Thunderball – 1965 (WINNER)
The award winning effects in this movie were very stunt-based. I often have to remind myself that stunts are considered special effects, and while Thunderball certainly had its share of physical stunts, there were even more examples of underwater filming. Underwater filming isn’t exactly a special effect, and it isn’t exactly a stunt, but as far as that goes, it was actually pretty cool to watch.
And when I think about it, that was this movie’s big thing. James Bond films are always big on the action and intrigue. He is a super spy who is known for his physical prowess and his gadgets, both of which are prominently displayed in this film. And then there is his ability to seduce any woman he needs to in the course of his duties to Queen and country, which, alas, cannot be counted as a special effect. But it was the underwater sequences that made this movie unique.
There was a cool effect where a fighter jet landed on the surface of the water, where it immediately sank to the bottom of the sea. A group of divers with a large open submersible craft approach the downed jet and stole its nuclear armaments. Later on in the movie, right before the big climax, which I’ll get to in a bit, there was a very cool underwater battle in which bad guys in black and good guys in orange, armed with spear-guns and knives, fought like soldiers on a battlefield.
But that wasn’t all this movie had. Even before the opening credits roll, we get to see James fly with a portable jet pack, which looked great in the wide shots, but was badly green-screened in the close-up shot. Never-mind that he was only given about two seconds to put the whole thing on, straps and all, before rocketing into the air. Then we had water jets shooting out of the back of the infamous Aston Martin, the evil villain’s death chair. and a couple of nice explosions, the climactic one even being accomplished using experimental rocket fuel.
And that is why this movie took home the Oscar for Best Special Effects. Nearly everything was real! The jet pack was real. All the sharks were real, though they were mostly behind plexiglass. The underwater battle was real. The yacht that split in two, the front half becoming a hydrofoil, was real. The sky-hook that pulled Bond out of a recessed cavern was real. The underwater jet pack was real. Even the nude girls swimming in the opening credits were real, or at least, their silhouettes were. Bond’s only gadget that wasn’t real was the tiny rebreather that Bond used several times in the film, but that one’s easy to forgive.
Unfortunately, it was the movie’s more common effects that were disappointing. Two things caught my attention. First, the bad green-screening looked cheap. Whenever the actors were in an artificial environment, it was painfully obvious. Second, there was the final fight between Bond and the villain, Emilio Largo, and his henchmen. To make the fight look faster and more dangerous aboard the out of control hydrofoil, they simply sped up the film, Benny-Hill style. It looked ridiculous, almost comical, and I don’t think it was supposed to.