BEFORE: I'm up in New England, attended the annual Newport Chowder Cook-off yesterday, then went to a cook-out at my sister's place, so a big eating weekend for me. Brunch with my parents today, then back on the Amtrak to NYC.
Connery carries over from "Dr. No", which makes me glad I'm following the Bond movie chronology going forward, as it also maximizes actor linking, and I can get a better feel for how the film series developed, instead of jumping all over the timeline.
THE PLOT: James Bond willingly falls into an assassination ploy involving a naive Russian beauty in order to retreive a Soviet encryption device.
AFTER: Again, the downside here is that I've watched two modern Bond films, with complex plots and flashy special effects. A film made in the mid-1960's is now unfortunately going to fall short in many areas, just by comparison. The plot seems very basic, the effects are almost nil, and the view of global politics seems almost cartoonish. Soviets? Hah, we beat those guys long ago. SMERSH? Is that a criminal organization or a Mad Magazine sound effect?
I'll admit SPECTRE is a pretty cool acronym - SPecial Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion). This is the stuff that parodies like "Get Smart" and "Austin Powers" were always poking fun at, no doubt.
And they did up the ante a little bit, the budget for this film was twice that of "Dr. No" - but they were still using cheezy fakey things like rear-projection. You couldn't put a real camera on a real car with Connery in the back seat? Seems kind of low-rent. And the way that you never see the criminal mastermind (Blofeld), which also allows for a sinister voice to be dubbed in later - it's a mystery-creating technique that also saves quite a bit of money during the shoot.
Plot concerns an encoding device called a Lektor, and it's no coincidence that Fleming had friends who cracked World War II's Enigma Code in 1939.
LOCATIONS: Istanbul, Zagreb, Venice (Ha! Not Jamaica! The tour guide was wrong...)
VILLAINS: Col. Rosa Klebb, "Red Grant" the assassin
BABES: Sylvia Trench, Tatiana Romanova
ALLIES: M, first Q (here named "Boothroyd"), Kerim Bey
PASTIMES: Chess, making secret-agent sex films
CARS: Derby Bentley Mark IV Sports Tourer convertible - with a radio car-phone!
GADGETS: Tricked-out attache case with knife + tear-gas, and easy-to-assemble rifle
THEME SONG: "From Russia With Love" by Matt Monro. Loungy-cheezy.
Also starring Bernard Lee, Eunice Gayson, Lois Maxwell (all carrying over from "Dr. No") Daniela Bianchi, Robert Shaw, Pedro Amrendariz, Lotte Lenya,
RATING: 5 out of 10 oil drums
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