dr. no Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I guess he'll die another way, to paraphrase Madonna's lousy theme song for the 20th Bond movie. Bond's survival of baroque death traps has been mocked on screen all the way back to 1965, when the noted character actor Robert Easton had the following line as a fruity-accented Bond type in The Loved One: "I think it could be dicey if he decides to use the giant squid." There was a giant octopus in the novel of Dr. No, though no villain ever actually employed sharks with laser helmets as in the Austin Powers films. However, there had been a planned robot shark in the kinda-non canonical Bond adventure Never Say Never Again. Our hero has dealt with seven especially exotic murder weapons over the years:

1. Death by giant yo-yo: Octopussy (1983) Resting after an exhausting shag with Maud Adams, Commander Bond (Roger Moore) is awakened by the sudden arrival in his bed of a razor-ended steel yo-yo as large as a family-sized pizza. This must have been the invention of co-screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser, who was always menacing his hero Flashman with just such stuff. I can't nail down the exact first use of strapping a heroine to a log and sending her into a sawmill, though this was considered so essential to the silent serials that it was parodied in the titles of TV's Fractured Flickers. This particular flying guillotine, some sort of cousin to this ancient sawmill gag, brings the circle around from silent movie heroism to modern day pulp.

If you are a die hard fan of everything Bond, it would probably thrill you to walk in the footsteps of Ian Fleming and frolic in the surf footsteps where Roger Moore hopped over those crocodiles. USA Today reports that Ian Fleming's famous Jamaican retreat, Goldeneye, where he dreamed up his lady-killing secret agent, will now become something much more impersonal...the Bond aficionado's ultimate vacation destination. Fleming owned the retreat in St. Mary Parish, Jamaica in the mid-forties and the area is rife with Bond history; both Live and Let Die and Dr. No were filmed nearby. One of the stranger factoids about the retreat was that another former owner was reggae legend Bob Marley, who sold the property to current owner Chris Blackwell.

Hotelier Jason Henzell is involved in the project and said that Blackwell was looking to "develop a new niche in Jamaica called residential tourism, where people buy land, visit and ultimately promote the island." The spot is also home to plenty of Bond memorabilia from Fleming's personal items and the various film productions. The renovation is set to begin in June, but there was no word on cost for the entire project. I would think that a total revamp on 100-acre property isn't going to come cheaply. For the truly devoted though, no price tag could keep them away. Oh well -- so much for Fleming's untouched paradise.