Thunderball (1965)

Director:

Terence Young

Writers:

Richard Maibaum (screenplay) and
John Hopkins (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

29 December 1965 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Adventure | Thriller

Tagline:

Look Out! Here Comes The Biggest Bond Of All! (British quad poster)

Plot:

James Bond heads to The Bahamas to recover two nuclear warheads stolen by SPECTRE agent Emilio Largo in an international extortion scheme.

Plot Keywords:

British | Bahamas | Extortion | Island | North Atlantic

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 3 wins & 3 nominations

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Sean Connery	...	James Bond
Claudine Auger	...	Domino Derval
Adolfo Celi	...	Emilio Largo
Luciana Paluzzi	...	Fiona Volpe
Rik Van Nutter	...	Felix Leiter
Guy Doleman	...	Count Lippe
Molly Peters	...	Patricia Fearing
Martine Beswick	...	Paula Caplan
Bernard Lee	...	M
Desmond Llewelyn	...	Q
Lois Maxwell	...	Miss Moneypenny
Roland Culver	...	Foreign Secretary
Earl Cameron	...	Pinder
Paul Stassino	...	Palazzi
Rose Alba	...	Madame Boitier

Also Known As:

Ian Fleming's Thunderball (UK) (complete title)
James Bond, Secret Agent (International: English title) (original script title)
Longitude 78 West (UK) (original script title)

Runtime:

130 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Canada:PG (Manitoba/Ontario) | Canada:13+ (Quebec) | Canada:A (Nova Scotia) | Iceland:12 | Singapore:PG | Germany:12 (DVD rating) | West Germany:16 (nf) | South Korea:15 | Brazil:12 | Portugal:M/12 | Canada:PG (video rating) | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Netherlands:12 | Norway:15 (re-rating) | Norway:16 (original rating) | Peru:14 | Sweden:15 | UK:PG (video rating) (1987) | USA:Approved (original rating) | USA:GP (re-rating) (1970) | USA:PG (re-rating) (1994) | UK:A (original rating) (passed with cuts)

Filming Locations:

Anet, Eure-et-Loir, France

Company:

Eon Productions

Trivia:

Martine Beswick had played one of the gypsy girls in From Russia with Love (1963), and Paula Caplan in this movie. She is well-tanned in the film, but before shooting she was pale white due to years of stage work in England. So before filming in Nassau she was required to spend some two weeks sunning herself to get the proper tan of a native girl.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Bond is escaping from the Island after he finds the girl is dead he comes out of a basement/cellar and opens the hatch door. He runs off without shutting it but when in the next cut his followers reach the door, it is now shut.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Madame LaPorte: The coffin - it has your initials: J.B.
Bond: At the moment, rather him than me.
Madame LaPorte: At least you've been saved the effort of removing him. Colonel Bouvar passed away in his sleep, so they tell me.
Bond: Mm...
Madame LaPorte: You sound disappointed you did not kill him yourself.
Bond: I am. Jacques Bouvar murdered two of my colleagues.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in All About 'Thunderbirds' (2008) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Thunderball

Sending In Their Best

After saving Fort Knox from an atomic explosion in Goldfinger, James Bond has not one, but two atomic bombs to deal with in Thunderball. Sean Connery also gets to spend a good deal of time in the beautiful waters of the Bahamas where arch SPECTRE villain Adolfo Celi has made off with one of them to use on Miami Beach.

If this sounds familiar the story was done again and by Sean Connery as James Bond in his last Bond film, Never Say Never Again. Only there the story was shifted to the Mediterranean. Who knows if current James Bond, Daniel Craig will do this one yet again.

Celi who is the current number 2 in SPECTRE the infamous third echelon has hijacked a British Vulcan bomber and stolen the two nukes on board. He's issued a demand for payment from the NATO countries to be paid in uncut diamonds or he'll use them on a couple of American or British targets with large populations. Of course the governments of both are ready to shell out to save casualties in the potential millions, but not without sending in their best to stop SPECTRE which means 007.

Two women became Bond girls in Thunderball, good girl Claudine Auger and bad girl Luciana Paluzzi. Paluzzi is one of Celi's assassins as good at her job as Connery is in his. The sexual tension between the two of them crackles even as she's trying to kill him.

Thunderball has some great underwater cinematography as the forces of SPECTRE battle the US Coast Guard and James Bond on the ocean floor as SPECTRE tries to take the bomb into Miami Beach harbor. In fact all the Bond films are noted for that, even the disastrous first Casino Royale.

You couldn't deny that James Bond was keeping Sean Connery's name in front of the movie going public. He wanted so badly to make a reputation for himself in non-Bond roles. Eventually he did, but it was a struggle.

Made comfortable by the money and box office drawing power that films like Thunderball were giving him.