It may not altogether be a surprise that Goldfinger was an
unstoppable global smash. Queues stretched around blocks. Cinemas were forced
to run the film in a loop 24 hours a day simply to keep up with audience
demand. The public’s appetite for Bond was soaring. This raised the question
for the producers of where to go next. There was one name they had on their
books who might prove useful.
As previously noted, Kevin McClory had won the film rights
to the Thunderball project in court, and after Goldfinger went stratospheric,
he decided to get his own Bond film off the ground. The first port of call was
Sean Connery’s agent, because you can’t make a Bond film without Bond. Connery
said no, which all but wrecked McClory’s plans before they’d even got off the ground.
So when Broccoli and Salzman came to him, asking to make the Thunderball movie
he wanted, you might be able to guess what his reaction may have been.
Broccoli and Salzman agreed to take a back seat as executive
producers, with McClory producing the film himself. Other changes were also
afoot. Terence Young would return as director, returning Bond to the more
documentary style of shooting from Guy Hamilton’s more opulent flourishes on
Goldfinger. The new film would also be shot in Cinemascope, for extra
spectacle. A revised version of the script was produced by the regular team,
and the project started filming in the winter of 1965.
Thunderball opens with a new version of the gunbarrel
sequence, made necessary by the new shooting process and featuring Sean Connery
for the first time. The image irises out onto a coffin bearing Bond’s initials,
which is hardly the most promising start. However, the camera pans to reveal
Bond and a female colleague watching from an overhead gallery. The funeral is
that of Jacques Beauvoir, an enemy agent who died before Bond got to him, so
now he’s keeping an eye on the man’s widow. Because of course he is. Having
watched the procession climb into their cars and leave, he then catches up with
the widow Beauvoir at a stately home. And immediately punches her in the face.
Because of course he does.
It transpires that Beauvoir is posing as his own widow, and
not just because dressing up is fun. Bond spotted that he opened his own car
door, which is a definite giveaway of some sort, and a brutal fight ensues,
with Beauvoir attacking Bond with a grandfather clock as almost every object in
the drawing room turns into a weapon, assisted by much speed-ramping in the
editing room.
Bond finally dispatches Beauvoir by throwing him head first
into a fireplace, and just has time to throw some flowers onto his body before
slipping out and keeping ahead of Beauvoir’s goons. No sooner is Bond out of
the building, when he straps on his trusty jet pack and flies away. Assuming
that he didn’t just happen across a piece of state-of-the-art ordnance just
lying around, it must have been left there for him, in the full expectation
that no one would steal or fiddle with it.
It is, in fact, a real jetpack that a well-shod stuntman
flies to safety, landing neatly by a convenient Aston Martin with Bond’s lady
friend inside. The luggage stored safely in the boot and pursuing henchmen
dispatched with built-in hoses, they make a casual getaway.
 |
Raquel Welch as Domino Duval.
"What sharp little eyes you've got." |
The spray of water then segues tidily into the opening
titles, with lots of underwater women swimming around. This is accompanied by a
blaring theme song performed by Tom Jones, in which a figure is described who
is known as ‘the winner who takes all’, who ‘strikes like Thunderball’ and
‘whose needs are more so he gives less’. It might be interesting to speculate
exactly to whom this is supposed to refer, whether or not it is the distinctly
amoral Bond we currently follow or his opposition? The song itself had been a
last-minute replacement. Originally, the titles were to have been accompanied
by Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which was unequivocally about Bond and inspired by
the nickname the character had acquired in the Far East. In fact, such was the
reputation and cachet that Bond had by this point achieved, that even Johnny
Cash submitted a song for the film, albeit in his customary style.
The titles also credit Norman Wanstall as sound editor on
the film, reprising his job from Goldfinger. He had, in fact, won the Oscar for
his work on the previous film, something he was not aware of until he was given
the statue in the UK several months later. He later retired from the film industry
to become Britain’s only Oscar-winning plumber.
The body of the film opens with a luxurious car pulling up
to a building in Paris. The driver emerges and is almost stopped by a gendarme
for parking in a restricted area, but then recognises him. This is Emilio
Largo, and he eats parking tickets for breakfast. Largo heads into the
building, apparently some kind of charity assisting people rendered stateless,
but through a last radio-controlled door in his office lies a vast conference
room, which acts as a reminder of the extraordinary skill of set designer Ken
Adam. Largo is a member of SPECTRE, and for the first time, we see them in full
conference. Hidden behind a smoked-glass screen, Blofeld bemoans the death of
Beauvoir and asks the attendees to outline their recent successes.
André Maranne plays the French delegate, and since he had
recently played Inspector Clouseau’s assistant in A Shot in the Dark, the
prospects for a crossover boggle the mind. The organisation has an American
member who isn’t even ethnic, showing how far its monstrous grasp can reach.
The electrocution of one delegate, who had attempted to embezzle from SPECTRE
and clearly thought that stealing from ruthless super-criminals is a good idea,
shows off the debt Austin Powers and his ilk owe to this scene, right down to Largo’s
eyepatch and the victim’s chair descending through the floor and reappearing
empty.
Largo then starts to outline his own scheme, which will lead
to NATO paying them £100 million, a sum equivalent to £1,639,150,000 in 2012
money. That’s a lot. The first step in the plan, says Largo, is in infiltrating
an ordinary health spa. Naturally we cut to SPECTRE’s inside man bumping into
Bond straight away, as he recovers from his recent stresses and strains. It
appears to be nothing more than coincidence that Bond happens to be having a
holiday in the eye of SPECTRE’s plans, and matters get more contrived when Bond
spots an odd tattoo on Count Lippe’s wrist and phones Moneypenny to get her to
look into it. He also uses the opportunity to threaten to spank her, and her
delight at the prospect says a lot about the creepy relationship that has
developed between the two of them at this point.
Lippe’s tattoo serves no actual purpose in the story, other
than Bond to suspect he’s a wrong ‘un just because it looks like the sign of a
Chinese tong. The German-Chinese connection is interesting, since it
corresponds with Dr. No’s parentage, but it’s all the excuse Bond needs to go
snooping around Lippe’s room. Given the care with which he prepared his own
quarters before going anywhere in Dr. No, it’s rather odd to see him happily
leaving plenty of signs that he has been around. His blundering around, which
is at least pro-active, if murky in its reasoning, is interrupted by a bandaged
figure entering from the next room and whose survey of Lippe’s suite extends no
further than looking through the door behind which Bond is hiding.
Bond heads off for his next check-up, where he is being
prodded by nurse Patricia. Given the opportunity of a woman within easy reach,
Bond forces a kiss on her. She is angry at this liberty, as she should as a
human being, and decides he should spend some time on a motorised traction
table, which assists with spinal problems. She leaves Bond whirring back and
forth, but a few minutes later, Lippe sneaks in and puts the table on the
‘deadly’ setting, which plays Bond like an accordion until he passes out.
He is revived by Patricia a few minutes later, heavily
shaken but none the worse for wear. She is horrified by what has happened, and
begs Bond not to mention this accident to her employers. Bond, of course, knows
exactly what price his silence has. Patricia doesn’t seem especially unwilling
as her back her into a steam room, but this is the creepiest moment to date in
any of the films. I wondered whether Fleming would have allowed this to go
ahead. He died while production was still underway on Goldfinger, only a few
months after his most famous fan, a lifetime of alcohol, tobacco and high
living finally catching up with him. He was 56.
Could McClory be the one responsible for the scene? Possibly,
but Bond pushing a vulnerable woman into a corner and taking what he wants from
her was virtually inevitable given events in the previous films. Outside the
bubble of Bond’s world, times were changing, and in retrospect this is the last
time that the filmmakers would be able to feature such a scene and get away with
it.
Later, Lippe is taking a Sitz Bath, which appears to be one
of those steam box cabinet they used to have in cartoons where Tom’s head would
poke out of the top when Jerry turned it on full blast. Bond gives Lippe the
same treatment, shoving a broom handle through the door handles to make sure he
gets properly steaming. This is fairly inconvenient, as Lippe has an
appointment later on.
 |
| Snap. |
In a nearby village adjacent to an air base, French pilot
François Duval is enjoying some time with his girlfriend, but checking his
watch realises it’s time to go and fly a plane. He opens the door to his hotel
– and is confronted by his own double who shoots him in the face with a gas
pellet. The double is Angelo, the bandaged man from Lippe’s room, and he was
staying at the spa for the scars from his plastic surgery to heal. Lippe and
the girlfriend outfit him with Duval’s personal effects – yes, she’s in on it
as well – but he tries to get more money from them, since it’s too late to get
a replacement. They reluctantly agree, and start to bandage the dead Duval.
At the spa, Bond is rubbing a furry glove all over Patricia
– she’s one of those people. You know
the ones I mean – when he notices an ambulance arriving outside. Deciding that
an ambulance arriving at a private hospital is just a bit too suspicious, he
leaves her on simmer and goes to investigate. The music as Bond creeps through
the dimly-lit clinic is impressively sinister and atmospheric, all the more
impressive as John Barry wrote the score in a tearing hurry. He had originally
based the music around the melody of Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but rapidly
changed tack when the song was scrapped. So close to deadline was he that the
soundtrack album only features music from the first half of the film.
Bond finds Duval’s body, swathed in bandages in a side room,
and picks up a phone to call for help as Lippe, concealed in the shadows,
raises a gun to fire. Then someone leaps through the window to attack Bond
instead, ending up with the cord around his neck. It looks as though everyone
was trying their turn to kill Bond all at once, even though Lippe doesn’t
bother trying to kill Bond as he leaves the room and sets off a fire alarm.
At the air base, Angelo takes Duval’s place on a training
mission, where he will be in the jump seat for a flight carrying two live
nuclear warheads. Once they are well underway, Angelo plugs his respirator into
his own air supply that he happens to have on his person and feeds more poison
gas into the system to kill off the rest of the air crew. Flying the bomber out
to sea, he makes a soft landing on the surf before sinking to the bottom. Largo
and his team arrive as Angelo tries to get out, but his seatbelt is jammed.
Largo waves at him to calm down and pulls out a knife – and cuts Angelo’s air
hose instead.
 |
| Scramble, scramble, scramble! |
This is clearly the price that he pays for attempting to
change the deal he had with SPECTRE, but given that he was a loose end that
would need tying off, one wonders whether Angelo was always doomed. The answer
is yes. Largo’s men carefully remove the bombs from their housing on the plane. The underwater photography is
impressively detailed, thanks largely to the supervision of Young and his
newsreel eye, but also McClory. As a citizen of the Bahamas, he was passionate
about water sports, and for him Thunderball was as much a film about scuba
diving as it was about James Bond. The plane is covered with a camouflage net,
and a couple of cuts later Largo’s big yacht is steaming towards Nassau.
The next morning, Bond has been summoned back to London, and
Patricia is getting oddly clingy now. The less said about how her character represents
women in the Bond world, the better. With only one touch from Bond, she becomes
entirely submissive to him. A horrible
precedent.
Lippe follows behind Bond, and he is preparing to use the
Aston Martin’s weaponry on the enemy agent when a passing motorcyclist fired a
rocket at Lippe’s car, exploding it into a ball of fire. The motorcyclist,
having slipped away in the conflagration, dumps the bike in a handy lake and
removes her helmet to reveal Duval’s redheaded girlfriend. Shouldn’t NATO
bombers pilots’ lady friends have security checks, just to be on the safe side?
It could be that her presence is a possible reference to Profumo again, but
more likely it’s just because Duval is French.
Bond arrives at the 00 conference room at MI6 headquarters,
and we are treated to another giant set. A tape recording has arrived of
SPECTRE’s ransom demands, namely that if the sum is not paid, a major NATO city
will be carbonised. The 00 section has been given the authority to take any
steps needed to prevent disaster, and the government plans to go as far as
paying the ransom if need be. This probably has more impact in the present day,
when terrorism is a continuous threat according to news media. The idea that
the government would accede to the demands of terrorists – and that’s what the
T in SPECTRE stands for, remember – is unthinkable, even when motives are
purely financial.
Leaving through the dossier on what has been termed
Operation Thunderball – catchier than Yewtree – Bond recognises a photograph of
Duval, noting that he was dead at the same time as being on the bomber. Having
been assigned to Canada, for reasons best known to M, Bond asks to be sent to
the Bahamas. Duval’s sister is there, and with suspicion falling on him in some
way, this appears to be MI6’s only real lead. At first glance, this might
appear to be a coincidence, but it just about hangs together.
A jump cut later from Moneypenny’s office, where M catches
her calling him ‘the old man’ behind his back, Bond is meeting Duval’s sister
in the waters off Nassau. As the reach the surface, he compliments her on her
stroke, telling her she swims like a man. As chat-up lines go, it’s about next
to ‘you remind me of my mother’. A fast worker as always, Bond already has a
girl waiting for him on his own boat, but the few lines she shares with Bond
point to an interestingly equal relationship between them.
Claiming that he needs to reach the mainland for an
appointment, he hitches a ride on Miss Duval’s boat, and offers to treat her to
lunch the second they set foot on dry land, since the appointment wasn’t that
interesting anyway. As they talk over lunch, Bond notes that they have been
followed, and Domino notes that her guardian likes to know where she is. Little
do all of them know that her guardian is also being followed.
 |
| Eyepatch, check. Sinister ring, check. Where's that I-Spy book? |
Bond continues to pump her for information about her brother
as they dance, and it becomes so absurdly obvious that he’s after something
that even she asks him mentions that he spends all their time together asking
her questions. She mentions that she loves her bother very much, and this note
of tragedy again reinforces the Hitchcock of keeping the audience a step ahead
of the characters, since the suspense lies in waiting for them to find out the
Great Secret.
Largo emerges from the casino, looking even huffier than
before, and tells Domino that they are leaving. He keeps the veneer of respectability
up for long enough to invite Bond to his house on the island for lunch the
following day, but as they depart, it is made plain through the body language
between Largo and Domino that she is not just his mistress, but effectively his
plaything.
Bond returns to his room, and checks the tape recording he
has apparently left running in case of something interesting. The tape reveals,
along with some clever camerawork to indicate where the noisy footsteps were
coming from, that someone is hiding in the bathroom. A knock at the door
distracts Bond, and he immediately punches the man outside and lets him slump
in a chair before flushing out the main in the shower and sending him packing.
The man at the door was the follower from before, and is in
fact Felix who has regenerated again into a blond Californian, now wandering
some distance from the Texan type Fleming had envisaged. The minion from the
bathroom reports to Largo, and has a further indignity piled onto him by being
thrown into a pool of sharks.
Largo kisses his SPECTRE ring as the small fry gets chomped,
in what may be an indication that he is of the Sicilian persuasion. Largo’s
background is not delved into to any degree, but he is very much the
traditional Mafia type. Perhaps that was how he was recruited – a don who had
the potential to be a godfather, headhunted by SPECTRE for their own
international crime syndicate. At least the old ways have yet to desert him.
Later on, local agent Pinder, effectively a local version of
Quarrel from Dr. No, takes Bond to a safehouse, where they are met by Q. Bond’s
exasperation at the mere sight of him is a charming shorthand for their relationship
to date, although it could well be a reaction to his remarkable Hawaiian shirt,
which ventures into unexplored regions of yuk.
Q outfits Bond with some field ordnance included a Geiger
counter that fits into a watch – rather an improvement from the boombox-sized device
used in Jamaica, an underwater camera, a rebreather that stores four minutes’
worth of air and a radium pill which may well be the subject of the series’
first bum joke when Q tells Bond which end it goes in.
Suitably armed, Bond swims out to Largo’s yacht, the Disco
Volante, to investigate any connection to how the bombs might have got aboard.
He is quickly discovered, fights with a guard and then escapes. The editing
goes a little peculiar at this point, with a number of wipes being used between
scenes, rather than straight cuts or fades. The sequence is also largely
useless. If the plane was ditched in the sea, as it must have been by Bond’s
logic, the question of how the bombs were moved is pretty irrelevant. However,
there’s some more underwater photography, and this is the intended centre of the
film anyway.
 |
| Just looking for bomb-shaped holes. |
Abandoning his diving gear, Bond makes it ashore, walks to a
road and hitches a lift, and who should stop but Duval’s girlfriend. Could this
be a deliberate move, or it is simply a coincidence? Bond gets in and they
drive off, as Bond notices that she and Largo wear the same ring. That Fiona
should explicitly advertise that she’s a member of the opposition raises the
question of SPECTRE’s overall competence, as does her driving faster and faster
until she screeches to a halt outside her hotel, which also happens to be Bond’s.
Noting that Bond made for a rather nervous passenger as she bombed along the
lanes, she says that ‘some men don’t like to be driven’. Bond’s response is
that ‘some men don’t like to be taken for a ride’, a clever piece of dialogue
that signals his awareness of her half-arsed duplicity and his overriding
masculinity.
The next day, Felix and Bond take a helicopter out to look
for the ditched bomber, but also fly over Largo’s estate where he and Fiona are
clay pigeon shooting. She castigates him for his hastiness in having Bond
attacked underwater the previous night, noting that it would give them away,
but this does not explain how picking him up wearing a ring carrying the enemy’s
insignia and driving him at breakneck halfway to Miami would not count as
suspicious.
Bond arrives for lunch shortly afterwards, having spied
Fiona’s car in the driveway. Largo shows him the shark pool, with only a faint
note of threat, before offering him a gun to shoot a few clay pigeons for
himself. As in the past, Bond wastes no opportunity to insult his host,
mentioning that Largo’s gun would be more fitting for a woman. Domino passes,
dressed in the customary bikini, prompting Bond to ogle her luxuriously before
very casually blowing away a clay pigeon, shooting from the hip and barely
looking in the right direction, all the while smarming at how tricky it seems.
If smugness could be only be bottled.
Largo invites Bond to accompany Domino to the Junkanoo, the
Bahamanian Mardi Gras, but the timing of this is rather odd. As SPECTRE’s
ransom tape has indicated, it is May, yet the Junkanoo is held either at the
start of Lent or on New Year’s Day. Meanwhile, Bond’s hotel suite is raided,
with Largo’s men and Fiona stealing the photos of the underneath of the Disco
Volante, making Bond’s midnight swim even more irrelevant, and kidnapping
Paula.
Bond manages to get back, changed and out again without
realising this has happened, as it is not until Felix flags him down at the
Junkanoo hours later that he is told Paula is missing in a wildly poorly-dubbed
sequence. Reasoning that she could only be in one place, he arranges for the
power to be cut at Palmyra at a crucial time. He breaks into the compound and
plays a game of cat and mouse with the guards, only to discover that Paula had
resisted interrogation and taken a hidden cyanide capsule. As with Tilly in the
previous films, Bond appears genuinely upset by Paula’s death, although at
least she knew what she was getting into as a member of MI6’s local staff.
To cover his escape, Bond fires off a few wild shots, and
largely manages to get Largo’s less than superlative guards to shoot at each
other, but one of them intercepts him and they tumble into the swimming pool.
Setting the standard for tropes in the future, Largo closed the metal cover of
the pool and opens the hatch to let in his sharks, prepared to assume that Bond
and his minion will be eaten. Bond swims
back into the shark tank using the rebreather and escapes, meaning that the
entire enterprise has been a further waste of time, with no purpose served
other than to remove Paula, a character who already contributed effectively
nothing.
Bond returns to her room, and finds Fiona in the bath. She
feigns surprise at his appearance, and asks for something to wear as she steps
from the tub. Bond cheerily hands her a pair of slippers before settling into
one of those chairs they always seem to have in hotel bathrooms for when you
want to watch someone washing their face.
This is merely a lead-in to Bond and Fiona going to bed, and
her presence is markedly different to the women seen so far. As a physically
confident woman working for the enemy and who doesn’t immediately fall for Bond’s
usual line, she is cut from similar cloth to Pussy Galore, so one might expect
a similar outcome for her character. This would be a mistake. As they get ready
to go out to the Junkanoo, where Domino is probably wondering what’s happened
to him, more goons rush in and take Bond prisoner. Bond does not seem in the least surprised,
stating that he noticed her ring straight away. Fiona says simply that she
likes to wear it, but Bond quips that ‘vanity has its dangers’.
 |
| This lady is not for turning. |
Immediately, and with impressed ferocity, she throws this
back in his face. He’s a fine one to talk about vanity, when he seems to think
that roll in the hay is all that is needed to turn a woman towards virtue. Bond
denies that what they did in bed gave him any pleasure, stating that he was
simply doing his duty, but even he is forced to shrug and admit that you can’t
win them all. Once again, the series is undermining its own devices almost as
soon as they are introduced, forcing itself to move in new directions.
Bond is driven back to Palmyra to be killed, apparently
purely for the sake of neatness, but he escapes in the midst of the Junkanoo. The
thugs give chase into further documentary-style footage, following the blood
trail from where a wild bullet nicked Bond’s leg. He dodges in and out of floats, manages to
avoid looking right at a dog pissing in the middle of the road and even misses
a large float with ‘007’ in huge numbers on, the result of islanders being
asked to build their own floats for the production and some getting a bit carried
away.
Eventually he makes his way to the Kiss Kiss Club, having
remembered that it was named after the original theme song. The band on the
club’s stage is even playing an instrumental version as Bond finds himself cornered
by Largo’s men. Trying to create a distracting scene, perhaps recalling North
by Northwest, he picks up a girl from a nearby table and starts dancing with
her. She seems charmed by this madcap stranger, until Fiona cuts in and the
girl grumbles that he didn’t say anything about his wife being there. It could
have been because I didn’t remember this little moment, but that line gave me
the biggest laugh of the film.
Dancing close with Bond gives Fiona greater control over the
situation, but he sees a gun barrel appearing to one side of the stage. A
dramatic turn at the right time puts a bullet in Fiona’s back. Bond drops her
body at a nearby table, delivering his farewell quip on the run, barely even
acknowledging her.
Dawn rises on the final day before the ransom is to be paid,
and Felix and Bond are still looking for the bomber. Exactly what they plan to
do should they find it remains unspoken. It could be that they are hoping the
bombs will still be aboard, but this would be a sign of poor planning on
SPECTRE’s part. Perhaps they are just praying there will be some kind of clue,
and that this remains a better use of their time than monitoring Largo.
They pass the area with the same name as the variety of
shark Largo mentioned keeping in his tank, tipping off Bond’s spy senses, so he
takes a look underwater and finds the Vulcan under the camouflage net. Felix
shoots a shark to keep the others occupied, and it looks very much like a real
shark was killed. Still, they deserve it. Bond finds Duval’s watch and identity
tags on Angelo’s ripening body, but notes that the bombs are not aboard, because
of course not. His next plan is to use these covered items to pull more
information from Domino, although given that’s all he ever does it hardly constitutes
a new plan.
They encounter each other underwater again, and appear to
make love with their aqualungs on, which is certainly a new version of buddy
breathing. On the beach afterwards, Bond breaks the news of her brother’s death
to her with surprising gentleness, simply showing her François’s things and quietly
offering her an opportunity to take revenge. The scene is rather oddly shot however,
cutting between studio and location footage and with Bond putting on sunglasses
halfway through, seemingly because of a mismatch in footage. He gives her the
underwater camera, telling her it is a Geiger counter and that it will go off
if the bombs are aboard the Disco. This is despite it not being a Geiger
counter. Bond also promises to kill Largo for her.
Acting on her tip regarding part of the Palmyra estate where
she is not allowed to go, Bond hides out until dark and waits for Largo’s
underwater squaddies to appear, getting one of them out of the way and taking
his place. The group swim to the Disco, where Largo reveals that the target for
the first bomb is to be Miami. This is probably the only possible target, given
the difficulty and time needed to transport the bomb. Simply sailing the Disco
to within a reasonable offshore distance and setting it off remotely would be
easy.
The team stock up with the necessary equipment and head out
to the cave where Largo has concealed the bombs. Playing along with the rest of
the group, Bond assists in loading the bombs aboard a motorised sled, but Largo
recognises the small visible part of his face and traps him inside the cave as
they leave.
On board the Disco, Domino uses the underwater camera, which
now seems to work as a Geiger counter after all, but the returning Largo
catches her and decides to get what information he can from her by
scientifically applying a cigar and an ice cube. His pet nuclear scientist, who
has been hovering in the background for much of the film with little to do,
looks very squeamish at the prospect.
Bond finds his way to the cave’s rear exit and signals to
any passing aircraft with a flare, which helps Felix to home in, having already
sought Bond out using the signal from the radium pill. This sets off the chain
of events needed for action, with frogmen being parachuted into the sea to face
off against Largo’s men in a huge and seemingly endless underwater fight using
harpoon guns, which are the best kind. Bond even breaks out another jet pack,
this one designed for underwater use, to join the fracas, ripping the facemask
from one unfortunate and adding to more of the kind of chaos last seen in a
Turkish gypsy encampment.
 |
| Chucking out time at the Atlantean Arms. |
There is some notably minimal music used in the sequence, as
various faceless figures are shot in the face, nibbled at by sharks or otherwise
dispatched, including two pinned together with the same harpoon. The overall
effect is that of a film pleading its case to have an exclamation mark added to
its title. Eventually, the SPECTRE men surrender, but Largo gets back to the
Disco and sets off, unaware that Bond is already aboard.
The yacht in turn is being pursued by the US Navy, so Largo
presses the button hidden under its gearstick and ejects its rear half,
allowing more of his men to fight a rearguard action, at least until a direct
hit blows them up. Thunderball is unique in the Bond canon as being the only
film in the series to win the Oscar for Best Visual Effects, and sequences such
as this show how richly it was deserved. Even in 1966, it would be the
blockbuster that left with the award for effects, but little else.
Largo may have plans for the other bomb, but his scientist
is having none of it. He helps Domino get free and asks for clemency in return,
as well as mentioning that he has thrown the arming device overboard. Exactly
why he should have a complete change of heart at this late stage is
questionable, though it may well be as simply as self-preservation. Bond confronts
Largo on the yacht’s bridge and a vicious fight ensues, during which the
throttle is kicked into top gear.
Thus, we almost have a re-enactment of the traction table sequence,
as the men struggle on the out-of-control Disco, somehow avoiding the many
islands and reefs seen rushing past the windscreen. Finally, Largo has Bond at
his mercy as he lies on the floor with his gun raised. Slowly his face changes
and he topples forward – to reveal a harpoon in his back and Domino holding a spear
gun, a look of satisfied rage in her eyes.
Somewhat incredulously, Bond is introduced to the scientist,
into whose hands he shoves a lifebelt as all three leap from the Disco Volante,
seconds before it finally strikes the rocks and explodes in a ball of
crispening Mafiosi and atomic debris. Bond and Domino climb into a life raft dropped
by a navy aircraft and sent up the attached balloon, which Bond has clipped to
his wetsuit, before the same plane snags the balloon cable and carries the pair
of them away, almost the entire scene since the explosion having contained no
dialogue.
Thunderball ends with inordinate haste, as the titles roll
without even a notable final line, and a wipe during the credits succeeds only
in chasing them further up the screen. This is unfortunately symptomatic of the
entire film. Though it is superficially entertaining and contains much that is
exciting or noteworthy, it remains alarmingly slapdash. Sloppy scripting can be
forgiven if the final product can gloss over it, but there are too many
narrative dead ends in the story and too much of an emphasis on the underwater
action. This was certainly the main selling point, but as a character notes in another
John Barry-scored film, too much sun can make a desert. The sights and sounds
of Thunderball leave a lasting image, however, even if only the loosest story
beats connect fully.
On its release, Thunderball was a sensation, even more so
that Goldfinger. The public across the world could not get enough of the
glamour and excitement of Bond’s world, and it is this huge popularity that cemented
it above so many other, better films in the public consciousness. Bond had conquered
the world, and this means that there was only one place for him to go next...
