During the height of the James Bond phenomenon in the mid-1960s, a host of knockoff fictional spies sprung up throughout popular culture, hoping to capitalize to any small degree off even the fringes of Bond-mania. From Matt Helm and Derek Flint on the big screen, to the agents of the Impossible Missions Force and U.N.C.L.E. on the small screen, perhaps no James Bond imitator was more unlikely than… James Bond himself?
Riding the enormous success of their official James Bond movie franchise, producers Harry Saltzman and Albert “Cubby” Broccoli locked down the film adaptation rights to all of Ian Fleming’s original Bond novels – except one. To their frustration, a contract technicality allowed the author’s very first Bond book to wind up in the hands of rival producer Charles K. Feldman (A Streetcar Named Desire, The Seven Year Itch). After abandoning initial plans to make a serious spy thriller that would compete directly against the blockbuster franchise starring Sean Connery, Feldman shifted gears and decided that his movie version of Casino Royale should instead become a madcap parody of all things James Bond, or anything spy-related in general.
With five credited directors, ten or more writers (most of them uncredited), dozens of celebrity walk-on cameos that audiences of the time would recognize, and at least four different James Bonds on screen, just about the only thing this Casino Royale comedy didn’t have was a single funny joke. Really, not even one. It’s a complete dud.
| Title: | Casino Royale |
| Year of Release: | 1967 |
| Directors: | Val Guest John Huston Ken Hughes Joseph McGrath Robert Parrish Richard Talmadge (uncredited) |
| Watched On: | Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | DVD PlutoTV Tubi Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
Perhaps I overstate the movie’s failures. The 1967 Casino Royale was actually somehow a box office success in its day, and even scored an Oscar nomination for the Burt Bacharach song “The Look of Love.” Viewers of the time may have found parts of it funny, or at least agreeably amusing. As I recall, in my first viewing decades ago, I believe I got one moderate laugh out of it. Watching it again now, however, I find even that reaction extraordinarily generous. This thing is a nearly insufferable slog, interesting only as a trivia footnote to a much more successful film series.
To his credit, producer Feldman used his very deep pockets to score a tremendous cast for the film, top-lined with the inspired choice of David Niven to play the original James Bond as an older gentleman spy now in retirement. (Niven had supposedly been author Ian Fleming’s preferred choice to play his 007 character when he wrote some of the early books.) In this telling of the story, the role of “James Bond 007” is a mantle passed down from spy to spy, and the original is none too happy with the swarthy lothario currently using his name (in other words, the Sean Connery version).
When British intelligence learns of an evil SMERSH plot that may threaten all the spies in the world, M (legendary filmmaker John Huston, who directed his own scenes) believes that only the true, one-and-only James Bond can foil the scheme, and tries to convince the man to return to duty. Bond resists, until M is murdered, whereupon his widow (multiple Oscar nominee Deborah Kerr) wastes little time throwing herself at the spy. Eventually, Bond relents and agrees to take over M’s former role.
In its early conception, this Casino Royale was envisioned as a sketch comedy comprised of multiple unrelated skits, each by different directors and starring different actors, giving their individual takes on James Bond and the spy craze of the era. When that didn’t seem to be working, Feldman asked one of the directors (Val Guest, best known for The Quatermass Xperiment) to shoot additional linking footage that would unite the various scenes under the umbrella of Niven’s storyline. Even to that end, the connections are loose at best and frequently nonsensical.
The centerpiece story, and the only one to have anything at all to do with the Fleming novel, finds Peter Sellers playing an author named Evelyn Tremble, who’s written a book on how to win at baccarat. Tremble is recruited to become the new James Bond 007 in order to gamble SMERSH operative Le Chiffre (the great Orson Welles, going full-throttle into ham mode as only he could) into bankruptcy at the title location.
Other notable guest stars include authentic Bond Girl Ursula Andress (from Dr. No) as the Tremble/Bond’s love interest, Vesper Lynd; Woody Allen as the real Bond’s nephew, Jimmy Bond; and Jacqueline Bisset (credited as “Jacky Bisset”) as the groanworthily-named Miss Goodthighs; plus briefer appearances from the likes of William Holden, Charles Boyer, and Jean-Paul Belmondo – each allegedly paid tremendous sums of money just to poke their faces onto camera for a few moments.
Jokes, such as they are, are scattershot and mostly consist of lame puns and even lamer sexual innuendo, all of which has aged terribly. The movie was released a few months before Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In debuted on television, and the humor here strains desperately to rise to that level, never quite getting there. Even when the hijinks turn psychedelic in the last act, modern viewers will really struggle to find anything entertaining in the film. On this watch, I frankly didn’t. At 2 hr. 11 min. long, I found it quite a chore to get through.
Beyond its connections to James Bond and fully legal use of that character’s name, just about the only interesting aspects of this Casino Royale have more to do with behind-the-scenes stories of the movie’s very tumultuous production. You can tell just by watching it that not a single actor on screen gave a damn about the movie they were making. Reportedly, Peter Sellers was distracted the entire time by personal issues related to his failing marriage to actress Britt Ekland, and his behavior so infuriated Orson Welles that the latter refused to show up on set anytime Sellers was there, or allow himself to be photographed in the same shot with the man.
Scenes went before cameras with only the faintest traces of anything that could be called a screenplay. Actors who had any background with writing (such as Welles, Allen, Sellers, or Huston) were tasked with rewriting their own dialogue each day before they shot it. In his desperation to cobble together something remotely coherent from this mess, producer Feldman threw money at a host of uncredited script doctors, including legends Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot), Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove), and Joseph Heller (Catch-22) – who might each toil at a single scene for a day whenever Feldman could afford to bring them in. Sadly, their efforts make no discernible impression on the final product.
Stories like those are gold, and almost make this film’s existence worthwhile just to hear about what a miserable time everyone had making it. I just wish I didn’t feel nearly as miserable suffering through the movie itself.
The Blu-ray
The 1967 Casino Royale was released on Blu-ray back in 2011. Neither MGM nor Fox Home Entertainment (its distributor at the time) put terribly much effort into the disc, and it certainly hasn’t held up very well in the following decade and a half. In the first of its many annoyances, the disc auto-plays the movie upon insertion into a Blu-ray player and has no main menu screen at all, just a pop-up menu. (When the movie is finished, it will loop back around to the beginning and start over again.)
Obviously recycled from a dated master that originated with a DVD release even further back in 2002, the 2.35:1 image has very soft and poorly-defined details, marred by regular edge enhancement processing. The film elements are frequently coated in dirt, scratches, and prominent hairs. Colors are drab, especially skin tones. Grain is heavy, leading to an unpleasantly gritty appearance. In short, the movie looks awful. It’s in dire need of a remaster.
Either picture quality very slightly improves as it goes, or at least I got used to it. The second half of the film seemed more tolerable to me than the first half, from a video transfer perspective, though that should not be taken as much of a compliment.
Be advised that the movie has several scenes with English subtitles permanently burned-in to the film element, all contained within the 2.35:1 image area and safe for Constant Image Height projection.
Originally monaural, this Casino Royale was remixed into 5.1 for the DVD edition in 2002. However, that DVD provided a copy of the mono mix as well. The Blu-ray carries over only the 5.1 track, encoded in DTS-HD Master Audio format.
As far as that goes, the remix is relatively sedate and not too gimmicky. The soundtrack is mostly dialogue, with some modest stereo expansion for the Burt Bacharach score and the “Look of Love” song. It sounds a little flat at times, and makes little effort to disguise the actresses whose English dialogue had been dubbed (most obviously Barbara Bouchet as Moneypenny), but it’s adequate enough overall. For my own preference, I find it incredibly lazy that the studio couldn’t be bothered to include the mono track.
Bonus features are limited to an audio commentary by “James Bond historians” Steven Jay Rubin and John Cork, plus a 41-minute making-of documentary and a trailer. The commentary and documentary are actually pretty interesting and help explain why the movie wound up such a mess. Disappointingly, the Blu-ray could not carry over the 1954 television adaptation of Casino Royale starring Barry Nelson, which had been included on the prior DVD release from 2002. For that item alone, I keep a copy of that DVD in the same case with the Blu-ray.
Related
- James Bond 007
- John Huston (director)
- Orson Welles
- Deborah Kerr
- Terry Southern (writer)
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