I haven’t seen this one in a few years. Just seen it again.
It’s the embodiment of everything you associate with Bond movies. Apart from the gadgets, which are absent here, unless you count the Geiger counter. And yes, it doesn’t have “a song”, but it introduced the famous “Bond Theme” - which serves as the title music here quite admirably.
Sean Connery is excellent in the role. There’s a reason he played the part six times (officially - or seven if you count “Never Say Never Again” which isn’t a proper Bond film), and you only have to watch this film to see why. He inhabits the part beautifully. He has an intelligence in the part. He has the air of someone who knows every trick in the book and is prepared for the unexpected.
Ursula Andress as Honey Rider is still one of the most memorable (and beautiful) Bond girls of all time. She can look after herself - except right at the end when she’s taken away and chained up, but I guess that’s fair enough. The one disappointing angle to her character is that she’s not really that important to the plot. Memorable though her entrance is, it doesn’t happen until all the wheels have been set in motion, and if you cut her character from the movie, it wouldn’t really make much difference to it.
Felix Leiter appeared in numerous Bond movies - usually played by a different actor each time. It’s one of those little deliberate mistakes I think, it became a gimmick to recast him pretty much every time he appeared. As such it makes it tricky to say which ones he definitely did and didn’t appear in. Interestingly, Jack Lord, who played him here, was Gene Roddenberry’s first idea to play the Enterprise captain in Star Trek (at that point in Trek history, the planned name for the captain was Robert April, which became Christopher Pike in the first pilot and James T. Kirk after that) - and I can sort of see that working.
Quarrel was indeed a likeable character - and, not really a spoiler, there’s another Quarrel in Roger Moore’s first outing, which we’re watching next, Live And Let Die, I think he’s the son of the original character.
Dr No himself is a great villain - as they went on toe do with Blofeld, they kept his initial appearance mysterious, a voice off-screen, then in the shadows, not seeing his face until Bond was properly introduced to him. That’s how to make villains scary, keep up the mystery right up until the hero comes face to face with them.
What I particularly like about this film is the pace - they spend a lot of time on the setup, which you wouldn’t get nowadays. These days you’d introduce the villain properly before the halfway point, and have various extended fights from that point on. But this film paces it to perfection, allowing us to wonder who’s controlling events for longer. Action and suspense are two different things, and back then, directors used suspense much more effectively. Bond goes through a number of lesser and medium players in this game, before finally reaching the ultimate goal. And that’s as it should be. It’s also got a number of moments early on that are more to establish the nature of the character than serving any purpose in the plot, but these moments are not wasted - Bond’s dalliance with the woman in the casino, then his attempt to sneak back his Beretta from M, and later on his precautions in case his room is searched - which turn out to be very revealing, when the talc is interfered with an the hair is missing.
Definitely one of the better Bond films. It’s a close run thing for me between this and its immediate successor, From Russia With Love, as to which is Connery’s best.
I remember I watched an episode of “Mythbusters” in which they debunked the gold paint being dangerous myth. The paint cannot suffocate a person (like in the movie) as we do not breathe through our skins. But it can potentially raise the body temperature somewhat, which if unchecked could be fatal. I do feel a bit sheepish for not being able to figure that out myself despite being a Biology major!