Lights, camera, action!
In Jamaica, a man is shot and killed after playing a game of cards. Who was that man? We don't know yet.
In England, another man is playing a game of cards. Who is this man? We've never seen him before. He introduces himself as "Bond. James Bond."
Never heard of him.
The guy, this Jim Band or whoever, is in the middle of flirting with the woman across the table when he receives an urgent message and must leave. How rude. Jack Bund heads to England's intelligence officers and meets with the head of intelligence, a man named M.
At least that's a name we can remember.
M informs Bend that he is to travel to Jamaica and investigate the disappearance—a.k.a. cold-blooded murder—of an agent named Strangways, who was keeping tabs on U.S. rocket launches.
Bond (we're pretty sure that's his name) flirts with Moneypenny, the office secretary, then returns to his apartment where the woman from the casino is waiting for him in nothing more than a shirt and a smile. Before you can say "Jamaican me crazy" (don't ever say that) Bond seduces her in enough time to catch his flight to Kingston.
At el aeropuerto, Bond is suspicious of the driver sent to pick him up. He definitely didn't send for an Uber, so who is this guy? Bond gets in the car with him anyway, and soon finds himself being tailed by someone else. Does everyone in Jamaica want Bond dead?
Bond's driver evades their pursuer, and Bond thanks him by throwing him out of his own car and demanding to know who he works for. The man bites on a cyanide-laced cigarette and dies before revealing his employer.
Who does he work for that he can't bring himself to say? Sears?
At Jamaica's Government House, Bond meets the government official who will introduce Bond to the last men to see Strangways alive. One of them is Professor Dent, a geologist, who has the hots for Strangways' secretary, who, like Strangways, is dead. Well, she was hot.
Bond snoops around Strangways' office and finds two clues—a receipt for geological analysis from Dent and a photo of Strangways with a Jamaican fisherman. Bond travels to the dock and meets the fisherman, named Quarrel, who takes Bond to the back room of a bar. It's a trap. Bond is attacked by Quarrel and the bartender. Bond fends them off, but a third man presses a gun into Bond's back. RIP 007.
No, Bond is fine. The man turns out to be Felix Leiter, a CIA agent, who has been observing Bond. When he saw Bond leave with the bad guy at the airport, he thought Bond might be a double agent. Now he trusts him, and they agree to work together.
Quarrel tells Bond that one of the last places he took Strangways was Crab Key, an island owned by a mysterious Chinese man named Dr. No. With a name like that, we're sure he's running a charity out there, right?
Bond interrogates Dent about the geological analysis. Dent says that the samples were only fool's gold. Bond, no fool, uses a Geiger counter to analyze bits of debris from Quarrel's boat. They're radioactive. Bond suspects Dent is a liar.
Meanwhile, Dent travels to Crab Key and tells Dr. No that no matter how hard they try, Bond just won't die. He's like a cockroach to them. To take care of him, No gives Dent another bug— literally, a giant poisonous spider.
While Bond snoozes in bed, the giant, hairy, multi-eyed, poisonous—have we creeped you out enough yet?—hungry arachnid creeps up Bond's body. The eight legs scuttling up Bond's skin wake the superspy, who flings the spider off and squishes it with a shoe.
The next day, he asks for all the paperwork on Dr. No from Government House. Mysteriously, his files are gone. The secretary, Miss Taro, says she'll try to find them, but Bond asks her out for dinner instead.
Miss Taro invites Bond to her house. It's another trap. Bond's car is chased by the assassins who killed Strangways. Bond manages to dodge them, and their vehicle flies off a cliff and explodes. Bad guys go boom. Miss Taro is shocked to see Bond still alive. He seduces her, then turns her into the police.
Later that night, Bond waits in her room. An assassin arrives to kill Miss Taro. It's Professor Dent. Bond knows that Dent is a liar and a betrayer and Bond shoots him dead. Now the man has about as many holes in him as his story did.
Bond decides he needs to go to Crab Key and check it out for himself. Even though he's afraid of the dragon on the island, Quarrel agrees to transport Bond there. They get in the boat and—
Wait a minute. Dragon. Dragon? What is this, Harry Potter? It appears that Dr. No has spread rumors of a dragon on the island to scare away the locals.
Okay, it isn't Harry Potter. It's Scooby-Doo. And Dr. No would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling international superspies.
Quarrel and Bond land on Crab Key. Bond is soon distracted by a beautiful woman wearing a skimpy bikini and a knife. Her name is Honey Ryder, and she seeks seashells on the seashore. Her shell scavenging is interrupted when Dr. No's gunboat opens fire, forcing Bond, Quarrel, and Honey to retreat into the swamps.
After evading No's guards, they find themselves face to fang with the dragon. It's a tank equipped with a flamethrower and painted to look like a dragon. Even though the dragon is fake, its power is real, and it roasts poor Quarrel to a crisp. Bond and Honey are taken hostage and carted off to Dr. No's lair.
They are held captive in rooms fancier than any fancy hotel you've been in, we promise. Maybe Dr. No will kidnap us for our next vacation. The doctor even invites them to dinner. In his chambers, they realize they are deep underwater. (Free dinner and an underwater viewing window? Sign us up.)
For no reason—or should we say...No reason—No reveals his whole plot to Bond. He wants to throw the world into chaos by disrupting the U.S. rocket launch. Bond vows to stop him, and he is locked in a much-less luxurious cell and Honey is taken away.
Bond breaks out of a conveniently place window in his cell, infiltrates No's central control room, and sabotage's No's plan for sabotage. Two wrongs don't make a right, but sabotaging sabotage does make things okay. No and Bond struggle and No falls into the boiling water of a nuclear reactor. That's gotta sting.
But wait folks—that's not all. His whole underwater lair is primed to explode. Great.
Bond finds Honey and frees her. The two escape and jump into a lifeboat just as the island goes kablooey. Leiter rescues them, but Bond would rather have a bit more alone time with Honey before returning to the mainland. He tosses the rope into the water and embraces Honey so the two of them can bounce on the waves in private.