Dr. No

I really love Dr. No.

For me, the first Bond film is the one that gets the details just right, and everything thereafter tries and falls short by varying degrees (some by inches, others by miles). I'm not saying Dr. No is my favorite or the best Bond film, but the little details keep me coming back to this one.

Here's what I mean. At about the 25:00 mark, Bond checks in to his room in Jamaica. When the bellboy leaves, Bond sprinkles some fine powder on his briefcase. Then Bond walks to his closet doors, squats down, and plucks a single hair out of his own head. Using saliva, Bond sticks the hair across a crack between the folding doors.

When he returns to his room later, he finds fingerprints on his briefcase and the hair missing from the crack between the closet doors. Someone has rifled through his belongings. When he makes himself a drink, he opens a brand new bottle of alcohol rather than take a chance with the previously opened one. (For some reason, later in the film, he drinks his captor's coffee without a single thought...until he passes out. "Damned coffee!")

I wish details like this were more numerous in Bond films. Somewhere along the way, Bond became more about fast cars, fancy gadgetry, hot women, exotic locations, and unbelievable stunts, and somehow the little spy details — the tricks that tell us more about Bond's level of experience — got lost. The Bourne films got the details back while the Bond films gave us...an invisible car.

Unfortunately, Dr. No is the one Connery film that I rarely saw when I was growing up. ABC was great about showing Bond films in the era before the Bond marathon on basic cable, but for some damned reason, Never Say Never Again seemed to be on television all the time. That film isn't even a real Bond film.

I could catch For Your Eyes Only or Moonraker or Octopussy, but forget trying to catch Dr. No. I don't know why this film was such a rarity on television; maybe this is just one man's perception/faulty memory.

Of course, this film is far from perfect. The credit sequence is excellent, but the theme music is so intrusive. Bond walks down the hall — play the Bond theme. He drives a car — play the Bond theme. He talks to a concierge — play the Bond theme.

And why not? We're talking about the Bond theme. I want the Bond theme to play when I walk down the street (failing that, I will accept "Pick Up The Pieces" by Average White Band).

When Bond is awakened by a gigantic spider crawling on not-really-Sean-Connery's-arm and/or a-pane-of-glass-slightly-above-Sean-Connery, the music is hysterical and overblown, especially when Bond smashes the spider with his shoe on the opposite side of the bed. With each blow, the music stings. DUHN! DUHN! DUHN DUHN DUHNNNNN!

Would Daniel Craig fight a big, hairy spider? Probably not.

Your classic Hollywood car chase errors are here — using footage of the same turn twice within a minute, for example. Plus, I love how Bond's hands are all over the wheel, turning this way and that, but the car does not swerve. Maybe older cars handled differently. I drive a late-model Honda.

The supporting cast is worth noting, and I don't necessarily mean Ursula Andress, whose work I admire here. No, I mean Jack Lord. Before "Hawaii 5-0" made Jack Lord famous for his role as Steve McGarrett, he played the original Felix Leiter. Unfortunately, throughout much of the film, Leiter is wearing your grandma's sunglasses.

We also get to meet Dr. No himself at about the 1:30 mark. No, played by Joseph Wiseman, not Asian, looks Asian anyway. (Must've been a shortage of Asian actors in 1962. Maybe they were all working for Kurosawa.) Wiseman passed away in late 2009, 91 years young. If I'm not mistaken, that leaves Christopher Lee as the oldest living Bond villain.

For a film pushing 50 years old, the DVD Special Edition looks brilliant, with very little in the way of visual blemishes. This edition is only surpassed by the Blu-Ray, which is likely the best Dr. No will ever look. You can see individual molecules. I promise.

This is the film where Bond swaps his Beretta out for a Walther PPK. We hear the phrase "licensed to kill" for the first time. We hear "007" for the first time, and the acronym "SPECTRE," too.

Ah, but we also get our first awkward Bond kisses, awkward-er fight scenes, and continuity errors a-plenty. Was anyone watching on set when Bond drew back his right hand in one shot, but punches with his left in the next? What about the phantom roving cigarettes?

Of course, we also hear Bond's smooth talking for the first time, before they were expected. "No, I'm just looking." Each time, I notice new brilliance. Sure, I'll sit and make fun of this one. I can't stop thinking about Austin Powers when I watch old Bond films. I kid because I love, though. The smoothness, the intrigue, the mystery — they're all just enough, at just the right tone, to overcome any shortcomings and make Dr. No a classic.