Dr. No

Yes, most of Dr. No is cheesier than an Afghani shepherd's lunch. But this is one of my favorite Bonds anyway. I like the music, the "underneath the mango tree" thing. Doing the intro with just the regular theme song is a nice contrast to all the following films. The introduction to Bond is without comparison in the series. It's perfect.

Maybe I'm simply enraptured by her tropical innocence combined with her encyclopedia reading, but Ursula Andress is not only my favorite Bond girl, but the ideal woman, except for maybe Viveca Lindfors in Stargate. I fully realize that that should make me an object of scorn or pity. But her lines about seeing a praying mantis, blah, blah, is so rewind-worthy. And the look on her face when Bond kills the guy in the river is so hilarious/alluring/acted that I can't help but love it.

Then of course they have to kill off Quarrel, the ultimate non-white sidekick since Tonto, who believed in the "dragon." But despite all that, it remains a great example of a human action film. Action is such a de-humanized genre now. Oh for the days of yore, when secret agents actually ran out of breath and had to do little things like place a hair on the closet door to see if anyone opened it. Now they'd just have a laser sensor that would kill any intruder. Sigh. And the spider, and especially the spider music.....