Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine James Bond 007

I started watching the 007 films again from the beginning. The 1st, DR. NO, while flawed, has grown on me slowly, and probably most resembles an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. Sean Connery is his youngest, thinnest, and most cold-blooded-- both with the women and the baddies.

"Let me put something on."
"Oh don't go to any trouble on my account."
(he suddenly grabs the girl and kisses her)
"Please!"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I was invited up here to enjoy the view."

Later, after he has the woman hauled away by the cops (presumably for conspiracy to commit murder, as 3 Jamaicans in a hearse tried to run him off the road she gave him directions to drive on), someone shows up and pumps 6 bullets into what looks like an occupied bed. Bond gets the drop on him. When the guy goes for his gun and tries to shoot Bond again, we see something that may have inspired Clint Eastwood...

"That's a Smith & Wesson. And you've had your six."

BLAM!




BLAM!


(Yeah-- he shot the guy a 2nd time, IN THE BACK, after he was lying on the floor!)


I keep having these fantasies about how these films COULD have or should have been made, in some better, alternate, reality. DR. NO's big "mystery" is the villain is using a nuclear-powered radar beam to "topple" missiles, screwing up their guidance systems. In the book, this is revealed in a single paragraph 75% of the way into the book. Bond's boss tells him 10 minutes into the film, destroying any hope for a "mystery".

The story began as an aborted film project that was then turned into a novel. The villain was created so author Ian Fleming's cousin, Christopher Lee, could play an evil oriental. (The FU MANCHU movies were quite a few years later!) Lee would have been more menacing than Joesph Wiseman-- but perhaps not as "cool" and "slick" as the producers tended to be over the years, sadly almost always going for "style" over "substance".

I'm probably one of the only men on Earth who DOESN'T think Ursula Andress as "Honey Rider" is THE sexisest Bond girl of all time. She doesn't even rank in my top 10-- maybe not even 20. The character Honeychile Rider in the book was possibly my favorite Bond girl, but Andress just isn't cutting it with me! Plus, it turns out they had to dub her entire performace with another actress' voice. Shame!!! Given the early 60's, I'm not really sure who could have been right for it, but then, producers Broccoli & Saltzman had a running habit of casting unknown or just foreign actors, to make things more "exotic" while also keeping the BUDGETS down.

Finally, the climax is a let-down. Bond escapes a cell, fighting thru an electric grill, a tube filled with boiling water & steam, only to find the reactor room, set something to overload and fight it out with the villain. But Dr. No in the book was MUCH sicker than the guy in the film. He liked doing warped psychological studies on human victims, and the whole thing of Bond crawling thru the pipe was PLANNED to study his reactions to different stresses, and to see how long he could survive before-- invevitably-- buying the farm. At the end of tube, Bond falls into a fenced-in lagoon, and finds himself fighting for his life against a GIANT OCTOPUS!!! (When Fleming wrote the story in '56, he'd just seen 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA, which came out 2 years earlier.) Broccoli & Saltzman didn't have the budget for that. So-- no octopus.

Then of course there's the score... Monty Norman was contracted, but his music was deemed unsatisfactory. Orchestra leader John Barry was asked to write additional material, but because of the existing contract, he had to do it UNCREDITED, on the promise that if the film was a success, he'd have a steady job on the series.

Half of the score is by Barry-- NONE of his work is on the soundtrack LP, which is all Norman-- and half of that was cut from the film. "Soundtrack album" is really a misnomer in that case!

But "The James Bond Theme" has LONG been in dispute, mostly by fans, sometimes by Barry. It's been said by some that Barry wrote a "new arrangement" for Norman's theme. I don't think that's quite right. Something else else I've never seen mentioned is a track on the LP titled "The James Bond Theme" (on side 2) which is a completely different melody-- but has a suspiciously-similar musical arrangement to the famous tune. I suspect this different melody was what Norman wrote-- and Barry kept the arrangement but wrote a new melody to go with it.

But Norman continues to get credit-- and presumably, the royalties. Pretty good deal for something he may not have even done, eh? But then, the music biz is littered with songs credited to producers because some songwriters were just "hired hands".

I need to go back and rewatch Bond. At least, Sean Connery Bond. Don't really care for Moore.

I would love to see the Fleming Bond novels refilmed in the proper sequence and done as period pieces. In other words, no lame gadgets, stale one liners or other bits of junk that have attached themselves to the film series over the years.

The books were actually much better than the movies. The closest one to the book was From Russia With Love, and it was also the best, in my opinion.

Still, you have to admit that it took two factors to make the character stay alive this long, the Sean factor, and the fact that it was almost non-existant when JFK said Fleming was his favorite spy author.

Does anyone remember the "playhouse" with the americanized "Jimmy Bond"?

Never saw it but I've heard of it. Isn't there a remake of Casino Royale afoot? I can't say for sure but I thought somebody wanted to redo it without the comedy elements in the 1st theatrical version. I hate to say, because I realize it's the first of the novels but CR is pretty tedious reading in parts. Unless you really like to read about people playing cards.

It was much more of an intellectual suspense type of thing. I think, and this is just my opinion, he culled the slower elements and amped it up in the other books. And the movies took the parts that worked best with movie-goers and amped them up. Thus, you have two variations working. Both worked well for the different mediums. But the movie formulas had grown a little worn by the time the best Brosnan was made, and that was goldeneye. Not so many farfetched "hideouts", and the action was very intense, especially the last fight with Bean.

I was in the unusual sitiation of having started reading the novels at least 3 years before seeing my first 007 film. As a result, a number of them were colored for me regarding how accurate translations they were-- or not. I didn't have trouble with GOLDFINGER, the 1st run by ABC, because I hadn't read that far yet.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE was a relatively simple revenge plot, with the KGB plotting to kill Bond for his interfering in various money-raising schemes in 3 previous books (CASINO ROYALE, LIVE AND LET DIE and DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER). Fleming took greate pains to craft something that could be more respected in literary circles, after many labeled his first 4 books the work of a "hack". It was also Bond's version of Sherlock Holmes' "The Final Problem", as Fleming was tired of Bond and decided to KILL HIM OFF as a surprise ending. Luckily, like Conan Doyle (and even ERB on TARZAN), he changed his mind after-the-fact. Good thing, the next book, DR. NO, has long been one of my favorites!

As far back as '59, it was felt for the sake of international sales on a potential film series, that Russians should NOT be recurring villains, hence the creation by Fleming & McClory of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and its leader, Ernst Stavros Blofeld. The initial project fell apart, but Fleming published their film treatment as a novel, THUNDERBALL-- and was subsequently sued by McClory! While things were up in the air (the suit dragged on at least 2 years) the deal with Broccoli & Saltzman came together, and with THUNDERBALL unavailable, they picked the PREVIOUS film proposal, DR. NO, to start with-- tacking on S.P.E.C.T.R.E. in the process.

I believe the lawsuit was STILL unresolved when FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE was made, and the film is TWICE as complex as its book source, mainly for adding S.P.E.C.T.R.E. as the real villains. I had trouble following it originally-- I had the novel in my mind (and I don't LIKE changes!); on TV, commercial breaks got in the way; and on reruns, ABC cut the film mercilessly, whole scenes yanked out to fit more commercials in. BLASPHEMY!

But around 1978 I got the chance to see FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and GOLDFINGER on a double-feature at the Woodcrest Cinema (I think it's a pizza parlor now). Uncut! Uninterrupted! On a BIG SCREEN as God and Cubby Broccoli intended! Something else else happened that night-- my appreciation for the film rose IMMENSELY, it surpassed GOLDFINGER in my eyes (which until then had been my favorite 007 film), and it became my favorite Sean Connery film. It still is!

Robert Shaw almost reminds me of HALLOWEEN's Michael Myers in this. He appears throughout the movie, but until he joins Bond on the train in the guise of "Nash", he NEVER utters a word! He just keeps turning up, KILLING people, and disappearing.

"The first one won't kill you. Nor the second. Not even the third. Not until you crawl over hear and KISS my FOOT!" (As Bond asked-- "What lunatic asylym did they find YOU in?")

So... sweeping changes from the book aside, I've come to feel this film is SO good-- SO close to perfect-- I would only change ONE thing if it were physically possible.

You have to see this uncut & uninterrupted to notice that almost every scene "fades" into the next. The film story "flows" so naturally, it overcomes its own complexity. But there was always ONE abrupt "cut", when Bond meets Tania on the ferry boat. Decades later, I found out WHY. There's an entire scene missing! En route to the ferry, Bond & Kerim Bey are once again followed by the Bulgars (working for the Russians). In an alley, the lead car jams its breaks, the Bulgar crashes into it. A 3rd car crashes into that, jamming it in. A 4th car drives up, Bond & Kerim transfer to it. But before leaving, Kerim leans over the Bulgar driver, taps his cigar ash on the guy's suit, smiles, and says, "That, my friend-- is life!"

Reportedly this was considered Pedro Armendariz' best scene in the film as Kerim Bey. But at the initial preview, one of the children of a production team member commented, "Hey! That driver was KILLED earlier at the mosque!" Yep-- I'm guessing the film was shot out-of-sequence, and NOBODY noticed this discepency until that moment. As the guy at the mosque was referred to as having been KILLED more than once later in the film, I guess they felt it couldn't be brushed off. They yanked the scene-- and the "flow" of the film has always been disturbed slightly ever since.

Damn shame-- as, on the soundtrack album, one of my favorite tracks is a light, upbeat piece titled "The Golden Horn". It took multiple viewings of the film before I realized it's NOT in the movie. I'll bet it was written for that car-crash scene-- which is why it's missing, too.

What's funny about this is, I'd SWEAR I see Krelenco (the man who "kills for pleasure") at the train station when Bond, Kerim Bey & Tania flee Instanbul. He's standing right next to Benz, the Russian security man, who runs to catch the train. But Krelenco was shot and killed by Kerim Bey SEVERAL scenes earlier. Maybe the train scene was ALSO shot out-of-sequence?

John Barry (with Lionel Bart, who wrote the title song) did, in my opnion, one of the BEST scores in the entire series, and really set the tone and style for almost everything to follow. There's a lot of variety in it-- unlike some later scores built around one song-- to the point where the original soundtrack LP may be the best in the series, as it works on its own even without the movie. Possibly my single favorite opening title music is this one-- "James Bond Is Back--From Russia With Love"-- which actually combines 3 different pieces, a new one by Barry, a dynamic, instrumental version of the Bart song, and the "James Bond Theme" (credited to Norman, natch). Maybe more 007 films should have INSTRUMENTAL title sequences?

Your pop culture knowledge never fails to impress, prof. This is a lot of stuff I never knew.

I've got to admit, as much as I like the movies, I preferred the books as well. Remakes that stuck close to those books could work. The only problem I see is the fact that the Bond of the books is in some ways less likable than the movie versions, because the Book bond is more honest about and aware of his manipulation of people.

"Your pop culture knowledge never fails to impress, prof. This is a lot of stuff I never knew."

Thanks!

"I've got to admit, as much as I like the movies, I preferred the books as well. Remakes that stuck close to those books could work."

I've felt that way for AGES!

"The only problem I see is the fact that the Bond of the books is in some ways less likable than the movie versions, because the Book bond is more honest about and aware of his manipulation of people."

See the 2 TIMOTHY DALTON films-- especially THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS. My God-- THAT's the Ian Fleming version of James Bond!!! His 1st film became the biggest-seller of the series at the time, and both were HUGE worldwide-- but NOT in America, where people don't know how to read. It's similar to what happened with MIKE HAMMER-- the Stacy Keach version is possibly the LEAST like the books, yet, JUST like Sean Connery, his characterization was specifically tailored for general audiences. It's funny-- back in '86, my brother told me, "Until now, George Lazenby was my favorite Bond." (Amazing what even a 1st-time actor can do if the SCRIPT is good enough!)

By the way-- LIVE AND LET DIE is the only Bond book I read TWICE. The film MUST be appreciated strictly on its own terms, and if you do that, it's funny as hell. But as a "Bond" film, it's an abomination-- yet not nearly as much as DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN and MOONRAKER. It's the only one of the "comedy Bonds" that's actually FUNNY. Meanwhile, so little of the book was utizlized, that the unused bits later turned up in both FOR YOUR EYES ONLY (my favorite Roger Moore film, a real tribute to Ian Fleming!) and LICENSE TO KILL ("He disagreed with something that ate him.").

"Does anyone remember the "playhouse" with the americanized "Jimmy Bond"?"

Regardless of what some have said... EXCELLENT!!! Sure, they made Bond an American, and Leiter a Brit, but PETER LORRE as Le Chiffre was one of the BEST Bond villains EVER!!! What a shame CASINO ROYALE wasn't the start of a big-budget FILM series instead of a live TV broadcast. Also, they LEFT OUT the 2nd half of the book-- which, frankly, I found a HUGE improvement! The climax of the story takes place halfway in-- after that, Bond spends the entire 2nd half of the novel recovering and having a love affair with Vesper... until he discovers she was a double agent all along.

On the phone: "Yes, I said WAS. The bitch is DEAD now!"

Clearly this was Fleming's tribute to Mickey Spillane's climax of the 1st Mike Hammer, I THE JURY.

BLAM!!! "How COULD you?" "It was EASY."

Thanks for the commentaries and book-to-film contrasts, Prof. I've been a fan of the films for 30 years, but only managed to read two of the novels. (Well, one novel, "From Russia With Love," and the set of short stories that was "For Your Eyes Only.")

From all I can see, Dalton -- who was not intended as Bond originally, but was pulled in for the unavailable Brosnan -- has the cruel edge and cynicism that Fleming's creation possessed, and which no one else (except "You've had your six" Connery in "Dr. No") has quite managed to convey. It's a shame that he only did two films.

Connery and, slightly behind him, Dalton are my own favorite Bonds. Moore and, again slightly behind him, Lazenby are the second echelon. Brosnan is competent and charming, but never had quite the same spark.

Here's my own ranking of the films I've seen, favorite first, with their Bonds, and some of what's memorable about them:

1 "Dr. No" (Connery) ... the perfect cool, Ursula Andress
2 "Goldfinger" (Connery) ... the silly laser, the car, the hat, Honor Blackman
3 "The Living Daylights" (Dalton) ... the insurgents, the cello, Maryam d'Abo
4 "From Russia With Love" (Connery) ... Venice, Karim Bey, Lotte Lenya
5 "The Spy Who Loved Me" (Moore) ... Barbara Bach, that sea-castle, the flag parachute
6 "For Your Eyes Only" (Moore) ... the kid, the aerie, the professional (spy) courtesy
7 "You Only Live Twice" (Connery) ... the pearl divers, Bond dying in the first scene
8 "Tomorrow Never Dies" (Brosnan) ... Michelle Yeoh, villain hoisted on his own missile
9 "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (Lazenby) ... Diana Rigg -- 'nuff said
10 "Diamonds Are Forever" (Connery) ... Jill St. John, the two gay assassins
11 "Thunderball" (Connery)* ... underwater scenes
11 "Never Say Never Again" (Connery)* ... he still looked great!
12 "Live and Let Die" (Moore) ... the bayou chase
13 "License to Kill" (Dalton) ... that underground lair, Bond's revenge motive
14 "Octopussy" (Moore) ... the reverse harem, the circus
15 "GoldenEye" (Brosnan) ... the Russian settings, Judi Dench as "M"
16 "Die Another Day" (Brosnan) ... Halle Berry
17 "The World Is Not Enough" (Brosnan) ... y'know, I can't remember, but still liked it

* Essentially the same film, but each has its charms

I never saw -- yet, or in full -- "The Man With the Golden Gun" (the villain was strange), "Moonraker" (it shouldn't have gone into orbit), or "A View to a Kill" (too preposterous a geology plot, even for Bond films).

I thought the parody "Casino Royale" was a hoot, but it's really not on the same planet as those above. Did I hear correctly that the Broccoli family is considering a straight-faced remake? I hope it happens. (I wonder how that book escaped their grasp originally.)

Here are the best Bond original songs or music:

1 "Nobody Does It Better," Carly Simon
2 "Live and Let Die," Paul McCartney & Wings
3 "Goldfinger," Shirley Bassey
4 "You Only Live Twice," Nancy Sinatra
5 Combined score to "Dr. No"
6 "Diamonds Are Forever," Shirley Bassey
7 "We Have All the Time in the World," Louis Armstrong
8 "Tomorrow Never Dies" ... no, not Sheryl Crow, but k.d. lang under the END credits
9 John Barry score to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"
10 "Thunderball," Tom Jones
11 "All Time High," Rita Coolidge
12 "From Russia With Love," Matt Monro
13 "For Your Eyes Only," Sheena Easton

And all-time kudos to Bernard Lee as "M," Desmond Llewelyn as "Q," Lois Maxwell as Moneypenny, and the Monty Norman (or whoever's-it-was) plucked-string theme, all of whom and which are irreplaceable. In this 007 fan's mind, anyway. (Okay, Judi Dench comes close. Very close.)

You know Tom Jones almost passed out recording Thunderbal. He insisted that he couldn't possibly get the note towards the end and hold it for as long as they wanted him to but they kept at him until he did it. The sustained note almost caused him to faint from lack of oxygen though, and he said he barely managed to finish recording the song. As with most really good artists though the final version is all from one take despite that, which is quite cool.

Plus I like the fact that Shirley is the only artists to do multiple Bond theme songs.

The funny thing is, Bevis, i think he would make an Excellent Bond villian. The one i am thinking of is the Laird of Murcaldy, in Gardner's first Bond book, License Renewed. Granted, the villians discriptionin the book is vastly different than Jones, but now he has the seasoned, matured look to him that could play well.

I have to say, though, that so far, i am preferring Benson's Bond to Gardners. Though he did good stuff in his first bond novels, his later books seemed a little to "desperate" for a breakout star villian. I think Benson manages to capture the more realistic, human side, but at the same time there is an element of the surreal in some of his stuff, like the brain lession thing. But he mixes in the brutal side of Bond well.

Just some thoughts, anyway.

Talk about comparisons...

THUNDERBALL / NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN

Try this...

GOLDFINGER / OCTOPUSSY

I'm not kidding!!! (Think about it...)

Growing up in the 60's, I watched THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E., GET SMART!, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, and later on, reruns of THE WILD WILD WEST. But because my parents didn't want to expose their kids to "SEX and VIOLENCE!!!", I never saw a Bond film-- until ABC ran GOLDFINGER for the first time in 1973. WOW!!! What a COOL movie!!! Sean Connery is SO cool. The villains! The gadgets! That CAR!!! Etc.

Eventually, I read the book. Like many others, the film made DRASTIC changes. Like, Jill Masterson-- my favorite of all the Connery Bond girls (despite her being onscreen maybe 5 whole minutes-- i just loved her personality) is killed while Bond is there, which really hurts. In the book, he doesn't find out about it until Tilly tells him-- weeks or months (?) later.

2/3rds of the book passes before Bond becomes a prisoner, and is almost killed by a ROTATING BUZZ-SAW (YIPES!!!). But Bond is a prisoner for more than half-- almost 2/3rds of the film.

Pussy Galore (the ULTIMATE Fleming Bond-girl-name!) has much more screen-time in the film and becomes more of a full partner with Goldfinger, instead of being one of many gang leaders. She's also specified as a lesbian in the book, and apparently gets involved for some time with Tilly, who doesn't get killed until the raid on Fort Knox at the book's climax.

The gangsters are NOT butchered wholesale in the book-- and Mr. Solo gets bumped off by falling down a flight of steps! This scene turned up in A VIEW TO A KILL. An unused sequence involving a "Picto-graph" machine later appeared instead in the film FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. The climax, where Oddjob is SUCKED OUT of the decompressing airplane, while Goldfinger GOES DOWN when the plane crashes, was used somewhat more authentically in OCTOPUSSY.

The BIGGEST change to the film, however, was the result of fans & critics complaining BITTERLY about the "implausability" of the main plot. For GOLDFINGER stands apart from most 007 stories, as unlike most (which are "espionage" tales of some sort), this one's a HEIST film-- of the grandest order!!! The film-makers actually took the specific criticisms about how IMPOSSIBLE it would be to actually ROB FORT KNOX-- and included it in the script when Bond tells Goldfinger, "It won't work, you know." And the villain smiles and says...

"Who mentioned anything about removing it?"

At the time GOLDFINGER was being made, THUNDERBALL was still in the hands of Kevin McClory. Apparently, by the time the 3rd film hit theatres, he'd seen the hand-writing on the wall and made a deal with Broccoli & Saltzman, because in the end credits it says, "James Bond will return in 'Thunderball'". But this may not have happened until late in the game. By having Goldfinger plan to use an atomic bomb to contaminate America's gold supply-- and mention the threat that if the authorities try searching for it, it may go off elsewhere-- like Miami, etc.-- the film is actually stealing the "McGuffin" of THUNDERBALL, and to some degree undercuts the main point of what eventually became the following film! (Like the 1940's Sherlock Holmes series, you wind up needing a score card to remember what bits of which movie came from which book.)

Like THE MALTESE FALCON, GOLDFINGER is a case of near-PERFECT casting. Gert Frobe as Auric Goldfinger; Harold Sakata as Oddjob; Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore; Shirley Eaton as Jill Masterson; Burt Kwouk as the Red Chinese spy. Despite my normal loyalty to books over film versions, this film is SO DAMN GOOD, in a different universe I'd leave it just as it is-- with one minor exception. Cec Linder is terrible as Felix Leiter.

My favorite Felix has long been David Hedison (imagine my joy & shock when he became, bizarrely, the only actor to play the part twice). But Jack Lord was damn good in DR. NO. What the HELL kept them from getting Jack Lord to come back as Felix? WHY have they consistently cast a different actor EVERY time Felix appears? I'm a bit up in the air about this-- Hedison or Lord? But since Lord played it first, I guess I'll stick with him. Next time you watch the film, just picture "Steve McGarrett" in place of the guy they're trying to pass off as Bond's "CIA counterpart".

I can't close without a comment about Shirley Bassey's SCARY vocals on that title song. Without this, we may have seen more instrumental 007 themes. It's not my favorite Bond theme by a mile, but it suits the picture. Anybody ever hear writer Anthony Newley's "demo" version? It turned up on the "25th Anniversary" CD set, and ever since I heard his wimpy, limp-wristed vocals, I've jokingly called it the "GAY" version of "Goldfinger". Oh yeah-- HE'S THE MMMMAN-- who LLLLOVES ONLY GOLLLLD (not women). And here, we all thought Pussy Galore was supposed to be the gay character in the story?

My favorite villianess was the redhead from thunderball. She attacked the role with a genuine lust for it. The remake, Never say never again, had barbara carrera. And while i lusted for her then, the redhead ( I used to know her name and now can't recall it...ah, the ravages of age) really stood out.

Luciana Paluzzi as Fiona Volpe. (Watching it today!)

She was also in TO TRAP A SPY, the "expanded" color theatrical re-edit of "The Vulcan Affair", the pilot for THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. (Strange but true-- they added several subplots for the movie version that were never seen on the TV show.) And, she was also in THE GREEN SLIME, a really cool, fun US-Japanese sci-fi space horror film written by Bill Finger.

"The one i am thinking of is the Laird of Murcaldy, in Gardner's first Bond book, License Renewed."

My best friend Jim and I used to read each new Gardner Bond book as they came out. The game we liked to play was trying to "cast" actors as the various characters, all the while wishing they'd do movie versions, while Broccoli & co. repeated stressed NO interest whatsoever in doing so.

For example, we BOTH thought of Veronica Hamel as the "bad" girl in NOBODY LIVES FOREVER (the 5th book), and Caroline Munro as the "good" girl in the same story. I also thought of Joe Don Baker as the CIA guy in ICEBREAKER (my favorite Gardner novel by a mile)-- what a surprise when he actually turned up in virtually the same role in GOLDENEYE!

The first 2 times I saw THUNDERBALL, I found it hard to follow, and later, I couldn’t recall what it was about. This never happened with the other 007 films. In my reading, I caught up with the book—and enjoyed it IMMENSELY. One of Ian Fleming’s best works, I felt. Nice, tight, fast-moving plot… which all left me wondering what the problem was. Then I saw the film on ABC a 3rd time. THAT’s when I knew.

“Too many cooks.”

THUNDERBALL started out in 1959 as a film project intended to bring James Bond to the screen for the 1st time. It was thought for worldwide ticket sales that an international crime syndicate—S.P.E.C.T.R.E.—would make better recurring villains than the Russians. The plot went through at least 12 scripts before the project fell apart. As he’d done twice before, Ian Fleming turned the story into a novel (and was promptly sued by Kevin McClory over it!). Can a book be called a “novelization” if it’s based on a film that was never made?

Now, I don’t know exactly what was in all those script drafts, but Fleming must have pruned that tree right to the bone. The book is SO simple, direct, and easy to follow—yet loaded with all the typical Fleming personal touches, details, and fully-fleshed out characters. The eventual film, however—based more likely on the earlier scripts than the novel—is a bloated, overstuff MESS that seems too proud of all the girls, gadgets, dangers and plot twists. Add commercial breaks on ABC and severe CUTS in reruns, it’s no wonder I couldn’t follow the plot of this on TV!

As an example, the book has 2 girls—Pat, the therapist, and Domino, the sister of the dead pilot & mistress of Emilio Largo, SPECTRE #2 and mastermind of the criminal plot. The film has 4 girls! The additions were Paula, Bond’s “assistant” in Nassau, and Fiona Volpe, SPECTRE #6, the red-headed Italian assassin! (WHOO-HOO!) In one of the ’59 scripts, she was named “Fatima Blush”; the name would be reused in the ’83 remake. In addition, it’s Domino’s brother who sells out to SPECTRE—whereas the film has him murdered and impersonated by a double, who double-crosses his bosses and is ALSO murdered. The whole “double / plastic surgery / man in bandages” thing just strikes me as the film-makers trying too damn hard to say, “LOOK how clever we all are!”

Then you have about a 45-minute sequence in the middle of the film which TOTALLY deviates from the main plot of the story. It starts when Bond is picked up by Fiona, continues when Paula is kidnapped by SPECTRE goons, Bond goes to rescue her but finds she’s already dead, has a cat-and-mouse game at Largo’s house Palmyra, then runs into Fiona in his hotel room—eventually being captured by SPECTRE goons, escaping, and running all over the “Mardi Gras” parade before she’s accidentally killed by her own men. (OOPS!) It’s no surprise that the very next scene has James & Felix in a helicopter searching for the missing plane & bombs—EVERYTHING with Fiona could be CUT, and the film would move much better, and have a lot more room for character development.

It’s a sad thing that THUNDERBALL has so many good actors in it—and NONE of them have enough screen time to do anything! This even includes Bond. Unlike the 3 previous films, Sean Connery appears to be just walking thru this. He shows no emotions, no anger, no sadness, no humor. The whole thing’s just become a job to him! Considering his talent as an actor, this is the real crime of the picture—not somebody stealing 2 atomic bombs!

So, while some have complained about the “slow” underwater sequences, to me, it’s everything else that’s the problem. In some alternate reality, I can envision what this film COULD have or SHOULD have been like.

Let’s start with the beginning. It took me decades to realize the pre-credit sequence is really ripped off from the CLIMAX of the book, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE! Bond goes after somebody who’s wearing a disguise for the murder of someone he knew. In the fight, he breaks their neck with a fireplace poker—then escapes INTO THE SKY! (No wonder I sometimes think you need a “score card” to tell what came from where.)

10 minutes into the film, as soon as we see Bond at Shrublands, the whole film cranks to a halt. So much goes on there, intercut with other scenes, it’s rediculous. I suggest scrapping the entire pre-credit sequence, and replace it with a very tightly-edited health club sequence. Bond’s there for therapy, sees Count Lippe, who recognizes Bond as an enemy of SPECTRE and decides to bump him off. Meanwhile, Fiona has seduced the pilot to work for them—thereby increasing her sexual prowess in the story—and warns Lippe not to do anything that might draw attention to their current plans. He tries to kill Bond anyway, fails, Fiona contacts her boss and gets orders. We then see Bond on the road, Lippe about to ambush him—several shots fired, cars swerving everywhere (it should be much more exciting than it was in the actual film), when out of nowhere, this black motorcycle appears, BLOWS Lippe to HELL, then disappears while Bond is driven off the road and barely escapes with his life. Some ways off, we find the cycle rider is Fiona—as she dumps the cycle in the lake, the “underwater” opening credits with Tom Jones’ song fades in.

The SPECTRE board room scene is one of the best in the film. The only flaw is, we never get to see Blofeld, who was described in great detail in the book. I picture going direct from this to the Vulcan bomber hijack, without any intercutting with other scenes (see above). Bond could have seen Domino’s brother talking with Lippe—he needn’t have seen him “dead” as stated in the film as an excuse to go to Nassau.

Connery once said Felix Leiter was “forgettable”—sure, when he’s played by a different actor in every film, and never given any decent screen time. The lengthy sequence where Felix skulks around, a bad redo from DR. NO, was probably left over from the earlier scripts. What we needed was a scene of Bond arriving at the airport, met by his best buddy Felix, who’d say, “When I heard you were coming here I KNEW this was where the action would be, so I had myself assigned here too.” Then when Bond meets Domino the first time, it could be Felix in the boat with him. I’d dump Paula entirely. She adds nothing to the story, and exists only as an excuse for Bond to traipse around Largo’s house at night and fall into his shark pool. There’s enough sharks around the Vulcan bomber, and later during the climactic battle—we didn’t need that pool sequence!

My one problem in restructuring this story is Fiona. I’m tempted to just follow the book, except Luciana Palluzi is SO good, I’d want to keep her—especially if by dumping some extraneous things she could have more screen-time, too. I’d say she should run into Bond in his hotel room and seduce him, WITHOUT his having gone to save Paula. Later, I’d have her shot at the Kiss Kiss club—but only injured, and wanting Bond dead even more. Later, on the beach, I’d have her sneak up on Bond & Domino—and get it with the spear gun. It was a much more memorable death, after all, and would have allowed her to stick around until just before the start of the climax.

The rest of my changes all involve the cast. Last year, I began thinking a lot about this, and got double-visions as I watched it, as I pictured who SHOULD have played certain parts. To begin with, Ernst Stavros Blofeld has NEVER been cast properly. I’ve read that CURT JURGENS would have been perfect. In fact, he almost did play the part—until a McClory lawsuit over THE SPY WHO LOVED ME had Broccoli thumb his nose by changing the villain’s name to Stromberg. When I saw Jurgens as a German general in THE LONGEST DAY, I knew he should have played the part. For consistency, I’d have had him appear in EVERY film—FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, THUNDERBALL, ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE and YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE. (I’m getting ahead of myself here, I you get the idea.)

Next, while suave & “cool”, Adolpho Celi is too old and “stiff” to play the virile, action-oriented Emilio Largo. Plus, they had to dub his voice (with the same actor who also dubbed a policeman in DR. NO, Tanaka in YOLT, and the guy pretending to be Blofeld in FOR YOUR EYES ONLY). My choice? TELLY SAVALAS. It’s been said Savalas was all wrong for Blofeld in OHMSS. I agree—but the script he had and his performance was SO good, he’s become my #1 favorite Bond movie villain of all time. Even so, I’d be willing to recast him here for a better fit, and even more screen-time!

Then there’s Domino. RAQUEL WELCH, an expert swimmer and one of the icons of the 60’s, was actually cast for the part. I’ve even seen a photo of her in the bikini Claudine Auger wears. But her studio took advantage of the 007 publicity and then yanked her out to appear in something else. Shades of what happened to Pierce Brosnan in 1986!!! Auger’s pretty, but not “tough” enough. Just imagine HOW MUCH MORE memorable Welch would have been, and how much better the film would have been with her in it!

For Felix, obviously, JACK LORD. While Rik Van Nutter has been described as the “closest” in appearance to the character in the book, he doesn’t get a chance in the film to show if he’s got any personality or not. Even without any, Lord has more presence.

Finally, the nuclear physicist, Kuntz. George Pravda was wonderful as the chief of police in the DOCTOR WHO story, “The Deadly Assassin”. Here, he seems too wimpy and in some scenes reminds me of Peter Lorre. My choice? DONALD PLEASENCE! Sure, I loved him in YOLT, but he was even more wrong for Blofeld than Savalas. Had HE played Kuntz, it would have been a perfect fit—as seen in the character he played in FANTASTIC VOYAGE (opposite Welch, as it happens).

Try picturing all this in your mind next time you watch the movie. It could have been SOOOOO good!!!

Lastly… you know how from THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS to TOMORROW NEVER DIES 4 films in a row had 2 songs—a “villain” song and a “romantic” song? THUNDERBALL almost had a song by the name of “Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” over the opening credits. The lyrics were SO silly, however, and sanity prevailed, so at the last minute the song Tom Jones sang was hastily written & recorded (and Jones reportedly DID faint after he finished it in one take—heehee). I think any DVD releases of this movie should have a video tacked onto the end of what could have been an end credit song—if end credits were as long back then as they are today. It was recorded by Shirley Bassey—too shrill for me—and Dione Warwick—which I’ve come to love. I’d go with that one. Ah, what could have been…

Thunderball - I've always thought of Claudine Augur as the sexiest of the "primary" Bond girls.

(Primary - Bond's main love interest in the film
Secondary - Bond dalliance within the film with a girl who serves the main adventure plot in some capacity but is not the primary
Tertiary - Dalliance with a girl who is nothing more than sexy window dressing)

I'm one of those rare folks who has seen all of Bond andlikes Moore the best. (Which is not to say I think all the Moore films are gems - Moonraker was an abomination, for example) I like the lighter touches amid the heavy intrigue, and no one did those better than Roger.

MOONRAKER has long been at the bottom of my list, scraping out below DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. It's frustrating, because when you look at the story and the scope, it had such potential! An article in 007 magazine even pointed out how it was THE SPY WHO LOVED ME redone without the plot problems. But it has 2 MAJOR drawbacks. It's IDIOTIC-- the style of humor is completely out of place, moreso when you consider how they worked so hard to find a proper tone in the previous film. But-- and I forgot about this for years-- it's also BORING. None of the action scenes are exciting. They all seem to be taking place in slow motion, and with an air of detachment.

I can't talk about the film without mentioning Derek Meddings' STUNNING effects work on the space shuttle lift-off. NASA had delays with the real thing, and when they finally got one off the ground (almost 2 years later), I saw the photo in TIME magazine and thought, "Hey! Derek Meddings got it ABSOLUTELY right!" Imagine if HE had done the spaceship work in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.

On the other hand, that space station... AAAAAUGH! Not only is the design confusing and meaningless, WHOSE bright idea was it to show it generating "artificial gravity" by rotating-- while the floors are all in the same direction? If we're to believe they were generating centrifugal force, as in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, then everyone would have been thrown to the outside edges of the structure. The kind of "artificial gravity" used in this space station was more of the LOST IN SPACE Jupiter 2 or STAR TREK Enterprise variety. I could accept that-- but the spinning just makes NO SENSE at all.

There's a reason FOR YOUR EYES ONLY is my favorite Roger Moore film... a LOT of reasons!

Yes, but the primary reason,no doubt, is because it's the most Connery-like Bond Moore played. On the other hand, I love Diamonds Are Forever, one of your bottoms, partially because it's the most Moore-like of Connery's films. And your other bottom, Golden Gun, is my favorite (although the reason is that I think Scaramanga was an awesome villain...there were definitely some things wrong with it)

Moonraker, on the other hand, was just absurd. It was so clearly done to rip off the popularity of Star Wars. Whatever level of realism exists in any Bond film were thrown out the window here, from the way-too-easy shuttle launch (no ground control???) to the apparent existence of a U.S. military space corps with laser weapons. It's one thing to have Q give Bond a special technology weapon, it's quite another to put these things into the hands of the regular military.

It's a shame MOONRAKER wasn't one of the earliest films made. I've always liked the book. So typical of the "mix and match" mentality of "adaptations", the climax of the book turned up in the movie THE SPY WHO LOVED ME-- so "obviously", it couldn't be used in the film supposedly based on it 2 years later.

As a fan of the books, I can't help but feel that Roger Moore-- and the producers' approach during his run-- were just WRONG for the character of James Bond. As a fan of THE SAINT (I've read 25 of the books so far and have ALMOST every film & tv episode on tape), I'd have much rather seen all that effort going into making big-budget "epic" SAINT films in the 70's with Moore, a character he at least seemed a good fit for, and apparently had more respect for. I can't understand his continual refusal to take Bond seriously-- while it turns out he often played Simon Templar TOO seriously for that character! (What went on there??)

Never mind Connery-- I've NEVER been able to visualize him or "hear" his voice in my head when I read any of the books (Fleming or Gardner). FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, made the way it was partly due to a backlash against MOONRAKER, returned to the Fleming source material BIG-TIME. There's a 20-minute sequence right in the middle that is an ACCURATE adaptation of the short story "Risico" (except for killing Lisl, which only happened in the movie). In addition, I counted pieces of at least 5 other Fleming stories used in the film, including the previously-missing climax of LIVE AND LET DIE. I also think Bill Conti did a much better job on the score than John Barry had done on anything since 1969. (Barry would not really return to form until 1986-- when he did his only score for a Timothy Dalton film!) And finally, it features my #1 favorite Bond girl-- Lynn-Holly Johnson! (You can tell this is personal taste-- she ALWAYS gets overlooked in any Bond girl retrospective.)

The thing I hated about Moonraker was the battle in space. You could SEE the laser beams! You can see a laser beam from the side only if:

a) there is something to reflect the beam, such as dust particles

b) there is an atmosphere, and the excited electrons in the path of the beam generate light in the visible spectrum

Did no one tell these people neither of these conditions exist in space?

I'm just trying to picture in my head who would make a good Sir Hugo Drax, that famous British Nobleman scientist struggling to bring England into the space age (when in reality he's an ESCAPED NAZI WAR CRIMNINAL bent on destroying London with a missile loaded with an ATOMIC WARHEAD), if they ever made a "proper" period adaptation of the book. Usually I'm at a loss for "current" actors, but right now, the 1st person who came to mind was Anthony Hopkins.

Any thoughts on casting "period" Bond films with current actors? (Or past actors-- this was a fun game at the DC boards with the JSA.)