MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 100 titles—from the ’20s through the ’80s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
Dr. No (1962, 110 minutes)
Dr. No, the first of the Sean Connery-era James Bond movies, broke new moral ground on the big screen when its life-and-death confrontations—unlike those from earlier wild-west shootouts—were resolved in a more pragmatic way that had little to do with New Frontier compassion.
When he gets the drop on Prof. R.J. Dent (Anthony Dawson), Bond has carefully counted the shots already fired into his empty bed by this would-be assassin. The geologist slowly pulls the small rug on which his pistol is resting closer to him, then lunges for the weapon, points it at Bond and pulls the trigger—with no response. Bond icily pronounces sentence: “It’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six,” before firing one slug into the professor’s heart and, after he’s hit the floor, another into his back. The British Secret Service’s 007 designation means “licensed to kill,” and Bond intends to use it.
Equally shocking is Dr. No‘s opening sequence. Three blind beggars tap their white canes through the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, as steel-drums play a calypso version of “Three Blind Mice.” After shooting British Secret Service agent John Strangways six times in the car park of the exclusive Queens Club, the trio arrives at his residence just as his secretary is powering up the short-wave transmitter so he can speak with the London office about something urgent.
The killers shoot the secretary three times in the chest through the French doors, then turn the body over to reveal a crimson stain spreading on her white blouse, before removing two files from Strangways’ cabinet, one labeled “Crab Cay,” the other “Dr. No.” In a bizarre bow to sexual equality, the poor girl may have been the first female ever dispatched so brutally, onscreen.
Now hot on the trail of Dr. No with CIA agent Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) and Quarrel (John Kitzmiller), a native Cayman Islander, Bond objects to a young girl taking his picture in a Kingston nightclub. “Get her, Quarrel, and the camera, as well!” he commands. “Captain wants you to have a drink with us,” says Quarrel, pinning one arm behind her back.
“Who pays you to take my picture?” asks Bond. “The Daily Gleaner. Tell this ape to let me go!” she replies. “Puss Feller, see if the Gleaner sent a photographer tonight, would you?” he shouts at the club’s owner. “They didn’t send me. I-I work freelance,” she says. Breaking one of her flashbulbs with her free hand, she scrapes it across Quarrel’s face. “Give her her arm back, Quarrel. On your way, freelance!” says Bond, after exposing her film. “You’ll all be sorry, you rats!” she spits venomously. “She would have stood for her arm being broken,” says Bond to Leiter. “Who puts that sort of scare into people?”
