini, both familiar and hopefully somewhat surprising, that have kept so many of us devoted to the series, movie after movie after movie, year after year after year. We’ll start at the beginning…

“Dr. No” (1962)

The Plot

James Bond, an MI6 spy with a “double O” designation which means he is both an investigator and an occasional assassin with a “license to kill,” is sent to investigate the murder of British operative and his secretary in Jamaica. The man behind it turns out to be a Chinese-German millionaire with an unhealthy interest in America’s space program and scores of expendable extras on his payroll. 007 gets his man, kills a few others, and makes a few new female friends.

The Backstory

It’s not surprising John F. Kennedy could relate to stories about an international man of mystery with whom he shared a vice or two. It’s more surprising he admitted to it in public. For a U.S. president to openly endorse a series of risqué potboilers was unheard of in the early 1960′s. Instead of hurting himself, however, Kennedy helped the books and turned a reasonably successful series into an early sixties publishing bonanza.

Seeing a potential to make a killing with a low-budget film of the character, an American expatriate producer residing in England, Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli, teamed with Canadian-born Harry Saltzman, who’d been holding on to the Bond film rights. At first, the newly written “Thunderball” was to be the first film in the series. That project, however, got waylaid by an issue regarding the rights to that story which would haunt the producers for decades.

Perhaps because of its simplicity and memorable title villain, “Dr. No,” the sixth novel in the series, was then selected as the basis for the first James Bond movie. Numerous hands would produce material that made it into the finished screenplay, but the final version was largely the work of American screenwriter Richard Maibum. He would remain with the series through the remaining decades of his career.

As for casting Commander Bond, at first producers Broccoli and Saltzman sought a major star. Cary Grant apparently considered the role, but it was a no-go: the self-aware 58 year-old knew that his leading man days were numbered and he would have no part of a sequel. Patrick McGoohan, already famed as a TV spy in the UK as “Danger Man,” turned the part down and eventually became a cult television legend with the surreal, weirdly Bond-influenced, “The Prisoner.” Shakespearean actor Roger Johnson would also reject the idea of committing for several films. He would later play one of Bond’s pulp predecessors, Bulldog Drummond, in a pair of mid-sixties spy spoofs.

When the winner of a “play James Bond” contest was rejected by Broccoli, the producers looked elsewhere. 1n 1962, Sean Connery was known, if he was known at all, for playing a male ingénue role in Walt Disney’s live action “Darby O’Gill and the Little People.” Described as “merely tall, dark, and handsome” by New York Times critic A.H. Weiler and admittedly a bit roughhewn to play the ultra sophisticated spy, the 30 year-old Scotsman was nevertheless selected.

By that point, journeyman director Terrence Young was already on board. Young was a fortuitous choice. Seen by his colleagues as the suave, well-dressed, lady-killing model for the movie Bond, he took charge of the production and set about creating that thing we now call “a James Bond movie.” Crucially, he understood that also meant the image of Bond himself. A grateful Sean Connery would later credit him with helping to smooth out the rough edges he needed to embody the super-suave, super-deadly spy.

Just as important, Young managed to create an extravagant look on a modest budget while shooting at London’s Elstree studio and within spitting distance of Goldeneye, Ian Fleming’s Jamaica estate. The rest is about as historic as pop cinema gets.

Meeting Mr. Bond

Director Young must have realized he had a great screen presence on his hands with Sean Connery. He certainly gets the credit for crafting an introduction that ranks just behind the first appearances of Orson Welles’ Harry Lime in “The Third Man,” John Wayne’s Ringo Kid in “Stagecoach,” and Humphrey Bogart’s Rick Blaine in “Casablanca” in terms of sheer movie panache.

Set in a swanky London casino, the scene delays our first good look at Connery/Bond for about as long as it can. As he beats a beautiful opponent in the high-stakes game of Chemin de Fer, first we see an extreme close-up of the spy’s hands picking up his two-card hand. Then, we see that hand lighting a match. Next, Bond’s attractive new acquaintance introduces herself to the handsome stranger as “Trench, Sylvia Trench.” Only then do we finally see the tuxedo clad Bond/Sean Connery, lighting a cigarette hanging carelessly on his lips. “Bond, James Bond” he replies in his distinctive Scottish accent. Cue the Bond theme. In a matter of seconds, Sean Connery’s 007 was sold to the world.

The Bond Girls (Rule of 3)

James Bond is, of course, the most ridiculously effective womanizer in English-language popular culture. Moreover, regular viewers of the series know that Bond usually manages three romantic conquests per adventure, roughly one for each act of the screenplay. (In the novels, Bond is relatively chaste while on the job, sometimes delaying gratification until after the last page.) Despite the fact that seeing even married people sharing a bed together was still a naughty novelty in 1962, “Dr. No” pushed the censorship envelope and boldly established Bond’s sexual rule of three.

Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gayson) — Bond’s first ever onscreen hook-up, Miss Trench is every bit as sophisticated and in control as Bond, even if her Chemin de Fer strategy may be open to question. She was intended to be Bond’s ongoing on-again-off-again girlfriend throughout the series, but the stunning and statuesque Eunice Grayson would only return for the initial sequel, “From Russia with Love.”

Miss Taro (Zena Marshall) — A embassy secretary secretly in the employ of Dr. No, the Chinese-Jamaican Taro is the first in a long line of treacherous beauties upon whom Bond would turn the sexual tables. She is also Bond’s first in-the-line-of-duty dalliance. (Sylvia Trench is strictly recreational.) In the manner of the time, Marshall was an English actress whose “exotic” looks often got her cast as women of various ethnicities. This was, needless to say, a less politically sensitive era in movie-making.

Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress) — Ian Fleming famously described professional seashell collector Honeychile Ryder’s naked emergence out of the Jamaican surf as resembling Botticelli’s Venus being birthed full-grown from the sea. Art and mythology aside, blonde and buxom Andress’s bikini-clad introduction set the stage for millions of youthful sexual awakenings. Almost a complete amateur during the making of “Dr. No,” Andress would go on to enjoy a significant film career despite the fact that her “Dr. No” performance was dubbed in later by another actress on account of her thick Swiss accent. Later films would include “What’s New, Pussycat?” opposite Peter O’Toole and “The 10th Victim” with Marcelo Mastroianni. (Check out a clip of this scene and more photos of Ursula here)

Friends and Colleagues

James Bond isn’t exactly the kind of guy to get misty-eyed thinking about the importance of friendship. Yet his working life does bring him into contact with an assortment of memorable characters. Not everyone was on board for the first Bond opus, but three of the series’s recurring characters do show up for the first time.

M

As portrayed by Bernard Lee, Bond’s boss is all business; both respectful of his underling’s heroics and a bit concerned about his love of danger. The part was dryly played for decades by the eternally miffed Bernard Lee. We’re told that in real life Mr. Lee was a witty raconteur and quite the life of the party. It’s called “acting” folks.

Moneypenny

“Dr. No” is the first of 14 appearances of the wonderful and thoroughly hot Lois Maxwell as the eternally smitten but entirely sensible Miss Moneypenny, M’s trusted secretary and the only person on earth the movie Bond may actually love. The backstory developed by Maxwell, Sean Connery, and Terrence Young, was that Bond and Moneypenny had enjoyed a youthful fling together, but both realized that a romance was incompatible with their respective roles at MI6. And so, cute and sexy repartee would have to substitute for actual sex. In this case…

Bond: Moneypenny! What gives?
Moneypenny: Me, given an ounce of encouragement.

“Dr. No” also marks the first appearance of a recurring bit of business where Bond would toss a hat onto a coat rack when entering Moneypenny’s office, the odd part being that Bond rarely wears a hat.

Felix Leiter

Bond’s opposite number in the American C.I.A. is the closest thing he has to a buddy in the series, though it’s a million miles from a full-blown bromance. In “Dr. No,” Leiter is Jack Lord, later to become legendary to 1970′s TV viewers as stolid, teetotaling supercop Steve McGarrett of “Hawaii Five-O.” Here, he drinks a little; you can’t not drink around Bond. Leiter would return frequently, but Lord never reprised the part. Instead, Bond’s counterpart would be portrayed over the decades by an assortment of actors of differing ages and ethnicities.

The Nemesis

Dr. No

Ian Fleming attributed the inspiration for the titular baddie to Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu, now almost universally seen as a viciously racist anti-Chinese stereotype. Fleming, who often included racial asides in the Bond novels, was clearly unperturbed by that. Even so, No’s half-German ancestry may have something to do with Germany’s Dr. Mabuse, who director Fritz Lang and others had turned into a symbol of international evil in a series of influential films. (Bond villain-to-be Gert Frobe of “Goldfinger” was already playing Mabuse and future “Man With the Golden Gun” Christopher Lee would soon be recreating Fu Manchu in a Bond-inspired series of mid-sixties British cheapies.) Since he’s in only one movie, Dr. No proves a lot easier to kill than his ancestors, even with his death-dealing metal hands. Still, he’s a memorable villain who sets the pattern for future Bond baddies, with his cool stoicism and odd politeness.

Once termed “the spookiest actor in the American theater,” Jewish-Canadian Joseph Wiseman seems to have had a solid understanding of his character, an ultimate outsider. That aspect also played into his status as a member of SPECTRE, the non-ideological amalgamation of bad guys bent on world domination which allowed the Bond producers to tone down the cheerfully strident Cold War politics of Fleming’s novels. In the book, No was more simply in the employ of the Soviet assassination outfit, SMERSH.

Lesser Bond Baddies

The crew of assassins, toadies, and femme fatales we’ve come to expect in all Bond films appears in “Dr. No.” This time we’ve got the “Three Blind Mice,” a trio of Jamaican hit-men — all played by uncredited actors — the unfortunate Prof. Dent (Anthony Dawson), who we’ll discuss below, the alluring though downright slutty Miss Taro, and also a pretty photographer who’d rather have her arm broken than say word one about Dr. No. (Marguerite LeWars, Miss Jamaica 1962)

License to Kill

Even after several decades of mindlessly brutal so-called heroes, James Bond’s first onscreen use of his Double-O license to commit murder remains oddly one of the single most disturbing moments in the Bond cannon. Not surprisingly, it took a bit of persuasion to get the “unsporting” killing of the conniving double agent, Prof. Dent, through censorship.

Don’t get us wrong, Bond has his reasons. However, Dent is unarmed by this point, having discharged all the bullets in his gun into a bed he thinks contains a sleeping Bond. Moreover, Bond is actually destroying a valuable intelligence asset, and there is still something slightly sickening about a putative hero killing a man in cold blood, even a loathsome and cowardly multiple murderer. But that’s what makes it so memorable. The scene gave rise to a quotable Bond line reportedly often repeated by UK schoolboys: “You’ve had your six!”

The Gadgets and Guns

Does a gun count as a gadget? Bond is forced by M to switch from his beloved Beretta to his signature Walther PPK for reasons that we understand make little ballistic sense. Then, there’s the armored-tractor tank-like thing with an attached deadly flame thrower which is almost comically disguised as a dragon. Is that a gadget?

The fact of the matter is that it was early days in 1962 and thrifty Cubby Broccoli wasn’t about to spend a ton of money on an unproven property. The elaborate doodads would come later.

The Car

Along with the guns and gadgets, most Bond fans obsess about the cars as well. The cars take on more importance as the series progresses, but Bond gets off to a nice start in Dr. No by driving a Sunbeam Alpine 1961 Series II along the Jamaican countryside during the obligatory automotive chase scene.

The Exotic Locales

Bond’s only trip this time is to Jamaica. However, Ted Moore’s great cinematography gave sixties audiences a real eyeful on a small budget, and we’re not just talking about Ursula Andress. The amazing sets and the beaches of Jamaica are a visual treat. See the restored version on Blu-Ray or projected in a state-of-the-art theater, if you can. Amazing.

The Outrageous Villain’s Lair

Ken Adam, who remained with the series through 1977′s “The Spy Who Loved Me,” is easily one of the two or three most distinctive production designers of all time. Here, he makes the most with least. His sneakily tongue-in-cheek approach to minimalist set design includes an almost bare holding cell with a single circular skylight casting a cross-hatched shadow — all the better to make poor Prof. Dent seem even more small and pathetic.

And let us not forget Dr. No’s living room with the giant fish tank. It was actually, a film projection which editor Peter Hunt was forced to hunt down at the last minute, and so the fish in it were much larger than they ought to have been. According to Hunt, that led to some new dialogue between Dr. No and Bond about “minnows pretending they’re whales.”

The Opening

This is the only official Bond film without a pre-credit sequence. Thank the spy gods, however, designer Maurice Binder was already on board for the credits themselves.

Firstly, Binder created the signature intro, now so much a part of the Bond mystique, in which we see a silhouetted Bond (actually stunt man Bob Simmons this time ’round) through a gunman’s site. Bond turns around and shoots at the audience/assailant, and then the screen is covered in a wash of animated blood. As stylized as it is, it’s almost shockingly graphic for its day. It’s also probably the most effective logo ever designed for a film or television series.

That’s followed by a spiffy and abstract Saul Bass-influenced credit sequence set to the James Bond theme. Then the music changes to a calypso version of “Three Blind Mice” and we see the colorful silhouettes of the trio of assassins who set the events of “Dr. No” in motion. It’s hard to imagine a more memorable opening, except that we know that even better ones will be following.

And speaking of that great James Bond theme…

The Music

There’s no doubt that composer-conductor-arranger John Barry’s compositions and orchestrations for the Bond films set the standard for spy music. There’s just one little difficulty that comes up with “Dr. No”: Barry is not the credited composer. The film’s score, including that incredibly recognizable Bond theme, is supposed to have been written by Monty Norman.

That leads to a question: Who the hell is Monty Norman? Well, Norman is an otherwise little-known theater composer and pop musician who has remained otherwise little-known despite having his name on one of the two or three most recognizable pieces of film music ever written. Something seems odd here and there has been libel litigation over it in the United Kingdom, which Norman nevertheless won.

Though he stopped short of saying he’d actually written the Bond theme, Norman’s credit for the melody always seemed to stick in the late John Barry’s craw. Barry, who arranged and conducted the music for “Dr. No,” would point out that he was the person who would be asked back and write a great deal more music in the same vein, and it’s an impossible point to argue with. It’s also true that the score for this first film is entirely undistinguished compared to the great work to follow, though many point out the Bond theme is similar to an earlier composition by Norman. Regardless, the only memorable pieces of music in it are variations on the Bond theme, whoever wrote it, and the silly but catchy calypso number, “Underneath the Mango Tree,” which Norman pretty definitely wrote.

The One-Liners

“Dr. No” has it’s share of witty badinage, some of it quoted elsewhere, but the jokey asides, often made after a killing, were mostly still to come.

The Cocktail

First a Jamaican room service waiter and then no less than Dr. No himself inform the audience of Bond’s movie cocktail of choice: vodka martini, twist of lemon, shaken not stirred. Cocktail aficionados will note with horror that the Jamaican hotel serves the drink in what appears to be a very small Tom Collins glass — shocking! Dr. No provides the superior service, serving the beverage in an appropriately shaped, small cocktail glass. Probably perfectly chilled, too. Just one thing, that martini is extremely tiny by modern standards, though surely made with 100 proof vodka.

Random Fact

Prior to becoming a major force in reggae and rock music, a young Anglo-Jamaican named Chris Blackwell served on the “Dr. No” production in several capacities. He had been an acquaintance of both Ian Fleming and Monty Norman. The Island records founder can be heard extensively on the “Dr. No” DVD/Blu-Ray commentary.