Never before did I think in the span of roughly six months I would make two separate trips to Nassau in the Bahamas.  Indeed, there was a time when I did not think I would ever make it to the tiny island nation off the coast of Florida.  Now that I have done so, I have come to enjoy Nassau quite a bit.  Then again, it is all I have seen of the Bahamas.  I am not counting Disney’s private island in the archipelago.  That could be anywhere in the world and it would be the same contrived landscape.  Anyway, during my most recent trip to the country’s capital, my friend and partner at Oh Man Disney on YouTube, along with his brother, took a tour driving Jeeps around the sometimes tricky to navigate streets.  One of the landmarks pointed out along the way was a house we were told belonged to Sean Connery, and that one of his James Bond films was shot at this location.  I learned today that the specific movie is Thunderball (1965), though as we shall see, the rest of what I was told was somewhat inaccurate.

Thunderball opens with our familiar military intelligence, section six (MI6) operative, James Bond (Sean Connery), going after more henchmen of the Special Executive for Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion (SPECTRE), this time in Paris, France.  By the end of this, I hope I will not have to look up that clunky acronym again, but I digress.  Meanwhile, SPECTRE’s leader, known as Number One (voiced by Eric Pohlman), has devised a plan to extort millions of dollars and/or pounds from, respectively, the American and British governments.  The person tabbed to carry the mission is SPECTRE’s number two, Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi).  The plan is to steal two nuclear bombs from the Royal Air Force and use them to blackmail those countries into handing over the money.  To do so, Emilio turns to his own assistant, a SPECTRE assassin known as Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi), who has been cultivating a liaison with a French pilot working with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) named François Derval (Paul Stassino).  François is slated to be a part of a training mission that will be carrying the weapons of mass destruction, making him a target for Fiona.  Their next step is to replace François with a double they have forced Angelo Palazzi (Paul Stassino) to become, surgically reconstructing Angelo’s face in order to look exactly like François.  This part of the plot is taking place in the south of England, near a place where James is recuperating from his struggles on the other side of the Channel.  Because he is known to SPECTRE, they try to kill him while he also observes their activities.  Because he does not know the full extent of what they intend, he does not stop Angelo in the guise of François from hijacking the jet bomber carrying the nuclear devices, landing it in the waters of the Bahamas.  At this point, the demands to the aforementioned governments are made, prompting MI6’s chief, M (Bernard Lee), to call together all his agents to deal with this threat.  James is initially ordered to Canada, but requests instead to be transferred to the Nassau field office.  In typical James Bond fashion, he makes contact there with Emilio, not directly, but with his woman, Domino (Claudine Auger).  James suspects that Emilio knows where the bombs are, which are his primary mission, but assumes they are still on the plane.  Thus, while jockeying with Emilio, James enlists the help of Felix Leiter (Guy Doleman), an officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to search the waters in the area for the aircraft.  When it is finally located, James dives onto it sitting on the bottom of the shallow sea, but there are no weapons aboard.  Instead, he finds a dead Angelo, with François’ face, in the pilot’s seat.  This news comes as a blow to Domino for Angelo was her brother.  She makes James swear that he will kill Emilio, but this also makes her a useful ally in dealing with the villain.  The problem, though, is that time is running out before the deadline Number One had given for the money to be delivered, and James has yet to actually locate the bombs.  Yet, he now has a better place to look, and manages to infiltrate Emilio’s men as they swim out to where the atomic devices are being kept.  Unfortunately, he is discovered before he can do anything about it, and Emilio gets away, headed towards his target of Miami.  Luckily, James has a homing device implanted in a pill he swallowed, allowing Felix and the United States Coast Guard (USCG) to find him before too long.  This also allows James to warn the Americans as to what is about to happen.  Thus, as Emilio and company approach the Florida coast, they are met by a wall of soldiers.  What proceeds is something I can honestly say I have never seen in a film: an underwater battle between people all wearing scuba gear, their weapons knives and spear guns.  It is, er . . . interesting?  Either way, it is merely a backdrop for James to come to the rescue and personally confront Emilio.  This takes place as the one-eyed bad guy is attempting yet another escape, this time on his converted private yacht, speeding over treacherous, reef lined waters.  It is Domino that finishes off Emilio, whose corpse is left to ride into a rocky outcrop as her and James jump overboard.  We last see them sitting in an inflatable rescue boat waiting to be picked up.

I glossed over some detail in talking about Thunderball’s plot because it is more of the usual James Bond doing one of three things: being awful to women, delivering one liners, and/or doing action stuff.  What was more positive to me was the setting for much of the proceedings.  To pay off something to which I alluded in the introduction, the house in question is called Palmyra in the movie, and it is Emilio’s headquarters.  I do not know if Sean Connery owned it after shooting the film.  Anyway, what was more fascinating to me is the fact that the film features the Junkanoo.  If you are on a cruise that stops in Nassau and you get off the boat, it is a word that you can hardly miss.  It is a festival that celebrates Bahamian culture, and this is all of Bahamian culture.  This is important to underscore because one of the groups of people you see on camera marching in the parade look like they took their inspiration from the Catholic Church.  Adherents to the Church do not make up the majority of the population of the Bahamas, a little over ten percent, but that is also not the point.  Catholicism, even if you do not practice its tenants, is a visual religion.  If you want to signal that something is Christian, you turn to the Church.  Now, I am sure that the people you see in the movie are likely not Catholic.  At the same time, them dressing as they do should not be taken as a sacrilege.  Catholicism has a tradition of incorporating different cultures into the life of the Church, and this is especially true for how it won so many converts on this side of the Atlantic.  It may not be the specific goal of the revelers to represent this history, but it is nonetheless part of the story.

Thunderball appears to have been a step up in terms of how much action and drama they decided to put into it as compared to its predecessors, but it is still pretty schlocky.  It should be noted that much of this, as well as those before it, is probably a function of me watching this in 2024.  Audiences in 1965 must have thought this was all pretty neat, especially given how much money these films grossed compared to their budgets.  Does this mean you should watch it?  Probably not.