Thunderball - Review

I'd say (and in fact have said in the past 3 reviews) that the first three Bond films stand as some of the best in the series. Each ones giving a slightly different flavour of Bond (underground lairs, low key sleuthing, and finally a megalomaniac industrialist [they come up a lot in the world of Bond]). So it is somewhat disappointing that upon reaching Thunderball, it feels like the series is simply treading water (pun very much intended in this waterlogged sequel).

Perversely, the long fought saga over the rights to the characters in Thunderball is vastly more interesting that the conflict at the heart of the movie. You see, before the Bond films were even a thing, Fleming had his eye on translating Bond from page to silver screen. In doing so, he collaborated with writers Jack Whittingham and Kevin McClory. McClory devised many of the key elements of the plot of Thunderball, including that the vast majority of the action would take place underwater.

However, most crucially, this screenplay marked the first appearance of SPECTRE and there was a vast dispute between McClory and Fleming as to who exactly came up with the diabolic group. Although the pair could not agree on who created SPECTRE, it mattered not, with McClory's own film career stalling and the Thunderball script failing to generate any buzz, Fleming devised other plans. He instead, went on to write Thunderball, the novel, without the aid of Whittingham or McClory.

Naturally, upon publication Whittingham and McClory also did not go quietly into the night, and petitioned the High Court for an injunction to stop publication. Unfortunately for them, the High Court allowed the book to be published but allowed the pair to continue to pursue their plagiarism case. And so McClory did, and on 19 November 1963, the case of McClory v Fleming began.

The case lasted 3 weeks, and took a considerable toll on Fleming, as he suffered a heart attack during the course of it (I'm sure his binge drinking and chain smoking had nothing to do with it). Fleming ended up putting an offer to McClory to settle out of court, which they did. The result? McClory gained the literary and film rights for the screenplay, whilst Fleming kept the rights to the novel.

The ramifications of this dispute rippled down through the years, with further films avoiding naming SPECTRE, culminating in a Bond-off in 1983, with Roger Moore's Bond film Octopussy going head to head with McClory taking a stab at starting a rival Bond film franchise, wrangling a disgruntled Connery back into the role (he had long since fallen out with the producers of the EON series that I am covering, and relished the opportunity to give them a backhander). Unsurprisingly, Connery's return in Never Say Never Again (McClory's own version of the Thunderball plot) did not beat Octopussy at the box office, and so this rogue series fell at the first hurdle.

However, the legal drama did not end there, for McClory retained the rights to Thunderball and SPECTRE until his death in 2006 and a further agreement was being reached, releasing SPECTRE back into the EON series, and thus providing us with 2015's Spectre and the return of one scarred, bald, cat stroking evil genius.

So that's 6 paragraphs about the legal strife around the film but what about the film itself? Well, for want of a better word it is damp. For such a truncated legal battle, you'd really expect the plot to be worth all the hassle (the value in the screenplay was clearly the creation of SPECTRE rather than any plot). And yet, we have an evil plot that I am sure was hackneyed even upon Thunderball's release in 1965: SPECTRE hijack two NATO planes carrying atomic bombs and then hold the world to ransom for £100 million in diamonds (yep, that's where Dr Evil got his grand plan from - and the film even features a villain with a pool full of sharks (sans "laser beams attached to their frikkin heads"). 

As in Goldfinger, Bond just lucks upon the threads of this plot, but whereas that happenstance is archived with deft writing, putting Bond in the cross-hairs of Goldfinger almost immediately, here it is quite the opposite. Bond just happens to be at the health resort where one of the NATO pilots also happens to be. SPECTRE shortly sends in a goon who has had plastic surgery and acting lessons to pass off as the NATO pilot once he has been "taken care of."


This part of the film seems to take an age to advance, and primarily involves Bond slinking up and down the halls of the resort in very short shorts, sexually harassing the staff, and then nearly dying in one of the most preposterous death traps in the series (Bond lets himself be tied down to some sort of therapeutic rack, only to have SPECTRE bozo stroll in and flick the switch up to 11). 

Once SPECTRE does get their hands on the NATO missiles, they sink the plane in the Bahamas, retrieve the missiles and the world domination threat goes out. The various security services can't be sure exactly where the NATO plane went down, but naturally Bond lucks out when he is the agent chosen to go to just the right spot.

And what does he do when he gets there? Not a lot. He has little to no impact on the actual plot until the end, simply flying about in a helicopter, looking down at the sea, saying "nope can't see it" before, with 30 minutes left of the 130 minute film, he suddenly lucks out and spies the downed plane. 

Thus ensues one of several aquatic battle scenes in the film, with Bond and allies versus various kitted out SPECTRE frogmen. Like everything else in the film, these scenes whilst fantastically shot for the time (the film went on to win the visual effects Oscar at the awards show in 1966), just drag and drag. And with our various heroes and villains kitted out in nondescript scuba gear, it is impossible to get a real grasp on who is who, other than good guys in orange, bad guys in black. 

So what is good about Thunderball? Well, isolated bits here and there. We do get the first classic SPECTRE boardroom meeting, replete with a quivering lackey thinking that he is for the chop, only to have his neighbour combust upon failing his master, the still cloaked in shadow Blofeld. We also get out first true Bond femme fatale in Fiona Volpe, an assassin of SPECTRE, who wonderfully calls Bond out on his past behaviour with women, most notably Pussy Galore:

"But of course, I forgot your ego, Mr. Bond. James Bond, the one where he has to make love to a woman, and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing. She repents, and turns to the side of right and virtue... but not this one!"

Tom Jones gives his best shot at the theme song, wrestling with nonsensical lyrics trying to crowbar the word Thunderball into a tune (it is just the name of the operation to recover the NATO missiles). Rumour has it that the long note held by Jones in the theme song actually caused him to pass out during recording.

But here you see the pattern, it is the backstage goings on that give Thunderball any significant merit all these years later. This a sub-par, submerged, damp squib of a sequel, but fear not there is a lot better (and a lot worse) to come.