FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

Cert PG

115 mins

BBFC advice: Contains moderate violence and mild sex references

I can't even think of From Russia With Love without picturing Lotte Lenya dancing around Sean Connery with the poison tip in her boot.

Lenya plays the dastardly Rosa Klebb who is trying to engineer a war between the Russians and the British over a theft of a much sought-after coding machine.

While betraying her motherland, she enlists the naive staffer (Daniela Bianchi) to do some dirty work.

But, of course, instead of using James Bond (Connery) to get her way, she falls in love with him at first sight.

As Bond's second outing, From Russia With Love has a greater confidence than Dr. No.

The spy begins to introduce his many well-known traits, the special effects are more ambitious, the theme tune was a cracker and we are introduced, albeit by voice only, to the super-villain Blofeld.

Oh, and it was the first appearance of Desmond Llewellyn as the long-lasting and beloved Q.

Connery has more of a swagger this time and he needs to be on his mettle against SPECTRE agents Klebb and the muscled-up Grant (Robert Shaw).

But he also has an impressive ally in Turkish agent, Karim Bey, played with great panache by Pedro Armendáriz.

I watched Terence Young's second outing as a Bond director on a flight from Canada back home. It seemed suitably exotic for the Bond film which set a new bar.

This was apparently the last movie watched by J.F.Kennedy. I bet he was shaken and stirred.