Revisiting Thunderball at 60

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As this year marks the 60th anniversary of both Thunderball and…well…myself, and with the expanded score coming later this month, I decided to give the film another spin in the BluRay player. It’s never been a favorite, but then neither do I actively dislike it. There are some wonderful visuals, namely the gorgeous scenery of the Bahamas and arguably the most attractive line-up of Bond girls in any one film, but I remembered it as ponderous and bloated and not terribly engaging.

And now? Well, it’s still Thunderball, but I feel I got more out of it this time, and for sure I noticed some things that somehow eluded me all these years. To wit:

  • The PTS brawl between Connery and Simmons is weaker than I remembered. It definitely benefits from Peter Hunt’s editing, which gives the punches a sense of power even if it creates considerable confusion about the geography of the whole encounter, but in between the punches, there’s lots of awkwardness. Bouvard, maybe because he’s still in a dress, fights like a girl by turning over a clock and throwing a lamp. Bond slides a small chair about 12 feet across the floor and it arrives with enough sustained momentum to topple Bouvard with the force of a city bus. Bond obligingly falls into a chair and waits to be hit with a poker, then gives a Roger-style foot tap to Simmons, who equally obligingly spins and falls as if he’s been poleaxed. It’s all okay, I guess, but a far cry from the pending fight with The Rock’s grandpa in the next film.
  • Bond locks Lippe in the steam cabinet with the dial set to “Boiling Death” (what is it with this place and lethal equipment settings?) and leaves him screaming for help with no one around to hear. In practically the next scene, we see Lippe skulking about like normal, none the worse for wear. How did he escape death and why does he seem unaffected by the experience? Amusingly, as a kid I was completely confused about who was who and when the ambulance drivers removed the dead guy under a sheet as Bond’s leaving Shrublands, I thought the corpse was the guy from the steam cabinet. Pat says he “had a heart attack” and Bond says, “I’m not surprised,” so that had to be him, right? No, it’s “Mr Angelo,” David. Try and keep up: Lippe isn’t the type to have heart attacks from being cooked alive, he just shrugs it off and keeps going.
  • Ah, but he does hold a grudge. So on the highway, he pulls up behind Bond’s Aston Martin, sticks his revolver out of his car window and starts shooting. Except when we switch to a wide shot, we can see he’s approaching on the LEFT side of the DB5, sticking his LEFT hand out the LEFT window. Which means the only way he has even a slight chance of hitting Bond is if he leans way forward over the steering wheel and extends his arm far enough out of the window to bend it at the elbow, resting his forearm against the outside of the windscreen to fire diagonally across his car hood at the DB5 way off to his right. Blofeld is correct; the guy is a screw-up.
  • Not to worry because Fiona chooses this moment to blow up Lippe’s car with a rocket fired from her motorcycle, prompting Bond to react with a bemused, “Oh well, another rocket-related road rage incident” and carry on merrify to the office, not even curious enough to follow the biker and see what the heck is going on.
  • Is it just me, or does the lake where Fiona dumps her bike look exactly like the one where Zorin ditches his Rolls in AVTAK? How many vehicles would we find in that lake if we dragged it?
  • Bond shows up at the office in a dark blue suit, leaves his hat on the coat rack and proceeds to the briefing with the other double-ohs (taking chair #7 of 9, suggesting you can only have those two O’s out in front if there’s no numeral in the “tens” place). He proceeds to M’s office to ask for reassignment but is now wearing a brown suit. Where did it come from? Apparently even he doesn’t know, because he says “I think I had a hat when I came in,” only to find no, he did not. Except we saw him come in, and he did have a hat. And a different suit. It’s almost like a deliberate “meta” commentary on the various editing errors in the series: even the characters in the film are confused about where they are, how they got there and what they had on when they arrived.
  • Moving on to Nassau, Bond realizes from his nifty tape-recorder-in-book (The Congressional Record? The Anderson Tapes? The Sound and the Fury?) that someone’s hiding in his bathroom, he goes to confront him with his gun, but he’s interrupted by a knock at the door. “Well, hello, double-oh-” says the visitor, before being cut off with a punch to the gut. Bond knocks down (but not out) the guy hiding in the shower and the gut-punched fellow says, “Fine way to treat the CIA.” Bond answers, “Sorry, Felix,but you were about to say 'Double-Oh-Seven.” Then he helps the drenched thug to his feet and pushes him into the other room. So at this point the continually-conscious thug has not only heard the phrase “Double-Oh-Seven” (from Bond’s own mouth) but he’s also heard that the other man in the room is a CIA operative and that his name is Felix. Bond is really bad at this spy stuff.
  • On the other hand, he’s a miracle worker with plumbing. To subdue the thug, he turns a knob in the shower and is immediately rewarded with a spray of scalding hot water. Now I know Bond leads a charmed life, but getting instant hot water from a shower nozzle is surely a god mode cheat.
  • As long as I live, I will never NOT love Sean feigning polite interest in Largo’s pride and joy pet sharks (“Mmm, charming”) and effortlessly shooting the clay skeet target from the hip (“No, it isn’t, is it?!”) Peak Connery Bond.
  • Bond seems to use the same brand of wetsuit for his underwater photo shoot that he had in Goldfinger, because his shorts and polo sure look dry to me. He hitches a ride with Fiona and says his boat’s capsized, but I don’t think there’s any danger of getting her seats wet.
  • At the Junkanoo, we see a parade-goer in a Superman suit. Then we see him again. And again. Either it’s the smallest parade ever or Bond and his pursuers are going in circles.
  • Nice job on Bond’s part judging the exact moment Fiona’s flunky will fire the gun, and spinning her into the bullet’s path with his fingers positioned precisely to allow the slug to pass between them. That’s why he makes the big bucks.
  • When Domino steps on the sea spine, Bond takes her by the elbow to lead her ashore. Once he gets there, his toupee has received a significant upgrade.

And so on. I’m not even getting into the continuity errors in the final underwater battle, or the many, many curious times the dialog we hear bears no relation to how people’s mouths are moving, or how Bond manages to violently slam open that cellar door at Palmyra without making the slightest sound to tip off Largo’s men.

All of which is not to say I didn’t enjoy the film. In fact this is easily the most fun I’ve ever had with it. The errors almost all fall into “delightfully bonkers” territory and what’s right is often fantastic. The cinematography, both above and below the waves, is amazing if very much needful of the added clarity afforded by Blu Ray (or 4K, I’m betting), especially underwater. When I saw this in my youth on a standard def TV – or worse, a black and white one – much of it was a boring muddle, visually.

Luciana Paluzzi still kills it (you’ll pardon the expression) as Fiona, easily the best femme fatale in the entire series. She’s not only gorgeous, but also thoroughly rotten. One is often divided between the desire to bed or kill her, and Bond thankfully completes both tasks in the approved order.

Even the cartoonishly undercranked final battle aboard the Disco Volante worked for me this time, aided greatly by Barry’s score, but the airborne “extraction” at the end is as nutty as anything in MR or DAD; Domino remains surprisingly unperturbed by the whole experience, even though her survival is entirely dependent on Bond’s grip, and her own.

This one went way up in my estimation despite expectations. It looks great, it sounds better, it devotes itself largely to one beautiful location instead of darting around the globe at a whiplash-inducing pace. It’ll never be a favorite, and maybe it helps that it’s the first time I’ve watched ANY Bond in about a year, but all in all, I’m fine with sharing a birthday with Thunderball, and very much looking forward to the La-La-Land Records release.

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Splendid observations, @David_M - you spotted a lot more of THUNDERBALL‘s absurdities than I did recently. For me the greatest bafflement was how the Junkanoo night seemed to take up half the film‘s Bermuda portion.

I also used to criticise Faulks for simply reeling off THUNDERBALL elements without realising how spot on he captured that flick‘s careless nonchalance towards plot and logic.

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It is astounding that one only notices these errors by rewatching the films again and again. In the cinema on the big screen, being involved in the proceedings for the first time, one is just spellbound.

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Totally. As a kid in the 70s THUNDERBALL used to be great fun. I couldn’t understand any criticism about it, even the scuba parts of it captured my imagination. :man_shrugging:t3:

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I’ve always liked Thunderball but my appreciation has increased with time. In some ways I see it as the quintessential standard Bond experience, meaning an adventure without significant moments in Bond’s life, eg. marriage, presumed dead, lover killed, etc.

I think a lot of it is the juxtaposition of two key moods which brings things into sharper focus and makes the overall product feel cooler. We have a relaxed Bond demeanour set against a nuclear ransom plot where the stakes couldn’t be higher. All in the beautiful Bahamas.

Bond is taking the situation seriously (check out he way he snaps at Felix when they’ve found the plane wreckage), but he’s calm and collected about it all…thriving under pressure. It’s chock full of great moments - Fiona in the bath, Fiona’s fast driving, sneaking around Palmyra, the casino sequence, Vargas getting the point, and more.

Largo is a terrific villain. The Bond girls are some of the best ever. Van Nutter is probably the most accurate on screen Felix. I really love Barry’s score and can’t wait for my expanded CD to arrive. I rank it third after OHMSS and TLD. The film wouldn’t be what it is without it.

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It’s a flawed film (but still terrific) overshadowed somewhat by its predecessor (unfairly but most know where I stand on GF), but with peaks higher than the entries either side of it.

I know in Sideswipes this month we had the discussion about “actor’s thirds” and I will always offer TB up as proof that the 3rd is not an actor’s best performance. SC is effortlessly brilliant throughout TB, as if he’d taken the best of his prior outings and funnelled them into this. Sure, he is indestructible, but he shows the right amount of pathos (the brief look at Paula’s body sums his Bond up), every interaction with Domino, the baccarat scene, the clay pigeon shooting, Shrublands, the rack.

If TB is the film where SC started to chafe at being Bond, it doesn’t show (unlike YOLT). An absolutely terrific performance.

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I would argue for Thunderball being perhaps the greatest James Bond performance by any of the actors. Not as earnest as FRWL not as glib as GF, assured and not yet meta as it would be with DAF. Not becoming Pastiche as with MR.

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I honestly don’t think you’re wrong here, though Sir Rog in TSWLM comes very close. The script and the source mesh very well (TB is a great read) and you sense that Maibaum/Hopkins knew exactly who their lead “was” as the character, and wrote the part accordingly.

SC was coming off his work in The Hill filmed the prior September and maybe coming back to Bond was of benefit. He’s very good doing something diffferent in The Hill, as well as being part of an ensemble (how can playing opposite the likes of Banner, Andrews and Hendry not put you in positive place creatively?). There is a “freshness” to the performance that for me makes it so much more than a continuation of GF.

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Oh, I don’t know. He does bleed, which is fairly rare for the time. In fact I was surprised just how much blood was involved with that gunshot to the leg, although he seems to recover by the next scene, like Sylvester the Cat shrugging off having been temporarily turned into an accordion by a falling safe. And the blood only seems to drip down so as to leave a trail, as opposed to staining his nice trousers. (I forgot to include that on my list: the “blood” he loses is a nice, bright shade of “Hammer Studios Crimson #3”, all but glowing in the dark to keep Fiona and the boys on his trail).

There are also some great moments, notably when he’s skulking around in Shrublands at night, or retrieving his gun from under the table in the Nassau hotel room, where he exudes a sense of lethal menace. Sometimes I saw flashes of the Bond from DN who looks on from the phone booth at his “driver from government house” with a look that says, “Oh, this guy is so dead.”

Also, I like how the “too cool to care” facade drops when he hears Paula’s missing; he drops everything to rescue her at considerable risk to himself, and you can see the “well, sh*t” look on his face for a moment when he realizes he’s too late. He doesn’t linger, doesn’t brood, but you can tell he’s affected.

I also feel like there’s something genuine, if not exactly deep, between him and Domino, maybe because Sean and Claudine really did have something going on?

And at the end, that’s a look of real worry when it seems his luck’s finally run out and Largo has the drop on him. “YOU’RE glad?” brings one of the most earned laughs in his tenure.

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Those old stills from the set are worth a gander and an inference!

I can never decide if Augur is not that great an actress or that it’s just a master of the English language thing, but regardless, SC makes the relationship believable (definitely in comparison to the 2nd go-round in NSNA). The scene at the beach, with SC’s eyes behind sunglasses, is driven entirely by the tone in his voice and it all works.

This is not a “kick NSNA” thread, but helping the relationship believable in TB is also the fact Bond is the younger man; unfortunately NSNA is older man and older man filling out the triangle and it all just seems a bit “desperate.”

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Auger’s Domino is fun because on the surface she’s glamorous and graceful and at ease but once we spend any time with her at all, we realize she’s depressed and afraid. She’s in way over her head, trapped in a dangerous situation she’s blundered into because once upon a time Largo seemed exciting to her, or at least rich. Now she knows there’s only one way out of the relationship and it won’t end well for her: she could try to escape, but he’ll kill her, or she can wait til he gets tired of her, which will probably end the same way. As a mental escape, she clings to an idealized image of her brother, who frankly doesn’t come across as saintly to the rest of us as he does to her, but the illusion is important to her mental health. Which is to say, she has some real layers to her character, even if she’s not exactly the most independent, formidable Bond girl by a long shot. Her brother’s death is turning point: without the hope of a reunion to cling to, she’s now willing to risk action, and consequences. What’s left to lose? When she kills Largo at the end, it’s the culmination of an arc for her character, from helpless to empowered. Sort of, anyway. Which helps make up for the fact that Fleming’s “hero saved from certain death by a shot from off screen” trope is every bit as hoary as the “object in my pocket saved me from the bullet” routine in FRWL.

In contrast, Bassinger’s Domino is, at best, a pretty face, and even then it depends on your tastes. Does she idolize her brother? I can’t remember, but if she does, she’s crazy. Basically she exists to be the prize tussled over by Bond and Largo (and the slavers, and so on), sort of a living, breathing MacGuffin. She has no real agency herself, is pretty vapid and clueless overall, and although she gets the honor of the final kill, too, there’s not that same sense that a big character moment is making up for the cliche of it all. If we were capable of being surprised by the save, it would only be in the sense of, “Oh yeah, I forgot there was a girl character in this thing! Whew!” (It doesn’t help that Largo’s kill happens underwater in this version, where nothing ever carries the same impact. You can’t see anyone’s faces, for starters).

I agree the dynamics of the series shift importantly when we move from the era where Bond is younger than the villains, M and Q, to an era (under Roger) where they are his contemporaries and then finally (with both Roger and Craig) where they are younger than Bond. I’d never exactly position Bond as a representative of the “youth culture” but the tension between him and stuffy, tweedy old M and Q or various old rich guys in the earlier films was an important element. In NSNA, Sean comes off as older than Fox’s M or Brandauer’s Largo, and it does make a difference. Maybe not as stark as when Roger’s Bond battles Walken’s Zorin, but it does have an impact.

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Forgot to ask…

As Bond departs Shrublands, Pat expresses her eager willingness to reconnect with him “anytime, anyplace.” Bond replies somewhat less interestedly, “Another time. [pause] Another place.”

I’ve always wondered: was this a nod to Connery’s 1958 film with Lana Turner, Another Time, Another Place? The pause in his delivery, and the way he speeds off after saying it (“mic drop!”) always makes me think so. On the other side of the argument, it would be unlikely for Cubby, Harry or McClory to promote a film in which they had no stake, and which was already 7 years in the past. But possibly the line was written in all innocence and it was Sean who spotted the opportunity for an “in joke?”

Or maybe I just overthink things too much…

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If it had been some really big film - BEN HUR, HIGH NOON - the line would probably stick out like a sore thumb. But given it was a production seven years in the past, and not a particularly big or popular one either, I don’t think there was any hidden intent. It was probably just written as a fancy way of ‘Yes, sure. Let’s keep in touch…’

From what I gather both adaptations of Thunderball were somewhat troubled - to say the least - and The Battle for Bond mentions constant script changes during THUNDERBALL’s whole shooting. I suppose it’s entirely possible the producers mainly concentrated on the changed parts and read the rest of the dialogue only cursorily, if at all. McClory in particular seems not to have been the really consistent force during production.

Connery would of course recognise the title of a former production and put some emphasis into his delivery. And why not, he could shamelessly overplay it, if Young didn’t like it he could still cut the line. THUNDERBALL was cut with a hatchet anyway, nobody would have missed those three seconds.

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DavidM you are not guilty of overthought - for some reason I dorecall reading somewhere (perhaps an old Steven J Rubin book) that the line was an intentional reference, a little in-joke, as it were. Then again, that could have been supposition by the author.

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I just always thought: You can glove me anywhere but Shrublands again.

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I read Rubin’s “James Bond Films” 40+ years ago so maybe its not my imagination but rather my memory pointing me in this direction.

That said, I agree with Dustin that it’d be a little strange to reference a film that was never particularly well-regarded or commercially successful (“Call Me Bwana” gets a pass because it’s “cross-promotion”).

I gather at this point ATAP is really only remembered for Connery’s off-screen contretemps with mobster Joey Stompanato, if at all.

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I always thought it was a nod to the old Connery movie, I even told my late wife when she watched it a bit together with me, but I also read it somewhere years ago.

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