Dr. No
1962 - 109 min. - Color
Genre: Action
Rated PG
Country: USA

LaserDisc Movie Storyline:
With DR. NO, the first of the James Bond films, director Terence Young and leading man Sean Connery set the precedent for what would become one of the most popular, influential, and long-lasting series ever made. Bond makes his first famous introduction, "Bond, James Bond," in an upscale casino, to a saucy brunette named Slyvia Trench (Eunice Gayson), who he promptly coaxes into a dinner date. Back at Secret Service Headquarters, M (Bernard Lee) assigns Bond to a mission in Jamaica. An agent who was investigating strange activity with nuclear weapons in Cape Canaveral has disappeared, and Bond is to take up where he left off. His contact, CIA operative Felix Leiter (Jack Lord) reminds Bond that his title, "007," means he has license to kill, not be killed. This advice comes in handy in Jamaica as assassins relentlessly emerge from the woodwork, desperately trying to bring Bond down. Bond makes his way to Crab Key Island to find evil scientist Dr. No (Joseph Wiseman), the primary suspect. There he is met with the obstacle of Honey Ryder (Ursula Andress), a deadly beauty who emerges from the sea in a tiny bikini with a knife holster slung about her hips, in one of the most seductive Bond-girl moments of all time. With a striking lack of gadgets, DR. NO is a heartier mystery than subsequent films in the series, providing for some excellent adventures in which Bond must rely on his own clever spy skills to get out of sticky situations.

LaserDisc Movie Review:
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. --- Paul Brenner

Terence Young's Dr. No started one of the most lucrative franchises in movie history, as well as forever changed film audiences' expectations and the film industry's conceptions of both screen heroes and movie thrillers. Dr. No presented a hero who was as hedonistic and even venal (and that went double where women were concerned) as he was brave and resourceful; in no way selfless, Sean Connery's James Bond was the first hero conceived along lines that Playboy magazine could have applauded, always as mindful of his own pleasures as he was of the mission at hand --- Bond was the first modern screen hero motivated as much by the pursuit of those pleasures, and his personal lusts, as he was by any devotion to duty or a higher purpose (there had been a few antecedents in the distant past, mostly growing out of post-World War I adventure fiction, such as Bulldog Drummond and the Saint, but they hadn't made a huge impact on the screen). The seemingly blurred morality of Dr. No's hero also blurred the lines that movies and popular culture had relied upon for decades to differentiate the sides on which characters stood, so much so, that in their first face-to-face meeting, the film's title villain (Joseph Wiseman) mistakes Bond for a kindred spirit and a potential ally; indeed, Dr. No's first onscreen appearance is filled with as much teasing as Bond's first appearance before the camera --- their bodies and hands are seen before their faces, as though to establish a bizarre (for its time) parallelism between the two characters. Much of what was supposed to intrigue and dazzle viewers in 1962 may now seem tame, mostly thanks to the many Bond movies that followed, but Dr. No holds up as more than a period piece, mostly thanks to the mix of fresh, energetic portrayals by Connery, Wiseman, Ursula Andress, John Kitzmiller, and Jack Lord; a carefully crafted script with its feet in old- and new-style mysteries; and very lean, skillful work by Young and editor Peter Hunt. The sexual byplay also seems mild, until one realizes that Bond beds more women in this movie than any 50 screen heroes up to that time. In looking at the movie today, one can not only see the cinematic equivalent of a bolt of lightning hitting the action-adventure genre dead-center, but also a candid snapshot capturing several new phenomena in popular culture that were about to spring into the world, far beyond the realm of motion pictures. The location material in Dr. No was shot in Jamaica in early 1962, just as the island was in transition to independence, and its culture, music, and identity were all about to
Cast for Dr. No

Sean Connery - James Bond
Ursula Andress - Honey Ryder
Joseph Wiseman - Dr. No
Jack Lord - Felix Leiter
Bernard Lee - M
Anthony Dawson - Prof. Dent
Zena Marshall - Miss Taro
John Kitzmiller - Quarrel
Eunice Gayson - Sylvia
Lois Maxwell - Miss Moneypenny
Margaret LeWars - Photographer
Peter Burton - Maj. Boothroyd
Reggie Carter - Jones
Yvonne Shima - Sister Lily
Lester Prendergast - Pussfeller

Crew for Dr. No

Terence Young - Director
Albert R. Broccoli - Producer
Harry Saltzman - Producer
Ian Fleming - Book Author
Johanna Harwood - Screenwriter
Richard Maibaum - Screenwriter
Berkley Mather - Screenwriter
Ted Moore - Cinematographer
John Barry - Composer (Music Score)
Monty Norman - Composer (Music Score)
Eric Rogers - Musical Direction/Supervision
Peter Hunt - Editor
Ken Adam - Production Designer
Sidney Cain - Art Director
Syd Cain - Art Director
John O'Gorman - Makeup
Frank George - Special Effects
Bob Simmons - Stunts




Catalog Number: ML105406
UPC: 027616540669
Manufacturer: Pioneer USA
Manufacturer 2: Pioneer Japan
Publisher: MGM/UA Home Video

Sides: 2
Cover: Jacket
Certification: THX
Closed Caption: English
Spoken Language: English
Country: USA
Video Format: NTSC