Thunderball

Thunderball was released in 1965 and broke box office records at the time. Sean Connery appeared as Bond in his fourth outing and was charged with recovering two stolen nuclear missiles which were being ransomed by the evil organisation SPECTRE. It featured some classic Bond moments but it also caused a legal battle and was remade as Never Say Never Again in 1983.

The film opens with Bond uncovering the fake funeral of a SPECTRE agent and then having a fistfight with the evil transvestite which is strangely comical to behold. He escapes the scene with the help of a jetpack which was the height of cool technology at the time. He then skips into his rigged Aston Martin DB5 in a very memorable Bond opening sequence.

The film is an extremely odd mixture of rather ridiculous scenes like the opening fight and great moments like the scene which treats us to an inside view of SPECTRE. Blofeld is hidden behind a screen stroking his cat, only his bottom half visible, and he executes a traitorous agent who made the mistake of embezzling funds. The man is electrocuted in his chair which then descends into the floor and returns a moment later vacant. On the other hand we get scenes like the health farm attack where Bond is strapped to a traction table which a would-be assassin turns to high in a failed attempt to kill him. It surely would have been simpler for the killer to shoot or stab Bond as he lay there helpless but instead we get the prolonged spectacle of what looks like him humping the table before a nurse comes in and saves him.

The book Thunderball was intended to be the first Bond film but Fleming was sued in 1961 shortly after the publication by former collaborators Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham who insisted the book was based on a screenplay they had written with Fleming. The lawsuit was settled out of court and McClory retained rights to the story, plot and characters which he later used to make the non EON production Never Say Never Again.

Thunderball took over $140 million at the worldwide box office on a budget of $5.6 million. The fans loved it and it was the most successful outing to date but the critical reaction was mixed. Watching the film again now it is easy to see why, it really is a strange mixture of classic Bond and almost embarrassing nonsense. The characters are great though. The main baddie turns out to be the eye patch wearing Largo and he has the silent, clean living Vargas as his head henchman. This film also features Largo’s mistress Domino and there are appearances from Blofeld, Felix, M and Q.

The latter half of the film sees Bond tangle with Largo in the Bahamas and he is dumped into a swimming pool with sharks, the kind of accessory a proper villain is never without. There are also a number of exotic underwater scenes with harpoon gun fights, especially the never ending final battle between Largo and his frogmen and the United States Coast Guard and Bond. Thunderball is a jarring combination of brilliant and awful.