Thunderbook E-Book

John Rain

• Herausgeber: Polaris
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 671

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

This fully updated edition includes the 25th Bond film, No Time To Die, and also features a chapter covering Never Say Never Again, which starred Sean Connery as Bond but was not an official Eon film. The Bond films have entertained annoyed, excited, bored, aroused and invigorated cinemagoers (and ITV4 viewers) for more than fifty years. Who hasn't wanted to kick a big bloke with metal teeth in the groin? Fly a small plane out of a pretend horse's bottom? Or push a middle-aged man into space? No one, that's who. Thunderbook: The World of Bond According to Smersh Pod affectionately examines Bond with tongue firmly in cheek and elbow dug in ribs. Join John Rain as he goes film-by-film through the Bond saga as he points out all the good, the bad, and the double-taking pigeons contained within Bond's half-century of world domination. With one chapter for each of the twenty-five films, Thunderbook examines all the moments that are funny, silly, rubbish, nonsensical, bizarre and interesting, with the ultimate intention of celebrating Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and becoming the go-to companion book for the Bond fan at large.

Leseprobe

This paperback edition first published in 2022 by

POLARIS PUBLISHING LTDc/o Aberdein Considine2nd Floor, Elder HouseMultrees WalkEdinburghEH1 3DX

www.polarispublishing.com

Distributed byBIRLINN LIMITED

First published in 2019

Text copyright © John Rain, 2019, 2022

Illustrations by Phil BeverleyKall Kwik [email protected]

ISBN: 9780957507661eBook ISBN: 9781788853279

The right of John Rain to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

The views expressed in this book do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions or policies of Polaris Publishing Ltd (Company No. SC401508) (Polaris), nor those of any persons, organisations or commercial partners connected with the same (Connected Persons). Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or content expressed by third parties are not those of Polaris or any Connected Persons but those of the third parties. For the avoidance of doubt, neither Polaris nor any Connected Persons assume any responsibility or duty of care whether contractual, delictual or on any other basis towards any person in respect of any such matter and accept no liability for any loss or damage caused by any such matter in this book.

This is an unofficial publication. All material contained within is for critical purposes.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Designed and typeset by Polaris Publishing, EdinburghPrinted in Great Britain by MBM Print, East Kilbride

For James and Alex

‘Sometimes irreverent, sometimes camp but always deeply affectionate, Thunderbook is a big fat love letter to the Bond franchise. John Rain’s main endeavour is to make us laugh and he achieves this with great aplomb. It’s beautifully observed and a laugh-out-loud joy’

KATHY BURKE

‘An affectionately droll Bond-by-Bond stroll through the films we know and love, whether we like them or not; the rest of this endorsement will avoid puns like Double Oh Heaven and Licensed to Thrill’

AL MURRAY

‘A book full of Bond love and occasional bewilderment’

SAMIRA AHMED

‘Nobody does it better. John Rain delivers his love letter to Bond with a raised eyebrow that would do Roger Moore proud’

JOEL MORRIS

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1: Dr. No

2: From Russia with Love

3: Goldfinger

4: Thunderball

5: You Only Live Twice

6: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

7: Diamonds Are Forever

8: Live and Let Die

9: The Man with the Golden Gun

10: The Spy Who Loved Me

11: Moonraker

12: For Your Eyes Only

13: Octopussy

14: Never Say Never Again

15: A View to a Kill

16: The Living Daylights

17: Licence to Kill

18: Goldeneye

19: Tomorrow Never Dies

20: The World Is Not Enough

21: Die Another Day

22: Casino Royale

23: Quantum of Solace

24: Skyfall

25: Spectre

26: No Time to Die

List of Illustrations

Our first glimpse of Bond, playing chemin de fer in Le Cercle at Les Ambassadeurs Club in Dr. No. MGM Studios/Getty Images

Sean Connery and the first (and probably most iconic) Bond Girl, Ursula Andress (Honey Ryder), pose for a promotional still for Dr. No. MGM Studios/Getty Images

Canadian actor Joseph Wiseman playing ‘Chinese’ villain Dr. Julius No. Popperfoto/Getty Images

Bernard Lee (here pictured with Lois Maxwell’s Miss Moneypenny in From Russia with Love) played the role of M brilliantly for eleven movies. Always cantankerous when dealing with Bond, he could also be touchingly affectionate. Sportsphoto/Alamy

Bond, Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi) and Donald ‘Red’ Grant (Robert Shaw) prepare for the shocking faux pas of having red wine served with fish in From Russia with Love. United Artist/Getty Images

Shirley Eaton, playing Jill Masterson, covered in gold paint on the set of Goldfinger. Popperfoto/Getty Images

Lois Maxwell, the wonderful Miss Moneypenny, with Sean Connery during the filming of Dr. No. Collection Christophel/Alamy Stock Photo

See, I told you his hands were massive! Desmond Llewelyn shows off one of his new gadgets to Bond in A View to a Kill. Sportsphoto/Alamy

Jetpack! Bond flies to his car in Thunderball. United Artists/Getty Images

Donald Pleasence as Bond’s arch enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld on the set of You Only Live Twice. Express Newspapers/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Mr and Mrs James Bond. George Lazenby, in his one appearance as Bond, with Diana Rigg (the Contessa di Vincenzo) in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

Blofeld (Charles Gray) checks out the ‘plastic transformation’ process that allows his scientists to create doppelgängers of himself in Diamonds Are Forever. Collection Christophel/RnB © Eon Productions/Danjaq/Alamy

Roger Moore makes his debut as Bond in Live and Let Die with (from left to right) Julius Harris (Tee Hee), Jane Seymour (Solitaire), Geoffrey Holder (Baron Samedi), Yaphet Kotto (Kananga) and Earl Jolly Brown (Whisper). Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images

The masters at work: Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli and Harry Saltzman with Roger Moore on the set of Live and Let Die. AF Archive/Alamy

Bond and the three-nippled assassin Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) prepare for a duel in The Man with the Golden Gun. Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images

Jaws (Richard Kiel) chomps through a plank of wood during a fight with 007 on a train in The Spy Who Loved Me. United Artist/Getty Images

Bond goes to space (of course he does, space is COOL) in Moonraker. Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images

Looking more like her uncle than her sexy spy lover, Bond checks out Melina Havelock’s (Carole Bouquet) crossbow in For Your Eyes Only. John Bryson/Sygma via Getty Images

Bond disguises himself as a clown in the ridiculous dénouement of Octopussy. AF Archive/Alamy

Again going for the dad vibes over the sexy young spy approach, Connery returns AGAIN in Never Say Never Again in 1983 – posing here with Kim Basinger (as Domino Petachi). Photo by M Richard Melloul/Sygma/CORBIS/Sygma via Getty Images

Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) and May Day (Grace Jones) hold Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts) and Bond at gunpoint in A View to a Kill. AF Archive/Alamy

There’s a new man in town: Timothy Dalton takes on the role of Bond in The Living Daylights, while Maryam d’Abo (playing Kara Milovy) tries to act cool after apparently tripping over. Sportsphoto/Alamy

Dalton takes on the threat of drugs in Licence to Kill. Here Dario (Benicio Del Toro) holds Bond at gunpoint while Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi) examines the goods in his lab. AF archive/Alamy

Q aims to impress the latest incarnation of Bond (Pierce Brosnan) with his plaster cast gun in Goldeneye. Frank Trapper/Alamy

Bond and Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) assemble some kit to take on ruthless media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) in Tomorrow Never Dies. United Archives GmbH/Alamy

Anarchist Renard (Robert Carlyle) mid-gun battle with Bond as he steals weapons-grade plutonium from a Russian missile base in Kazakhstan in The World Is Not Enough. PictureLux/The Hollywood Archive/Alamy

Zao (Rick Yune) proudly shows off his diamond-studded face while torturing Jinx Johnson (Halle Berry) in Die Another Day. AF Archive/Alamy

The first blond Bond (as if anyone cares), Daniel Craig, takes on Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) at poker in Casino Royale. Collection Christophel/Alamy

Looking hot. Bond and Camille (Olga Kurylenko) wander lost through the desert, much like the production of this entire film – Quantum of Solace. Everett Collection Inc/Alamy

M(ummy) issues – Judi Dench enjoys her final full outing in the franchise with an angst-ridden Bond in Skyfall. Francois Duhamel/©Columbia Pictures/Everett/Alamy

The author of all our pain. Christoph Waltz first assumes the role of the iconic baddie Blofeld in Spectre (above, alongside Craig and Lea Seydoux ) before hanging out in a shopping trolly in No Time to Die (right). WENN Rights Ltd/Alamy

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to: Joel Morris, Jason Hazeley, Marc Haynes, Great Big Owl, Julia Raeside, Polaris (Pete, Julie and Alison), Scott Innes, Stephen Graham, Jason Sinclair, Paul Litchfield, Sean, George, Roger, Tim, Pierce, Daniel, EON, Mum, Dad, Chris, Pete and Mannie . . . and my classic family.

INTRODUCTION

AS BRITISH AS tuppence, yet as international as the Beatles, James Bond is truly a hallowed cultural institution. A solid link in the long, winding chain of the national DNA. A friend on bank holidays, flourishing among the war movies, Carry On films and The Two Ronnies specials. 007 has been a companion to an entire generation of children who were raised on Sean flinging a hat into the bars of Fort Knox, George telling us it never happened to the other fella and Roger skiing off a mountain. He was a window into the world during a time when the world was less travelled. Who needed to go abroad when you could watch James Bond do it instead? People either wanted to be him or be with him. He had the best cars, the best clothes, the best watches and, at times, magic powers. He could drive, fly, glide, sail, hover or swim anywhere, and could outsmart the very smartest around. His only weakness was, it turned out, appalling misogyny.

When Ian Fleming sat down and decided to turn his insider knowledge of the highly dangerous and exciting world of espionage into a book, he would have had no idea that he was about to create an icon. The places Bond would go, the things he would see – all stemmed directly from Fleming’s pen. The tragedy was that he died during the making of Goldfinger, and therefore never got to see the boob-zoom bit from Octopussy, which he would no doubt have appreciated.

When I was eight years old I went to the cinema with my mum to see Ladyhawke, a fantasy adventure starring Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer, in which a woman turns into a bird. However, when we got there we realised we’d got the times wrong and had missed it. Luckily, A View to a Kill was about to start on the other screen, and being aware of Bond via the Shredded Wheat sticker campaign during Octopussy and the odd viewing every now and then with my parents on bank holidays, I was only too happy to wander in and see what would happen next. As I sat in the dark and watched a 57-year-old Roger Moore run up the stairs of the Eiffel Tower, I knew that I had found my hero. I would spend the rest of my formative years becoming increasingly smitten with the frankly ridiculous premise of a middle-aged man relentlessly saving the world in increasingly bizarre circumstances, and just as obsessed with each new incarnation as it arrived.

I started Smersh Pod, the podcast celebrating the Bond films (by those who enjoy/hate/aren’t arsed about them), because I wanted to share some of my knowledge, observations and favourite moments from the 25 official films to date plus the unofficial Never Say Never Again. If you’re aware of the podcast, you’ll know how this all works, but if you’ve never heard of it, then please come with me as we fix a complicated drink and journey through Bond in film, soaking up the thrills and spills and savouring the devil-may-care attitude of 007.

I hope this book will be seen as a vital and indispensable tool for the discerning Bond fan for many years to come. If I’m wrong, then obviously I deserve a laser-beam to the groin, swiftly followed by a dunk in the piranha tank.

John RainMay 2022

ONE

DR. NO

1962

WHEN DR. NO was released in 1962 and cinemagoers flocked to their local theatres, they thought they knew what they were getting. The movie was based on the sixth James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, published in 1958 – a series which had already established itself as a cultural phenomenon. But as the studio logo cuts to black, those fledgling audiences had no idea that they were bearing witness to the birth of a movie franchise that would come to dominate the film world for more than 60 years.

The first sound we hear is of radio interference. Then a gun barrel unfurls into view. And there he is . . . James Bond (in this instance Bob Simmons, a stuntman standing in for Sean Connery). He walks across the viewfinder and then suddenly he spins and fires a shot that rings out like the Big Bang. And much like the Big Bang, a new universe is created.

The opening titles and the gun barrel were the brainchildren of Maurice Binder, and a key part of establishing Bond’s on-screen identity. These carnivals of flashing lights, naked ladies and opulent typography are as vital to Bond as the Walther PPK.

This kaleidoscope is accompanied by John Barry’s lush arrangement of Monty Norman’s Bond theme, before someone apparently got bored and skipped the song to a man playing the bongos while falling down some stairs. This lasts for a couple of minutes until the hyperactive bongo player is usurped by an upbeat Jamaican rendition of the ‘Three Blind Mice’ nursery rhyme. In the space of just a few moments we’ve been given a taste of what is to come: exquisite cool mixed with the jaw-droppingly bizarre.

Dr. No feels like the demo version of a beloved song. There are blueprints laid out, but it’s not quite there yet. The film opens in Queen’s Club (private members only). John Strangways, the MI6 station chief in Jamaica, is playing cards with his friends. He’s won this game and is feeling pretty good about life. He leaves to take a call from his managing director, heading past the three blind men we saw in the title sequence and putting some money in their cup. A lovely gesture, but sadly also his last, as they murder him.

Back at Strangways’ HQ, his secretary calls London on a ham radio. She has the most awkward handle I’ve ever heard – ‘W6N, W6N, W6N’. However, before we can find out more, she is also murdered. The killers grab her keys, take her body away and steal two documents from the filing cabinet: ‘Crab Key’ and ‘Doctor No’. London are worried as contact has been lost with W6N in Jamaica, so they decide to send a message to their top agent.

Bond is at Le Cercle at Les Ambassadeurs Club in London – the kind of place where you could accidentally run over a poor person in the car park and no one would mind. He’s playing a game in which the dealer apparently needs to pass the cards around with a paddle. (‘Boat cards’, I think it’s called.) He’s beating Sylvia Trench. She asks for a further thousand, and he remarks that he admires her courage and gets her name. She asks his, and everything stops: time, hearts, the very concept of the universe. As Sean Connery lights a cigarette and murmurs the famous words, the game is over. We are smitten. This is pure, uncut sexuality. Cubby Broccoli’s wife, Dana, famously remarked that Connery ‘moved like a panther’, and Ian Fleming himself was so impressed that, in an act of retroactive continuity, he wrote in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service about Bond actually being a super-sexual Tyrannosaurus Scot.

Bond gets his message and leaves the table. Sylvia Trench seems sad that Bond is leaving. (You would be too – look at the state of him.) Bond asks if she’s good at any other games (he means sex), and she says she’s not bad at golf, amongst other things (which probably means sex as well). He gives her his number and heads out of the club with his winnings.

Bond waltzes into Moneypenny’s office and, for the very first time, flings his hat onto the hatstand. She laments that he never takes her anywhere dressed like that, and Bond says that if he did he’d be court-martialled for ‘misuse of government property’ (and he can’t go through that again – not after he got caught sitting on the photocopier at the Christmas party).

Bond gets the green light and heads in to see M. (Isn’t it fun that M has a soundproofed office? He could hold a small band rehearsal in there and no one would know a thing about it.)

Bond greets M with a ‘Good evening, sir’ and is grumpily corrected that it’s 3 a.m. Bernard Lee is perfectly cast in this role, which he played wonderfully for 17 years. A cantankerous, curmudgeonly old sod, deep-rooted within the walls of Whitehall, who on the one hand despises Bond’s work but on the other believes in him totally. Bond sees M as the father he never had; M sees Bond as the son he’s glad he never had.

M tells Bond he’s on a flight to Jamaica in three hours and then brings in Q – but not the Q we know and love; here he goes by the name ‘Major Boothroyd’. Q/Boothroyd takes Bond’s precious Beretta and swaps it for a Walther PPK, his weapon of choice for the next 50-plus years. It’s here that M mentions that he’s head of ‘MI7’ – a line that seems to have been changed in post-production, as his lips don’t quite match. While MI6 is never explicitly mentioned in the early Bond films, in later adventures it’s clearly established as the branch of government Bond works for (which makes this an interesting potential pub quiz question).

In beautiful Jamaica, Felix Leiter, played by Jack Lord (and wearing sunglasses just like your mum’s in old photos), watches over the airport like a hawk at a mouse farm, chain-smoking like there’s no tomorrow (which there probably wasn’t for sixties smokers). Bond wanders through security and is greeted by a driver claiming to have been sent by Government House to collect him. Bond, however, doesn’t quite trust him, and phones Government House to see if the driver is genuine. He’s not, and Bond looks highly smug that he knew the driver was lying, like when your dad guesses the killer at the start of Midsomer Murders.

The driver speeds dangerously along the seaside roads with wild abandon. Bond asks why he’s in such a hurry, and the driver points out that they’re being tailed (I was hoping he would use the excuse that he’d shat himself, like Sir Alex Ferguson did when he was caught speeding), and indeed they are – by Felix Leiter of the CIA. Bond directs the driver to take a turning to lose their tail, which works perfectly, and once they’ve stopped he draws his PPK and shoves it in the man’s back. He wants information, but unfortunately the driver opts for suicide instead.

This primordial Bond is less cavalier and more like an actual spy than later incarnations. We see him dusting talcum powder on his suitcase and plucking a hair from his head to place across the door of his hotel room, an act I’m sure Connery later saw as wilful self-abuse, what with so very few hairs being spare for such grandiose gestures.

At the Queen’s Club, Bond sits with the last people to see Strangways alive – Pleydell-Smith, Professor Dent and General Potter, the three members of the card game. No one has any real theories about what could have happened to poor old Strangways aside from Dent, who speculates that he probably eloped with his new secretary, as she was ‘rather nice’. Pleydell-Smith mentions that Strangways’ latest big obsession was fishing, and Potter adds that a chap called Quarrel is the most expensive to charter of all the fishermen, which we can assume means he also offers executive relief.

Bond takes a cab to the harbour, where Quarrel says he’ll tell Bond anything he wants to know in the back room of the bar, which sounds like a police sting if ever I heard one, and as Bond follows him in he’s immediately ambushed. However, his assailants haven’t factored in his unique judo-flip abilities, and within moments he has them on the floor at gunpoint. They’re ordered against the wall and Bond is about to back out when Felix Leiter appears, still wearing your mum’s sunglasses. It turns out that Quarrel is working with Felix and very much on the same team as Bond. A celebration may be in order.

There’s a vibrant sense of joie de vivre in this Jamaican bar at night. Bond, Quarrel and Felix discuss where the rocket disruption could be coming from (and they’re not talking about James’s pants). Bond asks if they’ve checked Crab Key, and Felix explains that they can’t as it belongs to a Chinese – cough – man called Dr. No. Quarrel tells them that Strangways recently slipped onto the island at night to collect samples of sand, rocks and water, which interests Bond a great deal. Presumably he’s wondering if the island has a thriving dogging scene.

With a receipt he found at Strangways’ office, Bond visits Professor Dent, card player and geologist. Dent explains that Strangways wanted him to examine some rocks to see if they were valuable. Sadly none of them were, and they were thrown away. Bond looks suspicious, as Dent’s cagey manner makes it sound like he’s actually eaten them. He asks if they came from Crab Key and Dent says definitely not, it’s geologically impossible, but again in such a way that essentially confirms they did. Bond thanks him for his time and walks away smiling.

Sufficiently spooked, Dent rushes out and gets a boat to Crab Key to face the mysterious Dr. No. He’s shown into a room where the mysterious No speaks to him over a tannoy and instructs him to kill Bond, giving him the perfect weapon with which to do it: a massive spider. Now, I am no uber-villain, but I’m pretty sure there are more effective ways to go about this. I’m just not sure a spider is up to the job (not unless it has a gun, sword or flamethrower to hand).

Bond arrives back at his hotel, with his own theme pumping along in the background. (It’s fun how often the Bond theme is used in this film. He stands up, the Bond theme plays. He walks to the toilet, Bond theme plays, which all makes one wonder what music is played while he has a wee.

Bond collects his key from reception and walks away while the receptionist takes a good long look at his arse. Back at his room, the precious hair he placed over the door is gone (definitely could have fallen off) and the talc on the suitcase has been disturbed. Bond doesn’t seem surprised at all. He fixes a drink and heads for bed.

The room is dark and quiet. Only the chirping of crickets and the mild breeze of the tropical night disturb the silence. Bond suddenly wakes up, looking perturbed, like he’s just remembered he didn’t pack his ‘Kiss Me Quick’ hat. However, the real reason for his horror isn’t as simple a matter as forgetting to bring the cheeky sexy headgear that always works with the ladies, it’s the spider crawling over him. And not just any spider – Dr. No’s spider. Bond stays very, very still and sweats a lot as he keeps track of the arachnid wandering up his arm. It gets closer and closer to his head (at one point seeming to float as if this was filmed on glass and put in afterwards). Thankfully, it’s such a shit spider that it walks off his shoulder onto the bed, and Bond is able to leap up, throw it to the floor and murder it with his shoe.

The next morning, Bond heads to Government House and asks Pleydell-Smith to get him all the information he can on Dr. No and Crab Key. Unfortunately, those are the very files that were stolen from Strangways’ house. Bond suspects that Pleydell-Smith’s secretary, Miss Taro, is listening at the door. He’s proven right as he catches her peeping through the keyhole. She pretends she’s looking for files, but he knows she’s lying, and to prove it he offers to spend the afternoon with her at his hotel. It was a different world in those days.

An exciting parcel has arrived from London: a Geiger counter, which of course measures radiation. The rocks that Strangways found make it go off like a dolphin orgy. Bond asks Quarrel how soon they can get to Crab Key, and Quarrel decides that this is a great time to tell Bond his bonkers story about a dragon, which Felix dismisses as native superstition, probably started by Dr. No himself. Nevertheless, they agree that it’s time to go check out the island.

At the hotel there’s a message from Miss Taro. She wants Bond to collect her from her apartment, so he heads out in his car, only to be ambushed by the three blind assassins in their hearse. However, they don’t take into account how good he is at driving (he’s basically The Stig), and they are sent off the road, exploding in a ball of fire. Bond is asked by a shocked road worker how it happened, and he replies, ‘I think they were on their way to a funeral’, which doesn’t answer the question at all.

Taro is very surprised to see him arrive alive but is under orders to keep him there and so offers some sexual intercourse, which in those days was like being given a newspaper to read while you wait. After the event, Bond calls a cab to take them out for dinner, except when it arrives it’s actually a car from Government House and he tells them to arrest her. Bond chuckles to himself about sending a woman to prison and then goes about preparing a trap for the assassin who is undoubtedly heading to her house to kill him.

Sure enough, a hand soon drifts through the hotel door brandishing a gun. After a moment’s pause it fires six bullets into the bed. The man holding the weapon then walks into the room to see if Bond is dead. It’s Dent. Before he can see for sure, the light comes on and he’s greeted by 007 pointing a pistol at him from a chair in the corner. Dent thinks it’s a great idea to try and shoot – but he’s forgotten that he emptied the gun into the bed (this is the same idiot that brought that spider). Bond pops two caps in Dent’s ass, which is definitely one of the coldest Bond kills in the entire franchise, as the second shot looks like it goes right up his anus.

As he arrives at the island with Quarrel, Bond announces they need to get some sleep – you know, as you do when arriving at the baddie’s lair – and wanders off to find a comfortable patch of beach. Quarrel necks something from a jug while looking around for giant monsters.

The next morning Bond is awoken by the sweet singing of Diana Coupland dubbed over the iconic vision of Ursula Andress emerging from the sea (always top of the pervert’s list of best Bond moments) with a handful of shells. She’s belting out the classic song ‘Underneath The Mango Tree’ as she checks over her aquatic finds. Bond decides that the best way to introduce himself to a lone, half-naked woman on a beach is to step out of the undergrowth and join in with her singing. She asks what the fuck he is doing there (this may be paraphrasing) and whether he’s also looking for shells, to which he pervily replies, ‘No, just looking.’ Nice one, James.

He reassures her that his intentions are honourable and asks her name. ‘Honey Ryder,’ she replies (in the voice of voice-over actress Nikki van der Zyl, who worked on ten Bond movies). Bond stifles a laugh. She tells him that she often comes to the island to get shells and points out that some of them are worth a lot of money. Bond humours her, probably well aware that they’re tat. Before he can tell her that she’s wasting her time, Quarrel comes running out of the trees and says he can hear a noise, and it’s not another mythical beast. Bond confirms that a high-powered boat is coming and tells them both to take cover.

The boat slowly floats past, the soldier on board checking for trespassers through his binoculars while shouting through a megaphone that if they come out they ‘won’t get hurt’. There’s no response to his threats, so the boat opens fire on the empty beach, which seems entirely normal. After the burst of gunfire, the megaphoned guard hilariously asks, ‘You coming out?’ then announces they’ll be back ‘with dogs’, which is how I end all of my correspondence now.

Honey tells Bond that she has also seen the dragon and he eye-rolls into next week. She asks how he knows dragons aren’t real by enquiring if he’s ever seen a ‘mongoose dance’. It’s at this point that Bond should tell her and Quarrel to go away and never come back, but as he clearly wants to have sex with one of them (I’ll let you decide which one), he lets this statement pass.

Back at Honey’s hiding place, and after a brief wash of the key areas, Honey tells Bond she thinks Dr. No killed her father, and that she’s lived all over the world, wherever there are shells. (Shells again. Christ.) Bond asks her where she went to school and Honey replies that she didn’t need to, as they owned an encyclopaedia. She started on ‘A’ when she was eight and now she’s reached ‘T’. This explains a great deal. She then tells a happy story about how she was sexually assaulted by a man who she then murdered, and how he took a week to die. Bond must be wondering how this simple mission has ended up with him trapped on an island with a pair of absolute lunatics.

Quarrel announces that something is coming, and Bond declares that he wants to see it. They wander through the trees and lagoons until they come to a dark, empty swamp. An object with bright lights tells them to stay where they are. It’s the dragon. It slowly approaches, fire blasting out of its face. Quarrel tells Bond that this is the dragon, to which Bond retorts that it’s a dragon that runs on diesel and to stop being a dopey arse. He devises a plan for Quarrel to grab the driver while he takes out the tyres. However, like all of the best-laid plans, this one ends with Quarrel being burned to death.

Bond and Ryder are captured and taken to Dr. No’s lair. Their radiation levels are checked, and they’re high. So the boys in Dr. No’s lab, dressed like the International League of Beekeepers, decide to cover them in a dubious-looking white substance which is sprayed from a hose. I’m guessing these guys have a lot of downtime as they seem to have filled an entire vat on their own. Bond and Ryder are ordered to remove their clothes. Bond seems very happy with this and tells them to ‘do the girl first’. They are put on a conveyer belt and showered in a scene that resembles a post-apocalyptic version of The Generation Game, or perhaps The Erotic Adventures of Valery Legasov, Chernobyl Investigator.

The rooms are adjoining, which obviously suits a pervert like Bond, and there is some lovely food and coffee laid on for them. Bond smugly warns Honey that the whole place could be bugged while knocking back a cup of joe that he doesn’t think for a moment could be drugged, and they both pass out. Nice work, James.

Joseph Wiseman is a bit problematic in the role of Chinese villain Dr. No (the only way this could be worse is if he were played by Benny Hill and referred to everyone as an ‘iriot’). He explains that he can’t shake hands as he has giant metal ones (presumably he lost his in a chip-pan fire), but he brings Bond a medium dry martini with lemon peel, shaken not stirred, which impresses him. He gives Honey a pint of wine. I guess she’s not important enough for him to bother finding out what she likes. If they listened to her for more than ten seconds they would know it’s probably shell juice.

Dr. No explains that he was the unwanted child of a German missionary and a Chinese girl from a good family, but rose to become treasurer of the most powerful criminal society in the world. He also says that he’s only keeping Bond alive because he’s the one man capable of matching him, which you’d think would be the best reason to have him killed. Bond asks him to set Honey free, as this is no place for a girl, so Dr. No gets the guards to take her back to her room as a sort of compromise.

Bond picks some low-hanging fruit by asking Dr. No if the toppling of American missiles compensates for having no hands. The doctor remains unmoved by the taunt, like a top tennis pro when someone calls them a wanker at Wimbledon. He reveals that the missiles are only the first part of the plan, and that he works for SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), an organisation headed by the greatest criminal brains in the world (sort of like Dragon’s Den for baddies). He offered his services to the Americans but they refused, and now they will pay. He intends to shoot a radio beam at the next missile launch and disrupt it. This is his plan to take over the world: broadcast The Archers at a rocket.

Bond offers that world domination is the ‘same old dream’. Dr. No responds with a show of strength, crushing a gold statue with his robotic pincers, and then offers Bond a job with SPECTRE. He’s flattered but would mostly like to get revenge on the man who killed Strangways and Quarrel, and also save the world, so Dr. No calls him a ‘stupid policeman’.

After being beaten up, Bond wakes in a prison cell, slightly worse for wear. He attempts to peek through the air ducts but is immediately electrocuted. He uses his shoe to break the grate and is able to climb in and escape. It should be noted that a shoe is the best gadget in this film: one killed the spider, and another got him out of a prison cell. (Hope you’re taking notes, Q Branch.)

Bond sneaks into the control room where Dr. No is sitting in his chair, wearing a full body condom and looking out pensively at the nuclear pool reactor. They’re waiting for the Americans to launch the next missile so they can begin their broadcast. While they are all distracted, Bond creeps up to the controls and begins to covertly overload the reactor, which sounds as though it has the Bee Gees concealed within. The alarm sounds and Dr. No orders his men to abandon the area while he goes after Bond. They have a very quick fight over the radiation pool (at no point does the doctor think of crushing Bond’s balls with his giant robot hands, which would have ended it there and then). Sadly, those same powerful robot hands provide no purchase when Dr. No ends up in the radioactive water, and he slowly sinks to his death.

Bond rescues Honey, who has inexplicably lost her trousers, and they sprint out of the facility before it explodes, getting onto a boat for some much-needed sexual intercourse. Their engine dies, but Felix arrives with his troops and offers to give them a tow home. As their boat begins its journey, Honey and Bond once again begin to snuggle up suggestively, and Bond lets go of the rope, causing them to drift away from Felix and presumably begin their next bout of frenzied erotic activity. Better than beachcombing, surely, though you can never be sure with Honey.

TWO

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

1963

IT’S DARK. THE chirrup of crickets and the occasional nocturnal hoot are the only sounds. Then, out of the darkness, appears James Bond. He wanders into the light and slowly pads, panther-like, through the garden of a country estate, pausing to check if he’s being followed. He notices no one, but we see the feet and, eventually, the chiselled face of blond, beautiful and stern Donald ‘Red’ Grant (Robert Shaw), a professional assassin with a taste for peroxide, leather gloves and death. Grant tracks his quarry like a seasoned predator and eventually emerges from the darkness with a garrote that he pulls from his watch. After the briefest of struggles, James Bond is dead.

Floodlights burst into life and the darkness is banished. As guards emerge from the country house, Grant repacks his wire back into his watch as a man calmly approaches and congratulates him on his time of 1 minute and 52 seconds (as though he’s on The Crystal Maze). This is his trainer, Morzeny (Walter Gotell, who went on to play General Gogol for many years in the Bond franchise). Morzeny reaches down and removes the mask from the corpse. It wasn’t James Bond at all. If there’s one thing we can be sure of, it’s that Red Grant is the numero-uno killer of lookalikes.

At this point one might question why the mask, costume and actual murder were necessary. You can just about justify the tux, and the mask at a push, but the murder seems a bit OTT. Who was this man? Why did he agree to this homicidal role play? The answers never come, for this is SPECTRE Island, a mysterious place inhabited entirely by the world’s deadliest killers (and some poor stooges), all working in pursuit of the impossible dream: to kill James Bond.

The credits arrive like a seedy, after-dark bikini lightshow live from an underground car park, the text projected onto belly dancers’ arms, legs and breasts. The ‘From Russia With Love’ song is here, but as an instrumental version. Finally, the reassuring presence of John Barry bursts through the organs and tambourines and fires out his bombastic explosion of the Bond theme. This is Barry’s first full score of a Bond film, and it’s a beauty.

We find ourselves at a chess tournament in Venice, and the sex is already turned up to a sweltering 200%. Kronsteen (like Prince, he doesn’t have a first name) is a chess grandmaster while also being SPECTRE’s top organiser – activities one supposes go very comfortably hand in hand. He’s playing some specky idiot who thinks he can beat him, while in the background a man is echoing their moves on a giant wall-mounted chessboard. Kronsteen is brought a glass of water with a doily stuck to the bottom, which he looks at suspiciously. On the doily is a note telling Kronsteen that he’s needed at once by SPECTRE, so he shifts up a gear and wipes the floor with the guy challenging him. In many ways he’s like Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali or Jocky Wilson – a true sportsman full of natural charm and raw sexual energy.

He leaves the beautiful Syd Cain-designed set (Ken Adam was busy working on Dr. Strangelove and changing the way the entire world would see a war room for ever) and attends a meeting on a yacht with Rosa Klebb (a SMERSH defector) and a man referred to as Number One, who is stroking a cat. The attraction to jump ship from SMERSH to SPECTRE is a no-brainer for me. SMERSH were the Soviet counter-intelligence agency, and therefore were probably low on bonuses and world travel, the company car was likely to be a Lada, the uniform would be grey slacks and furry hats, and they would never have had any discos. Whereas SPECTRE were a worldwide organisation with whopping budgets (imagine the cost of all those underground lairs), great travel allowances, quality benefits, dental plans, sexy trousers and state-of-the-art discotheques with strobe lighting and smoke machines.

We never see Number One’s face, which means he’s either very scary, or very mysterious. They watch a tank of Siamese fighting fish attack each other while Number One hammily explains SPECTRE’s plan to set East and West against one another until they are too weak to stop SPECTRE from, presumably, taking global power.

Kronsteen declares that he is going to steal the Russian’s new Lektor decoding machine, and will fool the British into taking it for him. He reassures them both that his plan is foolproof, and as an added sweetener, the British will undoubtedly send James Bond to carry out the mission – thus SPECTRE will be able to get revenge on the man who killed Dr. No. Number One is delighted, and tells Kronsteen that Bond must die a humiliating death, presumably with a hoover up the jacksie or something, and then feeds a piece of Siamese fighting fish to the cat, which has had more screen time in this scene than anyone else.

Klebb calls in Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi), a cipher clerk at the Russian consulate in Istanbul, for an interview. She begins to go through Romanova’s file, which includes details of her having slept with three men to date. Romanova takes slight issue with this line of questioning, but Klebb pushes on like she’s a researcher for Take Me Out. She tells Romanova that she’s been selected for a mission to disseminate false information to the enemy, which these days, of course, would mean she’d simply have to tweet about how Donald Trump is the best president ever while misspelling every other word and going on and on about ‘liberals’. Klebb tells her the mission will be a ‘labour of love’, which suggests that Romanova’s sexual liaisons are about to increase to four, and follows this up by declaring that if Romanova refuses the mission, she’ll be shot. What a lovely plot line this is.

Bond slides into Moneypenny’s office and gracefully throws his hat onto the stand. He’s about to turn around and boast about it when he’s stopped in his tracks by a very unimpressed-looking M standing behind the door, looking every inch like a man having to explain to the organist at a funeral that ‘The Birdie Song’ is not acceptable as the deceased was killed by an eagle. He tells Bond that a Russian cipher clerk, Tatiana Romanova, has fallen in love with him via a photo, to which Bond decrees that she must be ‘mental’ and decides that it’s some sort of trap. M agrees, saying that the bait is a cipher machine – a brand new Lektor, which the CIA and British Intelligence have been after for years. Romanova has told the station chief in Istanbul that she wishes to defect on one condition: that Bond go over there and bring her, and the machine, back with him. Bond doesn’t seem very keen until M shows him a photo, whereupon he becomes 200% invested in this mission.

M sends for the ‘equipment officer’ and in walks Q – yes, our Q. Presumably he killed that charlatan from Dr. No and assumed his identity, lives in his house, sleeps with his wife, wears his skin on weekends. He brings Bond a suitcase which contains a machine gun, a can of spray gas, some coins and a sniper rifle (for when you’ve got a top business meeting at three, but a spree killing at three forty-five). We get some unfortunate close-ups of Q’s hands here, and they look like the kind of hands an over-exuberant child would make out of Plasticine. They’re so off-putting you almost miss the explanation about how the booby-trapped briefcase works.

In Istanbul, Bond is picked up by a driver, and after a brief exchange of passwords he’s whisked away to meet Ali Kerim Bey, the station head, who spends most of his time on screen talking about all his kids who work for him, like a Turkish Donald Trump. Red Grant watches on as a mysterious man with a moustache follows in another car. The driver explains it’s a Bulgarian working for the Russians and they always follow each other, which is a very friendly, or possibly just passive-aggressive, arrangement.

Ali tells Bond that something smells, and before Bond can check his shoe he explains that he thinks this whole mission is a waste of time, and that Bond should just go home (roll credits). Bond explains that if there’s a chance of getting a Lektor, it’s worth it, and plus he may get to have sex with a lady. Ali begrudgingly accepts this, and before he asks if he can watch, he tells him that Romanova said she will make her own arrangements to contact him, so he will just have to wait while offering him access to his many magazines.

As Ali’s car takes Bond away from the meeting, the same car from earlier follows once again, but this time it’s driven by Red Grant, with the previous driver beaten and tied up in the back. He dumps the car and the body and takes a car with Klebb away from the scene. Klebb remarks that the Russians will blame the British, and it will hopefully start a war. She probably also slows down for car crashes.

Ali is about to have sex with a lady in his office when there’s a large explosion, and no, he isn’t that good, but rather it was an attempt by someone to kill him. He tells Bond that luckily he was ‘relaxing’ on his sofa when it went off, which I suppose is reasonably accurate. He’s confused, though, as it must have been the Russians, but he doesn’t understand why they would break the truce. Bond offers that his presence may have something to do with it, so Ali takes him into an underground tunnel below the Russian consulate, where he has a periscope that he uses to spy on them, which seems entirely normal and not perverted in any way. While they take turns spying, Romanova enters the room and Bond ogles her legs via periscope like some sort of underwater strip-club owner.

Ali decides the best idea would be to hide out at a gypsy camp until things die down, which just happens to be jam-packed full of women – two of whom are about to fight over the hand of a man they both love. As Ali is a friend of the family, he and Bond will be allowed to stay and watch, and Bond must be thinking that he’s struck pornographic gold. Behind the scenes, however, Russian agent Krilencu, with a gang of Bulgarians, moves in on the camp and readies an attack.

Now it’s time for the main event: the half-naked lady-wrestle. ‘No matter what happens now, say and do nothing,’ Ali tells Bond (so strictly one for him to think back to later), however, just as it’s about to get interesting, from an anthropological perspective, shots ring out and bodies begin to drop from rooftops. Bond draws his weapon and returns fire. He’s about to be set upon from behind by a mad bastard with a knife when two shots ring out from a sniper; 007 looks up but sees no one. It was Red Grant, protecting the asset from afar.

Krilencu and the Bulgarians eventually retreat, and the camp burns. Despite this, the lead gypsy thanks Bond and proclaims that he is now his son. In return, Bond asks him to stop the ritual lady fights, and the gypsy laughs, essentially calling him a big girl’s blouse. Instead, he can decide the winner, and the women are brought to his tent as gifts. Bond says it will take him some time, delighted that he can take his pure anthropological studies to a more practical level.

Bond returns to his hotel room to run a much-needed bath, but finds Tatiana Romanova in his bed, like some sort of gift from Sex-Santa. She tells him he looks just like his photograph (which is never the case – ask anyone on Tinder) and Bond replies that she’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen (and he’s seen a few). She accepts the praise, but then claims that her mouth is too big, which leads to a very strange, almost fetishistic close-up of it. ‘It’s just the right size – for me, that is,’ he says as they kiss. He asks her if she has the Lektor and she tells him it’s at the consulate. As they commence with the sensual lovemaking, we see that, behind a mirror, Klebb and an associate are not only watching but filming, which could have been awkward were it not for the fact that Bond is definitely a vanilla, missionary-sex man.

The next day Romanova heads to Hagia Sophia, a beautifully picturesque museum, and fine example of Byzantine architecture, to drop off the consulate floor plans in the agreed spot. Bond observes and notices another interested party – the Bulgarian with the moustache, who looks a bit like Alfred Molina’s pornstuntdouble. The Bulgarian moves in to steal the plans, but Grant takes him out, and not to the Dorchester. Bond reaches the spot and finds the dead Bulgarian. Thinking nothing of it (presumably he finds mysteriously murdered Bulgarians all the time), he grabs the plans and heads back to Ali.

They compare Romanova’s plans with the blueprints and they match up perfectly. Ali warns him that it all sounds too easy, and to think with his brain, not his penis – sage words from the man with 897 children. Bond, however, is confident that he knows what he’s doing, and why shouldn’t he be? He’s somehow still alive.

While taking the sights on the Bosphorus Ferry, Bond pretends to take pictures of Romanova, but in actual fact the camera is a recording device and he’s asking her the specifics of the Lektor – size, weight, special features and so on, but she’s much more interested in him, and whether they will be together when this is all over. He promises that once they have the Lektor, they will commence the lovemaking ‘day and night’, like some sort of sexual London Underground.

In M’s office, the gang of specialists gather round his tape recorder to listen to the technical details of the machine. Everyone is gripped, until one vital moment when Romanova asks James if she’s as exciting as the Western women, whereupon he begins to describe a time when he and M were in Tokyo and had an ‘interesting experience with some Tokyo girls’. The mind absolutely boggles about what M and Bond could have got up to with a group of Tokyo girls, but M turns off the tape as quick as a flash. While everyone speculates, M, in an effort to distract from the many mental images swimming around the room like fat dolphins, instructs Moneypenny to send a cable to Bond: ‘merchandise appears genuine, go ahead with deal.’

In the tunnels under the consulate, Ali is waiting to detonate a bomb. The bomb goes off and the room rocks into dust. Bond grabs the Lektor and heads into the tunnels with Romanova to meet up with Ali and race to the train station. As they board she spots Russian security entering the train, while Red Grant is also a secret passenger. Ali shows them to their compartment and hands them their new passports, Tatiana is very excited about going to England (wait until she finds out about the food), and Bond tells her that as they are posing as newly-weds, they have a two-day honeymoon to enjoy until then. To complete the creepy-Humbert Humbert vibe, he gives her a very nice suitcase of dresses to wear and watches on with a wily smile as she excitedly picks them out and holds them up.

Everything seems to be going well, but there is still the matter of the Russian security guy to sort out, so Bond and Ali storm their compartment and tie him down at gunpoint, which is how we say hello in England. Ali tells James he’ll take care of the rest, and he’ll meet him at 6 p.m. in the restaurant car. As Bond departs he walks past Red Grant, who is going the other way slyly holding a gun.

As Bond and Romanova ready themselves, a porter rushes in to tell them there has been a terrible accident with Ali. Bond heads off to check, telling Romanova to keep the door locked while he’s gone. He reaches the room and finds Ali and the Russian security man dead. He returns to find Tatiana in the compartment and begins to grill her for information about why Ali was murdered, but rather than a ‘grilling’, it’s more of a ‘flame-throwering’. She tells him she knows nothing, so he naturally calls her a liar and punches her in the face – a moment that has always seemed wholly unnecessary, shocking and difficult to watch. I’d prefer that the hero of my espionage film wasn’t the worst person in a Lars von Trier film.

When the train reaches the next station, Bond meets with one of Ali’s many sons and tells him, in the most matter-of-fact way, that his dad is dead. Rather than offering his condolences or a hug, Bond instructs him to send a request to M in London for someone from Station Y to meet him in Zagreb. He then hands over some of Ali’s personal items and boards the train without a backward look.

When the train reaches Zagreb, Grant intercepts the man from Section Y and kills him before assuming his identity and heading to meet Bond on the platform. He tells him his name is Captain Nash and that his orders were to make contact with Bond on the train. Always the smooth operator, 007 compliments Grant on his body, a comment he seems deeply flattered by, saying that he likes to keep in shape. Anyone hoping the film will take a deeply homoerotic turn here (perhaps with a game of volleyball, or a nude wrestle by the fire) will be disappointed.

In the restaurant car later, Bond orders the grilled sole for himself and Romanova. Grant asks for the same, with a glass of red wine to go with it. When it arrives he knocks over Romanova’s wine glass, and when Bond calls for a waiter, he refills it. After awkward conversation and dinner they all head back to Bond’s compartment and Romanova passes out on the bed.

‘What was it? The stuff you put in her drink,’ Bond says as he locks the door. ‘Chloral hydrate – quick but mild,’ replies Grant, before pistol-whipping him. Bond says that the red wine with fish was a giveaway, essentially calling Grant out as nouveau-riche scum. Grant calls him ‘old man’ again, and Bond takes exception, as he’s said it about 400 times since meeting 20 minutes ago. ‘Is that what you chaps in SMERSH call each other?’ he grunts in disdain. Grant turns his nose up at the very idea of being involved with SMERSH, and it clicks for Bond: SPECTRE. They’ve been playing the British and Russians against each other.

Grant confesses to all the murders, as well as saving Bond at the gypsy camp, and says he gets a kick out of seeing Bond be so stupid (this is nothing, he should see him dressed as a monkey in Octopussy). He shows him a roll of film – Bond and Romanova’s sex tape, as well as a letter supposedly from Romanova, trying to blackmail him. Grant says the British press will love it, and he’s right, as it will undoubtedly contain boobs.

Bond asks for a last cigarette and offers Grant 50 gold sovereigns from his suitcase (which is about right for the price of fags these days). Grant opens it and falls for the old exploding-gas-canister-in-the-suitcase trick. Bond leaps to his feet and so begins one of the greatest close-quarters combat scenes in Bond history. In an age where fighting in films was very much depicted as drunken scuffling, Bond vs Red Grant is one of the finest early examples of two mad-for-it hard bastards trying to kill each other with their bare hands. They swipe, punch, push, huff and grunt, all under a dim blue light. It’s very much the Space Mountain of fight scenes. Bond eventually strangles Grant with his own wire, but sadly doesn’t take the opportunity to crack a good joke like ‘nice death you’ve garotte there’ or ‘what a choker’. Instead, he wakes up Romanova and they escape the train and steal a truck that has been left as part of Grant’s escape route.

On the way to the Dalmatian coast, where presumably the spotty dogs swim in the bay, they are attacked by a helicopter which drops grenades on them and tries to run Bond over as he attempts to draw them away on foot. Thanks to his rifle and some classic henchman buffoonery, Bond shoots the grenade dropper just after he’s pulled the pin; the grenade gets lost under his seat and the helicopter explodes.

Bond and Romanova reach the coast where they find a boat waiting for them. Bond is now sporting a very natty captain’s hat, as it’s maritime law that you can only drive a boat if you have one. He pushes the pilot into the water while lamenting it’s ‘just not your day, is it?’ (and it really isn’t as the pilot is about five miles from shore), and then announces to Romanova that they’re heading to Venice and have plenty of fuel, so they should be there by the morning.

Meanwhile, in SPECTRE HQ, Number One is stroking his pussy (sorry, but he is) and telling Klebb and Kronsteen that Grant has been found dead and therefore the plan has failed. Kronsteen looks very sheepish, like his parents have just checked their last phone bill, and he tries to blame Klebb and her people, but Number One isn’t having any of it, and tells them that they need to kill Bond and recover the Lektor, as he has agreed a price with Russia for its return. He then has Morzeny kill Kronsteen by kicking him in the balls with a shoe-knife covered in venom.

In Venice, Bond and Romanova relax on the balcony of their hotel room, soaking in the sun, presumably sitting in silence because they have run out of small talk, therefore perfecting the cover of being married. The phone rings, and 007 steps away to answer it and asks for a porter to come and get their luggage. As the door slowly opens we see Rosa Klebb, dressed as a maid and looking a bit like the woman from the end of Don’t Look Now in her day-job. She pulls a gun on Bond and tries to steal the Lektor, but ends up pinned to the wall via a chair while flailing and kicking out her blade-shoe like some sort of can-can dancer who’s had her drink spiked with powerful psychotropic drugs. Romanova picks up a gun and shoots her dead, and as she slowly slides and hams her way down the wall to the floor, Bond turns to Romanova and makes a joke about how ‘she’s had her kicks’, again working that deep cover about being married very well, as she doesn’t laugh.

Matt Monro’s beautiful song, ‘From Russia With Love’, begins to play as the couple float through Venice on a gondola. Romanova hands the wedding ring back to Bond, as it’s government property. They kiss, but she tells him to behave himself as they’re being filmed. Bond looks up and sees a couple of tourists filming the river. ‘Oh, not again,’ he says, and takes their sex tape out of his jacket pocket and begins to unfurl it. As he and Romanova embrace, he tosses the film into the water and waves it goodbye, then proceeds to initiate sex on a boat in broad daylight. That’s our hero.