Three Days

Thunderball, Sean Connery's fourth excursion as 007, upped the Bond ante with the most ambitious adventure--and budget--to date, and turned out to be his most successful venture in the series. George Lazenby, a handsome Australian model with a self-effacing confidence, made his first and only appearance as James Bond in the underrated On Her Majesty's Secret Service, a witty and action-packed adventure that makes 007 history when Bond marries the girl (the lovely and talented Diana Rigg, fresh from her duties as the butt-kicking spy on the TV series The Avengers). Roger Moore brought an altogether lighter tone to 007 with Live and Let Die, softening Connery's rough edges with a more romantic persona as the films became even more exotic. Octopussy, a colorful cold war thriller and one of Moore's better outings, stars Louis Jourdan as a corrupt Afghan prince and Maud Adams (making her second Bond appearance) as the ringmaster of an all-babe traveling circus team that unknowingly carries a nuclear bomb. Christopher Walken hams it up under a platinum-blond hairdo while his Amazon bodyguard, Grace Jones, growls through A View to a Kill, a silly but often visually impressive adventure that made it obvious Moore was too old and stiff to carry on the Bond legacy. No such problem with Pierce Brosnan, whose fourth outing, Die Another Day paired him with sexy American agent Jinx (Halle Berry) to take on a genetically altered North Korean villain (Rick Yune) armed with a satellite capable of destroying just about anything.