Octopussy - Dir. John Glen (The Bond Project # 13)

Octopussy (1983)

Dir: John Glen

Bond Goes to India

By Jay Maronde

                 Director John Glen struck cinematic gold for the Bond Franchise in his second Bond film and it couldn’t have come at a more critical time. The movie easily has the best title of any film in the series as it’s the most blatantly sexualized Bond title that I think the censors could ever even tolerate. This could easily be one of my favorite Bond movies as right from the very beginning it’s action packed, full of great gadgets, and completely full of awesome plot twists.

                Let me start right with the pre-credits sequence as I personally feel that it could be one of the most entertaining of the entire series. Bond is in Cuba, posing as a Cuban General, and trying to blow up some sort of fighter jet. He gets captured, which is about typical for the old-ass Roger Moore Bond, but it doesn’t matter. As Bond is being transported as a prisoner, a lady-friend driving a super cool topless Range Rover towing a horse in a trailer distracts the guards. Bond escapes and takes care of his captors, but alas, mission failed….OR NOT. As more Cuban military personnel pursue him, Bond kisses the girl goodbye, and then hops into the horse trailer disconnecting it from the truck. The viewer is like geez, how confused has Roger Moore become in his old age? This isn’t a western—a horse isn’t going to help this situation. But Q branch and Bond have a plan. As Bond enters the trailer, the horse’s rear end is revealed to be a dummy meant only to conceal the real cargo: a mini jet. In true and perfect James Bond fashion, Bond lowers the retractable wings and accelerates directly towards the enemies. At the very last second he lifts off, scattering the hapless Cubans. Bond then continues to kick ass in the way only James Bond can, and flies back over the base he was supposed to destroy, and in a fantastic piece of cinematography, directly through the hangar that was the original target. Then, trailing the surface to the air missile, he destroys the hangar and all the planes and Cubans inside! MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! Then just to remain extra suave, Bond lands at a gas station and says, “Fill her up.”

                The movie then cuts away to the title sequence, again, as always, designed by Maurice Binder. The titles are some of the most interesting Bond titles yet, accompanied by the song “All Time High” by the classic Rita Coolidge. The song, while not one of my favorites, did spend almost a month in the number one spot on the adult contemporary charts, and looking back at this film it’s easy to realize why James Bond is at a new “all-time high.” Speaking of all time high, Roger Moore is at his all-time oldest. Granted he would be older in the next film A View to A Kill, but he’s definitely looking his age again in this film. In reality, Moore had wanted to stop playing Bond after For Your Eyes Only (that movie was so bad it would have made me want to quit the role too), and the producers conducted a very public search for a new Bond (there is a special feature on the Octopussy Ultimate Edition DVD  titled James Brolin: The Man Who would Be Bond, and features 3 of his screen tests). I would also like to comment right now that despite his agedness, Roger Moore puts in an excellent performance as Bond in this film, which was lucky, because 1983 also saw the release of Kevin McClory’s rival James Bond tale, Never Say Never Again, which was of major concern to the producers as McClory had secured the original James Bond, Sean Connery. This opposing casting in a very similar movie (actually a remake of Thunderball) is the reason the producers eventually decided to stay with Roger Moore as Bond as they felt it would be a big leap for an audience to also have to deal with a new actor playing Bond when Connery was busy in the next screen at the multiplex also playing an aged Bond.

                After the titles the story picks back up with a clown-suited 009 fleeing from some knife-throwing henchmen. He escapes and spends the last moments of his life delivering a spurious Faberge egg to the British Ambassador. It turns out that the non-counterfeit egg, which this fake is designed to replace, is actually on sale at Sotheby’s in London the very next day. Bond and nerdy type fellow attend the auction in an attempt to glean what the now departed 009 was willing to die for. Here we meet Kamel Kahn, the real evil villain of this film. Kahn is a fantastic villain, played exceptionally well by the actor Louis Jourdan—an exiled Afghan prince with a castle in India and a business association with the film’s title character, the world wide smuggler Octopussy. Apparently there is a Russian general, bent on U.S.S.R. domination of the world, who has been stealing and auctioning rare Russian treasures, and replacing them with fakes. Since this fake has been “misplaced,” the general must now retrieve the original at auction to avoid being caught by an ill-timed inventory. Bond seems to smell Kahn’s need to have the egg and proceeds to bid (with the Queen’s Money) on the egg and drive the cost to a half of a million pounds. In another moment of sheer Bond brilliance, Bond swaps the real egg for the fake right in the middle of the crowded auction, thereby allowing himself an out later when M angrily asks him what he would have done if he had won the auction. All of this is sheer writing and directorial genius as the viewer doesn’t even realize the swap has gone down until the later meeting with M and I had to go back to watch for Moore’s very quick hands.

                Following this new lead, Bond travels to India in pursuit of Kahn and the egg. The Bond producers had long wanted to film in India with its extreme scenic beauty, but it took until this film to find a province whose ruler would grant them permission. It’s well worth the wait as all of the scenes are filled with so much natural beauty and cultural history that the location is definitely one of the biggest stars of this film. There’s a wonderful homage to the film Goldfinger where Bond goes to the casino and beats the cheating Kahn using his own loaded dice. Here in India we also meet Bond’s Station I connection, Vijay, played sublimely by India’s first international tennis star Vijay Amritraj. Amritraj is a great actor, and there are numerous running jokes in the film about him being a tennis player, including a scene where he fights off henchman using a tennis racket. It turns out that the actor’s union had a huge problem with this “tennis star”  being a film actor, so Broccoli pulled some strings and got him a cameo on the television series The Love Boat so that he could earn his SAG card and alleviate the problems.

Bond has some troubles—being captured and escaping from Kahn—before finally meeting Octopussy, who, as it turns out, knows quite well of James Bond and is very excited to have him as her guest on her Floating Paradise full of only women. This is the perfect setting for the super suave Roger Moore and his senility actually works to the film’s advantage here as his age makes the beautiful Maud Adams look even more radiantly young and beautiful. Octopussy tells Bond that she is traveling to Germany for a business meeting with her circus, and so he follows.
                While in Germany, Bond realizes that this whole scheme has very little to do with stolen jewels, and everything to do with this crazy conquest-bound Russian general attempting to start WW3 (also in Germany, if the viewer looks very close they might catch a glimmer of a 16-year-old extra playing a soldier at Checkpoint Charlie, who would go on to make notoriously thorough award-winning documentaries: Ken Burns). Soon after there is a great chase scene where Bond must catch up with Octopussy’s circus train and stop the bomb from detonating in the middle of a US air base. Of course he’s successful, but in the process he defuses a bomb right in front of a circus audience and becomes the hero of the day. If it wasn’t enough that Bond saved the world from nuclear annihilation, he then travels back to India with Octopussy and her team and storms Kahn’s palace.  Desmond Llewelyn gets probably his largest amount of screen time from any film in the entire franchise when he appears with Bond in a union jack painted hot air balloon over the palace to provide air support and back up to Bond. Personally, I think these are fantastic scenes as the battle that is raging is wonderful and for Q to sail in to the rescue makes this already awesome movie even better. The scenes with the army of ninja girls are also Bond classics, and after Octopussy is captured, Bond chases the villains to their airplane where he jumps from a horse to the back of the plane at the very last second. Then, again in true super hero fashion, he grounds the plane from the outside by disabling a motor and then forcing the flaps down with his feet. He climbs into the plane, frees Octopussy, and the two dive to safety seconds before the plane plunges off a cliff. Bond is then shown “recovering” with Octopussy as the movie closes.

                This film has everything that we have come to expect in a Bond film. There is fantastically beautiful scenery, a big globetrotting plot that takes Bond all sorts of places and requires him to literally save the entire world, truly bent and evil villains, cadres of beautiful women, and enough action-packed scenes to keep everyone cheering. Also this film is the only one to be named after a Bond girl—and who could deny that Octopussy is truly deserving of that honor?

 

 

For Your Eyes Only - Dir. John Glen (The Bond Project #12)

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Dir: John Glen

Atrocious Bond

by

 Jay Maronde

                This movie is atrocious. To be honest, it’s so fucking bad I had trouble viewing it and writing this review. In fact, I watched the next two movies just to psyche myself up for writing this, and I still almost submitted this review containing only the words, “if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.” Unlike The Man with The Golden Gun, this movie doesn’t just suffer from a bad plot, it suffers from bad vision—atrocious vision, in fact—and it doesn’t even have a midget to make things go down any easier.

                Let’s start at the very beginning, the very first scene. Bond is visiting his deceased wife at a cemetery. It’s sad, it’s stupid, and it’s only there because the writers/producers were unsure if Roger Moore could be enlisted to reprise his role as Bond and as such needed a scene to possibly introduce a new actor as Bond. Moore eventually capitulated, returning geriatric as ever—meaning that this scene has even less significance and seems even more tasteless. While Bond is at the cemetery, the office calls the priest and tells him to inform Bond that they are sending a chopper for him. Bond hops in the chopper, seemingly off to another highly important mission. Unfortunately, an unnamed, uncredited, bald wheelchair-bound cat-stroking villain shocks the pilot to death, and takes remote control of the helicopter with the intent of killing Bond. Clearly Bond isn’t going to die before the credits, so he pulls some pretty sweet maneuvers and eventually dispatches this villain. This “not-Blofeld” is here because the producers had just finished another extensive round of litigation with our old real life villain, Kevin McClory, and Albert R. Broccoli wanted to symbolize his success of finally being rid of both villains. Sadly this might be the most satisfying moment in the movie, as the rest just drags.

                The title credits feature a forgettable 1980’s anthem by Sheena Easton, which is only of note because Easton appears in the title sequence herself and is the first Bond songstress to do so. The song was actually quite successful and every Bond song since has had a tied in music video as a result of the song’s success. But not even a great song can justify the tripe that is the rest of the film.

                After the titles we are transported to an unknown locale in the Mediterranean where a covert British spy ship is quickly sunk by sea mine. The boat carries a transmitter to control the nuclear missiles on the British fleet of Polaris submarines. Clearly the MI6 needs this item back, so they contract fellow Britons the Havelocks to retrieve said item. The Havelocks are murdered on their research vessel right in front of their daughter Melina, played by the very passionate Carole Bouquet (who coincidentally is named Melina, the Greek word for Honey, in an Homage to Dr. No’s classic Bond Beauty Honey Ryder—another tragedy because Bouquet cannot compare to Ursula Andress). Bond is called in to find and interrogate the murder suspect, who is now relaxing at his villa, waiting to be paid by the villains who ordered the hit. Bond witnesses the payoff, and then is captured. Personally, I would have cut this whole divergence from the film as it really adds nothing but to introduce the silent henchman—then again I would have cut about ¾ of this film, or just made a completely different movie. Melina shoots the assassin with a crossbow, in a scene which I feel only adds to the anemic aged-ness of Roger Moore, as James Bond shouldn’t really need random revenge seeking women to help or save him. Bond and Melina escape, but Bond’s Lotus explodes after two low-level henchmen try to break into it (in a scene which was supposed to symbolize that this new Bond film would rely less heavily on gadgets, which was a huge error in the entire direction of the film because Bond’s super gadgets are a big part of the reason to view any Bond film). In truth the scene just makes Bond’s gear look craptacular, so Bond has to escape by driving the girl’s Citron, which again is shameful for the world’s best secret agent to be driving such a tin can.

                Next Bond travels to Italy, to a winter Olympic compound (added to the film to capitalize on the popularity of the recent winter Olympics in Lake Placid). Here in Italy, Bond again meets up with Melina and has a few assorted adventures dealing with henchmen of all sorts and eventually has a social meeting with the film’s real villain, who is at the time posing as an ally to Bond. The villain here is played actually quite wonderfully by the delightful Julian Glover. Glover’s performance is quality Bond Villain evil, but my major complaint is that he does a much better job playing a nefarious double agent villain almost a decade later in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (coincidentally one of his co-stars in that film is former Bond Sean Connery). The whole Italian part of this film also adds nothing to the plot, as even though Bond and MI6 know almost exactly where the nuke transmitter is located (off the coast of Greece) for some reason Bond needs to wander around this ski resort town and have silly-ass adventures. I will note that two of Bond’s escapades in this part of the film contain very commendable women. First off while visiting the ski resort town, Bond dispatches several henchmen, including one whom he throws through the window of a flower shop. While the henchmen and the fight scene aren’t very memorable or classic, the girl in the flower shop is very notable for how she got the role. Robbin Young was actually the winner of Playboy Magazine’s, “Be a Bond Girl Contest,” and besides being rather pretty, launched her modeling career and was featured in a Playboy spread. The other notable woman is The Countess Lisl von Schlaf, played prettily, but again not memorably by the beautiful actress Cassandra Harris. While Harris’ performance isn’t spectacularly wonderful, what she did while off camera is the notable part, as she introduced her current husband (some little known actor fellow, Pierce Brosnan) to Broccoli, and clearly this would have some very long lasting implications for the franchise.

                Eventually Bond decides that actually getting in a mini-sub and recovering the artifact that the whole film revolves around will be a good plan. He goes to Greece, recovers the device, gets roughed up by some henchmen in an underwater battle, loses the device, fights some more henchmen, and eventually recovers and destroys the device. Now this seems like a great end to a Bond film as Bond vanquishes all the villains and does save the day, but again this falls short, as this sequence occupies approximately thirty minutes of the two hour plus film. I’m sorry but had I been alive in 1981 and gone to see this film, where only the last half hour of the movie had anything to do with the plot, I probably would have smashed my face into the wall of the building upset about the other 90 minutes of my life I had sacrificed to this complete drivel.

                I really wanted to write some sort of redeeming conclusion here, but I’ve got nothing for you, dear reader. What I can say, is that if you have a choice of watching any of the Bond films, this one would easily be at the bottom of my list.

                 

The Spy Who Loved Me - Dir. Lewis Gilbert (The Bond Project #10)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Dir: Lewis Gilbert

Back on Track

By Jay Maronde

                Director Lewis Gilbert and Set Designer Ken Adams teamed back up again—and after extensive delays, seemed to re-work their “You Only Live Twice-magic” into the Blockbuster smash The Spy Who Loved Me—and saved the entire James Bond Franchise. This film is widely regarded as Roger Moore’s best Bond work (not necessarily by me), and he is more than adequate in this film in which James Bond’s ability to seduce women literally ends up saving his life while dealing with a Soviet spy. But the real star of this film is Ken Adams’ completely insane sets (which earned him on Oscar nomination) and the brilliance of Gilbert’s special effects team.

                First though, let’s start with the problems, which were once again legal, and once again caused by the Franchise’s early dealings with one Kevin McClory. Litigation is nothing new in Hollywood. People sue other people all the time—in fact, the producers had to buy at least one other litigant’s film treatment to avoid being sued by him—but Kevin McClory takes the all-time cake. From my research it seems as though McClory  sued the James Bond Franchise for almost 50 years. He even went to so far as to produce a non-authorized Bond in the 1980’s. I personally feel that he got his what for during the production of this film.

The Spy Who Loved Me was, and forever will be, the only Bond Film that occurred in the same order as the book from which it drew its title: the 10^th book became the 10^th film. Coincidentally, and partially because of McClory, the film draws almost nothing from the book besides the title and part of the inspiration for its uber-famous henchman: Jaws (played famously by Richard Kiel). TSWLM was supposed to be another film in which Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE were the villains. McClory had already won the rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE in earlier litigation, so when he heard this new film would include Blofeld, he sued again.  The producers had his number this time and almost immediately rewrote the entire script to no longer include any mention of BLofeld or SPECTRE, and instead created a villain extremely similar to Blofeld, except named Stromberg. AHHH HAHAHAHAHAHA Kevin McClory had to learn the expensive way that he didn’t have the exclusive monopoly on fictional villains.  (Sorry, I just like it when Bond’s enemies get theirs).

                Anyways legal problems aside, Gilbert (who had actually been chosen after Steven Spielberg refused, having just completed Jaws and stating that he “wanted to see how these fish movies turn out”) began work on a Bond to really outperform the others, and in this effort went to some amazing extremes.

First off, over 1 million dollars of this production’s budget went directly towards the building of an all-new world’s-largest-ever-soundstage built at Pinewood Studios and named the 007 stage. The first job for this stage was the interior of Stromberg’s super-evil nuclear-submarine-swallowing super tanker The Liparus (the water tank inside the stage actually held more than one million gallons of water to enable this footage). The new stage was so incredibly large that a super-secret consultant was brought in to aid with the lighting: Stanley Kubrick. A Shell corporation executive and golfing buddy of Producer Albert Broccoli had volunteered a real Shell supertanker for the film, but the production team had been forced to pass as the insurance which would have been required would have been outrageously prohibitive.  The outside shots of the supertanker were filmed with an almost 70 foot long model.

Another favorite special effect is Bond’s white Lotus Espirit turbo coupe which converted to a submarine when driven into water. This car is easily one of my favorites throughout the series, because it is super cool, which is exactly why after the film’s release the waiting list for a new Lotus suddenly grew to over three years. Another aquatic effect in this film is Bond’s use of the world’s first jet ski. The “water motorcycle” (as it was at the time called) ridden by Bond during the latter part of the film as he assaults the evil villains lair, literally sprouted an entirely new watersport.

                Gilbert’s two other smashing successes with this film came from two shockingly different angles. First there was Jaws, cast perfectly with the actor Richard Kiel, who in real life is actually over 7 feet tall, and still works with the Bond Franchise doing Bond events and promotions. Jaws was immediately popular with Broccoli—so popular, in fact, that Broccoli had the script rewritten so that Jaws could live and escape and therefore possibly reappear in a later Bond adventure. Screener audiences loved Jaws so much that they gave the film a standing ovation when Jaws escaped. Over the years, Jaws has become one of the most recognizable and beloved Bond villains.

                Gilbert’s other success was even more important: he singlehandedly re-envisioned the entire humor of the franchise. Gone were the slapstick shtick and vaudevillian humor; gone were silly southern sheriffs and stunts corrupted by penny whistles. This new Bond was smooth as ice, and when he does make a joke it’s in an extremely pithy, very British, overly-sexualized-and-yet-not-quite-skeevy manner. My favorite Bond zinger comes at the very end of the film after Bond has escaped from the villain’s destroyed fortress in an escape pod with the lovely Soviet Agent XXX (played well, but not too memorably, by the very pretty Barbara Bach, who is actually currently married to none other than Ringo Starr). The two have escaped, and the girl is about to make good on her oath to kill Bond once the mission is over. Bond then seduces her in a scene which couldn’t have been more perfectly written for Roger Moore. As Moore handles Bond’s favorite business, the escape pod is recovered by the British and when M (again played by the classic Bernard Lee) asks Bond what he’s doing, Bond replies: “Keeping the British end up, sir!”

                This movie was wildly popular and easily made up for the lackluster financial performance of The Man with the Golden Gun. The theme song “Nobody Does it Better” went gold, even though it was the first Bond theme song not to be titled the same as the film, and has been covered by numerous artists over the years since it was first recorded by the ethereal Carly Simon. On a strange note: this film ends with the classic “James Bond will return…in For Your Eyes Only.” Moonraker would actually be the next Bond film to be produced as the management team would seek to capitalize off other space movies such as Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but also to parlay the audience’s love of the character Jaws by having him reappear in the successive film. It is of little concern though, as Gilbert had saved the longest running film franchise.  Were it not for his excellent direction of this film and re- direction of the entire series, one truly wonders if we would all so eagerly be awaiting next month’s Skyfall.

Diamonds are Forever - Dir. Guy Hamilton (The Bond Project #7)

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Dir: Guy Hamilton

Sean Connery is Back... 

By Jay Maronde

                Before the EON productions team had completed shooting On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, George Lazenby had already declared that he would not reprise his role as 007.  Again the producers were left with a tremendous problem of who would be the next Bond. Numerous leading players were considered again (including Adam West), as were new candidates, such as Burt Reynolds. But no one was available or fit the producer’s fancy. The studio folk loved Sean Connery in the role, and orders were given to return him to Bond at any cost. The result was a world record breaking contract that included more than £20 Million (adjusted for inflation to 2012; approximately $32.3 MM in US Dollars), and a promise to produce two movies of his choice. But Connery was back on board.

To be honest, this might be my only real complaint about this movie (which has been panned by numerous critics over the years). Connery looks a little old for the role, and almost seems a little pudgy. He still Bond, he’s still awesome, and in fact he almost seems a little colder and angrier, which clearly fits in with his role as a secret agent, but he’s definitely older and you can tell that the hard living had worn on him (reportedly Connery filmed all night, and gambled and golfed all day during all the shooting in Vegas). Other than this one complaint, I think that this movie is great fun. Everything isn’t perfect, and I can see where some hypercritical folk might denigrate the film, but it is definitely worth viewing if only for the highly amusing campy attitude the film takes with itself (which was part of the reason that some people hated it, and part of reason that it has been vindicated by history—in retrospect it doesn’t seem too campy at all—just 1970s spy movie-ish).

                I should mention now that this film doesn’t really follow the book’s plot. The book portrays a revenge on Bond by Goldfinger’s twin brother. This was going to be the plot of the movie, until one night “Cubby” Broccoli had a dream where his dear friend Howard Hughes was kidnapped and impersonated by evil villains. Cubby felt that this was a fantastic plot (which it is, especially when the villains are building a space laser out of diamonds) and spoke with his friend about making this movie essentially about him. Cast wonderfully to play the Howard Hughes character (named Willard Whyte) is None other than “Jimmy Dean Sausage” Jimmy Dean, cousin of the late, great James Dean, and at the time a casino performer in several of the real Howard Hughes’ facilities. Jimmy Dean was more than a little concerned about imitating his boss and tried to escape the role, but Hughes liked him and insisted he take the part. Hughes loved the idea of the movie being about him, and offered tremendous assistance to the production allowing them to shoot on his properties. For his fee, Hughes only asked for a personal print of the film. This was extremely beneficial to the production as too much money had been spent on Connery and there was already some talk of having to scale back the special effects.

           Another highlight of this film is the casting of the two gorgeous Bond Girls. First off these two have some of the best names in the series: Plenty O’Toole (played by Lana Wood) and Tiffany Case (played by Jill St. John). Jill St. John got her role by auditioning for the role of Plenty, but the director, Guy Hamilton, who also directed Goldfinger, decided that she was better as Tiffany Case, thereby becoming the first American born Bond Girl. Lana Wood was cast as an indirect result of her fame following an appearance in a full Playboy spread. Both women are very beautiful and also perfectly cast. Hamilton even got around Wood’s particularly short stature by having her stand on a milk crate in any scene she was in with Connery. Notable also is that Wood almost drowned while filming the scene in which Bond and Case find her dead from drowning.

The crew jumped into the pool at the last minute and saved her, but in one of those “truth being stranger than fiction moments,” the first thread of a complex web of coincidence, love, casting, and death was spun. To wit: Jill St. John is currently married to Robert Wagner, who was on the boat (with none other than later Bond Villain Christopher Walken) the night that Wood’s famous sister, and Wagner’s earlier wife, Natalie Wood, drowned. Wagner would later appear as the villain “No. 2” in Austin Powers and while it may be hard to resist speculation about the nature of human existence and the ironies that befall not only famous lives, but all properly-examined lives, it would go beyond the scope of this review.  Suffice to say, whatever strange “Hollywood herpes circle” connections might exist between these two women, they are both excellent in their roles.

            The villains are also excellently cast. In this film Bond meets and kills no less than four Blofelds (it’s quite comical that the character of Blofeld had appeared and escaped in four movies previous to this film). Obviously they aren’t all Blofeld—it’s one Blofeld and 3 of his plastic surgery borne body doubles. Cast to play all these Blofelds is Charles Grey, who had previously played a Bond ally in You Only Live Twice, and he is the best of all the Blofelds in the franchise (I should also note that this is the last film that includes any mention of Blofeld, and contains no mention of SPECTRE, as Kevin McClory’s legal battles had been successful and the Fleming estate and EON productions lost all rights to those ideas). It is slightly disconcerting to me that this actor played a Bond ally in an earlier film (and may cause a double-take in the viewer following the franchise chronologically), but his performance will erase any doubts that he is, in fact, a slick super-villain, and no longer a creepy old man.

Also in this movie are two of the most famous henchmen in the entire Bond Franchise: Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wint.  The characters (who were not in the book but created for the movie) are a pair of homosexual hand-holding assassins that snuff people out all over the world, but fail three times to kill Bond. These two provide a real sense of evil for the film. They are just hit men, but their very weird attitude towards their job and towards each other will not only creep you out, but leave you thinking about their performance for a long time to come.

Also back to reprise her Bond role is Shirley Bassey, and “Diamonds Are Forever” is easily one of my favorite Bond title songs ever! The song has been extensively sampled including for Kanye West’s “Diamonds From Sierra Leone.” Bassey’s big voice dominates the tune, which was loathed by the producers for being “too sexual.” In truth, years later Music Director John Barry would admit that he instructed Ms. Bassey to think of “penis” while recording the song. This little tidbit brought new light to the song for me, but still couldn’t change my opinion that it’s a great catchy tune with an incredible singer really belting it out.

                Director Guy Hamilton certainly did not produce another fantastic epic such as Goldfinger, but Diamonds Are Forever is nevertheless a fantastic film that stays very true to the franchise is a ton of fun to watch.  

Never Say Never Again - Dir. Irvin Kershner (The Bond Project #4.5 (Thunderball Remake))

A THUNDERBALL ADDENDUM ::: NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN (1983)

The Super Ugly

by Jay Maronde

So if you read my review of Thunderball, you probably remember that there was a prolonged legal battle stemming from the very beginning of the film. As part of the settlements, one of the original collaborators, Kevin McClory, was awarded the film production rights to the story. In 1983, Mr. McClory, and Warner Brothers film studios put those rights to use and released the extremely controversial Never Say Never Again, in which the entire story of Thunderball is re-imagined. This was not an “Official” James Bond film, as EON productions released Octopussy the very same year, and as such I will not be writing an official review of the film, (at least not with this collection of essays.) I do, however, believe that this film deserves some note and so this ever brief commentary will serve as such.
I like this film. I find it amusing. However, I feel Thunderball is infinitely better. The plot is essentially the same. In what may be the most shocking case of "cash-making-someone-eat-their-words" in Hollywood history, the Bond is the same; a "retired" Sean Connery was coerced into reprising his role. Despite Connery's usually welcome presence, this is one of the huge gaping flaws with the film. Bond looks super-duper old, borderline geriatric, and the fact that he is staying at a health farm during the start of the movie should come as no surprise, because compared to his Bond of almost two decades before, he looks decrepit. The film also has a very beautiful actress playing Domino, a very young Kim Basinger, who I will gladly admit is great in her role, exceedingly beautiful, and actually a better casting decision than the aged Connery. But for my money, she’s no Miss France, Claudine Auger, who is so beautiful I currently have one her press photos from Thunderball as the wall paper for my phone. 
The one part of the film that  I will concede to be better than Thunderball  is the yacht. The yacht is bigger, which was mostly due to that fact that 20 years of yacht building technology had happened, and yachts had gotten bigger. This isn’t even to say I don’t like the original yacht because I do, but the new one is certainly bigger. The yacht also highlights for me where this all went wrong: the movie lacks all the standard class of James Bond. The new yacht is  named the English translation of the old yacht’s name (The Disco Volante became the Flying Saucer). 
This "dumbing-down" underscores the common critical complaint about this particular Bond: almost all of the usual class and suave has been removed from the character by various directing/script decisions. As far as I am concerned, the rest of this movie is tasteless, and in a way almost only worth viewing as a sideshow piece to be compared to the canon of true Bonds.

James Bond 007: Thunderball - Dir. Terence Young

James Bond 007: Thunderball (1965)

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

by Jay Maronde

                Thunderball, the fourth film in the James Bond film franchise, takes the series to some new places and some old places, but the journey could be the longest and most fraught of all the Bond films. In the course of making an omelette you gotta break a few eggs right? Well Thunderball is one hell of an ugly omelette, and there are definitely a few egg shells in there, but is quite delicious nonetheless. So in my usual spirit of optimism I’m going to explain first the ugly, then the bad, and then the good; so the reader leaves with a pleasant taste in their mouth.

                Thunderball was supposed to be the first Bond film. Ian Fleming and a team of collaborators wrote the original screenplay many years before Dr. No in what would be a failed attempt to start the Bond movie franchise. Terrence Young, who returns to direct this Bond (making it his 3^rd) would later comment that it was a lucky twist of fate that Dr. No was made first, as its meager one million dollar budget would have been insufficient for such a large effects-heavy film. One could easily understand if this were the reason for Thunderball’s "delayed" production, but the truth is much much uglier, as most all lawsuits are. That’s right, I said lawsuit. 

                You see dear reader, shortly after an early studio team denied production of the original Thunderball script, Ian Fleming cannibalized the story for a James Bond book, with the same title (As he was apt to do, considering that at the time he was producing not only Bond books, but also short stories, and comic books.). This obviously upset the other collaborators, and they sued. 

                The lawsuits went on for many years, and some of the rights were eventually re-assigned to the other collaborators. Head amongst this cadre of former writing buddies turned litigants was the ultimate Bond villain in history: Kevin McClory. Mr. McClory was very upset that he felt his ideas were stolen (wow an intellectual property battle in the 1960’s--James Bond is ahead of his time even in the world of litigation) and as a result of the lawsuit was not only given a producer credit, but was awarded the rights to the story. He was unhappy with this arrangement: he had always wanted to direct the film, and besides continuing his lawsuits well into the next millennium, he also would go on to direct a Warner Brothers produced version of the film later in the 1980’s that was called Never Say Never Again. Personally I feel that this highlights the ugliness surrounding the film: the disgrace to the series is still incomprehensible to this day.

                Clearly Thunderball was a film that has its issues, but with legal hurdles cleared, production continued, and with the “spy film fever” at its height, no expense was spared, and while spending a lot of money can very often produce great action movies, certain aspects of this film go too far over the top. Certainly for this writer, and many other of critics throughout history, the verdict is clear: this film DRAGS. The opportunity was there, and Young apparently couldn’t stop himself from literally putting everything but the kitchen sink onto the screen. Peter Hunt, the film's editor, stated that he “simply needed more editing time, the original cut was over four and half hours,” to explain the two month delay in releasing the film. Even at the final cut of over two hours the movie still seems to drag. 

                Bond simply exhausts every locale, woman, toy, hotel, and situation. And while the underwater scenes are fantastic, they go on too long, and I’ve also heard rumors that numerous divers died while filming the extensive underwater battles. I’m sorry to say this, but even though the filming and the idea of an underwater movie/ battle was new and interesting at the time, the film leaves you with the feeling that you’ve just watched the newest Jacques Cousteau documentary. 

                Another part of the film that Young goes too far with is the women. Perhaps because of Bond’s extreme success with the misogyny and “pimpin-ness ” during Goldfinger, Bond seems to go even farther during this movie. He has company-funded lady sidekicks both in Paris and Nassau, and he quickly blackmails a nurse at the health farm into a steam room tryst. After he fornicates with Fiona Volpe (played masterfully by the gorgeous Luciana Paluzzi (who auditioned for the role of Domino, but while not cast, so entranced the producers that they changed the script to include her character)) she reveals herself to be a SPECTRE agent, and Bond tells her: “My dear girl, don’t flatter yourself, what I did the evening was for King and Country, you don’t think it gave me any pleasure do you?” Overall I don’t feel the misogyny plays as well or is as endearing for the character, and most of Bond’s liaisons don’t contribute to anything besides the already too long run time.

                One tryst that doesn’t just add to the run time is Bond’s seduction of the evil villain Largo’s girlfriend Domino. Claudine Auger was a former Miss France and a Miss World runner up, and considering all her snorkeling scenes, gorgeous is too weak of a word and more fitting would be “wet dream.”  Here again Bond seduces the villain’s girlfriend, and this time it directly helps him save the world, as she is eventually the one to kill the villain in the final scene aboard the Disco Volante. 

                 The boat is also a huge part of the movie, the final scene in the film is a massive boat chase climaxing with an Oscar-caliber explosion. In fact the movie would win the academy award for effects most notably for the final explosion and destruction of the boat. In real life the explosion was produced using an experimental rocket fuel supplied by the US armed services and when the charges were lit on the day of the filming, many windows along the beachfront in Nassau (30 miles away) were shattered.  Nassau also plays a prominent role in the film as Bond once again returns to the Caribbean, which served as the perfect location for filming the numerous undersea battles including the famous "battle royale" between a US Navy SEALs team and the villain’s henchmen.

                Finally, before I close I would like to comment on one of my other favorite parts of this film: The theme song: “Thunderball,” which is performed to iconic perfection by none other than Tom Jones. This song was actually the third version recorded for the film as the other two (recorded by Shirley Bassey, later re-recorded by Dionne Warwick and hidden until the later 1990’s) were deemed unacceptable by the producers. Johnny Cash also recorded a version of the song, which told the story of the film in its lyrics, but was never used*. The song is EPIC, and during its recording Tom Jones actually passed out from the exertion of belting out the final note. Much like the rest of this film, while utterly fantastic, apparently it’s so fantastic that sometimes it sucks all the oxygen out of the room.

                 Thunderball is not without its moments, but after the high watermarks set by the first three Bond films, all of which may fairly be considered true cinema classics, the viewer cannot help but feel a vague sense of disappointment.  As Sean Connery prepared to pass the role onto the next actor, and as other actors would similarly "pass the torch" a few more times, the franchise always had (and still has) the potential to have new life breathed into it.    

NOTES (by JK)

*While Tom Jones turns in a stunning performance of this song that is clearly most appropriate for the opening titles, the Johnny Cash song demands to be heard.  Not only does it feature the excellent songwriting and original singing style that made Cash the legend he became, but it also sounds like "Ring of Fire" and could be considered a sort of "companion piece" to that classic.