Movie plot from Wikipedia because they remember stuff I don’t. My thoughts follow in bullet points. It’s been a while since I’ve seen this one.
John Strangways, the Station Chief of MI6 in Jamaica, is murdered, along with his secretary Mary, by a trio of assassins before his home is ransacked. After MI6 loses radio contact with the station, James Bond is found playing baccarat in a private London club; Sylvia Trench is one of the other players. M, the head of MI6, assigns Bond to go to Jamaica; Strangways was helping the CIA investigate radio jamming of rocket launches from Cape Canaveral. M also confiscates Bond’s Beretta handgun, which he had used for ten years, replacing it with a Walther PPK 7.65 mm. At Bond’s home he finds Sylvia Trench, a brief encounter as he is on the way to his flight.
Landing in Jamaica, Bond accepts a ride from an enemy agent. He overpowers the agent, who kills himself by biting into a cyanide-laced cigarette. Bond arranges with principal secretary Pleydell-Smith to meet those who saw Strangways last, including Professor Dent. At Strangway’s home, Bond finds a receipt from Dent and a picture of Strangways and Quarrel, who tailed Bond from the airport earlier. Bond finds Quarrel, they fight, and CIA agent Felix Leiter stops it, explaining that Quarrel worked with him and Strangways looking for the radio jamming source. One island, Crab Key, is generally off limits, controlled by Dr. No, with a bauxite mine; Quarrel and Strangways got rock samples at night.
Bond visits Dent, who claims the samples were iron pyrite. Dent travels to Crab Key and is given a tarantula to kill Bond. However Bond kills the spider. He arranges to meet Pleydell-Smith’s corrupt secretary Miss Taro. On the drive to her home, the assassins try to run Bond off the road, but themselves crash and die. After an intimate interlude, Bond has Taro arrested. He waits in her home. Dent arrives to kill Bond and is killed by Bond.
During the night Quarrel takes Bond to Crab Key. The next morning they meet Honey Ryder, a shell diver. Armed guards search for them. At nightfall the group encounter a flame tank disguised as a dragon to deter locals, which kills Quarrel. Bond and Ryder are captured. Radioactive from the contaminated swamp, both are put through a decontamination process. Taken to comfortable suites with clothes in their sizes, they drink drugged coffee and sleep.
Upon awakening, the pair are escorted to dine with the base’s owner, Dr Julius No: a Chinese-German scientist with prosthetic metal hands due to radiation exposure. No was a member of a Chinese tong, until he stole $10 million in gold, and now works for SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion). The radio jamming will disrupt a Project Mercury space launch at Cape Canaveral. When Bond refuses to join SPECTRE, No has Ryder taken away and Bond beaten. Bond escapes his cell through an air vent, disguises himself as a worker, and infiltrates the base’s control centre.
Bond overloads the nuclear pool reactor as the launch commences. Dr. No fights him, but falls into the reactor pool and is boiled to death. As the base’s personnel evacuate, Bond frees Ryder before the two escape the island by boat, moments before the base is destroyed. Felix finds the pair adrift at sea after their boat runs out of fuel, and has them towed to safety by a Royal Navy ship. As Ryder passionately kisses him, Bond lets go of the towrope to embrace her.
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- People rely too much on cyanide to avoid their problems.
- Interesting now after watching all of them how the series starts and ends in Jamaica so far
- The start of what would be the most predictable movie plot line ever.
- Must have been shocking for its time though.
- Good use of time.