Both would lead me to other terrific films such as Niven’s The Guns of Navarone (1961) and Seller’s Dr. About the same time, I discovered other films from the era such as Blake Edwards’ comic masterpiece The Pink Panther (1963) starring David Niven and Peter Sellers. Having first seen Never Say Never Again on TV (the other major unofficial Bond film), I sought out the series on VHS and began watching them in order to the best of my ability. Casino Royale (1967)Īs a kid, I loved the James Bond series. For all its faults, plot holes, and euphoric inconsistencies, Casino Royale has a certain charm, with some incredibly inventive set pieces and gags peaking through its constant barrage of inebriated excess. Yet, despite its troubles, there is an accidental brilliance that underlies the whole production. In fact, it’s a damn cinematic miracle that the film was even completed and released. With dozens of directors and screenwriters alternating throughout the film’s production (many, to their luck, uncredited), maddening celebrity feuds, and the top-billed star, Peter Sellers, abandoning the picture halfway through, it isn’t the biggest surprise that it ended up being such a gigantic mess.

Where does one begin with 1967’s Casino Royale? An unofficial spoof of the Sean Connery James Bond series “suggested” by the first 007 novel of the same name (which had already been filmed as a black & white television special in 1954), Casino Royale succeeds as neither a proper spoof or, for that matter, a proper film. If you were to mix every single stereotype of the 1960’s with a who’s who of the biggest stars of the time in a blender with a dash of powerful psychedelics, the resulting sludge, though colorful, would still be more consistent and coherent than what we got instead.

Casino royale plot line