007 Dreams: Thunderball

Thunderball is the one where based Bond murders a crossdresser at a funeral and flies to freedom on a jetpack. This is followed by the best Bond theme song ever: the Tom Jones one.

Brought to you by swimming sluts and colour theory!

This song is great because it describes Bond's psychopathic personality: "any woman he wants he'll get/he will break any heart without regret", making it basically his counterpart to Goldfinger's song in the previous film.

In this scene we almost get to see the other 00 agents.

It's also the first one in which the villain (Largo) uses sharks, which are allowed access to his swimming pool through a gate operated by his goons. Perhaps he had it installed to prompt unwanted guests to leave his pool parties.

Another highlight is the ginger villainess, who calls our hero "Mr BondJamesBond", which is funny, and whom he has the nerve to tell he only banged for Queen and country, which is a sort of duty I could see myself being moved to take onboard.

I'm a patriot like that.

Thunderball also escalates the SPECTRE threat nicely, with hijacked nukes. We even get to see a meeting in which various agents report the results of their criminal endeavours, and classic Blofeld blows one of them up for embezzlement.

Largo's non-reaction to this is priceless.

I think a SPECTRE TV show like The Sopranos, featuring Largo, Volpe, Doctor No and others beefing and screwing each other over could be fun, except anyone doing it would probably completely fuck it up, but we can dream.

I wish I had a SPECTRE secret club ring :(

Sadly this movie was ground zero for the Kevin McClory bitchfit that saw the rights to that esteemed villainous organisation disputed, more of which later. Sadlier, the back projection in the climactic runaway yacht scene sucks, much more of which later.

"DERP HERP" - Mr BondJamesBond