May 25 - Thunderball

Today’s movie is an espionage thriller with a scene that takes place on May 25. Watch it tonight and enjoy.

THUNDERBALL 

British MI6 agent James Bond attends the funeral of SPECTRE agent Col. Bouvar and becomes suspicious of a woman at the funeral. Bond follows her back to her chateau, where it’s revealed the woman is actually Bouvar. Bond kills Bouvar and escapes on a jetpak. We see a meeting of SPECTRE, where their NATO project is mentioned. Count Lippe, a SPECTRE agent and Bond happen to be staying at the same spa.  After he  searches Lippe’s room, an attempt is made to kill Bond. Major Derval meets his double and is killed. The double, a SPECTRE agent takes his place on a British nuclear bomber. He kills the crew and hijacks the plane. Back at the spa Bond sees the dead body of Major Derval  which was brought there by Lippe. Derval’s double lands the plane in the ocean and it is hidden underwater. The bombs are removed. There is a meeting of all 00 agents because SPECTRE has sent a ransom demand for $280 million or it will set off a bomb in a city. Bond is sent to Nassau as a photo of Derval was taken there. He meets Dervals’s sister, Domino and later her guardian and SPECTRE agent, Largo. On May 25, 1965 Q arrives in Nassau and equips Bond. [54:10 to 1:09:02] Bond searches both Largo’s yacht and compound looking for the bombs, but can’t find them. Later, with Domino’s help he sneaks on board Largo’s yacht, which is taking the bombs to Miami. After an epic underwater fight the bombs are secured and Largo and his henchmen killed.    

This installment of the Bond series is not the best. The plot is good, but the underwater ‘action’ sequences get dull after a while. When Bond and his foes are on dry land however, there’s plenty of action to go around.

In the film at 1:01:48 SPECTRE’s ransom tape says the diamonds are to be dropped at 8 p.m. GMT May 27. Leiter says while Q is there that it is 55 hours until that time, at 1:02:45 meaning its 3 p.m. on the 25^th in the Bahamas.

Producer - Kevin McClory                                          

Director - Terence Young                            

Screenplay - Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins     

Awards – The film won the Oscar for Best Special Visual Effects at the 38^th Academy Awards

Runtime – 2 hours  10 minutes                                    

.

Released – December 9, 1965                                     

Starring –

Sean Connery as James Bond (007)

Adolfo Celi as Emilio Largo

Claudine Auger as Domino Derval

Luciana Paluzzi as Fiona Volpe

Rik Van Nutter as Felix Leiter

Bernard Lee as M

Guy Doleman as Count Lippe

Martine Beswick as Paula Caplan

Molly Peters as Patricia Fearing

Earl Cameron as Pinder

Paul Stassino as François Derval

Desmond Llewelyn as Q

Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny

Copyright by Ivan Walters in 2015