A poster for
Dr. No (1962), the first film adaptation of the James Bond novels made under
Eon Productions.
The film opens with the now-iconic gunbarrel sequence (which will be used for every film onward), but does
not cut to a pre-credits scene; it cuts to the special intro which fades into the song "Three Blind Mice". The intro then fades to 3 blind men walking with canes through the streets of Jamaica... or are they?
Meet undercover British agent John Strangways (Timothy Moxon), who is playing with professor R.J. Dent (Anthony Dawson) and a bunch of other people at a country club in Kingston, Jamaica. He excuses himself to the washroom for a moment. While walking through the hallways of the country club, he is suddenly stabbed in the back by the "Three Blind Mice", who quickly muffle his screams and shoot him outside the complex. They then throw him in the back of their car, before driving off.
Of course, this doesn't go unnoticed. His secretary Mary Trueblood (Dolores Keator) hears of what happened from the few members that were at the country club when he was killed, and she quickly calls headquarters. Offscreen, she is shot dead by the "Three Blind Mice", who gather some files labelled "Crab Key" and "Dr. No"; the person on the other end of the receiver realizes what is happening and calls MI6.
Meanwhile, at a casino in London, Sylvia Trench (Eunice Gayson) is playing baccarat with a bunch of other people, and one particular agent, introducing himself as Bond... James Bond (Sean Connery).
Bond and Trench flirt, but he receives a note and excuses himself from the game. She follows him into his room, and he invites her to lunch the next day.
Bond goes to Universal Exports, a front for MI6, and learns about Strangways' death in Jamaica, which seems to be related with a series of mishaps NASA has been having with their rocket launches, which would often go off course. M (Bernard Lee) asks him to go to Jamaica to investigate the murders. Major Boothroyd (Peter Burton) offers him a Walther PPK, his standard gun throughout much of the franchise. Afterwards, Bond catches a flight to Jamaica. Some mysterious guy is watching him at the airport, and a mysterious woman is also taking photographs of him.
Immediately, something is amiss — Bond notices a car has been sent to pick him up, but he calls Government House only to find that there was no car sent. He gets inside to find out what's going on; chaos ensues as the man from the airport begins tailing them, and Bond's driver begins driving erratically. Bond manages to get ahold of him and pulls a gun on him. The man asks for a cigarette, but he bites down on it and dies moments later (the poison later revealed to have been cyanide). He continues on to Government House to meet Pleydell Smith (Louis Blaazer) to discuss Strangways' death, and learns about Dent, one of the last people to visit Strangways alive.
He sees a picture of a fisherman on the wall, realizing he was the same guy driving the vehicle who was tailing them earlier. Before leaving to go meet Dent and the other card players at the country club, Bond sets up traps around his hotel room to catch any potential intruders. The card players tell him that Strangways had been using the boat of a fisherman named Quarrel (John Kitzmiller) recently, and Bond goes off to try and find him.
Bond visits Quarrel, who is polite, but has nothing to answer him. Quarrel leaves to go to a restaurant, with Bond following him. The man at the restaurant, Puss-Feller (known for wrestling octopuses, hence his name), and Quarrel begin fighting Bond, but Bond gets the upper hand. Just then, another man steps in to break up the fight: CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jack Lord). Later that night, at a restaurant, Leiter, Quarrel, and Bond discuss the death of Strangways. The photographer woman from earlier, Annabel Chung (Zena Marshall), photographs them yet again, but Bond snaps and asks Quarrel to seize her. She initially claims to be working for the local newspaper, before quickly changing her story and attempting to attack Quarrel. He is unfazed, however, and Bond destroys her film. The "Three Blind Mice" nearly attack Bond, before being distracted by a passing car.
The following day, Bond goes to Dent, a metallurgist, to inquire about some special rocks Strangways had acquired before he was killed. Dent responds that the rocks were uninteresting and he threw them out, and that they were
not from the nearby island of Crab Key. After the meeting, Dent sails over to the island, where he is interrogated by a voice in a massive open room. The voice is angry that Bond is alive, holding Dent responsible if Bond trespasses onto the island, before ordering him to kill Bond using a deadly centipede provided.
Bond goes to his hotel room, only to see the traps activated. Someone has been snooping inside his room. That same night, Bond is suddenly ambushed by the centipede, but he successfully manages to kill it. Now on edge and wary of any further attacks, Bond goes to Pleydell to discuss the investigation. He notices secretary Miss Taro (Talitha Pol) spying on them, but she claims to have been looking for files on Dr. No. Bond is suspicious and goes to check Quarrel's boat, finding high traces of radiation. He orders Quarrel to take him to the island later that night. Quarrel tells him about the island, which is populated by roseate spoonbills, and supposedly has a dragon living on it.
Bond drives to Miss Taro's residence, surviving an assassination attempt by the "Three Blind Mice", who plummet off a cliff to their deaths. A shocked Taro, seeing Bond alive, decides to keep him at her house until another assassin can arrive. They sleep together. Later that night, he tells her that he'll call for a cab so they can go to a restaurant together, but having already caught onto the ruse, calls for a police car. Taro is arrested. Bond waits for some time, setting up a decoy using pillows in the bedroom. Eventually, an assassin arrives: none other than Professor Dent.
Dent tries to shoot the dummy, but turns around and eventually sees Bond, sitting in a chair. Dent brags that Dr. No will be pleased about Bond's impending death, before firing... or rather,
attempting to fire at Bond. Bond coldly states, "That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six", before shooting Dent multiple times. Bond departs for Crab Key minutes later, accompanied by Quarrel.
Awakening on the island later that day, Bond sees a woman in a white bikini rising up from out of the ocean with a utility belt and a shell; this is Honeychile "Honey" Ryder (Martine Beswick), shell collector on Crab Key. Bond asks her why she's on the island, and she claims that she's not afraid of the island's security. Just then, Quarrel notices a patrol boat rounding the corner, and they hide behind a sand dune. The patrol crew notices Bond's boat, firing bullets towards it, and threatens to return. Bond tries to send Ryder back to Kingston, but her boat has been damaged by the gunfire. They head inland, with them hiding under the surface of a pond using reeds as breathing devices when a patrol arrives with some dogs. The patrol leaves, but another guard arrives; Bond kills him. Ryder tells them of a hiding spot she uses, and they proceed there. They take turns watching the dragon, which Ryder had supposedly seen before. Quarrel sees some tracks and assumes they must be from the dragon, so they follow the trail.
It is night when they encounter the "dragon", in reality a fortified flamethrower tank. Quarrel charges the tank and tries destroying the wheels, but is horribly burned in the process. Bond rushes up to him, but a crew step out of the tank and apprehend Bond and Ryder. The two are taken to an underground facility, where they are decontaminated and led to a room... with clothes that fit their exact size (the receptionist claims that it was because they were expected at the facility), and given respective bedrooms to sleep in. They drink some provided coffee, but quickly fall asleep — the coffee is drugged. A man with black gloves enters their room, but leaves shortly afterward.
The next morning, both of them dress up, and are led to the facility's owner: Dr. Julius No (Christopher Lee). No tells them his story: originally the treasurer of a Hong Kong tong (crime group), he escaped with $10,000,000 worth in cash, nearly having his fingers cut off during a brawl. His services were refused by both the US and the Soviets, so he decided to work for the non-partisan organization SPECTRE. No felt that his damaged fingers would hinder the progress of his work, and thus had them amputated and replaced with prosthetic metallic hands; he always wears gloves to cover these up. Bond tells No that he knows all about him after having read an MI6 dossier (seen earlier in the film). Bond requests No to have Ryder excused, and he complies, but remarks that "I'm sure the guards will abuse her", as the guards drag her away. Bond tries to help her, but he is quickly sedated by more guards and forcefully led back to his seat. No tells Bond about his plan with the rockets, and invites him to SPECTRE. Of course, Bond refuses. No taunts him, "You seem to be quite an agile one, Bond. Let's see just how skilled you are." Bond eventually blacks out, having ingested yet another drugged drink.
He awakens in a cell with only one escape: a vent in the wall. This isn't a mistake, as Bond realizes when a massive torrent of water begins rushing in from one end, forcing him to crawl faster. After fleeing to a higher tunnel, Bond crawls into a room with a bunch of live wires, forcing him to manuever his way around them without shocking himself. He manages to escape this, and continues navigating through the dense maze of ventilation before emerging in a reactor room: the powerhouse of the whole compound. He strangles a guard, before stealing his disguise and shoving the guard's body down the vents. Analyzing the behavior of the other guards, he manages to get to a massive control panel on the other end of the room without arousing suspicion. However, No become suspicious, and Bond tackles him to the ground.
A brawl starts, and in the process, Bond accidentally cranks a lever on the control panel to dangerously high levels. A meltdown starts, and the facility begins to malfunction. The fight takes them onto a cage being immersed into the boiling reactor pool. No initially gets the upper hand, but Bond manages to get away from him, kicking him into the boiling water. No's metallic hands prove incapable of holding onto the cage, and he is boiled to death.
Bond runs through the facility, before finding Ryder, strapped on the floor to slowly drown. He rescues her, and finds a lifeboat area as the facility implodes. After floating at sea for minutes, Felix Leiter arrives to assist both of them, but Bond lets go of the rope, before kissing Ryder.
Part of my collaborative TL
The Name's Bond.
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