Bovie Movie

Terence Young directed this first of a long line of screen adventures with Ian Fleming’s unflappable British Secret Service Agent 007 in a fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek style that set the tone for the rest of the popular series. Sean Connery sets the standard by which all future takers must measure themselves as the insouciant and devil-may-care James Bond. The story concerns Bond being sent to Jamaica to investigate the murders of a British agent and his secretary. During his investigation, he comes into contact with the evil and unscrupulous Chinese scientist Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman) who, living on an island called Crab Key, is hard at work in a nuclear laboratory. Dr. No’s scheme is to divert rockets being fired from Cape Canaveral off their charted course and to blackmail the United States to get their rocket launches restored to normal. Helping Bond is Ursula Andress (mostly undressed in a bikini throughout most of the film), as well as bad gals like Zena Marshall, who almost leads Bond to his death in her bedroom, and Eunice Gayson, a Bond pickup in a London gambling house who proves herself a greater adversary than even James Bond can handle.

For Your Eyes Only eschews the gimmickry and campiness of earlier James Bond films, concentrating instead on telling the story and maintaining suspense. Roger Moore is back as Secret Agent 007, this time on the trail of Soviet spies while he romances the beautiful Melina, played by Carole Bouquet. Richard Maibaum’s screenplay has very little to do with the collection of short stories that made up Ian Fleming’s For Your Eyes Only, save for the plotline involving Melina’s seeking vengeance for the death of her father. The direction is by John Glen, who’d previously done second unit work on other Bond films.

The Living Daylights represents the first appearance by Timothy Dalton as “Bond…James Bond.” Based very, very loosely on an obscure Ian Fleming short story, the film finds Bond assigned to aid in the defection of KGB agent Jeroen Krabbe. 007 must prevent an unknown sniper from killing Krabbe before he can reach the West. The mysterious assailant turns out to be the luscious Maryam d’Abo, who like practically everyone in the film except Bond is Not All That She Seems. The plot wends its way through a scheme to trade several million dollars’ worth of diamonds for weapons, which will be shipped off to mercenaries worldwide. The climax takes place high above the clouds in a cargo plane loaded with opium. Dalton would play Bond one more time in License to Kill (1989) before handing the franchise over to Pierce Brosnan.

Roger Spottiswoode (Air America) directed this film, the 18th chapter in the 35-year-old James Bond series (excluding Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again). James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) learns billionaire media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) is manipulating world events via an exclusive flow of information through his satellite system reaching all corners of the planet. With a stealth battleship sinking a British naval vessel, Carver sees that the Chinese are blamed. Crashing Carver’s party in Hamburg, Bond meets “journalist” Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh), later revealed as a Chinese agent. In a brief tryst, Bond renews his past relationship with Carver’s wife Paris (Teri Hatcher). Carver dispatches Stamper (Gotz Otto) and other goons to cancel Bond, who eludes attackers with some of his new gadgets. In Southeast Asia, after Bond and Wai Lin scuba dive into the sunken British ship, they are captured by Stamper, handcuffed, and taken to Saigon where they make a motorcycle escape. To thwart Carver’s plans for WWIII, the two agents head for Carver’s stealth ship where a cruise missile is aimed at Beijing. Principal photography began April 1, 1997 in the new Eon Productions studio facility at Frogmore, northwest of London, and on the 007 stage at Pinewood Studios. Locations included the UK, Hamburg, Southeast Asia, Mexico, and off the Florida coast. The trademark Bond pre-title sequence was filmed in the French Pyrenees snowfields, centered around one of the few high-altitude operational airfields in Europe.

After George Lazenby portrayed James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Sean Connery returned to the tux, gimmicks, and catchphrases of Secret Agent 007 in his penultimate Bond outing, Diamonds Are Forever. Fragments of Ian Fleming’s original 1954 novel remain, including the characters of the alluring Tiffany Case (Jill St. John) and fey hitmen Wint (Bruce Glover) and Mr. Kidd (Putter Smith). The remainder of Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz’s script diverges dramatically from the novel, involving Bond in a scheme by the insidious Ernst Blofeld (Charles Gray) to force the world powers to disarm so that he can take over the globe. Folksinger Jimmy Dean shows up briefly as a Howard Hughes-like reclusive billionaire, while Lana Wood (Natalie’s sister) participates in one of the film’s edgiest cliffhangers. Agreeing to make Diamonds Are Forever only because of the money offered him, Sean Connery parted company with the role for 12 years after this film; he returned to the role once more in 1983, for Irvin Kershner’s underrated Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again.

In this adaptation of Ian Fleming’s 1955 novel, James Bond (Roger Moore) must thwart Sir Hugo Drax (Michel Lonsdale), who plans to wipe out all of humankind and replace it with a super race that he has cultivated in a massive space station. The girl in the case is American secret agent Holly Goodhead, intelligently played by Lois Chiles. “Jaws,” the steel-mouthed henchman played by Richard Kiel in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), makes a return appearance in Moonraker, turning good guy (complete with a girlfriend of his own) in the process. Bernard Lee makes his last appearance as “M” in this most costly of James Bond’s 1970s escapades.

Retired after years of international espionage, Agent 007 is lured back into action to battle the evil spy organization SMERSH in this notoriously incoherent parody of the James Bond films. David Niven portrays the aging Bond, who atypically rejects the advances of a variety of women, and agrees to battle SMERSH’s hold on the lavish Casino Royale only after organization head M is murdered. Also mixed up in the affair are several other secret agents, all named James Bond, played by everyone from Peter Sellers and Woody Allen to a chimpanzee. Despite a star-studded cast, a large production budget, and a hit score by Burt Bacharach, the film was universally panned as a muddled, overlong failure, with the occasional amusing sequence lost in the unintelligible surroundings. The participation of several screenwriters and five different directors, including John Huston, only adds to the confusion.

With Goldfinger, the James Bond series took a turn away from relatively straightforward spy thrillers and toward campy gadgetry, extravagant sets, and kitschy jokes. Bond (Sean Connery) has to prevent a notorious gold smuggler, appropriately named Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe), from robbing Fort Knox. Goldfinger is surrounded by evil henchmen such as the sexy female pilot Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) and Oddjob (Harold Sakata), who kills with his steel-rimmed bowler hats. In order to stop Goldfinger, Bond has to survive several perilous situations, including a huge, deadly laser. Goldfinger is one of the most popular films in the James Bond series, and it set the tone not only for the rest of the series but also for most of the action/adventure films of the late ’60s and early ’70s.

Secret Agent 007 must stop a megalomaniacal technology mogul from destroying Silicon Valley in this unexceptional entry in the James Bond series. Computer baron Max Zorin (Christopher Walken) is planning to trigger a major California earthquake in order to wipe out his competitors. Bond is assigned to stop him, but first he must do battle with Zorin’s statuesque partner in crime, May Day (Grace Jones). The expected high-wire confrontations ensue, as Bond battles the villains at international landmarks like the Eiffel Tower and takes the occasional break to romance an attractive geologist. Unfortunately, nothing fresh is brought to the familiar formula, and even the well-staged action sequences prove less than exciting. Indeed, this otherwise by-the-numbers production is most notable for the fact that it marked the final appearance of Roger Moore as the dashing Bond.

The Man With the Golden Gun, Roger Moore’s second outing as James Bond (Live and Let Die was the first), whisks our hero off to Hong Kong, Macau, Thailand, and then the South China Sea in search of a solar energy weapon. His opponent is Scaramanga (Christopher Lee), who rules the roost on a well-fortified island. Scaramanga’s aide-de-camp is Nick Nack, played by future Fantasy Island co-star Herve Villechaize. Britt Ekland plays the bikinied Mary Goodnight, whose clumsy efforts to help Bond thwart Scaramanga are almost as destructive as the elusive solar device. The Man With the Golden Gun was adapted by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz from Ian Fleming’s last James Bond novel, which had to be published posthumously in “rough draft” form.