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File:DrNo.jpg
Cquote1

 Dr. No: The Americans are fools. I offered my services, they refused. So did the East. Now they can both pay for their mistake.

James Bond: World domination. The same old dream. Our asylums are full of people who think they're Napoleon. Or God.

Cquote2


Dr. No is the first James Bond film, starring Sean Connery. After a British agent and his secretary are murdered in Jamaica and their files stolen, James Bond is sent to investigate. As the first film of the series, it lacked many of the traits that would become iconic of the franchise but nonetheless set the groundwork.

Not to be confused with Ron Paul.[1]


This movie contains examples of:[]

  • Adaptational Attractiveness: In the book, Honey is described as beautfiul, but her nose is broken (she even sells her shells to pay for the operation).
  • Adaptational Wimp: In the novel, Honey is a lot more savvy and capable, managing to rescue herself.
  • Adaptation Amalgamation: In the novel, Honey collects seashells in the hopes of paying for the surgery to get her broken nose fixed. The film omits this, thus implying that she collects shells purely for the money.
  • Adaptation Distillation: Ian Fleming loved the movie so much that he made Bond Half-Scottish in honor of Sean Connery. He also gave Ursula Andress a cameo in his novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
  • Air Vent Passageway: Double-subverted. When Bond tries to escape his cell through the vent, he gets shocked when he touches the grill. However, he tries again by using his shoe to push it out and succeeds in escaping. As a nice touch, he experimentally taps the grill at the other end with his feet to make sure it isn't electrified.
    • Also justified in the novel. It's designed to be a part of a Deadly Game.
    • And the reason it's so wide? It's not an air vent; it's a water vent, as Bond learns to his dismay.
  • All There in the Script: The charred trees in the area where Bond confronts the Dragon Tank are part of the sanctuary for rare birds that Dr. No has disrupted. All mention of the sanctuary was deleted from the final film.
  • America Saves the Day: Averted. All Leiter does is pick Bond up after he escapes Dr. No's lair. And even then, he's on a boat flying the white ensign (the flag of the Royal Navy).
  • Animal Assassin: The poisonous spider (in the film) or centipede (in the book) which gets dropped into Bond's room, as well as the one Honey put in her landlord's bed after he raped her.
  • Antagonist Title
  • Artificial Limbs: Dr. No has mechanical hands, having lost his hands in an accident during his research into radioactivity. His mechanical hands can crush stone to powder, but can't grip a vertical beam well enough for him to lift himself out of the reactor's cooling tank.
  • Artistic License: Biology: Tarantula venom is only about as powerful as a bee-sting, and certainly not fatal. Not to mention the black widow spider Honey uses to kill the man that raped her. Black widow bites are generally not lethal to healthy adults. However, the bite can be extremely, debilitatingly and agonizingly painful...
  • Artistic License Nuclear Physics: While the overloading of Dr. No's reactor doesn't produce a nuclear explosion (which Bond and Honey would never have had a prayer of surviving in a speedboat), it does produce a big enough explosion to total No's complex and the surrounding area, something that wouldn't happen with even the most catastrophic meltdown.
  • Ascended Extra: Although the novel only mentions Miss Taro in passing, the character's role was greatly expanded and embellished for this film.
  • Assassin Outclassin': Firstly, Professor Dent attempts to assassinate Bond by placing a black widow spider in his bed, but he manages to overcome it. Then, the Three Blind Mice attempt to run him off the road, but he outmanoeuvres them. Finally, Dent tries to shoot him in bed, but Bond foils him with the three-pillow trick and kills him.
  • Badass Boast: Pussfeller gives one when Leiter introduces him to Bond.
Cquote1

 Leiter: "That's Pussfeller, he owns the place."

Bond: "I hope he cooks better than he fights!"

Pussfeller: "Nobody died from my cooking...yet."

Cquote2
  • Beauty is Never Tarnished: Played straight with Honey. Averted with Bond, who ends up in a bad shape after getting beat up by No's guards.
  • Better to Die Than Be Killed: Bond's driver Mister Jones, who takes a cyanide capsule disguised as a cigarette when Bond tries to interrogate him.
  • Big Red Button: The large wheel that Bond turns to set the reactor to danger level. It is admittedly rather more tiresome and less prone to accidental self-destruction than a button.
  • Blind Black Guy: The "Three Blind Mice". Unfortunately for Strangways, they were just faking blindness so they could shoot him in the back.
  • Blind Idiot Translation: Apparently, when the movie came to Japan, the title was translated first as We don't want a doctor.
  • Bond One-Liner: "What happened?" "I think they were on their way to a funeral!"
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: Compared to a lot of later villains in the series, Dr. No isn't actually too bad in this regard. The only major error that he makes — though it does prove to be the one which ultimately leads to his defeat — is not having Bond killed the instant it became apparent that he didn't have the slightest interest in defecting to SPECTRE.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Averted. Bond hides behind the door as Professor Dent fires several shots into blanket-covered pillows on the bed. Bond disarms him and the two converse, but Bond "carelessly" allows Dent to retrieve his dropped pistol — which clicks on an empty chamber. Bond doesn't even flinch and says "That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six." before killing Dent.
  • Click Hello:
    • Bond defeats Quarrel and Puss Feller and backs out of the room, only for Leiter to stick a gun in his back.
    • Bond surprises Professor Dent by hiding behind a door while he empties his gun into a bed.
  • Clipboard of Authority: The sheaf of papers Bond picks up while infiltrating the reactor room.
  • Collapsing Lair: After Bond overrides the nuclear reactor, Crab Key goes kaboom.
  • Comic Book Adaptation: DC Comics published an adaptation of the film in the early 1960s. Strangely, it was published as part of its Showcase series, which generally featured superheroes.
  • Concealment Equals Cover: Apparently, hiding behind a sandbank will protect you from bullets fired by a vehicle-mounted machine gun!
  • Convection Schmonvection: The climactic battle takes place in a room being flooded with coolant from a nuclear reactor. Dr. No survives long enough in the superheated coolant to desperately claw for a way out even when submerged above his head, and Bond is unharmed despite being mere inches away from the coolant.
  • Convenient Decoy Cat: A flock of birds saves the protagonists from Dr. No's guards.
  • Cool Guns:
    • Bond uses an FN Model 1910 pistol to assassinate Professor Dent after "he's had his six". It is worth to note that the props department was unable to find a suppressor for Bond's PPK, so they had to use a Model 1910 with a fake suppressor that simply slid into the barrel instead. They were able to find an appropriate suppressor for the PPK in time for From Russia with Love.
    • Quarrel takes a Colt Police Revolver to Crab Key.
    • A henchman uses a Bren Gun to fire at Bond, Honey and Quarrel as they take cover behind a sand bank.
  • Coup De Grace: Bond's shooting of Professor Dent, who after being shot down receives an extra bullet in the back, for safety. (An act that does not occur in any of the novels.) Reportedly the original edit of the film had Bond shoot the man six times but this was considered excessive. Reportedly, this scene was added primarily to illustrate the "licenced to kill" aspect of the character given most other killings by Bond in the film were of the self-defence or "heat of battle" variety and not cold-blooded. The scene was controversial with Bond fans to the extent that nothing similar would be attempted again until Casino Royale (2006).
  • Creepy Centipedes: A poisonous centipede is used in an attempt to kill Bond in the novel. Never mind that their poison is almost harmless to humans.
  • Cryptic Background Reference: M's line about Bond replacing his Beretta was a reference to the novel From Russia with Love (and the whole scene is part of a larger portion explaining why Bond is given an "easy task" in the novel, where the Strangways incident goes without attention for weeks before they act on it). Of course, its film adaptation wasn't released yet, rendering it referenceless.
  • Cyanide Pill: A henchman uses a suicide cigarette.
  • Decontamination Chamber: Used to cleanse Bond and Honey Rider of radiation. The screen covers them from the shoulders down. When she gets out Honey wears a flesh-coloured towel in an ineffectual attempt to convince the audience she is nude and then dons a towel.
  • Distressed Damsel: Honey Rider at the end of the movie.
    • Subverted in the book - she was tied up with the threat of being eaten by a swarm of crabs. She knew the crabs were harmless, and let them swarm over her; her distressed attitude was over what would happen to Bond.
  • Decontamination Chamber: Used to cleanse Bond and Ursula of radiation. Ursula wears a flesh-colored towel in an ineffectual attempt to convince the audience she is nude.
  • The Dragon: Professor Dent to Dr. No.
    • In the novel, oddly enough, Sam-sam is built up as Dr. No's personal bodyguard, but Bond doesn't really have a fight with him so much as he ends up shooting a trio of stray Mooks to death later still.
  • Dressing as the Enemy: Bond knocks out one of Dr. No's workers and steals his radiation suit so he can infiltrate the nuclear reactor room.
  • Drowning Pit: How Dr. No tries to dispose of Honey Ryder. (The scene was originally planned to follow the book, where hungry crabs attacked her, but it was cut as they couldn't get them to be menacing enough... which, interestingly enough, was exactly what saves her in the novel).
  • Early Installment Weirdness: They had just $1 million to spend, so it's rather subdued (it helps that the franchise loves Sequel Escalation).
    • The film has no pre-titles sequences, with the opening credits immediately following on from the gun barrel.
    • The film does not have a "theme song" as virtually all the subsequent films would have, instead the Bond Theme itself plays over the opening credits.
    • The design of the opening credits is weird compared to the later formula. The gun barrel is scored with a weird space-age ditty, with the Bond theme starting after the shot, but this film's particular arrangement makes it sound out of order compared to the ones in later films. Then the circle becomes part of the still colourful and artistic credits. And given there's no theme song per se, at a certain point the music changes to a calypso rendition of "Three Blind Mice", culminating in the eponymous assassins changing from silhouettes to the movie characters. Also no silhouettes of naked women; instead we have silhouettes of fully clothed female - and male - dancers, as well as the three actors portraying the aforementioned assassins.
    • The Bond theme is not reserved for dramatic action sequences as it would be in later films; it is used in scenes such as Bond lighting a cigarette while introducing himself, and Bond arriving at the airport.
    • Q is only called by his name — Major Boothroyd. He lacks the snarky dynamic with Bond that he would develop in later films. There are no major "gadgets" here, either: Q Branch sends Bond an ordinary Geiger counter and issues him a new pistol. He is also played by Peter Burton here, in his only appearance. In contrast, Desmond Llewelyn would take over the role starting with From Russia with Love and would continue playing it all the way up to The World Is Not Enough, appearing in a total of seventeen films .
    • Bond's killing of Dent. No such scene occurs in any of Fleming's novels, but because the film version of Bond was promoted as a character who "kills who he pleases, when he pleases, how he pleases", and the novel actually has very little in the way of Bond killing people, this scene, along with a later sequence in which Bond knifes a guard for no real reason other than to have Bond give some justification in dialogue for his actions when Honey acts shocked, were added. Connery's Bond never acted this way again, though Moore and Dalton had a few such moments, and it's become normal operating procedure for the Craig version.
      • Bond shoots Dent off the bed, then delivers a second shot to the back of the still-breathing bad guy. As originally filmed, Bond actually emptied his entire magazine into Dent (echoing the "You've had your six" line), but this was cut as being too violent. Even today, how many shots Bond fires on screen (one or two) depends on who is broadcasting the film and the uncut version of the scene hasn't been shown since 1962.
    • Miss Taro always has the dubious distinction of being one of the only Bond villains to be arrested for her crimes rather than killed by Bond, an ally of his, or some ridiculous circumstance of her own making.
  • Elaborate Underground Base: Dr. No has an elaborate nuclear facility but it's not clear that it was underground. Although fairly likely, given that it explicitly is in the book and in the film they dine in a glass-windowed room below the waterline and thus presumably underground as well.
  • Enigmatic Minion: Doctor No himself, working for SPECTRE.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: The hearse following Bond blows up when it runs down a cliff. Then changes from a Cadillac to a cheaper LaSalle.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Dr. No explains his motive to join SPECTRE, claiming that it's led by geniuses, rudely dismissing 007 as a "stupid policeman", only for Bond to correct him that SPECTRE is actually led by "criminal brains".
  • Evil Genius: Professor Dent (one of Dr. No's henchmen). Also Doctor No himself.
  • Evil Plan: Dr. No's plan is to topple American rockets from his island base as part of a mission from SPECTRE, probably with a hostile foreign power as a client.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: The moment we first hear him, the movie does justice to Dr. No's "cavernous, echoing" voice.
  • Expy: Doctor No is a somewhat scaled back Fu Manchu. Oddly, resembling the Devil Doctor from his earliest appearances when he was just a high ranking member of the Si-Fan rather than its leader.
  • Fake Shemp: That's not Sean Connery in the gunbarrel opening sequence, but rather his stunt double, Bob Simmons. Connery didn't appear in the sequence until Thunderball.
  • Fan Service: The famous bikini scene. In the novel, she was just wearing the belt.
  • Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Dragon-tank.
  • Floral Theme Naming: The staff in No's base include a pair of female warders named Sister Rose and Sister Lily. The theme extends further, with his mole in Government House being Miss Taro (taro is a species of edible tropical plant).
  • Go-Go Enslavement: Honey dons a pair of capri pants and a tunic-style top to attend a dinner with Bond, Dr. No, and company. After the dinner, Bond is beaten up by No's henchmen and Honey is dragged away; when next we see her, she's chained up in a flooding basin, still wearing the top but without the pants.
  • Guns Do Not Work That Way: A pair of scenes are taken almost verbatim from the novel, but with the guns replaced by ones that make no sense for the scenes in question.
    • The alleged 6-shot Smith & Wesson Dent uses (which correctly should have been a revolver) is actually a suppressed 7+1 Colt 1911 automatic, the slide of which locks back after the sixth shot anyway, and then returns to battery on its own after it initially leaves Dent's hands. Additionally, Smith and Wesson didn't manufacture a 1911 at the time anyway. Especially strange because the production crew did have Smith and Wesson revolvers on hand.
    • The Beretta M forces Bond to surrender is the M1934 in .380 ACP. In the books, Bond carried a 418 in .25 ACP, which got caught on his holster when he attached a suppressor, allowing his enemy to stab him with a poisoned blade (here, it's stated to have jammed). It's replaced by a Walther PP, in the same caliber, but is stated to be the shorter PPK in 7.65mm, which would in fact be inferior to the M1934. When he shoots Professor Dent, he is inexplicably using an FN 1910 in the calibre, with a (fake) suppressor mounted (the film's armourer could not find a suppressor that would fit the PP). He also simply twists and yanks the suppressor, whereas the threads are too fine for such an action.
  • Handy Cuffs: When Bond is captured by the crew of Dr. No's "dragon".
  • Hazmat Suit: Dr. No's radiation suit.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: The metal hands of Dr. No do not have enough grip to allow him to climb out of the superheated pool of water.
  • Holding Hands: When Dr No invites them to dinner, Honey holds Bond's hand for reassurance, only to notice his palm is sweating as much as hers (it's the first Bond film, so they're both freaked out).
  • Hollywood Silencer: Bond and Professor Dent's handguns with silencers are whisper quiet when fired. But when Dent fires on an empty chamber, the "click" is much louder than the silenced gunshots. Downplayed during Strangways' assassination at the start of the film, as the Three Blind Mice's silenced pistols produce loud "thud" noises which are much more in line with (albeit still quieter than) how a real silencer would sound.
  • Hong Kong Dub: Due to the large amount of dubbing that takes place (including every female character except Moneypenny), this inevitably tends to happen on occasion. The worst offender is the commander of the gunboat that opens fire on Bond, Honey and Quarrel, as not only is his dub very hit-or-miss, he even has the "bullhorn" effect on his voice when he's meant to be talking without it.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: Bond invokes the trope after he knifes a guard and Honey calls him out.
    • Some latter-day reviews film point out that there is actually little plot justification for Bond killing this particular man, other than continuing to establish the "licence to kill" aspect of 007 in a way Ian Fleming never did in his books. (This is why Bond is shown murdering Professor Dent earlier in the film, again an event never depicted by Fleming.)
  • I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Averted. The diabolical doctor's base from which he aims to upset the balance of terror between the USA and the USSR through missile toppling is called... Crab Key.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: When Bond and Quarrel arrive on Crab Key, Bond orders Quarrel to hide the canoe. Quarrel takes a swig from his vessel, assesses the situation, then takes another.
  • I Shall Taunt You: Bond taunts Dr. No when they're eating dinner.
  • Idiot Ball: Bond himself does it twice: multiple times in his hotel room and by murdering Professor Dent rather than capturing him for interrogation.
  • It Works Better with Bullets: Bond disarms Professor Dent and holds him at gunpoint. As Bond looks away, Dent gets his pistol back and tries to fire, but it's empty, leading Bond to remark "That's a Smith & Wesson, and you've had your six.", and shoots him.
  • Just Between You and Me:
    • A not too blatant example, since the US had worked out before the events of the film that their rockets were being toppled; they just didn't know who the culprit was, and Bond works out by himself that Dr. No is responsible. However, Dr. No also freely gives away the existence of SPECTRE, who Bond and, presumably, MI6 had been totally ignorant of until that point. In fairness, he only told him because he was trying to recruit him, and Russia and China definitely know because they keep doing business with them (No is on a mission for SPECTRE, but it is strongly implied that they were hired by Red China; No even has an army of Chinese henchmen), so its not so bad if half the world knows anyway.
    • A subversion with Professor Dent. Bond asks him who he's working for, and Dent replies: "Well, you might as well know as you won't live to use the information. I'm working for-" before grabbing his gun and attempting to shoot Bond. Sadly for him, he's had his six.
  • Let's You and Him Fight: Bond's investigation leads him to Quarrel, who's already working with CIA agent Felix Leiter. Because Leiter saw Bond leave the airport with one of Dr. No's men, Quarrel attacks Bond; their fight is broken up when Leiter arrives to clarify the whole mess.
  • The Load: Honey. Oddly enough, she isn't widely hated among fans, partly because she was the first main Bond Girl, but she really is the single most superfluous Bond girl in the entire film series—yet is consistently ranked as the best, a position clearly earned solely because she's the first and still very attractive. The film makers were usually pretty good in making the Bond girls in the series of at least some nominal importance to the plot of each film (even if, in the case of Mary Goodnight, their only importance is as The Millstone), but Honey is of no importance whatsoever. She shows up late in the film, tags along, and does nothing of any consequence. The film takes the time to give her the same backstory from the novel (Dr. No killed her father, she received all her education by reading the whole encyclopedia, she murdered her rapist, etc.) but again, none of that has any impact on the rest of the film. She exists solely to be the Distressed Damsel (and even that comes across as an afterthought) and for Fanservice. The latter, Ursula Andress does very, very well, which is the third reason she isn't widely hated.
  • Mauve Shirt: Quarrel. Killed by a flamethrower tank painted to look like a dragon.
  • Mexican Standoff: Bond outwits Professor Dent by hiding behind the door while Dent attempts to kill him in his room. Bond has the assassin drop his gun on a rug and sit down while he interrogates the man. Bond would occasionally take a drink during the conversation, which the assassin used to slide his gun closer to him by dragging the rug. Eventually, the assassin regained his gun and pointed it at Bond, saying that they are now at a standstill, to which Bond casually shrugs and simply shot the guy. It should be noted that the assassin had used all of his bullets earlier shooting the bed which he believed contained Bond. As Bond knew this fact, it was easier for him to react calmly to a gun pointed at him.
  • Mickey Mousing: Done each time Bond whacks the tarantula with the butt of his gun.
  • The Mole: Miss Taro is an agent of Dr. No who works as a secretary in Government House, passing classified information on to him.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Honey shows a lot of skin through the movie, including spending a long time in a bikini. Especially in that iconic introduction shot of her emerging from the sea.
  • Mundane Made Awesome: Since it's Bond's first movie, his theme music is used for everything, including arriving at the airport and driving by the coast.
  • Mugged for Disguise: How Bond gets the radiation suit he needs to infiltrate the reactor room.
  • My Card:
    • The messenger M sends to get James Bond in the club asks the attendant to give Bond his card.
    • While in the club Bond gives Sylvia Trench his card (which has his phone number on it) and asks her to call him if she'd like to go out with him.
  • Mythology Gag: Dr. No chastises Bond for trying to attack him with a bottle of Dom Perignon '55, to which Bond says "I prefer the '53, myself." This refers to the fact that the third Bond novel, Moonraker, was first published in 1955, while the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, was published in 1953. This gag gets echoed in The Man with the Golden Gun, as Bond arrives at Scaramanga's island, with Nick Nack offering Dom Perignon '64, with Bond saying "I prefer the '62, myself.", which referenced the fact that the third Bond film, Goldfinger, was released in 1964, while this first Bond film was released in 1962.
  • The Name Is Bond, James Bond: This is one of the iconic franchise tropes that began with the very first movie. Though interestingly, Bond is the second character to do it - Sylvia Trench is the first.
  • Nebulous Evil Organization: The first on-screen appearance of SPECTRE. Doctor No explains what the organization is about.
  • Nice to the Waiter: In his first scene, Bond tips both the dealer and the doorman at Le Cercle with one of his wads of cash winnings, a hint that he doesn't really care about the money, simply the thrill of play.
  • No Endor Holocaust: Bond and Honey really should have died from radiation sickness after the events of the movie. The entire island was contaminated, and they were rather close to that nuclear meltdown at the end.
  • No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: After Bond and Honey Ryder are captured by Dr. No's guards, Dr. No invites them to dine with him. He and Bond have a leisurely conversation, with Dr. No explaining his background and plans, complimenting Bond's intelligence and trying to recruit him to join SPECTRE. Bond responds by insulting him, so Dr. No orders his guards to torture him. Justified in this instance, since Dr. No is trying to understand Bond better.
  • No Name Given: The three black assassins are only known as "Three Blind Mice" after the song that plays in their introduction.
  • No OSHA Compliance: Dr. No's reactor. The entire island was radioactive because of it. Also, all Bond had to do to blow the whole thing up was to turn a wheel, which doesn't seem very safe to say the least.
  • Noodle Incident: The mission that ended with Bond hospitalized because his gun jammed (in the book, this refers to the previous novel's cliffhanger ending, where his Berretta, fitted with a suppressor, got caught on his holster)
  • Not My Driver: Subverted when Bond checks on the driver (he's supposed to be arriving quietly and unannounced) and finds out he's a phony, then deals with him.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: Dr. No's first scene has Professor Dent report to him in a cavernous room. No is offscreen, but his eerily calm-yet threatening voice is enough to have Dent fear for his life.
  • Now It's My Turn: Professor Dent is sent to kill Bond, but Bond makes it look like he's lying in bed asleep, and the assassin shoots the bed six times before Bond reveals himself. The bad guy drops his gun, and Bond politely interrogates him as he lowers his guard momentarily to light a cigarette. The bad guy quickly picks his gun back up and attempts to shoot Bond.
  • Nude-Colored Clothes: When Bond and Honey are being showered following decontamination, the latter steps off wearing a flesh-coloured towel in a failed attempt to make her look nude.
  • Overclocking Attack: Bond overheats a nuclear reactor so it blows up and ruins Dr. No's plan. It seemingly doesn't matter that it would cause serious environmental damage. It is James Bond, after all.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: A major reason why this was the first Bond story to be adapted is that many of the stories have Bond travelling all over the world, which would either require expensive location shooting or trying to stage the location in UK, which easily ends up looking cheap and unconvincing. The production company went with the former option, and Dr. No was deemed a relatively inexpensive story because Jamaica is the only location involved outside of UK.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your six."
  • Product Placement:
    • The teaser trailer was pretty much a love letter and advertisement for the Walther PPK.
    • The scene where Bond meets Leiter for the first time prominently features a large stack of cases of Red Stripe beer.
  • Race Against the Clock:
    • Leiter tells Bond the investigation has to go ahead before the next space programme launch, but it's never a major factor in the plot other than getting Bond and Quarrel to Crab Key.
    • Bond tells Leiter that if he's not back in 12 hours, to send reinforcements. However, Bond is gone considerably longer than 12 hours, but there is no sign of such reinforcements arriving. (A scene in which Dr. No forced Bond to radio Leiter and call off the reinforcements ended up on the cutting room floor.)
  • Rape as Backstory: Honey tells Bond that after her father was made to disappear by Dr. No, their landlord let her stay on for a while without paying. Then one night he raped her. She avenged herself by putting a female black widow spider in his bed, which fatally bit him.
  • Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
    • And so an agonising death by spider bite in response is...understandable.
    • Honey is dragged off to be used by the guards. When Bond finds her though she's chained up in a pit with her tight-fitting dress intact, so maybe Dr No just said this to taunt Bond or test his reaction.
  • Red Right Hand: Dr. No's mechanical metal hands. Although they're moderately maneuverable and super strong in the film, they're little more than crude pincers in the novel.
    • Their explanation differs between book and film. In the book, his hands were cut off by the Tong; in the film, they were damaged in his radiation experiments.
  • Reed Snorkel: Used by Bond, Quarrel and Honey Rider to avoid Dr. No's guards.
  • Revealing Coverup: Dr. No's assassination attempts are what convinces Bond that he and his base are behind everything. Alright, Dent's incompetence and Strangways' death helped.
  • Right Hand Versus Left Hand: Quarrel initially assumes Bond is just a nosey enemy, and leads him into an ambush when Bond tries to find out more about what happens to Strangways. Leiter gets in on it before all the misconceptions are sorted out.
  • Ripped from the Headlines: Goya's Portrait of the Duke of Wellington can be seen hanging on the wall in Dr. No's lair; Bond clearly recognises the painting. In Real Life, this had been stolen from the National Gallery in London in August 1961, several months before filming began — so the clear implication in the film is that Dr. No was responsible for the theft . The painting was returned in 1965.
  • Same Language Dub: Ursula Andress has a very thick accent, so she was dubbed not once but actually twice in the movie. Nikki van der Zyl dubbed all of her dialogue, while the calypso was sung by Diana Coupland.
  • Scare Chord: Every time Bond hits the tarantula with his gun, there's a scare chord. The first time it just seems a little cheesy, but after that the scene starts to be funny.
  • Scooby-Doo Hoax: Bond is told that Dr. No keeps his private island "private" by the presence of a dangerous fire-breathing dragon that kills any trespassers on his property. It turns out to be a tank painted to look like a dragon, and armed with a flamethrower. Partly justified in that the tank doesn't show up until it gets dark, so it's harder to figure out its true nature.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Once Bond sets the nuclear reactor to overload, every single one of Dr. No's henchmen immediately bails, leaving No to fight Bond by himself.
  • Security Cling: Honey clings to Bond's arm when riding the elevator to Dr No's lair. In a variation, Bond readily admits that he's as scared as she is (given that it's the first Bond film, he's not as used to the idea of villains inviting him to dinner instead of just shooting him, so is feeling rather creeped out).
  • Sleeping Dummy: Bond uses several pillows under the covers of his bed.
  • Somewhere an Entomologist Is Crying:
    • Professor Dent tries to kill James Bond by putting a very large tarantula in his bed while he slept. Even if it bit him (it didn't), it would've just hurt a lot.
    • Honey tells Bond that she killed her landlord after he raped her by putting a female black widow on his bed, and that it took the guy a week to die. She got very lucky: contrary to urban legend, black widow bites are rarely fatal to humans.
  • Spiders Are Scary: Professor Dent plants a tarantula in Bond's hotel room at night, clearly the most terrifying thing in the world judging by the shrill soundtrack music and the obvious pane of glass between the spider and Sean Connery. In the book it was a centipede known by Bond to be deadly - guess he hadn't read up on all the arthropods...
  • Spiteful Spit: Miss Taro to Bond after he has her arrested.
  • Standard Female Grab Area:
    • Photographer Annabelle Chung doesn't show much resistance once she is grabbed by her arm.
    • Bond drags off the receptionist who he forces to show him where the guards took Honey this way.
  • Tank Goodness: The "Dragon".
  • Time Marches On:
    • Several months before the movie was made, Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington" had been stolen from the National Gallery in London. This was a very high-profile crime which saw the painting splashed across every newspaper, cinema newsreel and TV news broadcast, so a British movie-going audience in 1962 would have been quite familiar with it. In a moment of inspiration, Ken Adam painted a copy and placed it very prominently in Dr. No's lair, and had Connery do a brief double-take as he passed it. According to the commentary track, this gag elicited a good thirty seconds of laughter from the theatrical audiences. Modern audiences don't even realize there's a joke there.
    • The film was considered new and shocking when it was made—not just for the violence of Bond shooting the unarmed Professor Dent, but for the style of editing it used. Cutting to and from movement and using fades as scene transitions had not been seen before. These editing tricks are old hat now, but there was a definite sense the movie gloried in "breaking the rules" back in the day.
  • Token Trio: Bond, Honey and Quarrel on their journey through Crab Key.
  • Toplessness From the Back: Honey when picking out clothes from the dressed shortly after waking up after being drugged. When Bond walks in on her, she clutches the dress to her chest to cover herself.
  • Trick and Follow Ploy: Had the mooks not confirmed they were on Crab Key by firing at Bond from a search boat and later unleashing the "Dragon," they might have been able to go through with their plans.
  • Unexplained Accent: Why Dr. No, a German-Chinese man from Shanghai, has a crisp English accent is never explained. It can't just be written off as actor Joseph Wiseman's own, since he was from Queens and sounded it.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Dr. No loses his temper after Bond foils his plans to sabotage American missile tests and desperately tries to kill 007, but falls into a vat of boiling radioactive water.
  • We Can Rule Together: Played with. Dr. No says that he was impressed by Bond's skills and was considering offering him a job. Unfortunately, Bond has pissed him off way too many times, so instead he's going to have him tortured and imprisoned. In fairness, Bond also offered Dr No the opportunity of working for the West, only for Dr No to inform Bond that both sides of the Cold War had already rejected his services.
  • Welcome to the Caribbean Mon: Crab Key and neighboring islands. When Bond asks Quarrel where he took Strangways, Quarrel points to the harbor, saying, "That there's the Caribbean. That's where I took him."
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Since it's Bond's first movie, the Leitmotif is used for everything, including arriving at the airport and driving by the coast.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: The "Three Blind Mice" assassins appear only three times in the movie: killing Strangways, killing his secretary, and taking the shot at Bond that gets spoiled by the car headlights. Then they simply vanish from the story, never to be seen again. (They were probably in the hearse that goes off the road, given that they had used it in the course of murdering Strangways, but they are not shown to be in it at that point. The omission is probably a result of the movie's budget and time crunches; there were some shots they simply did not have the chance to get, and that might include inserts of the Mice in the hearse.) This is a sharp contrast to later Bond films in which each movie's idiosyncratic assassin henchmen usually die on screen in interesting ways.
  • What the Hell, Hero? A bit of irony: Bond does this with Honey when she describes how she murdered a man who raped her by putting a black widow spider in his bed, causing him to die over the course of a week. "I wouldn't make a habit of it" he says, shocked. But later, after Bond somewhat unnecessarily stabs one of Dr. No's men to death, Honey acts shocked and asks why he had to kill the man.
  • Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Averted and lampshaded.
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 Dr. No:"That's a Dom Perignon '55, it would be a pity to break it."

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  • Yellow Peril: Dr. No, though he's only half-Chinese.
  • You Have Failed Me: Subverted; Dr. No deals with Professor Dent's failure to kill Bond simply by having him resort to an Animal Assassin and hope for the best. When that fails, he's lucky to be captured and killed by Bond during a subsequent attempt to deal with him personally.
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