Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965): I dissed Sean Connery in last week's GMOTW, so in order to realign my Guy Movie karma, I'd better praise a Connery James Bond this week. I'm choosing Thunderball for a couple of reasons: one, I wanted to try out my new home theatre set-up, including my new DVD player. I was able to locate Thunderball in a Special Edition DVD version, along with some other 007 titles. The other reason is, and please inhale now and prepare to gasp: I've never seen it.

How did this happen? I'm not entirely sure. I've seen virtually every other Bond film, and certainly all the Connery Bonds, but somehow this one slipped through on me. I think the problem is that for a large portion of my teenage and young adult years, I was always mixing Thunderball up with Moonraker ("Thun-der-ball", "Moon-rak-er" . . . you can see how that can happen). Moonraker is supposed to be lousy (I haven't seen that one either), but Thunderball was always reputed to be terrific. Yet somehow, I missed it.

Okay, well oversight rectified, and I can now look my fellow men in the eye again. And I'm happy to report, that as a Thunderball newby, I can wholeheartedly recommend the film. After tangling in the last film with Auric Goldfinger, Bond finds himself up against his old nemeses at SPECTRE again. These guys just love being evil, and their latest scheme, spearheaded by the eye patch-wearing Number 2 (Robert Wagner . . . I mean, Adolfo Celi) is to steal a couple of nuclear warheads and extort 100,000,000 pounds (approximately $1,047.65 USD in 1965) out of the U.K. and the U.S.

Thunderball was notable at the time for all the underwater action, and while I'm no fan of underwater fight scenes, there's plenty else going on to hold interest. Most of the pic takes place on Nassau island, for one thing, so babes in bikinis are the order of the day. Bond does a fair amount of shagging with the ladies in the picture, those both naughty and nice.

For one, there's SPECTRE agent Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi), a knockout redhead who Bond claims he banged only for "King and country". Ya, right. King and something, I'll grant you that. Even better, though, is Number 2's mistress, Domino (Claudine Auger)--she's a hot dripping slice of brunette peach pie, and Bond takes a big, drooling bite.

Watching the way Bond treats his women is as good a way as any to see how the culture has shifted since 1965. Take the nurse that Bond nails early in the picture. She rebuffs his every advance--even the smooth move of grabbing her and ramming his tongue down her throat--until finally he has something incriminating on her, at which point he pledges his silence if only she'll take a tumble with him. Nowadays forcing and threatening a woman into sex in this way would probably be dubbed "sexual harrassment" or even rape, and then, you know, frowned upon. But as recently a 1965, this was considered perfectly acceptable! I propose a return to conservative values which allows much more sex with unwilling women . . . I mean, keep in mind, once Bond did her up good once, she was totally willing when tumble number 2 rolled around. Highly instructive--not unlike what you see in movies with women ravaged by pirates, or in real life with victims of repeated sexual abuse.

Anyway, if you, like me, always confused Thunderball with Moonraker (I can't be the only one this stupid) and therefore didn't see it, go out there and get the tape, get the DVD, get whatever you gotta get. It's a neat, sexy picture.