The Official James Bond 007 Movie Book

by Sally Hibbin

Describes the production and plot of each James Bond film from "Dr. No" to "The Living Daylights," with additional details on 007's women, colleagues, adversaries, and his ingenious gadgets and weaponry

Genres: Film

128 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 1987

Reviews

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

The standard gallop through however many Bond films existed at the time of writing, listing plot, villains, 'girls' and what M and Q get up to, and excusing the worst Moore-era excesses in the name of light comedy. This one is a rare artefact from a time when everyone was as excited about Timothy Dalton being Bond as I still am:

"This debut could well be a momentous chapter in the history of the Bond series when another book is written titled: The Official James Bond 007 Movie Book - The Second Twenty-five Years."

(It was not called that.)

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1987 to coincide with the series’ 25th anniversary, this catalogues all of the films up to “The Living Daylights” and is well compiled by Sally Hibbin, who did such a great job with the “Making Of Licence To Kill” that I read last year. Featuring a foreword by Cubby Broccoli, this also has a decent introduction that covers the origins of Bond, from Ian Fleming to the novels as well as the film-making partnership of Broccoli and Harry Saltzman (which ended with “The Man With The Golden Gun”). There are also mini-biographies of the four actors to play Bond, the screenwriters, directors, production designers, special effects technicians as well as the music and titles for the series, all of which are well researched and presented. The bulk of the book is a trawl through the 15 films, with each chapter broken into categories - an opening essay, ‘The Assignment’, ‘Equipment Issued’, ‘Enemy Personnel’, ‘The Bond Girl’, ‘The Victim’, ‘The Background Story’ and a production dossier. The book is copiously illustrated, all of the images well reproduced and clearly labelled, a nice mixture of film stills, production stills and behind-the-scenes shots. Although this is clearly an EON sanctioned project, Hibbin gives her opinion in several places, deconstructing some of the formula (especially when it’s not used) and whilst she’s clearly a fan of Connery she gives all of the films a fair crack of the whip. Informative, entertaining and well written, as a Bond fan I would highly recommend this.