From Russia With Love (1963)

From Russia With Love (1963)

In Terence Young's second Bond film (with Sean Connery as James Bond) - including all of the requisite Agent 007 Bond film elements, including the opening credits sequence:

• the first view of evil, menacing SPECTRE No. 1 villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (uncredited Anthony Dawson) was only his hands - seen in close-up petting a white Persian cat
• the pretty Bond girl in the film was Soviet defector/double agent Tatiana Romanova (Daniela Bianchi - Italy's 1960 Miss Universe runner-up); later, she would nakedly await Bond in bed in his hotel suite, with a close-up of her red lips - and wearing only a sexy black velvet choker

• the menacing and villainous figure in the film was ex-KGB agent/assassin Rosa Klebb (SPECTRE # 3) (Lotte Lenya) with a poisonous toe-spiked shoe
• a gypsy cat-fight was featured between two jealous women who were both interested in the same man - son of gypsy chief Vavra (Francis de Wolff)
  • Zora (Martine Beswick) in green
  • Vida (Aliza Gur) in red
• the film's best sequence was an amazingly-edited, prolonged, vicious and choreographed train fight scene in the film's climax in a tiny sleeper compartment aboard the Orient Express train between Bond and ruthlessly-evil SPECTRE assassin Donald "Red" Grant (Robert Shaw); after Grant tried to strangle Bond with his garrote wire from his wrist-watch, Bond stabbed Grant in the shoulder with his flat throwing knife, and then strangled him with his own garrote
• the film concluded with a death-defying chase between Bond and an enemy helicopter (throwing hand-grenades), in which Bond (with his rifle) caused the helicopter to explode and crash, killing its two occupants

• in the film's ending, Klebb had disguised herself as a Venice hotel maid; she kicked and threatened Bond with her poisoned toe-spike, but Bond pinned her to the wall with a chair; Tania shot the "horrible woman" dead - as Bond quipped: "She's had her kicks"
• the final image was of Bond sailing away with Tania while relaxing on a Venetian water-taxi gondola in a canal