Sean Connery returned to the iconic role of James Bond in 1983 – the same year the official 13th Bond Entry, OCTOPUSSY, bowed in a year that the press deemed ‘The Battle of The Bonds’.
NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN was a renegade Bond production due to the result of a legal battle that the original producer of THUNDERBALL, Kevin McClory, won due to a lawsuit he took out against Ian Fleming over the authorship of the book. He was allowed after a period of time to produce a version of THUNDERBALL and so the legend goes, Connery collaborated with Len Deighton (THE IPCRESS FILE) on a screenplay which went so well that it was Connery’s wife Micheline who suggested that as things were going so well, she suggested that he play the part again.
The film follows the plot of the original THUNDERBALL – two warheads are stolen from under the noses of NATO and the plot sees Bond, who in this one is a teacher rather than ‘the World Number One Spy’, recalled to action and goes off to the Bahamas, where he encounters femme fatale Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera) and Emile Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer), whose trophy girlfriend Domino (Kim Basinger) is the brother of a USAF officer (Gavin O’Herlihy) who is a pawn in the plot.
Rowan Atkinson (MR. BEAN) turns up as Bond’s bumbling contact in the Bahamas, Small Fawcett. The film was directed by Irvin Kershner, who helmed the second and most loved STAR WARS film, EPISODE V – THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK three years before.