Bond lands in Kingston, ready to begin his investigation. A
mysterious man in sunglasses observes him as he passes through customs. They
use the theme tune again, making even the mundane activity of exiting an
airport exciting. A woman with a camera tries to snap Bond’s photo, but Bond
quickly uses his hat to hide his face.
Having thwarted the wily photographer, Bond looks for a
taxi, but is approached by a man in a chauffeur’s uniform. He introduces
himself as Mr Jones and tells Bond he’s there to take him to Government House,
Bond’s first port of call in Kingston. However, Bond is suspicious, as he
hadn’t requested a car. He makes an excuse and pops into a nearby phone booth. He
speaks to the chief secretary, Pleydell-Smith, and confirms that no car had
been sent to the airport. He then leaves the airport, still being watched by
the guy in shades. Bond makes the sensible decision of getting in the car with
Mr Jones. The pair leave, followed by a second car containing the sunglasses
guy and another man.
Cruising along the road, Bond notices the other car
following them. He tells Jones to lose them, which Jones obliges. They duck
into a side road and the other car zooms past. Jones seems relieved until he
feels Bond’s gun pressed into his back. Bond interrogates him, but Jones isn’t
giving anything away.
Jones makes a grab for a gun in the glove compartment, like
an idiot. Bond prevents him from getting the gun and throws him out of the car
and onto the ground. Jones attempts to fight Bond, who casually shrugs off the
attacks. One quick punch later and Jones lies across the bonnet of the car,
defeated. He agrees to talk, in exchange for a cigarette. Bond foolishly
agrees. Jones bites into the cigarette, and starts choking. Bond realises this too
late, and Jones dies.
Bond drives the car to Government House, Jones’ body sitting
in the back seat, and casually asks the sergeant guarding the entrance to “make
sure he doesn’t get away”.
Inside, Bond shows Pleydell-Smith the cigarette Jones used
to kill himself, noting that it contained cyanide. The local superintendent has
been unable to find any leads on Mr Jones and who he worked for. Bond is
irritated that he’s only been here for half an hour and already someone’s tried
to kill him. Bond decides that a good place to start investigating Strangways’
death would be with the last people known to have seen him alive, i.e. the
bridge players.
While Pleydell-Smith arranges the meeting, Bond heads up to
Strangways’ place. The superintendent, wearing a very attractive pair of
knee-length socks, escorts him. Bond has a poke around the house, eventually
finding two things of note: a receipt from Dent Laboratories, and a photo of
Strangways with another man who Bond realises was one of the two following him
from the airport. He asks the superintendent to find out who he is.
In the meantime, Bond pops round to his hotel room to
freshen up. Before he leaves, he lays a few traps to see if anyone noses in his
room while he’s out. This predates all the fancy gadgets, so he improvises –
some talcum powder on the locks of his briefcase, to show up fingerprints, and
a single hair pasted across the doors to his wardrobe, to tell him if anyone
has opened it. Don’t bother with tiny cameras and movement sensors; just use
your own hair!
Off to meet the bridge players then. Bond asks them if they
have any ideas regarding what happened to Strangways. Dent suggests that he ran
off with Mary Trueblood, noting that she was rather attractive. Potter tells
him that Strangways was keen on fishing, and often went off with a Cayman
Islander called Quarrel. Bond deduces that this must be the man in the photo
with Strangways, and so he heads off to find Quarrel.
Arriving at a quay, Bond finds Quarrel and approaches him. Quarrel
is non-committal.
Quarrel walks off, but Bond isn’t giving up so easily. He
follows him to a small bar. Quarrel realises that Bond won’t leave him alone
until he gets some answers, and so agrees to talk to him in private. Bond
follows the strange man in the back room of the bar, which, let’s face it, is
something we’ve all done at some point. In the small room, Quarrel pulls his
weapon out and brandishes it at Bond while another man grabs him from behind.
Again, this is what usually happens in the back room of a bar. Bond isn’t into
that kind of thing, however, and fights the two men off. He draws his gun on
them and backs away. Now, as anyone with an ounce of sense knows, you should
never, ever walk backwards in a film, since you’re just asking for a back
attack. Sure enough, a voice says “Hold it!”. It’s the sunglasses guy. Bond is
forced to hand over his gun, and Quarrel frisks him. Then, to Bond’s surprise,
Sunglasses hand him back his gun, and introduces himself as Felix Leiter of the
Central Intelligence Agency.
Quick note on Felix Leiter: he is another mainstay of the
series, appearing in several films. In the books, he’s one of Bond’s few
friends and the two of them share many adventures. In the films, he’s played by
a different actor in almost every appearance for various reasons, and with
varying degrees of success. Here he is played by Jack Lord, one of the better
versions of Leiter – he is cool, confident, and gets on well with Bond, even
though the men aren’t close friends – yet.
Realising that Leiter and Quarrel are in fact on his side,
Bond agrees to team up and figure out what’s going on.
Fast forward to night time, and the club is jumping. Of note
is the fact that the photographer from the airport is hanging around in the
background. Bond, Leiter and Quarrel are sitting in a quieter area, discussing
the case. The Americans are getting concerned, as another rocket launch is
scheduled in the near future. Bond asks Quarrel where exactly Strangways had
been investigating. Quarrel lists a few of the surrounding islands, one of
which is Crab Key. Leiter tells Bond that Crab Key is a private island, and
begins to tell him about the owner. However, they are interrupted by the photographer,
who attempts to get another photo of Bond. Bond tells Quarrel to grab her. Quarrel
obliges.
The woman claims to be a freelance photographer for a local
newspaper, but Bond isn’t buying it. Quarrel threatens to break her arm, but she
refuses to reveal anything, and, smashing a light bulb, cuts Quarrel across the
face with it. Quarrel doesn’t seem too concerned. Bond rips out the film from
her camera and sends her on her way.
Bond asks for more information on Crab Key. Leiter tells him
that it’s owned by a Chinese gentleman, and there’s a bauxite mine on
the island. He also states that there’s some low-level radiation in the area,
but nothing dangerous or illegal. Quarrel is of a different opinion; he tells
Bond that he had friends who went to the island and never returned. Well, this
is certainly ominous. Quarrel tells him that Strangways collected a few rock
samples from the place. Bond asks if they know anything else about the
mysterious owner. Leiter says they only know one other thing, his name: Doctor
No.
Next morning, Bond calls with Professor Dent at his lab. Bond
shows him the receipt he found at Strangways’, and Dent admits that Strangways
did bring him some samples to look at, but they were worthless and of no
interest. Bond asks to see the samples, but Dent tells him that they were
thrown away.
Bond asks if the samples could have come from Crab Key. Dent
immediately tells him that they did not, and Bond asks why he is so certain.
“Not geologically possible” is Dent’s answer, which is a conveniently vague
excuse. Bond thanks the professor and departs.
We now follow Dent for a bit. He drives out to the dock and
demands to be taken to Crab Key. The boat captain agrees, providing Dent
accepts the consequences. We now get our first look at Crab Key; specifically,
the bauxite mine.
Dent is taken to a small room, completely empty apart from a
chair and a table with a cage on it. After a moment, an ominous voice tells him
to sit down. Dent is asked why he came in broad daylight, when he was under
strict instructions not to. Dent warns that Bond has been poking around and is
in danger of discovering the truth. The voice makes it clear that Bond should
be dealt with as soon as possible. At this point, Dent is instructed to go to
the table and look at the cage. Dent does so and OH JESUS
Dent is told to pick up the cage, which he does so with
extreme reluctance, and the voice tells him: “Tonight”. Dent hurries out of the
room with his hairy friend kept at arm’s length.
Back to Bond, returning to the hotel at night. Bond enters
his room and discovers that his improvised traps have been disturbed, so
someone has obviously been in his room. Rather than getting the hell out, Bond sensibly
decides to pour himself a drink of vodka. He does at least swap the already
opened bottle for another, sealed one, since Bond apparently always has several
bottles of vodka on standby at any given moment.
Later on in the night, Bond is lying in bed. Suddenly, he
feels something crawling up his body. He looks down and sees OH HOLY FUCK
Bond, needless to say, is a tad uneasy at having that big
bastard of a thing crawling up him. Finally, the spider crawls off Bond and on
to the pillow, at which point Bond moves faster than he has ever moved, and
ever will, as he throws himself out of bed, grabs a shoe, and squishes the horrible
horrible thing. Bond breathes a sigh of relief.
(Incidentally, the spider in question is a tarantula.
Tarantulas, in spite of looking like horror incarnate, are not particularly
dangerous to humans. So Dent’s murder attempt was unlikely to succeed – unless his
plan was to give Bond a heart attack, in which case he nearly succeeded.)
The following morning, Bond visits Pleydell-Smith and asks
to see the files on Doctor No and Crab Key. Pleydell-Smith asks his secretary,
Miss Taro, to bring them in, but the files are of course missing. Bond isn’t
surprised at this point. Acting on a hunch, Bond asks to leave via Miss Taro’s
office. He yanks the door open to find her apparently listening at the door.
She denies it. Bond being Bond, he promptly chats her up and, within thirty
seconds, has arranged a date with her.
Out at Quarrel’s boat, Bond uses a Geiger counter to discover that the samples Strangways collected on
Crab Key, in spite of what Dent told him, were radioactive. He asks Quarrel how
quickly he could be ready to take them to Crab Key, but Quarrel is reluctant to
go. His reason? There’s a dragon on the island. Okay. However, in spite of his
fears, Quarrel agrees to take them out to the island that evening.
Back at the hotel, Bond gets a call from Miss Taro, who is
currently lounging about her bedroom wearing only a thin gown and gold high
heels (again). Of course she is.
Miss Taro suggests to Bond that he come up to her apartment,
all the way up in the mountains, for their date. Bond agrees to go to the
remote location at the behest of a suspicious character. I bet nothing bad will
happen!
Bond heads up in his new car, the very sexy Sunbeam Alpine. On
the way, he is waylaid by the Three Blind Mice, who give chase in their hearse.
After some evasive driving, Bond zooms under the crane of a truck blocking the
road. The hearse won’t fit, so it swerves off the road. Unfortunately, they are
on a mountain road, and so the hearse falls down the cliff and explodes,
because that’s what cars do in films. Bond stops to look at the blazing
wreckage. A construction worker asks him what happened, to which Bond dryly
replies:
“I think they were on their way to a funeral.”
Bond heads up to Miss Taro’s place. She’s just out of the
shower (of course) but has still found time to put on her high heels. She’s
somewhat surprised to see Bond who, in spite of the fact she’s clearly a
villain, begins to seduce her. Yep, get your
jollies first before dealing with them: standard operating procedure for Bond.
Miss Taro is distracted by a phone call. She is instructed
to keep Bond in the apartment until yet another attempt can be made on his
life. Bond, in no hurry to leave, gets it on with her.
Afterwards, Bond tells her he wants to go out for something
to eat. She of course tries to convince him to stay in, but Bond ignores her
and rings for a car. When it arrives, Miss Taro gets in, only to discover that
it’s the superintendent, who arrests her. She manages a spiteful spit at Bond
before being driven off.
Bond re-enters the house alone to await the latest effort
from the villains. He puts on a record and puts a pillow under the bed sheets.
Then he fits a silencer to his gun, and settles down to wait.
A figure approaches the house. It enters, raises a gun, and
fires six shots into the bed. As the figure walks over to check the “body”,
Bond orders that the man drop his gun. The figure is, not surprisingly,
revealed to be Professor Dent. Dent drops his gun and sits down. Bond tells him
the details that made him suspicious about Dent. First, there was the fact
that, alone out of the bridge players, Dent had seen Strangways’ new secretary.
And also the fact that Dent, a geologist, had failed to mention that the rock
samples Strangways brought in were radioactive, which surely would have been
worthy of note. “Very clever, Mister Bond,” Dent remarks. He then confirms that
the people behind him had Strangways killed. Bond asks who exactly Dent works
for. Instead of answering, Dent grabs his gun and fires.
Click! The gun is empty. Bond remarks:
“That’s a Smith & Wesson. And you’ve had your six.”
And with that, Bond coldly shoots Dent twice, killing him. He
didn’t need Dent to tell him who he works for. Bond already has a pretty clear
idea of who’s behind everything. It’s time to go to Crab Key and confront
Doctor No.
Screencaps courtesy of
screenmusings.org
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