Casino Royale (1967)

I recently decided to re-watch all of the official James Bond films before the release of “No Time to Die” (back when I naïvely believed that the movie would ever be released, ah those were the days…) It was a fun experience, gaining a newfound appreciation for the two Dalton instalments and surprisingly enjoying some of the Roger Moore ones. So, feeling enthusiastic, I set my sights on watching the only two 007 films that I’d never seen, “Casino Royale” (the 1954 TV oddity that infamously depicted Bond as American agent Jimmy Bond) and “Casino Royale”, the 1967 “spoof” of Connery’s early adventures.

So let’s not beat around the bush, we need to talk about “Casino Royale”… the 60s one, not the 2006 masterpiece (this is already getting confusing.)

I absolutely loathed this movie! “Casino Royale” is an atomic train wreck, a film so incoherent it made me want to watch “Thunderball.” A movie so absurd, it makes “Die Another Day” look like “Doctor Zhivago.” It bamboozled me, it enraged me, it made me question the very fabric of cinema itself and, worst of all, it made the torture scene from “Casino Royale” (the good one) look like an appealing watch, at least when compared to this cocaine-fuelled, psychedelic nightmare! This is, without question, the worst movie I’ve seen this year (overthrowing the “Smokey and the Bandit” sequels), the worst James Bond film ever made and one of the worst films I’ve ever seen!

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a poorly structured and nonsensical motion picture in all my life; from a narrative perspective, “Casino Royale” is a stone-dead turkey. The movie attempts to interweave several different plotlines together (like “Love Actually” but more moronic), before tying everything together during the finale. This may work on paper, but in execution, it’s a total disaster. Each plotline feels completely different to the next, so as the film bounces from one to another, it’s impossible to understand anything that’s going on. If “Casino Royale” featured either a single competent director or a well-written script, this anthology style story might have worked, but it ended up as a scattershot calamity.

It’s probably worth mentioning that “Casino Royale” was crippled by behind-the-scenes troubles, the most notable being that 6 different directors (one of whom asked not to be credited) tried to keep this sinking ship above water. Each director would shoot a certain portion of the movie, without any idea what was happening in the rest of the film, leaving the poor editors to attempt to stitch the whole thing together.

It seems that no one enjoyed the experience of working on “Casino Royale”, as many of the actors hated working on the picture. Orson “I miss my oh so precious sled” Welles made it a contractual obligation that he would only star in the film if he was allowed to perform some stupid magic tricks during his scenes. Obviously, there’s nothing silly about this at all, the 2006 “Casino Royale” would have been infinitely better if Mads Mikkelsen had started sprouting world flags out of his nose to impress Daniel Craig! What was Martin Campbell thinking in not including such a stupendous scene in his film?! What a hack!

Welles wasn’t the only actor on set with a massive (and extremely childish) ego, Peter Sellers was also an alleged nightmare to work with. He feuded with Orson “Unicron” Welles (causing their shared scenes to be filmed on separate days using doubles), he would regularly leave set whenever he felt like it, he punched one of the directors in the face, got “The Vicar of Dibley” legend John Bluthal sacked and ordered the crew to tear down one of the sets because he had a dream that his mother hated it. Honestly, reading the IMDb trivia on “Casino Royale” is vastly more compelling and amusing than watching the final product!

“Casino Royale” is supposed to be a spoof of the early Connery Bond films (whilst reportedly costing more than the combined budgets of the first four Eon Bond movies.) The idea of creating a 007 parody during the height of the franchises popularity seems like a good idea, but the film never doubles down on that concept. The comedy is too offbeat and broad to be called a Bond spoof, as there aren’t any real jabs at Connery’s Bond, the iconic scenes or memorable lines. “Casino Royale” has more in common with the ghastly “Carry On” series than it does with the likes of “Johnny English”, which is unfortunate as the “Carry On” movies are also dreadful.

The only aspect of “Casino Royale” that has any value is the visual design. The cinematography is imaginative, bright and colourful, and the sets are lavish and clearly very expensive. That being said, the trippy sets and vivid costumes fail to hide how broken this movie really is!

Whilst the original novel isn’t perfect, “Casino Royale” is a gripping read, a story that brilliantly introduces the reader to the character of James Bond and his world. I don’t understand why the filmmakers didn’t simply make a straight adaptation of the book, with some gritty action sequences and a serious portrayal of 007. Surely that would have been better than this heap of putrid garbage?

“Casino Royale” houses the most woeful ending in any movie I’ve seen so far. I’m not even going to attempt to explain what happens (you wouldn’t believe me if I did), but if I had to make a comparison, it’s essentially “Reservoir Dogs” meets “Jesus Christ Superstar.” It’s blindingly obvious that the filmmakers had no idea how to end this car crash, so they simply threw every madcap idea into the mix, in the hope that they’d squeeze a few chuckles out of the high-as-a-kite 60s audience. In movies like “Airplane!” or “Spaceballs”, insane visual gags are par for the course and make sense within the context of the respective film. Here however, these moments come out of nowhere, so rather than adding to the humorous atmosphere, these scenes feel like they’ve been taken out of another movie. It seems clear that everyone making this film was so exhausted by the end of the production that they didn’t care how the film ended, so they cobbled this tragedy together as quickly as possible.

To summarise, this is an abhorrent, atrocious abomination of a film with an infinitesimal amount of redeeming qualities. “Casino Royale” is a steaming pile of cow dung, a movie so demented and bewildering that only the most hard-core Bond fans should dare to watch it. It may not be a Thunder-Bore, but this movie certainly doesn’t have a License to Kill.