Thunderball was released in 1965 and broke box office records at the time. Sean Connery appeared as Bond in his fourth outing and was charged with recovering two stolen nuclear missiles which were being ransomed by the evil organisation SPECTRE. It featured some classic Bond moments but it also caused a legal battle and was remade as Never Say Never Again in 1983.

The film opens with Bond uncovering the fake funeral of a SPECTRE agent and then having a fistfight with the evil transvestite which is strangely comical to behold. He escapes the scene with the help of a jetpack which was the height of cool technology at the time. He then skips into his rigged Aston Martin DB5 in a very memorable Bond opening sequence.

The film is an extremely odd mixture of rather ridiculous scenes like the opening fight and great moments like the scene which treats us to an inside view of SPECTRE.

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You Only Live Twice was released in 1967 and it was the fifth Bond film to hit cinema screens. Once again Sean Connery played Bond, although he took some persuading this time. Rather bizarrely the screenplay was penned by Roald Dahl. The film saw Bond tangling with his ultimate villainous opponent, Blofeld, played by Donald Pleasance and the action took place with a Japanese backdrop.

The film actually started in space with a US space craft being eaten by a UFO which turns out to be a SPECTRE rocket. MI6 trace the space craft to Japan and send Bond to investigate. A Soviet space craft is also eaten and a world war looms as Bond races to uncover the evil mastermind Blofeld and foil his scheme. There are some great moments in this outing and some deeply cheesy scenes as well.

This is the first Bond film that reveals Blofeld fully; his face was never revealed in previous films.

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Tee Hee Johnson has to be my favourite name for a Bond baddie henchman. He worked for Mr. Big (Kananga) in Live and Let Die as the head henchman. He was a big scary looking gangster with a metal arm and a pincer for a hand.

He appeared to be the right hand man or bodyguard of Mr. Big and was always hanging around in the background whether his employer was portraying Mr. Big or Kananga. The name Tee Hee refers to his habit of giggling at inappropriate moments, something which seems to irritate Bond. He tangles with the agent a couple of times during the film. The first time they meet the tarot reading Solitaire warns Tee Hee that Bond is armed and dangerous. He grabs the gun and showing off the formidable strength of his metal claw he bends it back on itself. At the next meeting Tee Hee tries to strand Bond at a crocodile farm.

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The very first in a long line of Bond villains was the unfortunate eponymous Dr. No. He struck an imposing character with his unusual racial background and dangerous metal hands. He also behaved as a classic Bond villain, inviting the agent for dinner and politely explaining his nefarious plans.

Dr. No was a mad scientist, the son of a German missionary and a Chinese girl. This racial blend was probably the most monstrous that British Empire stalwart Fleming could imagine. He was supposed to have worked for the Chinese criminal gang the Tongs and escaped to the US with a large portion of their profits. In the book the gang tracked him down and cut off his hands as punishment, in the film he is supposed to have lost them during his research messing with radiation. He set up an island lair at Crab Key, Jamaica in a Bauxite mine where he constructed his own nuclear reactor.

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The first appearance of Roger Moore as James Bond came in the 1973 release Live and Let Die. This time Bond takes on, not a secret evil organisation bent on world domination but, the heroin trade in New York which is stereotypically run by black gangsters. The film received a lukewarm response from the critics and Moore failed to convince fans of Connery but none of that stopped the film being a huge financial success. Made on a budget of around $7 million it took over $160 million at the worldwide box office.

The action starts with the mysterious deaths of three MI6 agents. So how do they react? They send another agent, in the shape of Bond on his own to investigate. After narrowly escaping death on arrival in New York he begins to track Mr. Big, a local gangster. He meets the tarot reading Solitaire, played by Jane Seymour (the youngest Bond girl ever at the time at just 22 years old) and she has the ability to predict the future. Following Mr. Big back to San Monique he uncovers a huge heroin production operation.

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Jaws was the towering mute henchman from The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. He had razor sharp steel teeth fitted and used his unnatural strength to hold down unfortunate targets and bite their throats out. Played by the frightening Richard Kiel he was a memorable henchman.

In The Spy Who Loved Me, which was Roger Moore’s third outing as Bond and possibly his best Bond film, Jaws first appeared as a terrifying killer. The script for the film underwent a number of re-writes and it was a troubled period for the franchise but the resulting film was praised by critics. Jaws was the hired help for Karl Stromberg, a web fingered shipping magnate with an underwater base. He was entirely mute and extremely menacing and his enormous strength and slicing teeth made him a formidable opponent.

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The World Is Not Enough was the third film to star Pierce Brosnan in the role of Bond and it came out in 1999. It got a mixed reception from the critics and it often pops up on lists of the worst Bond films ever and yet it took over $360 million at the box office worldwide making it one of the most commercially successful releases in the series.

The film featured a pretty confusing plot which kicked off with the assassination of British oil tycoon Sir Robert King. Bond investigates and runs into a terrorist called Renard (Robert Carlyle) who is immune to pain because of a bullet lodged in his brain. Bond tries to protect King’s daughter, Elektra (Sophie Marceau) when they are attacked in Azerbaijan. He then poses as a nuclear scientist in Kazakhstan where he meets Dr. Christmas Jones (Denise Richards). There’s an oil pipeline attack, a mysterious meeting in Istanbul, an assault on a caviar factory and a battle for stolen plutonium which ends on a submarine.

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Ernst Stavro Blofeld was the most enduring villain in the Bond universe. As the head of SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) he was required to be a true evil genius. The cat stroking maniac bent on world domination was well spoken and smartly dressed and he appeared in three of Fleming’s original novels. When it came to the Bond films they couldn’t resist using him a bit more and he was seen or at least heard in six of them. Blofeld has become a caricature of villainy and he is widely referenced in popular culture.

According to the books Blofeld was originally Polish and worked in Turkey for both the Nazis and the Allies during the Second World War. After the war ended he disappeared to South America and founded SPECTRE. He first appeared in the novel Thunderball, he was responsible for the death of Bond’s wife in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and he was eventually strangled to death by Bond in You Only Live Twice.

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The Living Daylights was released in 1987 on the same day as The Lost Boys and it was an absolute smash hit. Not only did it outperform the famous vampire flick it also took more at the box office than Die Hard or Lethal Weapon. The first outing for Timothy Dalton as Bond eventually raked in over $190 million at the box office worldwide. It was also well received by fans and critics as everyone welcomed a new incarnation of 007 to re-invigorate the character after the Roger Moore years.

The film is a gritty action packed affair which starts with a spectacular sequence on Gibraltar as Bond chases an assassin. He then assists with the defection of Russian General Koskov who is recaptured by a mysterious Aryan assassin called Necros.

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Two of my favourite henchmen from the Bond universe are Wint and Kidd from the film Diamonds are Forever. The pair are American assassins presumably in the employ of Blofeld and SPECTRE, although this is never explicitly confirmed. They seem to specialise in various unusual forms of murder and conduct themselves in an otherwise polite manner, often finishing each other’s sentences. As a kid I found them uncannily chilling, I think because of their cold businesslike manner.

They clearly take great pleasure in their work and seem to complement each other on gruesome murders with an appealing brand of black humour. They are actually more than the best of friends and there are a few heavy hints that they might be lovers. This was also the case in the book.

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