Spy museum features Bond villains

Debonair and dashing, superspy James Bond has battled evil for half a century on the silver screen.

From Sean Connery to Daniel Craig, audiences have cheered on the six actors who've played Bond in the world's longest running multi-million dollar movie franchise, and this Sunday's Oscar ceremony will pay tribute to 50 years of Bond.

But it's the Bond villains who are taking center stage at Washington's International Spy Museum, in an homage to Bond author Ian Fleming's bad guys.

In the "Exquisitely Evil" exhibit, visitors can see an assortment of memorabilia, including the rope used to beat James Bond in "Casino Royale," the tarantula that crawls up Bond's arm in "Dr. No" and the steel teeth used to attack the spy in "Moonraker."

But it's not just about movie props -- it's a reflection of 50 years of the changing world of espionage, and the threats the U.S. and British intelligence services often dealt with in the real world.

"We didn't want to just put interesting props from the films on shelves and say, 'Come look at this.' We wanted to derive some meaning from what the Bond films have been about. Part of it was of course through the eyes of the villains, they reflected the anxieties and concerns of the times," said Peter Earnest, the museum director and a former CIA operative.

In the early years of the 1960s and '70s, the films' plots often reflected the Cold War clash of the superpowers. Villains like Ernst Stavro Blofeld sought to spark global confrontation. In later films, the plots evolved. "When Fleming wrote the books and when Eon Productions produced the films, they attempted to pick up on the things that were producing anxieties in society like genocide or nuclear proliferation or terrorism or drugs," Earnest said.

In the latest blockbuster hit "Skyfall," villain Raoul Silva's weapon is information; his method: cyber warfare.

"He has all the names of all the MI6 agents around the world and the pseudonyms they're using and the people they are employing," Earnest recounted.

But over the years, the villains have maintained certain trends -- secret lairs, wacky aides and plots for world mayhem.

Aside from the tuxedos, the fast cars, the cool spy tools and the Bond girls, the films have been a kind of window into a secret world.

"For many people, this is the only impression they have. They may not be reading books or other information about real espionage or real intelligence, and therefore this fills in the blanks," Earnest explained.

"When Fleming started writing the stories and when the early films came there wasn't a lot of information out" about the world of secret agents, he added.

"Bond became people's impression of real intelligence and real espionage."