The Psychedelic Send-Up Bond: The 1967 Casino Royale

Few movies have wasted as much talent as the 1967 film adaptation of Casino Royale. Let’s see, we have David Niven, Deborah Kerr, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Orson Welles and William Holden; behind the scenes there’s Wolf Mankiewicz’s writing and Val Guest and John Huston, among others, directing. Despite all the talent, Casino Royale isn’t just bad, it’s tedious.

When I wrote my book on the Bond films, I knew I wanted to include the three non-EON movies: Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery back in the role; Operation Kid Brother, an Italian “spaghetti spy film” with Neal Connery as “the brother of secret agent 00-something”; and the 1967 Casino Royale (plus the 1954 TV adaptation). Ian Fleming sold off the movie rights to Casino in 1955 but nothing came of that until producer Charles Feldman bought them. Rather than compete head to head with Eon Films, Feldman turned Casino Royale into a spy spoof. This isn’t a bad idea, except spoofs have to be funny.

The film couldn’t use Connery but it has an elegant solution: Connery’s a phony. The real James Bond (David Niven) became an espionage legend during WW I. He fell in love with enemy agent Mata Hari (for the record, she was not a spy) but betrayed her to the firing squad in an act of patriotic self-sacrifice. He quit British intelligence in grief, so MI6 brought in a ringer to keep the legend alive. Connery is simply the latest James Bond. Yes, the theory Bond is a code name for multiple agents started before Connery had left the role.

In the opening, M (John Huston) and several foreign intelligence heads meet with Bond at his country estate. The dignified, genteel original Bond makes it clear he despises the current generation of “joke shop spies” relying on gadgets instead of their wits. He particularly loathes Connery, “the sexual acrobat who leaves a trail of beautiful women like dead roses behind him.” Not an issue, M says, as the crime cartel SMERSH (in the real world a Russian counterintelligence agency) has eliminated the Connery 007. SMERSH’s leader Dr. Noah is having spies of all nations killed as part of his master plan; will the real Bond return to the field to stop it?

Bond initially says no, even after receiving a request from Her Majesty. M has a back-up plan, however, bombing the estate to make it look like Bond is a SMERSH target. This ends up killing M, but it does indeed inspire Bond to return to action and take over MI6. Getting to HQ requires dodging several SMERSH attempts on his life. The main one is a long, plodding sequence in which SMERSH agent Mimi (Deborah Kerr), posing as M’s widow, tries to seduce or kill Bond. Given that Bond places a high value on his sexual restraint, Noah figures reducing him to a “sexual acrobat” will crack his self-confidence; instead he inspires Mimi to become a nun. The idea of a shy Bond evading sex with Mimi and her sexy fellow agents has potential, but it falls as flat as everything else in the film.

After that, the plot goes out the window. Or to be more precise, the multiple screenwriters just keep throwing plots in through the window without developing any of them. The funniest bit is Bond’s nephew and namesake Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen) narrowly escaping a firing squad (“You can’t shoot me — I have a very low threshold of death!”). It would have fit smoothly into one of Allen’s sketch-comic films of the era but Jimmy then disappears until the film’s climax. There are many more unfunny bits such as Bond trying to confuse SMERSH by making “James Bond’ the code name for all British agents. Nothing comes of this except the ad campaign declaring the film is “too big for one James Bond!”

In one plot thread Bond decides that since SMERSH is trapping spies with sex, MI6 should train an agent to resist any woman’s wiles. Moneypenny (Barbara Bouchet) does such a good job training Cooper (Terence Cooper) that he’s even able to resist the irresistible Detainer (Daliah Levi, a very sexy Israeli actor). Then the film forgets about Cooper until the climax. Later in the movie, Bond recruits his and Mata Hari’s daughter Mata Bond (Joanna Pettet) to spy on SMERSH. This plot goes nowhere too, though it does provide some spectacular psychedelic visuals as Mata explores a SMERSH base.

The actual Fleming plot, where SMERSH agent Le Chiffre is embezzling money to play baccarat? We get to that two-thirds of the way through the film. Millionaire businesswoman Vesper Lind (Ursula Andress) recruits baccarat expert Evelyn Trimble (Peter Sellers) to beat Le Chiffre (Orson Welles). Trimble has a baccarat system that can’t miss if you have enough money — such infallible systems are an enduring gambling fantasy — and Vesper’s got the money. Playing as James Bond, Trimble defeats Le Chiffre but only after Welles pads the running time by performing several unremarkable bits of stage magic. Le Chiffre then captures and tortures Trimble to get the cash back; unlike the book it’s not physical pain but a wild, psychedelic series of hallucinatory effects. Vesper, wielding a gun hidden in a set of bagpipes, kills Trimble before he can crack. A SMERSH agent then confronts Le Chiffre by videophone and iterally reaches through the screen to kill the embezler. No, it doesn’t make sense. Neither does Vesper betraying Bond later: she has her own agenda but I have no idea what it is.

Ultimately none of this relates to the climax at Casino Royale, where SMERSH has its base. It’s there we get the Big Reveal of Jimmy Bond as Dr. Noah. His evil master plan is to replace the world’s leaders with robots, plus unleashing a bio-weapon that makes all women beautiful and kills all men taller than he is. As a 5′ 2 1/2″ man, I can say with confidence that this plan does not at all appeal to me when I watch the film. Nope. Not even a little. I’m serious!

Jimmy has also invented an aspirin-sized atomic time bomb, which proves his undoing when the Detainer slips one into his drink. Before he goes nuclear we get the wildly over the top finish in which cowboys, Native Americans, the Keystone Kops and the French Foreign Legion all join the attack on the Casino. It’s like the climax of Blazing Saddles except for not being funny. Finally Jimmy explodes, putting the film out of our misery. We close with the good guys going to Heaven and Jimmy — ah, he goes to The Hot Place.

Casino Royale a clumsy botch of a film that can’t even stay true to its own premises. Although Niven’s Bond despises gadgets, we still get the obligatory scenes in Q’s weapons lab. Why not order all British spies to ditch the gadgets and rely on their wits (admittedly difficult in a witless movie)? Despite Bond’s supposed commitment to chastity, Moneypenny makes it clear he and her mum, the original Moneypenny, got horizontal back in the day. Tying the original Bond to WW I makes no sense either. Niven’s not old enough and even if he’s borrowing Nick Fury’s Infinity Formula, Joanna Pettet is way too young for Mata Bond to be pushing fifty.

The movie’s psychedelic visuals are memorable but not so memorable they make the movie worth watching. There are films so bad they’re good; this is not one of them.

#SFWApro.