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Amazon.co.uk Review
James Bond's fourth adventure takes him to the Bahamas, where a NATO warplane with a nuclear payload has disappeared into the sea. Bond (Sean Connery) travels from a health spa (where he tangles with a mechanised masseuse run amuck) to the casinos of Nassau and soon picks up the trail of SPECTRE's number-two man, Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), and his beautiful mistress, Domino (Claudine Auger), whom Bond soon seduces to his side. Equipped with more gadgets than ever, courtesy of the resourceful Q (Desmond Llewellyn), agent 007 escapes an ambush with a personal-size jet pack and takes to the water as he searches for an underwater plane, battles Largo's pet sharks, and finally leads the battle against Largo's scuba-equipped henchmen in a spectacular underwater climax. This thrilling Bond entry became Connery's most successful outing in the series and was remade in 1983 as Never Say Never Again, with Connery returning to the role after a 12-year hiatus. Tom Jones belts out the bold theme song to another classic Maurice Binder title sequence. --Sean Axmaker, Amazon.com--
On the DVD: The absence of any new contribution from Sean Connery leaves a hole in the behind-the-scenes selection, but the "making of" documentary still has plenty to talk about, including why Bond wore a crash helmet for the jet-pack flight, and what was for the time the utterly unique situation of having to stage an underwater battle (one of the Bond series' enduring legacies is its pioneering stunt work). A supplemental documentary describes the "Thunderball Phenomenon" that swept the world on the release of what was the most successful Bond movie to date (back in those innocent days when blanket retail saturation of movie merchandise was still a novelty). Two audio commentaries flesh out even more of the background: the first is another edited selection of various interviews, the second has editor Peter Hunt in conversation with the host John Quark of the Ian Fleming Foundation, as well as more sundry interview snippets, notably from screenwriter John Hopkins. Any contribution from series composer John Barry is also sadly absent. --Mark Walker
Product Description
Sean Connery, Claudine Auger, Adolfo Celi, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell Director: Terence Young
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Blu-ray|Amazon Verified Purchase
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.
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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Blu-ray
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.
For all the Fan of James Bond:
On amazon.fr, you can find 2 other titles of the collection on Blu-ray which have the advantage to be all zone
* "The Man with the Golden Gun" (L'Homme au Pistolet d'Or)
* "License to Kill" (Permis de Tuer)
Both of them come in DTS Master Audio 5.1 English soundtrack with English subtitle of course.
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.
For all the Fan of James Bond:
On amazon.fr, you can find 2 other titles of the collection on Blu-ray which have the advantage to be all zone
* "The Man with the Golden Gun" (L'Homme au Pistolet d'Or)
* "License to Kill" (Permis de Tuer)
Both of them come in DTS Master Audio 5.1 English soundtrack with English subtitle of course.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Blu-ray
Although not quite as jaw dropping as the first two bond movies on Blu-Ray, Thunderball still looks terrific. The colours are vivid, depth perception into the image is strong, and there's plenty of fine detail. I know this film quite well, but still noticed many details I hadn't before, one striking example in particular being the legibility of the warning signs on the Vulcan bomber; the bombs have "handle like eggs" written on them which I'd never noticed. It may well be possible to make out these details on the DVD, but the fact is they jump out at you on Blu-Ray.
The sound is also superb, although limited to DTS only, it is very punchy compared to the DVD soundtrack with excellent clarity, I was immediately struck by subtle cues in Tom Jones' voice as he sang the (rather weak) title song, and again, its the details spring out at you. Effects steering is also a noticable improvement over the DVD release.
The extras appear to be the same as the Ultimate Edition, which is pretty exhaustive in any case, and much of it is now in HD which is great.
The sound is also superb, although limited to DTS only, it is very punchy compared to the DVD soundtrack with excellent clarity, I was immediately struck by subtle cues in Tom Jones' voice as he sang the (rather weak) title song, and again, its the details spring out at you. Effects steering is also a noticable improvement over the DVD release.
The extras appear to be the same as the Ultimate Edition, which is pretty exhaustive in any case, and much of it is now in HD which is great.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Sir, I'd respectfully request that you change my assignment to Nassau.
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. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Spike Owen
sean connery the man who brought to life james bond.
The 1960s was a hot bed{not the percy thrower type}of creative activity.we had roger moor in the saint.we had danger man.the three doctor who acters I love. Read more
Published 6 months ago by these are the new house rules
Only REAL Bond fans will enjoy
It may be remastered but the quality is not great. If you are a REAL Bond fan then you will probably appreciate it and enjoy it. As a film I found it slow with a dull storyline.
Published 6 months ago by Janet24
One of my favourites
The health farm and the lovely Mollie Peters as the physiotherapist, sets the comfortable southern English scene for the activities to come. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Ian Hunter
thunderball blu ray
this film isnt as good as some other bonds.the underwater scenes do tend to drag.but its still a good film.and they dont make them like this anymore. Read more
Published 14 months ago by stargatesg1
Best Connery Bond
Thunderball has to be the best Bond film Sean Connery made, most will point to Goldfinger as being the best 60's Bond movie but in my opinion Thunderball is a more well rounded and... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Mr. Russell C. Witheyman
highly entertaining
Bond is back with a licence to kill and thrill. a spy film to suit all ages. no need to know anything before buying this movie,
turn the lights out, sit back and enjoy.
turn the lights out, sit back and enjoy.
Published 17 months ago by Nicholas A. Gambardella
Thunderball, 2007 Bond Remastered Edition - Thunderous rollercoaster...
This is the fourth outing for Sean Connery as superspy James Bond. After the success of Goldfinger, the producers had money to throw at the next film and it shows. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Victor
he's got THUNDERBALL'S!!!!!!!
my favourite bond movie of all time, connery at his most cool. great underwater action. great music by john barry. top notch.
Published 21 months ago by mr mark mooney
Thunderball DVD
Classic Bond what else can I say. Not the best of the Connery films but still good to watch, especially the Vulcan! Read more
Published 21 months ago by Mr. Mark N. Pearson
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