Diamonds Are Forever Re-imagined project: The lost climax of Diamonds Are Forever: Reconstructing the Frogman sequence & the unfilmed Salt Mine showdown...

"I was, around that time, intrigued, because I had seen a few stills of a huge salt thing in Baja California, or the Mexican end.

Miles and miles of white mountains and I rather fancied Sean in black, running around on these white mountains.

And presumably, there'd be big machinery that would suck the stuff in. We couldn't get permission to go there, so that more or less killed that."
- Guy Hamilton (Director of Diamonds Are Forever) *

A mock-up of Bond running around giant salt mounds as Guy Hamilton describes

What was the original climax?

Some Bond fans may have heard of the original concept for Diamonds Are Forever's climax, devised by the film's co-writer Tom Mankiewicz and its director Guy Hamilton. In addition to the CIA Helicopter attack on Blofeld's off-shore oil rig, there was to have been explosive-bearing Frogmen who would've demolished it. **

As we can see on the Ultimate Edition DVD special features, it appears part of the Frogmen sequences were indeed shot. Similar to the underwater battle in Thunderball, these sequences were rehearsed on the surface. ***

The released footage shows the Frogmen leaping into the sea from Marines Huey Helicopters with containers for limpet mines, then swimming in groups in the direction of the oil rig.

Interestingly, there is no footage of the Frogmen reaching the legs of the rig and detonating the explosives. Perhaps because that part was never shot, which would appear to be the case as Michael Wilson's commentary over the footage says the scene was scrapped during filming.

I presume that the Frogmen would then have detonated mines on one or more of the Oil Rig's legs to destroy the control centre so that Blofeld's laser satellite would be stopped.

The other element of the finale that never came to be was a confrontation between Bond and his nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld at a Salt Mine in Mexico.

Rather than Blofeld's Batho-Sub being crashed into the Oil Rig's control centre by Bond, the villain would have escaped from the Rig in his aforementioned midget submarine. Meanwhile, Bond would have followed along via a Weather Balloon. The intention was for them to arrive at a salt mine in the Mexican part of Baja California, where there would be a fight to the death between the two, climbing across gigantic hills of salt. **

In a gruesome turn, Blofeld would have fallen to his death in a salt granulator (rather than a chimney as was his eventual death in the series, seen in For Your Eyes Only's pre-credits sequence).

As Hamilton states in the quote above, the owners of the salt mine did not give them permission to film at the location, thereby scrapping much of the planned finale for good.

But it seems there was another obstacle to this extended climax making it to the screen; the running time. In one interview, Guy Hamilton revealed that the script for Diamonds Are Forever was originally timed at two and a half hours. *****

The previous entry in the series, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) was the longest Bond film up to that point, with its 142 minutes running time beating even the 130 minutes of the heavily successful Thunderball (1965).

Hamilton explained why a long running time was not acceptable to cinemas at the time;

"in America they’d lose one show, possibly two shows, each day where they began at 10 am, then another one at 12, 2, 4, 6, 8 and at 10 pm. So when I got to sign my contract, the picture had to be under two hours or else I had a penalty clause you had never seen in your life." *****

Simply put; even if the climax was filmed as originally planned, it's very likely that much of it wouldn't have made into the final print. So it's understandable why Hamilton had to make this tough decision to shorten the finale.

Re-imagining the "lost climax"

And that brings us to the purpose of this post; how have I approached re-imagining this sequence for the climax of my Diamonds Are Forever Re-Imagined project?

Since this project is a live-action fan-edit/animation hybrid, most of the climax will be animated as with the majority of the new sequences I'm working on, but with a few live-action scenes from the original film's Oil Rig climax.

The deleted footage of the Frogmen I mentioned earlier is an immensely important asset; without it, I'm not sure how I could possibly begin to re-construct that sequence from scratch. Therefore the only bits of that section of the climax that I would need to animate would be the Frogmen deploying the limpet mines to the Rig.

As for the Salt Mine confrontation, I've done a little bit of research to try and get an understanding of what Guy Hamilton and Tom Mankiewicz had in mind, since the screenplay for Diamonds Are Forever has not been released online to my knowledge.

The Oil Rig sequences were shot on a semi-portable Rig hired by the film crew, off the coast of Oceanside California. * In the film, the map in Willard Whyte's Penthouse places the Rig on the coast of Baja California.

From what I've been able to find out, there is indeed a salt works (founded in the 1950s) in the Baja peninsula around the Ojo de Liebre lagoon and near a town called Guerrero Negro. ****

While I have no information to confirm this, I think it's possible that this is the same location that Guy Hamilton mentioned seeing stills of, but was unable to film there.

Using photographs such as these of the location for reference (as well as some artistic licence), I'll visualise some exterior sets in Moviestorm. Hopefully it will enable me to replicate the broad strokes of Mankiewicz's planned climax to Diamonds Are Forever.

For now, here are some stills of how I envision the epic confrontation between Bond and Blofeld (albeit with the likeness of Telly Salavas rather than Charles Gray). Taking place on a gantry high above the ground after a pursuit across giant hills of salt, it will be by all means a gritty and tough brawl for sure...