BlogalongaBond / Thunderball: Fourth Film Founders, Fortunately Features Fabulous Fiona

It had to happen. After three films of increasing amazitude, even the invincible James Bond can't dodge the Curse of the Fourth Film. Thunderball, though not without its merits, is a flabby, overlong mess, sinking under the weight of its own desperation to be bigger and better than its predecessors. When even the casting of a Ringo Starr lookalike as 006 can't keep your film afloat, what hope is there?

The biggest problem with Thunderball is that 20.8% of it (yeah, I checked) is spent under the sea, turning nearly half an hour of running time into plodding time. But it's not the sheer volume of water that sinks this film: everyone who did such great work on Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger suddenly finds themselves out of their depth, ultimately drowning under the rising tide of pointless gadgets, needlessly complex plots and unsatisfiable hype.

Richard Maibaum's script over-complicates Ian Fleming's simple, effective story, allowing Bond to stumble fortuitously across bad guys and repeatedly get rescued from certain death by other characters. Director Terence Young lets the film get away from him, dumping a four-and-a-half hour cut into editor Peter Hunt's lap, leading him to employ two more editors to get the film to a manageable length before its already-delayed release date. Even the usually-faultless John Barry submits a score which, while effective in the quieter scenes, goes apeshit during the set-pieces, shrieking hysterically and repetitively to make up for all the tedious sploshing about and silly high-speed fights.

Fortunately it's not a total disaster. Thunderball has one spectacular redeeming feature, which itself has several redeeming features. Ladies and gentlemen, please rise for the series' Best Bond Girl Ever: Fiona Volpe.

Is it any coincidence that "volpe" is Italian for "vixen"? NO IT IS NOT. Foxy bitch Fiona, played by 28-year-old Italian Luciana Paluzzi, is devious, deadly and incredibly sexy, and puts every other simpering Bond girl into the shadow cast by her ample bosom.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I do have a thing for redheads. So from the very first frame we see of Fiona, the deal is pretty much sealed, and in glorious Technicolor:

Less than a minute later she's displaying further attributes that I admire in a lady:

But enough about her well-manicured fingernails. In her first scene she watches coldly as her colleagues murder a man she's just been making sexytime with, then orders them about like they're imbeciles. She even calls rubbish villain Count Lippe by his surname only, contemptuously disregarding his honorific title. She may take orders from SPECTRE, but what she absolutely will not take is any shit from the likes of you.

As if it wasn't obvious from her introduction that she takes pleasure in using her sexuality for her own ends (not unlike a certain British agent), the next time we see her she's literally dealing death from between her legs, blowing up Lippe's car with missiles fired from her motorbike. Obviously being a safety-conscious henchbitch, this necessitates her being dressed entirely in leather, and let's be honest: Brando never looked this good in The Wild One.

Thunderball could have ended there and certain sections of the audience would have left happy, but Fiona's best scenes are still to come. Splashing about in Bond's bath (the best underwater scene in the film by far), she lures him into her vagina to pass the time while waiting for her hired hands to arrive and beat him up. After literally softening him up for them, the last thing she wants to do is mess her hair up any more.

And then she really hits Bond where it hurts, launching a withering verbal attack on his vanity and ego, taunting him with his failure to turn her to the side of right and virtue. It's the film's sharpest dialogue, although it appears she's got all her intel on 007 from watching the first three films. Meta.

Thankfully Fiona sticks to her guns and spends her final mortal moments trying to turn Bond permanently stiff. Her death scene, while reminiscent of Goldfinger's pre-title sequence, is one of Thunderball's rare technical successes, with the score and editing building to a violent climax: just the way she would have wanted it.

It's wide!

Thunderball was the first Bond film to be shot in lovely 2.35:1, and by God Maurice Binder was going to make the most of it in his title sequence by placing the Panavision and Technicolor credits as far apart as possible.

The poster campaign

While Thunderball may be the least great of the four Bond films so far, its posters were by far the best. Shit-hot designers Frank McCarthy and Robert McGinnis were hired to create lifelike but fantastical interpretations of the film's signature moments, and between them they came up with some of the most iconic poster art in cinema history. Take that, "photograph of Daniel Craig's shadow".

Mister Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

It comes to something when one of the best things about a film wasn't actually in it. John Barry and Leslie Bricusse wrote this sublime theme song, beautifully sung by Dionne Warwick and tragically jettisoned in favour of Tom Jones thunderbawling Don Black's inane lyrics which, by order of United Artists, had to include the film's title. Good job this wasn't On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

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BlogalongaBond / From Russia With Love: The Fight That LITERALLY CHANGED THE WORLD

With Dr. No out of the way and James Bond firmly installed in the cinemagoing public's hearts, From Russia With Love wastes no time plunging us into a labyrinthine Cold War spy thriller. We haven't quite got Bond right yet - playing the crashingly loud theme over a scene of 007 bimbling about in his hotel room is a rare misstep - but this is still both a glorious snapshot of 1960s cinema and a film years ahead of its time.

Before Goldfinger's needle found the series' groove there was still time for subtlety in Bond, and From Russia With Love contains some of the most understated moments in the franchise. Rosa Klebb's terrifying seduction / recruitment of Tatiana Romanova, Red Grant's silent guardianship over 007 for most of the film, Bond's tender squeeze of Kerim Bey's arm when he finds his dead body - all these and more point to writing and direction that rarely felt so confident again until Timothy Dalton took over 24 years later.

Triumphantly, all the sneaking about in the shadows and mumbling secret codes that could have made From Russia With Love a catatonic yawnfest are not just beautifully shot, edited and scored, but are contrasted perfectly with the action scenes - the revolutionary nature of which often goes overlooked. Take the brutal, bone-crunching fight on the Orient Express between Bond and Grant, who, incidentally, is so hard that when he whacks Bond in the chops he momentarily becomes Kenneth Williams.

The fight begins when Bond's standard issue "ordinary black leather case" explodes in Grant's face and ends exactly two bruising, breathless minutes later with 007 calmly straightening his grenadine silk tie and buttoning his Anthony Sinclair suit jacket. Between these two now-iconic elements of Bond lore, several people go to work on one of the greatest fight scenes in Bond - and cinema - history.

As soon as the fight begins, director Terence Young makes three genius decisions. First, he refuses to have music over the fight. He wants us to hear every punch, kick and grunt. Second, he has Grant inadvertently shoot out the light in the carriage, bathing everything in a disorientating, nightmarish moonlight blue. And third, Grant's flailing arm smashes the window, allowing the roar of the train wheels to flood in and heighten the mood even further.

Almost every sound you hear in those two minutes was created by dubbing editor Norman Wanstall and his team of noise wizards. Many of the crashes, bashes and smashes are exaggerated to the point where it sounds like someone shoving a drum kit down a stairwell, yet it never sounds unrealistic. Just very, very painful.

Young rehearsed for two days with Connery, Shaw and stuntmen Jackie Cooper and Peter Perkins to choreograph the scene to within an inch of its life. By the time it came to cut it together, Connery and Shaw had the ballet down so well that only one shot of the stunt doubles was required, and it's almost impossible to tell which shot this is.

Which brings us to editor Peter Hunt. With footage from three cameras at his disposal, Hunt cut the fight like nobody had ever cut a fight scene before. Many of his edits make no sense in isolation or are deliberate jump cuts - watch when Bond shields his face with his arms - but in context they transform the fight from a bog-standard punch-up to a gladiatorial rumble. There are quick cuts to heighten the tension, but Hunt isn't afraid to linger on the odd shot to show how titanic this struggle is. And, most importantly, it's completely possible for the audience to keep up with who's kicking whose ass during the bout - something crucially forgotten during the editing of Quantum Of Solace's fights.

It's no exaggeration to suggest that between them Terence Young and Peter Hunt changed the action genre forever with From Russia With Love. Every on-screen scrap since owes something to those amazing 120 seconds in a tiny set at Pinewood Studios.

It's a proper spy thriller

Made during a particularly chilly part of the Cold War, From Russia With Love is shot through with paranoia, double-crosses and shadow-cloaked deaths at every turn. Everyone's being followed by everyone else, people use ridiculously convoluted recognition codes, and there are hidden cameras and microphones everywhere. It's arguably the only Bond film that could be labelled a "spy thriller" before the series became a genre in itself, making it not just a great Bond film, but a great film full stop.

John Barry's score

"Tania Meets Klebb"


If you've ever skulked about in a Turkish mosque, watched two improbably beautiful gypsy women scratch each other to shreds or stolen a Macguffin from the Russian consulate in Istanbul, this is the music you would have been humming to yourself along the way. Perfect in almost every way.

Red Grant

Where the book's Grant becomes a raving psychopath with every full moon, Shaw sensibly goes for the cool, calculating, brick shithouse approach, setting the template for Bond henchpersons for the next five decades. The way he puts his gloves on before he kills anyone makes me do a little poo.

And finally: All hail the first barely-disguised reference to Little James:

BOND

You're one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen.

TATIANA

Thank you, but... I think my mouth is too big.

BOND

No, it's the right size... for me, that is.

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