Dr. No (1962)
d. Terence Young, 110 minutes

Film Plot Summary

The British government's Agent 007 James Bond (Sean Connery) was sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance-murder of fellow government agent John Strangways (Timothy Moxon). There, he encountered the villainous and menacing Chinese Dr. Julius No (Joseph Wiseman) (with metal prosthetic hands), a member of SPECTRE (The Special Executive for Counter Intelligence, Terror, Revenge, Extortion) whose goal was to interfere with and sabotage American space rockets (and their launches) with a radio beam.

At reclusive No's private island Crab Key, Bond was imprisoned with shell-searching bikinied Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), but Bond insured that Dr. No met his fate when he was lowered into a tank of boiling radioactive water, that his base was destroyed, and that he was able to safely escape with Honey.

Film Notables (Awards, Facts, etc.)

The James Bond franchise is the longest-running one in film history.

The first of six films starred Sean Connery as James Bond.

With the series' first gun-barrel opening credits sequence.

With a production budget of $1.2 million, and gross revenue of $16 million (domestic) and $60 million (worldwide).

Set-pieces: the destruction of Dr. No's base and his demise.

From Russia With Love (1963)
d. Terence Young, 115 minutes

Film Plot Summary

British agent James Bond (Sean Connery) was tricked by SPECTRE into stealing a Lektor cryptographic decoder from Istanbul's Russian Consulate; the vengeful plan, to get back at Bond for killing Dr. No in the first film, included killing Bond and selling the stolen decoder back to the Russians, as well as destroying Bond's reputation and that of the British Secret Service (M16).

Ex-SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya) was put in charge of the criminal SPECTRE mission by the evil, menacing villain Blofeld (uncredited Anthony Dawson, his hands, in close-up, seen petting a white Persian cat); blonde psychopath "Red" Grant (Robert Shaw) was designated as Bond's assassin.

The plot involved setting Bond up in a romance with defecting Russian cypher clerk Tatiana Romanov (Daniella Bianchi) from the Russian embassy, who was recruited and following orders from Klebb to act as a fake defector; then Bond would be assassinated, and explicit film from their sexual contact would be placed on his corpse, making it appear that Bond killed her and then committed suicide;

However, by the film's conclusion, Grant was strangled by his own garrotte watch during a prolonged Orient Express train battle with Bond, and Klebb (with a poisoned toe-spike) was shot dead by Tatiana (who had fallen in love with Bond and had decided to defect to the West), and Bond sailed away with her on a Venice gondola.

Film Notables (Awards, Facts, etc.)

The first Bond film with a pre-title sequence. The second film in the series.

With a production budget of $2.5 million, and gross revenue of $25 million (domestic) and $79 million (worldwide).

Set-pieces: the opening chess match, the female cat fight and the Bulgars' attack on the gypsy camp, the helicopter fight, and the hand-to-hand combat on the Orient Express.

Goldfinger (1964)
d. Guy Hamilton, 110 minutes

Film Plot Summary

The plan of rich, greedy, gold-smuggling villain Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe), nicknamed Operation Grand Slam, was to explode a radioactive cobalt/iodine bomb inside Fort Knox (Kentucky), the site of US gold reserves; with the gold bars inaccessible for 58 years, Goldfinger would increase the value of his own gold and cause economic chaos in the West, to the delight of his Communist Chinese supporters.

Bond (Sean Connery) (with a preference for "a martini, shaken, not stirred"), first met Goldfinger in Miami, where he ruined his card-shark scam and then bedded Auric's assistant/escort Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) - resulting in the unfortunate victim's skin suffocation by gold paint as retaliation for her betrayal; Bond followed Goldfinger to Switzerland, where he was captured and then taken to the villain's Kentucky stud farm base. There he met Goldfinger's henchwoman Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman), the blonde lesbian-leaning leader of an all-female Flying Circus aerial troupe, poised to spray lethal nerve gas over Fort Knox. When she fell for the virile Bond and changed allegiances, she alerted the CIA and Goldfinger's plan at Fort Knox was foiled by an assault from the US military.

Bond defeated threatening, mute Korean henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata) (with a lethal, metal-rimmed bowler hat) by electrocution in a tense one-on-one fight, and dispatched with Goldfinger (sucked out of a plane window when a gunshot decompressed the cabin) who had escaped onto Bond's own JetStar airplane on its way to Washington, DC, after which Bond parachuted to safety with Pussy Galore.

Film Notables (Awards, Facts, etc.)

The first official blockbuster Bond film, and the first Bond film to use a pop star (Shirley Bassey) to sing the theme song "Goldfinger" during the titles.

The third film in the series.

Also, the first Bond film to be nominated (and win) an Academy Award: Best Sound Effects Editing.

With a production budget of $3.5 million, and gross revenue of $51 million (domestic) and $125 million (worldwide).

Set-pieces: the pre-credits sequence, the climactic Fort Knox assault and the one-on-one fight between Bond and Oddjob.