Over the next few months, MI6
will explore the scenes where James Bond is at his most cold-blooded
and hardcore across all 23 adventures
to date. Voting will then open to find 007's most
brutal moment in the series.
Sean
Connery's debut outing
as 007 in the very first James Bond film, 1962's "Dr
No", would
cause waves with cinema-goers and censors around the world for
a multitude of reasons. Nobody had quite seen anything like it
before. But one scene in particular drew attention due to the
un-gentlemanly way Bond disposed of a would-be assassin.
When 007's taxi driver fails
to eliminate Bond, Professor
Dent is put on the case. He proves to be one
of Bond's top suspects in the case of the missing Head of Section
after he discovers that Dent gave Strangways a report declaring
a sample of rocks from island of Crab Key as 'clean' when they
were really very radioactive. When Dent realizes Bond is onto
him he makes contact with Dr. No who tasks the Professor with
the planting of a black widow spider in Bond's bed.
Dent meets a brutal end when 007 spends an afternoon with
his cohort,
Miss Taro. Dent arrives at Taro's home to do away with
Bond,
only to find him ready and waiting. Dent unloads his clip
into what he believes is a sleeping Bond, but it is just a
pile of
pillows 007 case placed as a diversion to lure the assassin.
When faced with the scheming Professor, Bond does not hesitate
to
use his
licence
to kill.
Professor Dent shot "Bond" (actually
pillows in bed) six times. After some plot point explanation
by Bond, Dent lurches for his gun, but it's empty, hence
Bond's line, "That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had
your six." As a kind of payback coda, Bond shoots Dent once,
and Dent flips off the bed onto the floor. Bond then fires five
more rounds into Dent's back. Censors scaled this back to two
total shots, with just one to the back.
The killing of Dent was
originally filmed in a slightly different way. Some members of
the production
team were a little worried about the way that Bond cold-bloodedly
guns the man down and arranged for a new sequence to be shot
in which Dent fires one last bullet at Bond and misses - Bond
then kills him in self-defence. This
actually explains why Dent is shown firing a seven-shooter,
rather than a six-shooter. Terence Young, wisely, opted
for the
cold-blooded
approach.
Bond: "That's a Smith and Wesson,
and you've had your six..."
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