The world first saw Bond, James Bond, in a smoky French casino at 3 in the morning.

We followed him back to his hotel room to check his “burglar alarms”: a hair wedged in a desk drawer, a smear of talcum powder on the handle of a cabinet. Next, a cold shower, a cigarette (his 70th of the day) and bed, with a .38 pistol tucked under the pillow.

“Then he slept,” Ian Fleming wrote in 1953’s “Casino Royale,” “and with the warmth and humor of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal and cold.”

So began the first of Fleming’s 14 Bond novels ” a secret-agent franchise that didn’t start turning on movie-theater marquees until 1962, when a mostly unknown actor named Sean Connery was hired to play Bond in a low-budget British film called “Dr. No.”

Bang: It was a smash.

After 40 years, the agent code-named 007 still hits the target at the box office; the 20th Bond film, “Die Another Day,” opens today. Pierce Brosnan plays Bond for a fourth time, and co-star Halle Berry is the first “Bond girl” with an Oscar at home.

The makers of the new, $100-million-plus Bond adventure planned to include several subtle salutes to Bonds of the past, from wardrobe to weapons. The producers are in a nostalgic mood, playing off the double milestones ” 40 years, 20 films (they don’t count the two “unofficial” Bond movies not produced by MGM/United Artists: 1983’s “Never Say Never Again” and 1967’s “Casino Royale”).

We had the same kind of idea, but a smaller budget. So in honor of Bond’s cinematic anniversary, here’s a Viewer’s Guide to the Best (and Worst) of 007.

THE FILMS

Best: “From Russia with Love,” 1963. The most plausible of all the Bond movies, based on Fleming’s best novel. Nobody here is out to take over the world or collapse the West’s economy or turn Buckingham Palace into a roller disco ” the story focuses on a twisty international plot to kill Bond (Connery) and cripple Her Majesty’s Secret Service. An all-time low on gadgets, an all-time high on suspense ” a formula that nearly all the later films would reverse. (Sigh.)

Worst: “A View to a Kill,” 1985. How could it come to this? A seemingly comatose Roger Moore squares off against a seemingly stoned Christopher Walken while a seemingly lost Tanya Roberts yells, “Help me, James!” Guest star Patrick Macnee, no doubt remembering his years on TV’s “The Avengers,” settles for looking embarrassed. The feeling was mutual.

THE BONDS

Best: Sean Connery. No debate necessary. He was, and still is, Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang ” the only actor who has ever caught the flammable mix of charm and danger that Fleming infused into the Bond character. No matter who plays Bond, he’ll always be walking in Connery’s 6-foot, 3-inch shadow.

Worst: Roger Moore. Even at the start of his Bond tenure, in 1973’s “Live and Let Die,” Moore was smug and lazy. By the end, in 1985’s “A View to a Kill,” he was sleepwalking. Whether making war or making love, Moore always gave you the feeling he was glancing at his watch between every take.

Not that bad, really: George Lazenby. The forgotten Bond. He only played 007 once, in 1969’s “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” after Connery quit the series. The critics butchered Lazenby’s blandness. If only they’d known that Moore was even less.

THE VILLAINS (MALE)

Best: Robert Shaw as “Red” Grant, the assassin ordered to give Bond a “particularly humiliating” death in “From Russia with Love.” And he could have done it, too.

Worst: Christopher Walken as Max Zorin, the overly ambitious industrialist in “A View to a Kill.” He has a pretty white blimp and some tomfool scheme to take over the world or something like that. The details aren’t even worth looking up.

THE VILLAINS (FEMALE)

Best: Lotte Lenya as Rosa Klebb, the SPECTRE agent two-timing her Soviet bosses in “From Russia with Love.” Dig those shoes with the poisoned switchblades in the soles.

Honorable mention: Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp, the athletic assassin who crushes her victims’ heads between her thighs in “GoldenEye” (1995).

Worst: Sophie Marceau as Electra King, the kidnapped heiress who fell in love with her kidnappers in “The World Is Not Enough” (1999). Patty Hearst was so 1970s.

THE ‘BOND GIRLS’

Best: Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder in “Dr. No” (1962). The first of Bond’s onscreen lovers-turned-allies, the formidable Andress set the standard for all who followed. (That’s her bikini-and-knife set Halle Berry wears in the new Bond film.)

Honorable mention: Diana Rigg (Mrs. Peel in “The Avengers”) as Tracy in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” She marries Bond and dies happily ever after.

Worst: Tanya Roberts as Stacey Sutton in “A View to a Kill.” A former Charlie’s Angel, Roberts appears to spend most of the film waiting for John Forsythe to give her orders over the speaker-phone. Sadly, he never does.

THE HIDEOUTS

Best: The enormous fortress/launch pad Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) has built inside a hollowed-out volcano in “You Only Live Twice” (1967). Production designer Ken Adam’s set cost a sixth of the film’s budget.

Worst: The humble island hideaway of freelance assassin Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) in “The Man with the Golden Gun” (1974). He gets $1 million per job, and this is the best he can do?

THE GADGETS

Best: The jet pack that blasts Bond to safety at the start of “Thunderball” (1965). It was no fake: Developed for the military, the Bell jet pack could rocket a man 600 feet high.

Worst: Bond’s “hairbrush transmitter” in “Live and Let Die.” Almost as logical as Maxwell Smart’s “shoe phone” in TV’s “Get Smart.”

THE ACTION SCENES

Best: Bond (Connery), shackled to a nuclear warhead inside Fort Knox, battles the silent henchman Oddjob (Harold Sakata) in “Goldfinger” (1964). The gold standard (pun intended).

Worst: Bond (Moore), atop an unconvincing Golden Gate Bridge, battles Christopher Walken’s pretty white blimp in (what else?) “A View to a Kill.”

THE DIALOGUE

Best: “Red wine with fish. I should have known.” ” Bond (Sean Connery)

“You may know the right wines, but you’re the one on your knees.” ” “Red” Grant (Robert Shaw), holding Bond prisoner aboard the Orient Express in “From Russia with Love”

Worst: “Run along, Dink. Man talk.” ” Bond (Connery) shooing off his poolside companion in “Goldfinger”

THE THEME SONGS

Best: “Goldfinger,” lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, vocals by Shirley Bassey. Brassy and sassy, it set the mold for the next four decades.

Worst: “From Russia with Love,” lyrics by Lionel Bart, vocals by Matt Monro. Sounds like a Kennedy-era Hootie and the Blowfish tune. And who the devil is Matt Monro?