Please indulge me for a moment before we get to the matter at hand. With apologies to both Joe Walsh and Tom Jones:
He lives in hotel rooms and tears out the walls,
and he strikes like Thunderball
Or the one that runs through my head each time I hear the theme song:
He has accountants pay for it all,
and he strikes like Thunderball.
To return to more serious matters, Thunderball was made at what may have been the very peak of Bond's popularity worldwide. The film was made before Sean Connery became bored and disillusioned with the whole enterprise, and consequently it features one of his more competent performances. The story itself is a reasonably faithful adaptation of Fleming's book. The astonishing success of Goldfinger also ensured that this Bond outing would be the most lavishly funded production to date. So what in the world went wrong? The sad fact is that Thunderball stands as one of the world's most expensive object lessons. The lesson taught being simply that a film set almost entirely underwater is just not very exciting. Other words do come to mind upon viewing the film, of which "languid" is perhaps the most complementary in connotation. In fairness to the film, I want to add that I feel a bit sorry for having to rank it so low. It's not by any means a bad film. At this point in the countdown, I feel we have crossed an invisible line between the downright disastrous and the merely disappointing. Still since I'm presenting reviews in this format, I have to make the hard calls. If you are reading this and yet still haven't seen Thunderball, it is a movie worth seeing once. Unfortunately after that one viewing, the urge to see it again will probably never strike you.
As I mentioned the plot of Thunderball closely follows that of Fleming's book, but unfortunately has a tendency towards bloat. After a pre-credits teaser having essentially nothing to do with the rest of the film, Bond finds himself at a quack health clinic called Shrublands. While at Shrublands, Bond becomes suspicious of another patient named Lippe because of the odd tattoo he sports. Lippe is there with another patient whose face is entirely swathed with bandages, and this further peaks Bond's interest. It turns out that the bandaged man is someone that has been paid by SPECTRE to undergo plastic surgery so that he can impersonate a NATO pilot (shades of Diamonds Are Forever!). The real pilot is killed and his body wrapped in bandages. Bond hears of the supposed death of the bandaged man and unwraps the pilot's head to get a look at his face. Meanwhile, the pilot's double hijacks a NATO plane loaded with two nuclear bombs and crash lands it near Nassau. Even in this, the initial half-hour or so, the film has unnecessarily complicated its source material. In Fleming's book, SPECTRE resorted to the far less cumbersome expedient of simply paying off the NATO pilot himself to do the hijacking. Why did the screenwriters need to add the extraneous sub-plot about plastic surgery? As far as I can tell the only real reason was a misperception that somehow the grubby little bribing of a pilot wasn't "big" enough for the spectacle that was supposedly this movie.
After the bombs have been stolen, SPECTRE presents the NATO countries with a ransom demand. In a moment of intense realism - especially given current events - NATO's European members instantly cave into the demands of the terrorists. British Intelligence, however, does have a few days before the ransom is to be paid, so double-oh agents are dispersed across the globe on the off chance that one will be able to turn up the location of the bombs. Bond recognizes one of the pilots of the missing plane as being the bandaged man from Shrublands, and since the pilot couldn't have been lying dead at Shrublands and flying the plane both some sort of hanky panky is evidently afoot. The pilot's sister, Domino, is currently in Nassau and Bond thinks it worthwhile trying to contact her for a lead on the missing plane.
In Nassau Bond finds that Domino is the mistress of Emilio Largo, a wealthy resident who owns a luxury yacht called the Disco Volante. Snooping around the yacht, Bond finds that the Disco Volante has doors on the bottom that permit underwater access. Convinced that Largo has been using his yacht to facilitate the theft of the bombs, Bond and his friend from the CIA Felix Leiter search the waters of Nassau for the missing plane. Bond locates the missing plane and finds the body of the fake NATO pilot in the cockpit. He takes identification and a watch from the body and shows them to Domino. Domino recognizes them as coming from her brother. Bond tells her that Largo is the one who killed her brother and she agrees to help Bond locate the bombs. Bond gives her a Geiger counter to take aboard the Disco Volante so that it can be determined whether the bombs have been brought on board. Unfortunately for Domino, Largo finds the Geiger counter and has Domino imprisoned in her cabin. Largo promises torture by "scientific application of hot and cold" in the form of lit cigarettes and ice cubes. The cigarettes and ice cubes are also found in Fleming's novel and have always given me pause. Cigarettes I can understand only too well, but ice cubes? I'm sure if one fell down your back you'd be hopping around like Larry from the old Three Stooges shorts, but I doubt you could anyone to spill government secrets with them.
Even though the whole Geiger counter thing proved to be a major bust, Bond makes good use of information given him by Domino. Domino tells Bond about the location of Largo's secret cove and Bond arrives there just as Largo and his goons are preparing to retrieve the bombs. Impersonating one of Largo's frogmen, Bond tags along with them to the bomb's hiding place. To compress a very long and very slow moving sequence of events, let me just say that Bond is found out at the hiding place but escapes to inform Leiter that the bombs are being moved. A squadron of well-armed frogmen parachutes into the waters of Nassau and engages in a vicious spear gun fight with Largo's men. Needless to say, the good guys are triumphant. Largo is followed back to the Disco Volante by Bond and after a vicious brawl on the yacht's bridge, he ends up speared in the back by Domino.
Since this is a SPECTRE operation, arch-nemesis Blofeld puts in a token appearance at the beginning of the film. He is hidden behind a screen throughout, however, so the only parts of him visible are his hands petting the omnipresent white cat. He does get one of the franchises iconic moments when he performs the traditional execution of the treacherous underling. Blofeld pushes a button and the dumb sap gets electrocuted right in his chair at the monthly SPECTRE board meeting. After this early scene Blofeld's role in the picture ends. Thus for the film's major villain we are stuck with Emilio Largo, SPECTRE's Number Two. In discussing Adolfo Celi's performance as Largo, I should start by noting an odd feature of the early Bonds. Many of the European actors cast in these early films had a somewhat shaky grasp of the English language and consequently, after filming was done, ended up with their lines dubbed in by a voice actor. That is the case here both for Mr. Celi and for Claudine Auger, the actress playing Domino. This is certainly no blot on the films but in the interest of fairness I just want to note that, when I speak of Celi's or Auger's performance, the reader should realize that they might have been made to look worse by the over-dubbing done after the fact. Largo comes across as one of the series blander villains, not one of the worst by any means but a big, big step back from Gert Frobe's Goldfinger. A big part of Celi's problem here comes from the fact that he is not allowed to play to his strengths. Celi is a squat and burly man who can effortlessly project a brutish and nasty demeanor. The piratical eye-patch he sports only adds to his air of thuggishness. Did he lose that eye in a long ago knife fight? If so you can be sure the other guy got the worst of the struggle. And yet he is forced by the script to spend most of his time pretending to be a well-mannered member of society's upper crust. An actual gorilla would seem less out of place in Largo's natty tuxedoes than Celi himself does. I can't even buy the guy in a skin-diver’s outfit. I can see the guy down on the docks busting heads for the union bosses, but not leisurely scuba diving in the Bahamas.
It would extremely interesting to see Celi's performance without the over-dubbed voice work. There are quite a few scenes that could have allowed Celi to project some menace, but end up being sunk by the overly mannered performance of the voice actor. The stock casino scene in which Bond plays Largo a couple of hands of chemin de fer is very disappointing in this regard. While the enraged Largo gives Bond some kind of hand gesture, the voice-over gives an affected discussion of the "evil eye". Personally I would have preferred some gruff comment about putting a hit out on somebody. At one point Largo starts cruelly egging on a pair of lackeys about their not smoking and drinking, I was expecting a demeanor similar to that of Michael Corleone giving the kiss of death to his brother Fredo. Instead we get a lot of backslapping joviality and a bizarre non sequitur about Largo's passion for fishing. Absolutely worst in terms of missing menace are Largo's reactions to Domino's betrayal of him with Bond. Even if all Domino is to Largo is some willing floozy to keep on hand for when the mood strikes him, his reaction to the betrayal is nonchalant in the extreme. Now the last thing in the world I want to see is this thuggish man smacking around a woman for minutes on end. Some tasteful restraint is definitely in order. Still I wouldn't expect him to casually light up a smoke and natter on about scientifically applying the principles of heat and cold. Celi can't even blame the voice actor for this disappointment. Dean Martin with a skinful isn't as relaxed as Celi is throughout his scene with Domino in her cabin. Ricky Ricardo used to look more menacing reacting to one of Lucy's wacky schemes to appear in his show down at the club.
Turning to another dubbed performer, it's my sad duty to report that whoever dubbed Claudine Auger as Domino may have actually made her look better than she deserves. Ms. Auger's performance, while not abysmal, is still pretty weak. She spends much time in her early scenes staring off into the distance with an extremely vapid expression on her face. I will grant that Domino is a self-confessed kept woman in the film, so self-centered vapidity is not an implausible character trait. It sure doesn't help us warm to her as the leading lady, however, to see her as a gold-digging floozy that's just hanging around with Largo because he's a big spender. But lest you think that this aloofness is part some kind of nuanced performance on the part of Ms. Auger, part of a gradual change from self-centered to selfless as Bond's manly charms melt her cold heart, let me assure that her later woodenness will quickly disabuse you of that notion. Later when Bond shows her her brother's effects and implicates Largo in his death, she actually asks Bond to kill Largo for her. At least that's what's dubbed in as being said by her. If you turn the sound down, you'd be forgiven for thinking that she's actually asking Bond to pass the suntan lotion. I'll be fair and note that she does manage a tear in the scene, but that just may be due to the fact that she's forced to appear in front of an absolutely horrendous back-projection of the ocean. When Largo discovers Domino's betrayal, Ms. Auger takes woodenness to the extreme by proving as physically impliable as a plank. Just note how the enraged Celi has the darnedest time trying to fling the totally immobile Ms. Auger onto a bed in Domino's cabin. Even though Celi is very much less than frightening while describing his intent to torture Domino, Ms. Auger doesn't really manage to project anything resembling fear. She just curls up on the bed with an expression vaguely akin to nausea, as if she had one too many glasses of wine with lunch.
Given how tame this film is on the action front it was essential to make this film more character driven. Thus, even though Ms. Auger's performance is quite weak here, it was still essential to expand the role of Domino in the story. Could Ms. Auger have handled an expanded role here? To be honest that is indeed a question not easily answered. All she really had to do here was stand around looking good during her brief appearances on camera. Perhaps had she been given a significant part in the proceedings, she may have been able to rise to the occasion. There's quite a bit of room for character moments in this story primarily in the triangle between Domino, Largo and Bond, but we've already seen how little is done with this sub-plot. One of the most thoughtful moments in the film occurs early in the film when Bond has occasion to dance with Domino. Domino mentions how different Bond is from Largo just in the way he hold's her while dancing. Bond is nonplussed at this. He knows that he can be just as brutal and vicious as Largo while he's on the job, and he himself can't see a clear difference between himself and the opposition. Domino can sense the fundamental difference: Bond is on the side of right here. After this nice moment, however, any attempt to develop Domino as a character rather than a conquest is totally abandoned. Bond is in Nassau to make contact with Domino because he wants to get a lead on the stolen bombs. And yet as the film progresses, Bond seems to be far more interested in forcing himself on Domino than fulfilling his mission. He becomes so boorish and graceless in his suggestions to her that he couldn't seem less gentlemanly if he just flat out asked her to screw. Appallingly, Bond's tackiness actually meets with success. Domino practically disappears from the movie after this scene until its time for a romantic interlude with Bond. Even though they've barely said word one to each other since the dance, as soon as Bond sees her again swimming alone she immediately succumbs to his manly charms. This is made even more implausible in that it seems to occur under water! How would that even work? They’re both wearing scuba tanks for crying out loud! They couldn't even kiss!
In fact, it is entirely possible that Connery is at his most loutish in this film. While Bond is staying at Shrublands early in the film, Bond grabs a nurse and plants one on her while she struggles against him. To be fair Bond does kiss the nurse unbidden in Fleming's book, but in the book Bond himself knew that he deserved a smack for doing it. After Bond's assault, the nurse has him put on a traction table, some kind of quack device for stretching the spine. Lippe comes in and turns the machine to its highest setting and nearly kills Bond. The nurse comes back in time to save Bond's life by turning off the machine. After getting off the machine Bond says that someone's going to pay for this, and the nurse understands the comment as referring to her instead of Lippe. Bond, at his most callous, then promises not to tell anyone about it if she messes around with him in a steam room! This is not only sleazy, but also indicative of extremely sloppy writing on the part of the screenwriters. Rather than create meaningful interaction between Bond and the female characters, they just have Connery go ahead and brutishly proposition and grope them in expectation that his rapport with the audience would allow him to get away with it.
Thunderball also has the distinction of being the first film in the series to feature my least favorite stock character. Luciana Paluzzi plays SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpe in the film. The female assassin character occurs several times in the series, and Ms. Paluzzi's turn at the role is neither the best nor the worst. I've always been troubled by the filmmakers fondness for including this part in the movies, because I think it is best regarded as a bit of unpleasant detritus from the Swingin' Sixties sexual revolution. To Fleming's credit this character was never something that appeared in his novels, although he did have a hand in an early script for a Thunderball movie so he may have to shoulder some of the blame here. Now clearly female spies are real - the infamous Mata Hari being a prize example. The "black widow" character in Bond films, however, has no connection to any real life personages or notions of spying. There is never really even any indication of subterfuge on the part of the black widow. She doesn't, for example, gain Bond's confidence, seduce him, and then stick an ice pick in him while he's literally got his pants down. It seems rather that the black widow is some twisted and extremely ham-fisted attempt at making a statement about sexual liberation. If Bond is able to travel the world living a life of danger and promiscuity, then we are supposed to believe that a female opposite number can do the same. But do screenwriters really think that such a woman meets a man's expectations for romantic fantasy? The promiscuity itself is troublesome in this regard. Even setting that aside, however, does a man fantasize about meeting a woman so heartless that she could literally conspire to kill him after sharing the most intimate of moments together? I think not. The problem with the black widow idea is simply that Bond's life as a spy necessitates that he be cold, callous and even brutal at times. None of these attributes are even remotely feminine in nature, and they are totally undesirable in a female lead.
Ms. Paluzzi clouds the issue somewhat here simply because she manages to be quite desirably feminine despite being handicapped by the nature of her character. Her moments with together with Bond are surprisingly racy for a film this old, and display just the kind of intimacy totally missing in Bond's other liaisons in the film. The eroticism of these scenes should have featured in Bond's relationship with the lead female character, Domino. Instead after apparently joyous shared moments, the film has Bond and Volpe pulling guns on each other. It's just another typical moment spent with a girl of your dreams. To further insure that any sense of romance is quashed, Bond starts going on about how he just did what he did for queen and country not out of any sense of pleasure. In reminds me of nothing so much as that old "Love Connection" show on TV where a couple would come out to discuss a date gone wrong, and the man would pathetically try to salve his ego over his rejection by claiming that he never found the woman that attractive in the first place. Next Volpe starts mocking the idea that she should be turned to the side of good by making love to Bond. I think this is supposed to be a joking reference to Pussy Galore's helping to defeat Goldfinger's plan in the previous movie. Still, it’s an extremely sophomoric joke if this is indeed the case. After all, Galore decided to turn to the side of good because Goldfinger was an evil S.O.B preparing to kill tens of thousands of people. She didn't change sides because Bond was some superman in the sack, and I don't see why we in the audience would have been thinking that he was. Thus we see the film's only real romantic moments totally subverted; first by Bond's pathetic and ungentlemanly claims that basically he wasn't attracted to Volpe, and subsequently by Volpe's proudly professed lack of feelings of tenderness towards Bond even in the immediate aftermath of shared intimacy. On display in these scenes is a perfect illustration of some of the unpleasant and mercenary attitudes towards sex that became widespread in the sixties. Sex between a man and a woman apparently means absolutely nothing. At best may simply be a briefly pleasurable respite from attempts at killing one another.
Unfortunately after making us put up with a host of characters either boring or unpleasant, the film doesn't even deliver the goods in the action arena. To give the only bit of real credit the film deserves, I will admit that it is bracketed by two great fistfights. In the pre-credits sequence, we see Bond attending the funeral of a SPECTRE assassin. Bond becomes suspicious of the assassin's widow and follows her back to her chateau. The "widow" turns out to be the assassin himself who has faked his death and attended the fake funeral in drag. The vicious fight that breaks out when Bond learns this involves knives and fireplace pokers, and again has Connery in his element. I think the scene is marred rather than helped by Bond's crazy escape from the assassin's chateau by means of a jet pack. After all if he could secrete that thing on the premises, couldn't he have stashed away a gun and spared himself the brawl? In addition after spending the entire running time starved of excitement, we can at least take some sustenance from the savage fight that takes place on the bridge of the Disco Volante at the end. Bond has to cling to a strut and climb aboard the Disco Volante after the rest of Largo's men have been captured by the "good guy" paratroops and Largo himself is trying to escape in the yacht. Once aboard and on the bridge, Bond has to fight not only Largo but several flunkeys as well. For once Celi's brutishness is put to good use here, as he proves to be a very tough man to take in a fight. Bond even needs Domino's help to finish him off.
Other than a couple of savage brawls, what else do we have? Pretty much everything else we have takes place very slowly underwater. To be fair a little bit of underwater action is not a bad thing. Some beautiful marine life is on display in several scenes, and the omnipresent circling sharks bring a sense of sustained danger to many parts of the film. In addition, the underwater fights with spear guns are strong stuff indeed. This isn't the sanitized and bloodless violence of some movie gunfights. When those spears start flying, men end up speared through necks, arms, facemasks and chests and streaming blood into the surrounding ocean. When everything occurs under water, however, even if it's all well done, it is repetitive to the point of tedium. It's hard to say which of the underwater scenes is the best. I'm personally fond of the very first one, although that may be merely because at this point in the film they haven't become mind-numbingly tedious. The first underwater scene is centered on the hijack of the bomb-carrying NATO Vulcan. A full-scale mock-up of the plane was made for the film and the simulated crash landing in the ocean is very convincingly done. While Largo's goons steal the bombs from the underwater plane, Largo himself assassinates the hijacking double. The double had the temerity to ask for more money before going through with the plan, so I think that this is supposed to be his reward for intransigence. Still, knowing SPECTRE, I have to think that his days were numbered anyway. The double is entangled in his safety belt and breathing with a scuba tank. Largo slices through his air hose and the guy ineffectually struggles against the belt before drowning. This scene really scared the heck out of me when I was a kid, and even after all these years it still packs a punch. There's just something far too realistic about the terror displayed by the guy as he fights to escape the restraining belt.
These initial scenes, however, instead of whetting our appetite for more underwater action simply satiate us. The next underwater scene occurs near Largo's yacht. Bond is spying on the yacht from underwater, and Largo sends one of his goons out after him. The two grapple underwater and Bond of course gets the upper hand by either cutting his air hose or pulling his mask off. I'd really have to sit through it again to know for sure which it is and I truly don't care enough to do so. Exactly the same sort of thing happens latter when Bond impersonates one of Largo's men and tags along with them to the bomb's underwater hiding place. When Bond is found out, again we get one of Largo's goons sent after him to grapple and the whole air hose or facemask thing happens again. When Bond's not grappling with frogmen underwater, he's dodging sharks. And while as I've mentioned the ever circling sharks add an omnipresent menace to each scene underwater, they're not all that exciting in and of themselves. When Bond finds the camouflaged Vulcan and swims down to the wreck to find the double of Domino's brother, he is threatened by one or two slow moving sharks. At this point in the film, however, we've already seen about 437 sharks, so these two just aren't scaring anybody anymore.
Astonishingly underwater action even takes place on shore! Some of the most suspenseful moments in the film come when Bond sneaks into Largo's mansion Palmyra looking for one of his Nassau helpers. Bond brutally dispatches a henchman by tripping him and smashing his face into a concrete wall. When an alarm goes off, Bond manages to get Largo's flunkies shooting at each other by firing bullets in several directions. When Bond attempts to elude Largo's men he scrambles up onto the roof of the house only to lose the grip on his gun and see it go skittering down to the pavement. These scenes show the Bond franchise at its most Hitchcockian and are quite well done. Not able to leave well enough alone, however, the filmmakers end this sequence with Bond wrestling with one of Largo's henchmen by the side of a pool. The two go into the pool, and presto - even more underwater grappling. And we're not just subjected to even more underwater struggling; we even have to put up with more shark action! Largo keeps sharks in pools by his home, so even though we're in the guy's backyard we still have to sit through endless shots of slowly circling sharks! There were fewer cartilaginous fishes on display during Shark Week on the Discovery channel than there are in this movie.
The orgy of underwater action reaches its climax with the spear gun battle between Largo's frogmen and their American adversaries. While this is clearly meant to be the picture's signature set piece, it fails to impress for many reasons. First and most obviously, we're all swum out by this point in the picture. By the time this battle starts, you're praying for anything to happen on dry land - a car chase, a gun battle, a music video - anything! A second problem with the battle is that it frankly doesn't really make all that much sense that the good guys would parachute down and engage in an underwater spear gun fight with Largo's men. Largo's men aren't really moving that fast, and they're easy to spot from the air. Why don't the Americans just surround them with surface ships and use helicopters to keep an eye on them. They have to surface eventually and they'd be simple to round up at that point with no loss of life. The underwater scenes here presage the increasingly repetitious final armed struggles between the villain's henchmen and Bond allies that were to subsequently appear again and again in the series. A third and final problem with the underwater finale is due to the fact that the action that does occur is in large part confusing and chaotic. A lot of fighting takes place around a sunken ship just so that Bond can employ the wreck in various ways against Largo's men. It's not easy to understand, however, why Largo's men would be interested in following Bond around the wreck. One would think an underwater battle of this sort would quickly become an everyman for himself free-for-all, with Largo's men only interested in escaping capture. I certainly don't think they be forming small groups to pursue one man through the wreckage of a ship.
The only other action scene of note in the film is a foot chase through Nassau's Junkanoo parade. The Junkanoo is apparently some kind of Mardi Gras-type yearly celebration, and parts of it were restaged for this movie. After Volpe and two of Largo’s goons capture Bond, he is taken at gunpoint to a car bound for Largo's villa. The car is slowed down by the parade, and a drunken reveler sticks a bottle into the car and asks if anyone wants a drink. That bottle must be half filled with gasoline given the explosion that results when Bond spills its contents in the car and holds a lighter to the spill. Fleeing the car, Bond heads off into the parade with Volpe and goons in tow. Frankly I think this chase is something that would work far better in print than it does on the big screen. It's not clear why Bond doesn't simply run into the massive crowd yelling "Help!" and "Police!". There are only three people chasing him with handguns, so it just doesn't seem like it would be all that hard for Bond to escape them. If the chase cut to the climax quickly it might seem more suspenseful, but as it goes on and on you just start to wonder why Bond just doesn't seek out a policeman. If the chase were in printed form it would be possible to explain Bond's behavior in enough detail to make it seem logical, but here he just seems boneheaded in his refusal to find help. The chase does end cleverly at an outdoor club. Volpe catches up to Bond and dances with him while goons surround the club. Bond blocks an attempt on his life by turning Volpe to catch the bullet meant for him. If this had happened sooner it would have had more impact, but as it is it's too little pay-off for the extensive and ultimately unthrilling chase through the Junkanoo.
Although it may only serve to call into question my critiquing of the Bond films, I will still confess that the movie I've just spent time generally maligning is in fact the most successful Bond film made. Several Bond films have grossed more money in nominal terms, but inflation adjustment puts the receipts of Thunderball way out in front. Even the fantastic Goldfinger apparently couldn't thrill moviegoers of the 60's in the way this film did. Now that so much time has gone by, however, it just seems that Thunderball ended up falling between two stools. Despite the involvement of nuclear blackmail in the plot, Fleming's Thunderball actually is fairly small in scope. Fleming prided himself on writing plausible tales of espionage, and in Thunderball he attempted to create a realistic scenario whereby a small number of dedicated men could still manage to pull off a fantastically profitable crime. It's possible that in the novel Bond spends more time actually spying than he does in any other. Much of the book is taken up with the simple surveillance of Largo and his men. When it came time to adapt this to the screen, it was certainly possible in those early days to try to create a realistic tale of intrigue that mimicked the earlier From Russia With Love. Given the intimate scale of Fleming's book, this could have worked fairly well. What the filmmakers decided to do instead, however, was create something grand and spectacular in scope in imitation of Goldfinger. Unfortunately for them, the plot of Thunderball just wasn't as easily adapted as that of Goldfinger's to supporting the weight of this added spectacle. The end result is something far too bloated and ponderous to satisfy as a realistic tale of suspense, and something not nearly exciting enough to satisfy as spectacular escapism.
