The Other "Casino Royale"

Some very silly spoilers ahead.

Since I'd watched all of the EON produced James Bond films, I figured I should watch the non-EON films too, because I'm a completionist.  This brought me to one of the most notorious runaway productions of all time, the 1967 adaptation of "Casino Royale" that was put together by Charles K. Feldman and distributed by Columbia.  Feldman had the rights to the original Ian Fleming novel, and after being turned down by EON, decided to make the film anyway as a spoof of the other Bond films of the 1960s.  The resulting "Casino Royale" is not a good film, but it is an absolutely fascinating film, and I'd argue that it's a must watch for die-hard Bond fans.

Originally, the film starred Peter Sellers as Evelyn Tremble, a baccarat expert who is recruited by Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress) to challenge the evil Le Chiffre (Orson Welles).  He trains as an agent and impersonates James Bond for the job.  Sellers, unfortunately, quit the film before it was finished due to rumored behind-the-scenes tensions with Orson Welles.  So, bookend sequences featuring David Niven as the original James Bond - who hates what his successors have been doing to his previously squeaky-clean reputation - were created.  More Bonds were thrown into the mix - a new recruit, Coop (Terence Cooper), intended to take over the 007 mantle, Bond's weaselly nephew Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen), and Bond's daughter Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet).  Ultimately, the film had five different credited directors, a wildly chaotic storyline, and had to piece together scenes from unused footage of Peter Sellers.  The budget ballooned from $6 million to $12 million.  Somehow, it was a box office hit.  

Nobody talks about this movie anymore, and not just because MGM eventually got the rights to the film and happily buried it for ages.  The critics savaged it at the time of release, and despite a few brave defenders pushing for a reevaluation in recent years, it's still considered one of the worst, most inept big budget films ever made.  Watching "Casino Royale" now is a bizarre experience.  The POV character switches every ten minutes, from Niven to Cooper to Sellers to Pettet.  The film feels like a series of spy-themed sketches more than anything else, and some of them are pretty good.  Some are not.  Niven and Woody Allen are entertaining whenever they're onscreen, and Orson Welles is pleasantly odd - apparently he demanded that his character perform magic tricks and illusions throughout the film, including making a woman disappear at the baccarat table.  The film grows more and more chaotic as it goes along, finally culminating in a bonkers finale in the casino, where all the Bonds get into a fight, there are celebrity cameos everywhere, and Woody Allen finally blows it all up. 

Compared to the four Sean Connery films that had been produced by the time, "Casino Royale" is more fun in some respects.  A lot of this has to do with the film's Bond girls, who are shameless sex objects, but sex objects with more agency and active parts to play in the film.  The gimmick here is that Niven's Bond is a cold fish, Sellers' Bond is totally inexperienced, and Woody Allen is a geek, so the most sexually aggressive characters are the women.  In addition to Andress and Pettet, this includes agents played by Daliah Lavi, Deborah Kerr, and Jacqueline Bisset, and a bored Miss Moneypenny played by Barbara Bouchet.  You can see the influence of raucous sex '60s comedies like "What's New Pussycat?" which "Casino Royale" directly references multiple times.   

The production is also nothing to sneeze at.  The sets include some real gems of '60s psychedelia, including a spy school designed to look like the set of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," and the villain's eye-poppingly mod secret lair, which clearly had more influence on the look of the "Austin Powers" movies than any of the actual James Bond films.  The music and songs by Bruce Bacharach are top notch throughout, and do a lot to help everything feel like they're all part of the same universe.  Even if I completely lost track of the story, I was content just watching the film play out, introducing one wild setpiece or improbably dressed Bond girl  after another, and enjoying a lot of very good actors pretend that they have any idea what's going on.     

"Casino Royale" is a mess, but it's a beautiful mess, and I kinda dig it.