Thunderball [Blu-ray] [1965]

After Lowry Digital set the bar sky-high with its fantastic restoration work on Dr. No and From Russia with Love, I was ever so slightly disappointed by this spruced up version of Thunderball.

Despite Lowry's best efforts, it seems there were some elements of the original negative that had deteriorated beyond repair. In particular, there are occasional gate-hairs that remain on screen for several seconds at a time, and some underwater shots contain a vertical line in the picture. Since these parts of the film involve movement and a quickly changing frame, the blemishes must have been too problematic to remove digitally.

However, these very minor defects are few and far between and do not detract from the overall presentation, which is easily on a par with other Bond releases on Blu-ray. I look forward to more of them.

Thunderball is directed by Terence Young and adapted to screenplay by Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins from a story by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham and Ian Fleming. It stars Sean Connery, Adolfo Celi, Claudine Auger, Rick Van Nutter and Martine Beswick. Music is scored by John Barry and cinematography by Ted Moore.

The fourth outing for James Bond (Connery) sees 007 assigned to the Bahamas to try and thwart SPECTRE's number 2 operative, Emilio Largo (Celi). Largo has hijacked two atomic bombs from NATO and sets about extorting huge ransoms of money. If his terms are not met he will blow up major cities.

It was meant to be the first James Bond film, but Thunderball became part of a long drawn out legal battle between Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham and Ian Fleming. Eventually an out of court settlement was reached and Thunderball rolled into theatres in 1965. After the colossal success of Goldfinger, and Bond as a pop culture phenomenon, producers Albert Broccoli & Harry Saltzman knew that they had to try and up the ante to keep Bond on top. They were also acutely aware that many imitators were springing up on film and TV. These facts led Bond to go epic, with the producers going for a more is more approach, however, Thunderball is a considerable step down from Goldfinger.

As with many other Bond movies, Thunderball polarises opinions amongst the fans. Some are happy to laud the pure entertainment value on offer, the reliance on hardware and gadgets viewed as an aid to the Bond persona and not a hindrance to his humanistic worth. Technically the film is often exceptional, be it on or under the water, director Young really crafts some Bondian quality. The exotic Bahamas locale is beautifully realised by Ted Moore, Barry's blunderbuss score is one of his best for a Bond movie and Connery has charisma in abundance. The girls, too, are delightful, particularly Auger who positively sizzles with sexuality. Bond's by play with M, Q and Felix Leiter (Nutter very enjoyable and more charismatic than Cec Linder in Goldfinger) is well scripted and performed. While for those who adore the gadgets and daring stunts? Thunderball excels with its assortment of trick vehicles, under water weaponry and aids and radioactive pills! Without doubt the near $6 million budget is all up there on the screen.

Yet for other fans, and this is the category I fall into, it's a film of too many flaws to be considered one of the greats. Whilst it's undeniable that when it hits the high points it excites royally (the extended underwater battle is eye popping brilliance), but there's too much languid passages in the overlong running time. Young himself lamented that he couldn't get the pace right on account of the plot structure. The other major problem for me is Celi as Largo. Visually he's striking, with his white hair and eye patch, he well looks villainous, but physically he's wrong and someone you can't buy into as a man able to not only take on Bond, but to overcome him as well! While the finale lacks a grandness to reward those having sat for over 2 hours with the film. But what do I know? Film made a stunning $141 million at the box office! And the fanaticism that began with Goldfinger reached epic proportions here.

The more is more approach worked for the makers, and it ensured that for the time being Bond was going to stay in this epic, gadget, effects strewn groove. Connery wasn't happy, he had voiced his concerns about Bond becoming characterless, while he hated the mania surrounding the films and his role within them. He would return for the next instalment, You Only Live Twice, question was, would it be his last performance as Bond? 7/10

Blu-ray all zone

Ratio of the feature film:
2.35:1

Languages of the feature film:
DTS Master Audio 5.1: English
DTS 5.1: French, German
Dolby 5.1: Latin Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese
Dolby 2.0: 2 commentaries

Subtitles for all the videos:
German, French, Latin Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and English for the hearing impaired
Subtitle available only for the feature film:
Swedish

Verdict:
An outstanding picture and sound quality, the Lowry Company in charge of this restoration did an excellent job for the fourth film of the collection, this film couldn't have been watched in better condition than it is today. If you watch carefully, you should notice that the car after the DB5 does not have a door on the driver side for the stuntman to be ready to jump out of the vehicle. The mockups of the plane landing on water and the boat exploding at the end looks more obvious.

Soundtracks:
The English soundtrack is by far the most surrounding and accurate obviously, the German and French made in the 60s are also of good quality.
The Latin Spanish, the original dubbing is quite by far the most amazing using the new remastered soundtrack: they have removed the front centre channel which contains most of the English dialogue and replaced it by the original Spanish dubbing which contains some background noise meaning the special sound effect and music sometimes differ compare to the English soundtrack. The dialogues also taking up all the channels make the depiction of the Spanish soundtrack sounds mono during some part of the film, not all fortunately!

Un-expecting dubbing:
As usual in the early Bond films, the Bond Girls were dubbed. Nikki Van der Zyl, the one who dubbed Ursula Andress in Dr. No dubs the French actress Claudine Auger (Miss France 1958). The reason seemed to be that she could not speak loud enough despite a good command of English.
And also, Adolfo Celi playing Emilio Largo is dubbed by Robert Rietty.

NB: quite surprisingly, Blofeld whose face cannot be seen is played by Anthony Dawson and voiced by Joseph Wiseman (both featuring in Dr. No).
In the French dubbing, it is the German actor Gert Fröbe (playing Goldfinger in the previous film as well as speaking fluently French) who dubs Blofeld but not in the German dubbing.

Overall, we are looking at an excellent film technically speaking as always from Lowry. You shall not be disappointed.