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THUNDERBALL
Rating: 
UK. 1965.
Director – Terence Young, Screenplay – John Hopkins & Richard Maibaum, Based on the Novel by Ian Fleming (From a Story by Ian Fleming, Kevin McClory & Jack Whittingham), Producers – Kevin McClory, Albert R. Broccoli & Harry Saltzman, Photography – Ted Moore, Music – John Barry, Special Effects – Roy Field & John Stears, Production Design – Ken Adam. Production Company – Eon.
Cast:
Sean Connery (James Bond), Claudine Auger (Domino Derval), Adolfo Celi (Emilio Largo), Luciana Paluzzi (Fiona Volpe), Rik Van Nutter (Felix Leiter), Bernard Lee (M), Martine Beswick (Paula), Guy Doleman (Count Lippe), Desmond Llewellyn (Q), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny)
Plot: The criminal organization SPECTRE conducts a daring hijack of a NATO bomber containing two atomic bombs and then deliver to the world a ransom demand for a hundred million dollars. British Secret Service calls in all Double-0 agents. On a hunch James Bond goes to the Bahamas on the trail of the dead bomber pilot’s sister Domino Derval. There he comes up against SPECTRE agent Emilio Largo, SPECTRE’s No 2 agent and the mastermind behind the scheme.
Thunderball was the fourth James Bond film. If Thunderball had been the first or the second Bond film it might be a greater entry in the series than it seems. Alas it had the misfortune to be the entry that came straight after Goldfinger (1964). Goldfinger was the very zenith of the Sean Connery Bonds, the one film where not only all the elements of the formula ended up working perfectly, but one that in fact defined the formula. All subsequent Bonds ended up one way or another either mimicking Goldfinger or attempting to one-up it in terms of spectacularity. As is the problems of thinking with almost any sequel, Thunderball merely attempts to up the scale of its predecessor. Thunderball constructs some massive sets; adds a whole bevy of new gadgets – including rocket jetpacks, a yacht that sheds its tail and takes off as a hydrofoil, motorcycle sidecars mounted with rockets; offers four instead of merely two women; and even ups the visual scale of the film by shooting in the widescreen Panavision process.
But while Thunderball has upped the scale of the series seemingly ten times larger, it is conducted with less than half the panache that it all was in Goldfinger. As opposed to Goldfinger, and a fault shared by almost all of the subsequent entries, there is nothing that really impels Thunderball from scene to scene. The film certainly starts in well with the elaborate theft of the Vulcan bomber and the spectacular sequence where it is crashed at sea; followed by the introduction of SPECTRE gathered around the control room where a failing member is electrocuted in his chair; while the announcing of the extortion plot – the demand of a $100 million ransom that is to be announced by the ringing of Big Ben seven times at 6pm – is perfectly tongue-in-cheek. It is just that when Thunderball reaches the Bahamas it slows right down. It is merely a collation of giant-size set-pieces. Certainly some of these are in themselves excellent – the pre-credits sequence with Bond engaged in a mission in a chateau and making an escape by strapping on a rocket jetpack and flying away; the spectacular scenes with the double stealing the plane and landing it at sea on an underwater runway; Bond trapped under the cover in Largo’s shark-infested swimming pool. While individual sequences in the latter half are absorbing, there are also several underwater sequences that slow the pace right down. The en masse scuba fight climax should be a show capper but instead it drags. The crucial failing is that Thunderball merely remains a series of set-pieces but never enervates them with any of the panache that made Goldfinger work so well.
Adolfo Celi plays quite well but the film never stages the confrontations between he and Sean Connery with any electricity – contrast his rather humdrum villain with Klaus Maria Brandauer’s magnetic essayal of the role of Largo in Never Say Never Again (1983). Ditto former Miss France Claudine Auger as the Bond girl who is requisitely beautiful but never fills the role with anything other than her looks. (Luciana Paluzzi as the deadly red-haired SPECTRE assassain inflates her brief part with far more sizzle). To be fair Thunderball has a small coterie of ardent admirers that insist that it is the best of all the Bond films and it certainly was the most financially successful of all the Bond films until Moonraker (1979) a decade-and-a-half later and is still the biggest earning Bond film in terms of actual number of theatrical ticket sales.
There’s an interestingly complicated backstory behind the genesis of Thunderball. Thunderball (1961) was the ninth of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels and emerged out of talks between Fleming and screenwriters Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham who proposed the idea of making a Bond film to Fleming in 1960, two years before Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman had started the Bond series off with Dr No (1962). During this time they came up with the plans for the plot of Thunderball. When they failed to get the film project (which would have starred Richard Burton as Bond) off the ground, Ian Fleming then went away and turned the ideas into a novel. McClory and Whittingham sued and obtained story credit on the novel and the cinematic rights to Thunderball and the script ideas that they had created with Fleming, which included the creation of SPECTRE and the character of Blofeld. A series of bitter legal battles ensued between Kevin McClory and producers Salztman and Broccoli, with McClory attempting to mount his own Bond films, they attempting to prevent him and he counter-suing over their use of Blofeld and SPECTRE. Although McClory has announced numerous plans to make Bond films based on his Thunderball ideas, the only one to so far emerge was Never Say Never Again (1983), which is a substantially better version of Thunderball than this film.
The other James Bond films are:– Dr No (1962), From Russia with Love (non-genre, 1963), Goldfinger (1964), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Live and Let Die (1973), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (non-genre, 1981), Octopussy (1983), A View to a Kill (1985), The Living Daylights (non-genre, 1987), License to Kill (non-genre, 1989), GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), The World is Not Enough (1999), Die Another Day (2002), Casino Royale (non-genre, 2006) and Quantum of Solace (2008). Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again (1983) are non-series Bond films. Many elements of Thunderball – the villain’s control room, the character of Blofeld, the extortion plot – was parodied three decades later in Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery (1997).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1990
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