20 Things You Didn't Know About Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
19. “Making Mud Pies, Double-0 Seven?”
The thrilling revenge-focused pre-credits sequence is loosely adapted from Ian Fleming’s 1956 novel, Diamonds Are Forever.
In the novel, James Bond, posing as Peter Franks, visits Saratoga Springs and bets in a rigged horse race to collect his fee for smuggling gems into the United States. He and Pinkertons detective, Felix Leiter sabotage the race and implicate a gangland jockey, leading mob enforcers, Wint and Kidd to pour boiling mud over the jockey’s face at a local spa in revenge.
This inspired the opening sequence of the film in which Bond infiltrates Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s private clinic (presumably on SPECTRE Island from 1963’s From Russia With Love). Double-0 Seven assumes that Blofeld is undergoing a treatment akin to a mud bath and, when "Blofeld" pulls a gun on him, Bond drowns him in the mud. It transpires that "Blofeld" (stuntman, Bill Morgan) is a henchman undergoing a procedure to make him look like the SPECTRE leader.
Shooting this scene was unpleasant for everyone on-set as the “mud” was actually made of mashed potatoes, which perished under the hot studio lights within 24 hours, making B Stage at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire smell awful!