The 1967 version of Casino Royale was the second adaptation of Ian Fleming’s novel and the second unofficial Bond film. It is also the worst film to have anything to do with the legendary spy.
The major intelligence services are in crisis. Their best agents have been captured or killed. In desperation, MI6, the CIA, Deuxième Bureau, and KGB plead with Sir James Bond (David Niven) to come out of retirement and investigate SMERSH. After Bond’s house gets blown up he becomes the new head of MI6 and he comes up with elaborate plans to dispute SMERSH, including renaming all field agents James Bond (including the female agents) and train male agents to resist seduction.
This film’s journey to being was a long and arduous one. Producer Charles K. Feldman brought the film rights to the novel in 1960 and was unable to come to an agreement with Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli. Feldman chose to make a spoof instead. What resulted was a notorious production.
Casino Royale (1967) had five directors, an all-star cast, three cinematographers, three art directors, and three credited screenwriters and many more did uncredited rewrites. Peter Sellers and Orson Welles hated each other so much that they didn’t even film their scenes together, Sellers was upset that the film was a comedy and Woody Allen called the production a madhouse. Sellers didn’t finish filming all his scenes and Allen stormed off set and went on a flight back to New York. The result was an incoherent mess of a film.
The best way to describe Casino Royale (1967) was that it had a ‘throw shit at the wall to see what sticks’ approach. It was just a bunch of random scenes barely strung together. The real plot doesn’t start until the film hit the one-hour mark and the story was fleeting. Casino Royale (1967) ended up inducing a lot of ‘what the hell is going on’ reactions. At best Casino Royale (1967) was aiming for a zany British vibe like Monty Python and The Benny Hill Show but without witty writing to back it up. Some of the surreal sequences leads to the question ‘what drugs were the filmmakers on?’ Examples of this were the bagpipes scene and when the flying saucer landed in London.
Casino Royale (1967) was meant to spoof the Bond series as a whole but here the film fails miserably. There was no insight or attempt to satirise the tropes or formula of the franchise. Hell, it wasn’t even funny, which is a basic requirement for a comedy. There were only two moments that made me chuckle: the British army officer reaction to a war and the Stirling Moss cameo. But there are much better satires and subversions of the series like Kingsman, Austin Powers, or True Lies.
Say what you will about films often called the worst official Bond films but they all at least follow basic plot structure and have a story. The worst official Bond films at least have something redeeming like a cool action scene, an impressive stunt, or a good theme song. Casino Royale (1967) doesn’t have any of that. The other two unofficial Bond films, Casino Royale (1954) and Never Say Never Again, were at least watchable curiosities: Casino Royale (1967) doesn’t even have that going for it.
A debate revolving around the Bond series has been the codename debate. The official series has tried to dispel it but Casino Royale (1967) was the first time there was any reference to it because a new agent was given the Bond name and 007 rank. Unfortunately, this theory keeps coming up despite the number of times it has been debunked.
Casino Royale (1967) was a disaster of a film with barely anything of merit and if it wasn’t for its connection to the Bond franchise it would have been long forgotten. It’s not just the worst Bond film, it serves as a great example of how not to make a film.
Is there a longer version. A friend of the family, 84, years said he was 003 in the movie, but they cut him out. He was in the 3 hour version and the pictures to prove it.