Bond Rewatch #4 :: Thunderball
Thunderball — Terence Young, director; with Sean Connery as James Bond
Master Bond director, Terence Young, returns for this incredibly explosive and hilariously gadget-filled Bond installment. After re-watching this gem from 1965, I remembered how absolutely ludicrous the film is and just how wonderfully it winds up working out in the end.
The story is another madcap international farce that finds Bond trying to recover two NATO nuclear weapons that were stolen by who else? SPECTRE. The top secret terrorist organization is this time holding the arms as ransom in exchange for a ton of diamonds. Once the diamonds are received, SPECTRE promises to not use the nuclear weapons to destroy a city either in England or the United States; the city that’s at risk turns out to be Miami. Bond heads to the Bahamas (where the weapons are being kept) and is forced to match wits with SPECTRE’s number two agent, Emilio Largo.
Everything unfolds as expected; Bond saves the day by stopping Largo and his henchmen, the nuclear weapons are returned safely and Miami doesn’t get destroyed. Nothing much is that interesting in the actual plot of the film but what makes this Bond adventure so much fun is what happens around the actual story.
To begin with, this film is very gadget-heavy. The best example is something that happens during the pre-credit sequence. In the scene, Bond crashes the funeral of Colonel Jacques Bouvar, SPECTRE’s number six agent. Bouvar has faked his own death and is actually attending the ceremony dressed as a woman. Bond points him out right away and proceeds to beat the man to death in his mansion–while the guy is still dressed in drag. It’s a very hilarious sequence (especially when you watch it nowadays after all of Sean Connery’s ’sometimes you just need to hit a woman’ comments) and as Simon Winder points out in his book, “The Man Who Saved Britain: A Personal Journey into the Disturbing World of James Bond”, it was actually a sequence that British audiences went wild before because it featured the greatest English hero of all time beating up on a lowly Frenchman dressed in drag. Relations between England and France not being exactly peachy-keen, English audiences ate this up.
After the murder, Bond is of course chased by Bouvar’s henchmen. This leads to one of the most hilarious Bond escape strategies of all time. He runs out onto a patio and straps on what else? a jet pack! Safety being Bond’s first concern, they have Connery strap on this hilarious helmet and then blast off. Now, the actual stunt of a working jet pack is pretty goddamn cool. The final product is hilarious to watch, but the actual feat of the jet pack lifting a grown man off the ground, carrying him about thirty yards and landing him safely on the ground is pretty impressive.
It’s kind of funny because the villain in the film, Largo, is more or less an unthreatening individual. Sure he has his macho eye patch and he’s hatched the grand scheme to steal the nuclear weapons, but at the end of the day, he’s just SPECTRE’s number two. He’s working for someone else, taking someone else’s orders. A great, independent villain like Auric Goldfinger he is not.
Speaking of that grand scheme of Largo’s, it’s my favorite part of the movie. The plan is so outrageous and so ahead of its time, it’s really impressive. Largo hires one of his henchman to undergo extreme plastic surgery–like, Face/Off type shit–in order to steal the identity of the military pilot that will be steering the chopper carrying the two devices. After the fake pilot successfully boards the helicopter and takes off, he gases the entire crew killing them instantly. He then lands the aircraft in the ocean where he lets it sink to the bottom where a secret scuba teams makes off with the weapons on Largo’s boat. It truly is a complicated plan and one that eats up the first quarter of the movie at least. But that’s okay because without it, we wouldn’t have one of the most hilarious attempts on Bond’s life ever.
While at a clinic trying to rejuvenate his beat-up frame (on M’s orders of course) Bond runs into the man who has undergone the insane plastic surgery. When Bond is caught snooping around the man’s room, the guy tries to have Bond killed in a spinal traction machine. I’m not kidding you. A nurse puts Bond in the machine to loosen up his back. Connery is basically naked and tied to this table laying face down. Someone sneaks into the room and cranks up the machine to it’s maximum speed and leaves Bond to die. What follows is one of the most ridiculous things you’ll ever see in this franchise (aside from Roger Moore in a fucking space suit…Christ almighty): Connery basically humps the table to death all the while screaming and looking like he’s in agony. Finally a nurse comes in and ruins all our fun, but my God is it a site to behold. It doesn’t get any cornier than that.
A talk about Thunderball wouldn’t be complete without discussing the incredible underwater sequence. When Bond gets to the Bahamas he discovers that the weapons are being held in an underwater cave. As he goes there to explore the cave, his cover is blown and he’s attacked by an army of Largo’s henchmen who are all armed to the teeth with knives and harpoon guns. As Bond is quickly outnumbered, the day is saved yet again by the United States’ own Felix Leiter. Felix orders a bunch of Coast Guard sailors to parachute down into the water and help Bond out. What ensues is about ten minutes of non-stop underwater fighting and harpoon impaling. Bond and the sailors win out over Largo’s goons and the weapons are recovered.
The very end to this film contains an often overlooked, yet comical incident where Bond casually murders a more-or-less innocent man. While escaping Largo’s doomed yacht, Bond and the forgettable Domino (one of the most useless Bond Girls) are attempting to jump off the boat onto a life raft type device. There is a third man attempting to escape the yacht as well and while they’re preparing to jump, Bond just pushes the guy off the boat and he awkwardly falls in the water never to be seen again. Bond and Domino are saved by rescue workers after the boat explodes, but this poor fellow is nowhere to be found! Bond and Domino start to fool around in the life raft–because heaven forbid Bond wait the hour or so to get back to land safely– and the credits roll. Whoever the guy is, I think he’s some lowly crew member from the yacht which I guess doesn’t make him entirely innocent, he’s forever lost at sea and forever lost to the world of Bond.
Overall, Thunderball is one of the most fun Bond films. It wasn’t afraid to get a little silly at times, but it still contained lots of action which the films were expected to produce more and more of as the sequels went on. If you’re not a fan of the meat-and-potatoes-spy-flick feeling of the more base Bond films, then definitely check this one out; it won’t disappoint.
Thunderball is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Fox/MGM.
The Great Bond Rewatch of 2009 returns next week with You Only Live Twice.
That poster is fantastic! It looks like one of the best Bond ones! Can’t wait to see this one! Director Stephen Sommers can’t stop raving about it and promises that his G.I. JOE shall be a homage to it! I hope “The Man Who Saved Britian” is a good read cause I just reserved a copy of it!