Time to continue the ranking of all James Bond films, with the first "unofficial" entry on the list. The Charles K Feldman produced, Casino Royale from 1967.
This is the teaser trailer, and the one that follows is the full theatrical trailer.
This film came out at the height of Bond-mania in the 1960s, and came about due to the fact that Ian Fleming sold the original film rights for it quite cheaply overall in 1955, for a mere $6,000, to a man named Gregory Ratoff. Ratoff never managed to produce a film though, and after his death in 1960 from Leukaemia, producer Charles K Feldman bought the rights from Raton's estate for $7,500.
At first, Feldman wanted to produce a serious Bond film, and worked on the idea for a while, even at one point contacting Harry Saltzman and Albert R Broccoli about working with them to produce a film version. However at the time, Saltzman and Broccoli had just done Thunderball with Kevin McClory and were unwilling to do another film that way.
So, Feldman decided to do the film as a spoof, in the same vein as What's New Pussycat? which actually featured a very similar cast. Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, Woody Allen and Peter O'Toole had all been part of that previous Charles K Feldman production, which Burt Bacharach had also provided the music for.
So would Casino Royale match Pussycat's gross of over $18mlln? Well, let's take a look at 1967's Casino Royale.
THE PRE TITLE SEQUENCE
Amazingly, like the official Bond films, this has a pre-title sequence, albeit a very short one, which is actually a short scene clipped out from a point later on in the film, which features Peter Sellers as Evelyn Tremble/James Bond 007, and Duncan Macrea, as Lieutenant Mathis of the Special Police, even though he is listed in the credits as Inspector Mathis. He shows Tremble/Bond his "credentials", though what he shows him isn't actually seen by the audience, to which Tremble/Bond replies that they appear to be in order.
This is a variation on a old Goon Show joke on the radio, where occasionally you'd hear a gunshot, someone sound pained, and another character, usually Neddy Season say something along the lines of "That got him right in the old credentials." The joke somewhat relies on the listener's imagination to imagine what the "credentials" are, and in this visual medium, it doesn't work quite as well, as it does on the radio, which for a comedy, isn't a good thing. The very first joke of a comedy film has to be right, otherwise, the audience is pretty much lost.
THE TITLE SEQUENCE
Well, what can I say about the title sequence, except it is weird. Animated first letters, short clips from various points in the film, completely out of context, all set to music composed by Burt Bacharach and played by Herb Alpert & his Tijuana Brass. It's a lovely piece of music, and is the right tone for the film.
There are a few other notable things in this title sequence and one of those is the fact that they credit 5 different directors for this project. John Huston, who also appeared in the film as M, aka McTarry, Kenneth Hughes, who shot the Mata Bond stuff in the spy school in West Berlin, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish and Val Guest. Second Unit Director Richard Talmadge also did some main unit directing and asked not be credited for it. Val Guest had the task of putting all this together.
The other things to note, are some names who had some connection to the official James Bond films. The obvious one is Ursula Andress, who plays Vesper Lynd here but appeared as Honey Ryder in Doctor No.
Another face who appeared in both official and unofficial films was Vladek Sheybal, who is better known as Kronsteen, SPECTRE's director of Planning in From Russia With Love.
Another name, this one appearing in the titles, was Wolf Mankowitz. Wolf is famous for writing the first treatment for Doctor No.
And one final name connected to the official Bond films, that of John Richardson, who would produce Special Effects for Moonraker, Octopussy and A View To A Kill. Casino Royale was actually John's very first film, though he was uncredited for it.
THE PLOT
The film starts with 4 cars converging on a road, somewhere, where another car is waiting for them. The other car is driven by John Le Mesurier. Yes, Sergeant Wilson from Dad's Army is a Chauffeur in this film.
Anyway, 4 men get into Le Mesurier's car and he drives them off, and they have a conversation in the back of the car. The conversation starts sensibly enough and then turns completely crazy. "Let's down his intestines down and washes them by hand..." Excuse me, I don't even want to think about that!
The car looks to be driving through a safari park, as the car is surrounded by Lions, one of whom gets up on the car's roof as the car travels along, and we hear a quick burst of "Born Free". This opening sequence sets the tone for the film, both in dialogue terms and in visual terms. There will be a lot of visuals pulled off in the film that will have been quite expensive to pull off, and yet they are being done for a single joke or for some other reason that we haven't figured out, you'll get a lot of that in this picture. It will present itself as extravagant.
We are then introduced to a retired Sir James Bond played by David Niven. Sir James welcomes the four gentlemen, M, Ransome of the CIA, Smernov of the KGB, and Le Grand of Deuxieme Bureau. At this point Ransome lets loose a stream of initials that to us are completely meaningless.
The four gentlemen are hear to try and persuade Sir James Bond to come out of retirement to help them, as they have lost lots of agents to a fiendish organisation, but Bond is reluctant. He is disparaging of all the gadgets, criticising each of them for their gadgets. Bond shows them a black rose in his garden, and says he would not exchange one petal of it, for anything their world had to offer, "...even an Aston M-Martin complete with lethal accessories." M & co implore Bond to help them, and after playing Debussy on the piano, he decides to turn them down, even with a sealed letter from Windsor Castle.
So what does M do? He has Sir James's mansion destroyed, by mortar fire! No, really. It's a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but somehow, it seems to make a perverse kind of sense. The whole thing seems to backfire slightly, as M himself is killed in the midst of all this.
So Sir James decides to take M's remains up to Scotland, to the home of the McTarry's, but word spreads to our villains, who make their first appearance here. "Proceed with SMERSH plan B. Sir James Bond is back with his morals, his vows and his celibate image. We must destroy that image."
It's here we kind of realise what our filmmakers are really doing. They're spoofing the whole world of 007. Instead of womanising and doing whatever he needs to do to get the job done, this James Bond is a complete opposite of the character we know. Also very notable here is the fact that apart from the big guy who we don't see here, yet, most SMERSH agents we see in this next sequence is female. This is setting up a joke obviously, but we'll see what the payoff is.
At McTarry Castle, we discover that Agent Mimi is playing M's widow, Lady Fiona, who is being played by Deborah Kerr. We're not even out of the first reel yet, and already the cast list for this film, is incredible. But nobody seems to be in the film for very long so far, except David Niven who seems to be the constant in this.
We see Alexandra Bastedo here too, in a pre-The Champions appearance as well. I have to say that this whole part of the film is a little weird. It's strange seeing James Bond uncomfortable around sexy females, but that is, I guess supposed to be part of the joke. There's a party scene with girls dancing, and Deborah Kerr does a little Highland fling, but it seems that the SMERSH agents just can't hold their scotch, as they all pass out. Don't ask me to explain any more than that, I have no clue.
Lady Fiona/Agent Mimi then tries to seduce Sir James, but he resists, which apparently annoys Agent Mimi, as leaves Sir James' room, grabs a bugle and blows it, and calls for the big heavies, to "warsle" with Sir James, whatever that is, but apparently it has something to do with throwing cannonball sized stones at each other. But the big heavies just cannot handle the stones, whilst Sir James handles them, not exactly with ease, but far better than the heavy mob did. Apparently this impresses Mimi so much, that she falls in love with Sir James.
It's Alexandra Bastedo's character here who leads the SMERSH revolt on Agent Mimi, and lock her in her own room.
The next day, we see a grouse shoot, which Sir James is taking part in, but the SMERSH agents have a dastardly plan in place. One of the buttons on his cape is secretly a homing device, which will allow the dastardly divas of SMERSH to fire explosive metal birds at our hero. But even this Bond is still the crackshot that we know and he disposes of said exploding birds, before they can harm him. He even seems incredibly nonchalant that these birds are exploding. Then with the help of Agent Mimi, who escaped her imprisonment, by climbing down a fortuitous drainpipe, he turns the tables on SMERSH and destroys the van that is launching the deadly missiles, before Agent Mimi decides to start a new life in a nearby convent.
I have to say that the whole sequence is done very well here, John Huston directed this part and is an excellent director. The scripting here is excellent too. The sideswipes at Sean Connery's 007 in the early going, describing him as "...that sexual acrobat who leaves a trail of beautiful dead women like blown roses behind him." and "...the bounder you gave my name and number to." are particularly sharp, and on target.
It's hilarious and actually allows the film to get off to a good start, nothing special, but still good. It has potential to pick up from there.
The next sequence involves Bond driving back down to London in his Bentley, when his car is sideswiped by a woman in a white Jaguar. What follows is an... interesting chase sequence, which involves our two cars, and... a milk float.
I kid you not, a milk float.
The close ups here are all done as process shots on rear projection and it's not bad, actually it works pretty well, and isn't that distracting, but to be honest the whole sequence is quite weak. The milk float is driven by remote control, the headlights come out to form part of the detonators, and there is a slight joke, and by slight I mean very slight, that in SMERSH control, the whole thing is 'displayed' via some huge Scalextrix set, it just looks weird. Anyway, Sir James outsmarts them, manages to overtake the Jag, and via a remote controlled gate, gets away from the Jag, which is blown up by the oncoming explosive milk float.
Hmm, there are a lot of explosions here in this film, and whilst they don't feel gratuitous, they do seem to be a little obsessed with explosions.
We are then back in London, in the offices of MI6, where we are introduced to Moneypenny, played by Barbara Bouchet, who is actually Miss Moneypenny's daughter. But Bond doesn't realise this and kisses her. Wow, so much for that celibate image! We are also introduced to someone called Hadley, who I guess is this film's equivalent of Bill Tanner. Hadley is played by Derek Nimmo, who comes across as a kind of butler. Mind you, that was always present in his voice no matter what he did.
Hadley explains to Sir James that the picture is not very good, and he talks about 3 agents who have been liquidated in various establishments of lesser repute. One in a bordello, one in a geisha house, and the third in a ladies' sauna bath. I love the line that comes from Sir James here.
"It's depressing that the words 'secret agent' have become synonymous with sex maniac."
Then there's one more shot at Sean Connery's 007, when Sir James asks where is his namesake. Hadley replies...
"We've had to take him off the board, sir. He's now doing television."
The James Bond film series is hardly television but it's a nice little shot across the bows.
We also get a nice "cameo" from Woody Allen here. It comes as Sir James and Hadley are discussing various assignments, and it turns out that Sir James's nephew, Jimmy Bond, is on assignment for MI6 in the Caribbean. Yep, you guessed it, Woody Allen is playing Jimmy Bond. This is a subtle reference to the character that Barry Nelson played in the 1954 CBS production of Casino Royale in their Climax Mystery Theatre anthology TV series, who wasn't a MI6 agent but a Combined Intelligence Agent. And yes, it is appropriate that Woody Allen, an American, is playing Jimmy Bond.
Unfortunately for Jimmy, it seems this could be it, as he is led out to face a firing squad. I gotta admit, the lines he says here are very funny. "...My doctor says I can't have bullets enter my body at any time...", "...What if I said I was pregnant?", "You realise, this means an angry letter to the Times". It seems that little Jimmy Bond is a little bit of coward. He asks for and is granted his last cigarette, which turns out to be a mistake, as as the firing squad prepare to fire, he throws the lit cigarette down in front of them, which promptly explodes.
Hmm, exploding cigarettes... they sure do love their explosions on this film. We're only 2 reels in, and we've already had 8 explosions. That's more often than most, if not all official James Bond films.
There is a nice punchline to this sequence. Jimmy Bond scales the wall behind him with the help of some climbing plants that conveniently go right to the top of the wall, and he goes over the wall, and lands, at the feet of another prisoner on the other side, who is also facing a firing squad. But Jimmy manages to escape.
It's probably taken me longer to write this up, and you longer to read it, than it would do for you to watch the whole sequence from Hadley's intro to the end of Allen's cameo. But I do love the writing here, the whole sequence is very well written and played very well by Nimmo, Niven and Allen. So, here it is for you watch and enjoy.
However, it's at this point that the rot starts to set in. As Sir James Bond reasons out that because female spies are being used so much by SMERSH, what they need is an AFSD. An Anti Female Spy Device. This is where Terence Cooper is introduced, in an identity parade style scene where Moneypenny is testing out all these guys by kissing them, and looking for the best kisser, and Terence Cooper comes out the winner, and they continue in Moneypenny's bed.
It's here that Sir James comes up with the idea that all agents from now on are to be called James Bond 007, even the females. This comes after he criticised M for giving his name and number to someone else... The whole idea feels totally weird at this point. However, there is little doubt that Terence Cooper is the nearest we get to someone actually playing the familiar James Bond 007 role. It's just a shame that we see so little of him in the rest of this movie. I almost think I would have preferred him to Peter Sellers at the Baccarat table. It would have helped the film I think.
But we do an interesting scene where he starts his AFSD training, to resist the feminine wiles, and it's also here we get introduced to another interesting character, who once again isn't used as well or as much as she could be. She is only known as The Detainer, and is portrayed here by Daliah Lavi. She introduces herself as "...the new secret weapon.", but one that Cooper/James Bond 007 manages to resist, but she still tries to seduce him. "And what are you doing after this?", to which Cooper replies, "I'm having my head examined."
I love this line. Anyone being trained to resist women probably does need their head examined!
It's not a bad sequence overall, but it is weaker than the previous sequences and whilst it could have led into a nice set of sequences that could have helped the film, the filmmakers decided not to go down those routes.
Then we get the weirdest bit of the film so far as we are introduced to Vesper Lynd, played here by Ursula Andress. She is dressed in a headdress that looks way out of place for a business woman, which is how she is presented here. Sir James persuades her to do some work for him, via £5million in tax arrears that Vesper has accrued. And then they discuss things in private.
Then we're introduced to Evelyn Tremble, in a tuxedo, playing a one-arm bandit, played here by Peter Sellers in glasses. Vesper seduces Evelyn in a long sequence that changes location and even includes a strange bit where Vesper despises of a dead body into her deep freeze! There's a fair amount of slow motion, and some slightly odd items in Vesper's apartment, which I have no sense what they were for. I'm back to being completely confused here.
There's also a continuity gaff here as Vesper at one point is wearing a light pink gown, and suddenly it changes shade into a darker, duskier shade of pink. It's little moments like that that take you out of the film. Peter Sellers dressing up as various people including Adolf Hitler, Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln, (at least I think it's meant to be Lincoln...) really doesn't add anything to the film either, and just leaves me completely baffled. It's during this bit that they talk about Evelyn Tremble playing Le Chiffre at Baccarat, and beating him. Tremble apparently has a system for winning at Baccarat. I don't know that I'm supposed to care here, as I'm just lost in the pointlessness of so much that has just happened. Exposition scenes in films do tend to be a little boring, if not handled really well, and I guess the idea is that they included some weird visuals to distract people from the exposition, but it doesn't work and the whole thing could have been done a lot better. It just lasts too long.
Now at this point, we should have had a scene of Peter Sellers being followed into Harrods department store by a dwarf, but the scene was never filmed, primarily because Peter Sellers either walked off set, or was fired, both stories have been mentioned, and both are plausible here.
So instead the next cut we have is Peter Sellers exiting a elevator to meet Q, played here by Geoffrey Bayldon. This is meant to be a parody of a Q Branch scene, with instead of being Q branch, it's the James Bond 007 Training School. John Wells appears here as Fordyce, Q's assistant, but the whole scene feels like a waste of screen time. It tries to set up the video watches that are used later on in the film, but the joke here was missed thanks to an error in post-production, where an image of Ursula Andress was used, instead of the intended image of Geoffrey Bayldon.
At this point, we cut back to Sir James and Hadley. Why, I don't know, the whole construction here makes little sense. This scene leads into the introduction of Mata Bond, who is supposedly Mata Hari's daughter. I guess this is a different timeline to our world, as Mata Hari died in 1917, and Mata Bond would have been at least 50 years old in this film, not the 20-something that she appears to be.
The sequence where we are introduced to Mata is lavish. The production design here is extravagant, the costuming is fantastic, and the music is wonderful, and we are given a dance sequence here that is brilliantly choreographed and also performed wonderfully by Mata Bond, played by Joanna Pettet. It's a beautiful sequence, it would look good in any film, and it looks good here, don't get me wrong, but why is it here? Its entire purpose is to introduce the character of Mata Bond, but it's just too much.
The conversation between them in the next sequence just is weird. There is one joke which tries hard to be funny, but just doesn't work, as Sir James persuades Mata to be a spy and to infiltrate a spy school. We then get a shot where Hadley is talking to Mata, and Bernard Cribbins, who is a taxi driver in this film. And after arriving at West Berlin, in the taxi... ...how did it get across the English Channel? There was no Channel Tunnel in 1966... ...we then enter what has to be the weirdest visual creation of the whole film. The production design on the spy school is completely different to everything else in the movie, and that's not to say it's bad, it certainly isn't, but the whole design is deliberately off-kilter, both visually and in comparison with the rest of the film, it just doesn't match anything else. The camera work here as well helps to sell the off-kilterness of the set. Almost everything is shot at weird angles and with weird lighting effects.
In this sequence we are introduced to two characters who run the spy school. Frau Hoffner, played by Anna Quayle, and Polo, who we are led to believe is a robot, played by Ronnie Corbett. Anna Quayle here plays Frau Hoffner in a manner that is as off-kilter as the sets and the camera work, she is slightly disturbing and that's a not bad thing, if done at the right time, for the right reasons. Here, I'm not sure it's right, but it's a good change from everything else so far.
Ronnie Corbett plays Polo as someone who feel in love with Mata Hari and sees her in Mata Bond and is finding himself falling in love with her too, despite the fact that apparently he's a robot. I'm all confused and confuddled. Quayle and Corbett give their scenes a wonderful energy and it's fair to say that they are a highlight in this film, but again, it just adds to the whole weirdness that is this film, and not always in a completely good way, but at least with these two, it's better than some of the Sellers stuff, which is not something you'll hear me say too often.
There's a toilet in Mata Hari/Mata Bond's room that is actually a revolving door when you pull the chain. Like, what?
There's a brief appearance here by Vladek Sheybal as Le Chiffre's representative at the auction. If that name means nothing to you, then I will refer to him in this review, by his other name, Kronsteen, who was SPECTRE's Director of Planning in From Russia With Love. The character isn't given a name, so we'll use Kronsteen, even though Kronsteen was killed at the end of From Russia With Love, it just helps for our purposes.
Kronsteen is the auctioneer responsible for selling Le Chiffre's art collection of compromising photos and other stuff.
And we meet Frau Hoffner again who introduces something called Little Otto, which resembles an old dead German soldier, and we have a weird sequence where Frau Hoffner denies everything, even her own name.
The auction is another one of these sequences that is a waste of time, it really achieves nothing. We are re-introduced to the taxi driver, Bernard Cribbins, who is in fact Carleton Towers of the Foreign Office, who tells Mata to make sure that Le Chiffre doesn't raise the money. We then get a chaotic sequence of Mata causing chaos by substituting the art slides for a battle scene, and all the military men at the auction believe that war has broken out... what the...?
Mata tries to escape, but runs into Polo, who somehow knows she was responsible for what just happened, despite not being there to witness it. I just give up at this point.
Polo threatens to kill Mata, but she seduces him and pulls out some wires from his battery, but be puts the wires back wrong, and Polo starts going backwards. Frau Hoffner also appears to stop Mata, but is weirdly shot by Otto.
Kronsteen and the soldiers try to capture Mata, but she gets the better of them, with the assistance of Captain Towers. Mata then thinks about escaping down a drain, but the sound of the song "What's New Pussycat", stops her in her tracks, and Towers takes her back to their cab and they return to London, with Kronsteen pursuing for a while, firing a gun, 5 shots out of a 6 shot revolver. He then goes to a nearby phone box to call Le Chiffre, to tell him the scheme failed. Kronsteen is then killed by Le Chiffre, who sets off explosives in the phone box.
WHAT???
How on earth did Le Chiffre know that Kronsteen would call him from that phone box??? It just beggars belief.
I have to say though, that is the first explosion we've had in about 40 minutes, after having 8 in the first 40 minutes.
We now cut back to Tremble, who has taken the name James Bond, arriving in Paris, and assaulting a French Customs Officer. Why? It makes no sense. Heck, the film even references that later in a conversation between Sir James and Moneypenny. The stupidity here is monumental.
We then cut back to Mathis and Tremble/Bond having their conversation, that we saw started in the pre-title sequence. In my opinion, it was a mistake to have that bit cut out from here and put in the pre-title sequence. A parody pre-title sequence should have been written, and perhaps could have featured Cooper in a parody of a 007 pre-title sequence, it would have made more sense than what happened.
Also, notable is the people washing the car Mathis and Bond/Tremble are in are wearing black PVC clothes. Well, I suppose it makes it easy to clean the uniform at the end of the day...
Sir James talks to Vesper via the video watches that was introduced earlier, and in the next cut, we are introduced to Miss Goodthighs, played here by Jacqueline Bisset. She is holding a bottle of champagne and Tremble/Bond turns and shoots but misses. It's not clear whether he was trying to shoot Miss Goodthighs or the champagne bottle, but either way, it's just gratuitous and useless in the whole context of the film.
Miss Goodthighs is a parody of Miss Mary Goodnight, who in the books was Bond's secretary, and would later appear played by Brit Ekland in the 1974 Roger Moore film, The Man With The Golden Gun. But here, she's a SMERSH agent, and is trying to drug Tremble/Bond. We then get a dream sequence, which just feels completely unnecessary. The sequence features Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress and Jacqueline Bisset in various shots and perhaps was an attempt to use some of the footage that they'd shot with Peter Sellers and get the most out of it that they could. But to be honest, it just doesn't work.
We get to the casino, where Le Chiffre is playing Baccarat and performing magic tricks. I kid you not, Orson Welles had it written into his contract that his illusion sequence be kept in the final cut. Like so much in this film, it is completely meaningless and out of place, and does nothing for the film itself. Tremble/Bond and Vesper arrive and go to the cashier, who is played here by Graham Stark. Stark had performed with Sellers before in A Shot In The Dark, and would make other films with him, but this was little more than a token appearance.
We have a sequence where Tremble and Vesper observe Le Chiffre from the office of the Casino Director, and we have a strange sequence where it's revealed, kinda weirdly, that Le Chiffre is using X-Ray glasses to know what hand his opponent is holding. In essence allowing him to cheat his way to victory every time.
The game itself between Le Chiffre and Tremble is kinda boring really and I'm glad it doesn't take up a lot of time. It's shot well and the editing is nice, but the way it has been written here, just doesn't make it interesting. I must admit though, there is one nice shot where the camera pushes into Le Chiffre after Tremble says "No cards", and the closeup is practically full face, it's a great way of symbolising the pressure that Le Chiffre is under at that moment, and really works in the sequence's favour, but most of this is undone by the fact that due to some hatred that came about between Sellers and Welles during a visit by Princess Margaret, Sellers forced the filmmakers to shoot his scenes at the card table separate from Orson Welles. Not merely separate on the same day, but on separate days. The scene would have worked much better had we had most of the shots being of the two of them at the table, with the solo shots only for odd moments when emphasis was needed. But that's not what happened.
Vesper is kidnapped, and we get an odd scene where Stirling Moss cameos. Tremble tells him to follow that car, which he does by running after it. Tremble has also managed to mysteriously change from a Tuxedo to a racing driver's outfit in about 3 seconds. This little bit is all meant to set up a car chase where Tremble pursues those who have kidnapped Vesper, but that sequence was never shot, again due to Sellers either leaving the production by his own choice, or by being fired from the film.
So instead of cutting to a car chase, we cut to Le Chiffre sat in front of some weird computer/control panel thing, with a periscope that he looks through. Apparently he isn't even on the same floor where Tremble is being held captive. Don't understand it, don't ask me to explain it, I just have no clue.
There's a sequence where Le Chiffre apparently is causing Tremble to hallucinate in various ways, again not sure how, but suddenly Tremble is in this weird smokey area with two different Scottish marching bands, and Peter O'Toole. Vesper Lynd somehow makes the save here, we think, by shooting the pipers with her machine gun disguised as a set of bagpipes, but then she turns on Tremble and shoots him. Again, don't ask me to explain, I guess it has something to do with Sellers not completing all the scenes he was required for, but I don't know that for certain. Le Chiffre is then shot by two SMERSH agents on the orders of Doctor Noah.
We then cut back to London, where Sir James and a very different looking Mata Bond, now with short straight blonde hair instead of the long, curly hair we saw earlier, are at Downing Street. Sir James sends Mata to watch the changing of the guard, whilst he goes into talk with the PM.
Mata is then kidnapped by a guard, and taken aboard a flying saucer that had just landed in Trafalgar Square. Hey, this is the 1960s, flying saucers were a big thing then.
There's a weird scene with Moneypenny, Sir James and Sister McTarry, alias Agent Mimi from earlier in the film, who reveals to Sir James that Mata is going to be taken to Casino Royale.
The saucer takes her to an area just off the French coast, where a vehicle of some kind takes her inside a cliff, and dumps her in there. It's completely confusing and totally nuts.
What then follows is a weird end sequence, that really has little to do with all the Peter Sellers stuff, even though it's set in the same Casino. Sir James and Moneypenny arrive at the casino. Nice to see Moneypenny here get a field assignment.
Almost instantly a maitre-d or some such character, approaches Sir James and tells him that the director would like to see him urgently regarding his daughter. Okay, that's instant weirdness in my book, and would cause immediate suspicion, and thankfully, Bond seems immediately suspicious as well. Sir James and Moneypenny are shown into the office we saw earlier, and three Scottish-dressed agents suddenly appear, tie up Moneypenny and fight Sir James, who proceeds to make monkeys out of them all. Moneypenny manages to get herself free, and it looks like Sir James and Moneypenny might make their escape, but no, the heavies have guns, and Bond and Moneypenny are taken prisoner, and enter the "SMERSH headquarters of Doctor Noah".
By clever use of another Sir James tactic, they escape from their captors, only for an alarm to go off the very millisecond they trip up the heavies. Then for some reason, the film is deliberately under cranked to give the next bit the appearance of an old silent movie as Bond and Moneypenny run for their lives. This under cranking trick will crop up again later on. It does give the resulting footage a slightly comedic look about it and to be fair, it isn't done a lot these days, but the simplicity of the technique makes it instantly recognisable. They duck into a corridor, that is first red, then blue, then red, then blue again, then red again, and finally blue once more. Why they did this, I have no idea, again, it makes no sense.
The room they then enter is circular, with a spiral pattern on the floor, and coloured doors the outside, and another spiral opposite the blue door. I don't whether they're trying to outdo Ken Adam for set extravagance here, but some of these sets seem over the top, just for the sake of it. The production design in this film was done by Michael Stringer, who also did the designs for A Shot In The Dark and Inspector Clouseau, both of which were far less extravagant than this film.
From this they go through the green door, into a room with a psychedelic green design, and finally into the main room, to meet, face to silhouette, with Doctor Noah. I have to say, that Valentine Dyall, known to many radio listeners in the 1950s as The Man In Black, and also later known for playing The Black Guardian in Doctor Who, provides the voice for Doctor Noah up to this point. Dyall himself made an appearance earlier on in the film as one of Vesper's assistants in her first scene of the movie. His voice is very distinctive and would be recognisable anywhere.
Sir James meets his own double, manages to take the machine gun off him and kills him, then shoots at Doctor Noah's silhouette. Once again, we get a gratuitous explosion as the glass shatters to reveal...
...Woody Allen!
Jimmy Bond is Doctor Noah!
I love this actually, it kind of points to the fact that even back then, the 1954 CBS production of Casino Royale was not highly regarded, and Barry Nelson's "Card Shark Jimmy Bond" was not a patch on the character Sean Connery so brilliantly brought to life in the movies. So having Jimmy Bond as the villain here actually plays well, and is quite funny.
What makes it even funnier in my view is that he can't speak in the presence of Sir James, which begs the question who was talking just now, or was the glass barrier providing a kind of separation that made it easier for him to talk? I have no idea but whatever...
Actually, Woody Allen is one of the best things in this movie. He is genuinely funny, and a shining light in the film. That's not to say the other actors aren't good, but we'll deal with more of that later.
Anyway, Doctor Noah/Jimmy Bond/whoever else he is, there are so many dual identities in this film that it's so easy to become confused about who is known by what name, orders his female agents to take Bond and Moneypenny captive again, and they are led away somewhere, whilst Doctor Noah goes into another room, where we are re-introduced to The Detainer. We haven't seen her or Cooper since before the halfway point.
It's a funny sequence, with Jimmy Bond trying to prove that he is better than his Uncle James, and failing pretty miserably on all counts. He then reveals he's come up with a pill that can change a human into a walking atomic bomb, via 400 mini explosions inside the human body, starting a chain reaction. This is silliness upon silliness, but Woody Allen actually pulls it off. If you think about it, it's stupid, but in the moment, Allen makes it work.
The Detainer fools him into thinking she is interested in him, and Doctor Noah releases her from the restraints. She sneakily grabs the pill and we cut to Sir James, Moneypenny, Mata and Cooper, who are trying to fill up something with a gas that is apparently highly explosive. Oh boy, I think we're getting back to the explosions fetish here...
Another quick cut, and we are in Doctor Noah's Personal Jet, which looks nothing like any jet aircraft I've ever seen. We see a double for The Detainer, as a air hostess, and we also see some of the many doubles that Doctor Noah plans to replace world leaders with. Most of the doubles have their faces covered, so we can't see them. 5 are uncovered, and these are not duplicates apparently, but the real deal. 3 of them appear to be the leaders of Cuba, China and North Korea at the time, though who the other two are, I have no idea.
The Detainer drops Doctor Noah's atomic pill into his drink, and he unknowingly swallows it. The Detainer makes her escape, and Doctor Noah seeks an Alka Seltzer. Like that's going to help...
Meanwhile back with Sir James, and the crew, they've filled their pillow with this gas, and are using it to blow open the door. This part of the sequence is under cranked again, to give it that silent movie treatment, as Sir James and company make their escape. We're inside the final 10 minutes, and I think the explosion count is going up.
1 explosion to get out of the room, and more to come. As they go back through the room where Sir James confronted Doctor Noah, Cooper calls for everyone to get down, as a load of SMERSH agents fire their machine guns at our heroes. Somehow, they miss, and manage to set off a whole load of water jets that stop the baddies in their tracks. Sense? This film hasn't made sense since the start of reel 3.
Another door opens, and sparks start flying, and our heroes make their escape quickly before the door comes down as the fuse blows. I love Sir James' comment in the chaos of Doctor Noah's HQ being destroyed. "Try not to look conspicuous."
Our crew meet up with the Detainer, and they eventually find their way to the office, via a helpful Frankenstein monster, played by David Prowse, in his first movie role, and the crew get back to the casino, all except The Detainer, who decides she would rather risk a drainpipe than go through the casino again.
Sir James tells Cooper to get the ladies out of here, and goes to call Whitehall 0007. But before his call can be connected, Vesper cuts him off and orders him back to the office, but then we're into "the big finish" with a parody of the big battle sequences that ended Goldfinger and Thunderball.
It's a good sequence with a lot of energy, but the whole thing has almost come too late. But it has to be said the joke book at this point didn't have many pages left in it.
But at the end of all this silliness, involving laughing gas, an exploding roulette wheel (that makes 2 explosions in this last sequence), a cameo from George Raft, and even a Keystone Kops moment, at the end of this, everybody dies, as Woody Allen explodes, destroying the casino and everyone still in it, even a Sea Lion. Yep, a Sea Lion.
THE VILLAINS
SMERSH are the villains here, but due to the parody nature of the whole piece, taking them seriously as villains is rather difficult. Orson Welles plays Le Chiffre pretty well, and to be fair does a better job with the character than Mads Mikkelsen does almost 40 years later. Woody Allen is the standout of the cast, I said that earlier, and I mean that most sincerely, folks. His turn as Jimmy Bond/Doctor Noah is brilliantly written and very well portrayed. It's amazing to think that Woody Allen himself dislikes this movie intensely, and cites the messy production of it as the main reason why he decided to start directing movies himself, though I do think he's been a little unfair to at least one or two of the directors of this movie, as there are some good sequences, just many of them make no sense in the flow of the film, but individually, the sequences are mostly pretty good. Calvin Dyson says it best in his review of this film where he talks about trying to hold 4 stampeding elephants together with a single cotton thread, and it is a very fair point.
In a production like this, there has to be something that holds it all together, and more than a small something, it has to be strong enough to hold all the elements together. When you have more than one director on a project, whether by choice or by circumstance, the producer has to be the voice of consistency, holding it all together, and unfortunately here, neither Charles K Feldman nor Jerry Bresler provide that consistency.
Ursula Andress playing Vesper Lynd here is kinda weak actually. Now whether that's down to the script or her performance, I'm not totally sure. Certainly the scripting isn't up to the standard of the first two reels, but I don't know whether that's down to the many rewrites that various actors including Peter Sellers were forcing on the production, or whether the original script was that bad. Her performance is okay, but nothing special, and the reveal at the end that she's a baddie, isn't handled that well.
As to Agent Mimi and the others who make up the rest of the SMERSH crowd, most of them aren't really given any time to do much. Jacqueline Bisset as Miss Goodthighs is good in her little sequence, but we don't see much of her. Deborah Kerr is wonderful here as Agent Mimi, who falls in love with Sir James, but her scenes are mostly in the early going, except for one last cameo appearance towards the end. Rather a lot of characters in this film get just a couple of scenes and they're done. We don't really get invested in anybody because there are so many changes of cast all the way.
Anna Quayle and Ronnie Corbett are both excellent, and Vladek Sheybal is on good form here but again, they have limited screen time and you're not really invested in them all.
All the girls in Control in the early going are pretty good in what they do, but we know little about them, and they don't really show a lot of character.
THE HEROES
We have the same problem with a lot of our hero characters, who really don't have enough screen time to make much of an impression.
The only one who has much screen time in the whole project is Sir James Bond. David Niven plays this to his usual standard and does a fine job playing the polar opposite of the Sean Connery 007 character that we know and love. He has some great lines in the early going which really sets up a delightful character, with a wonderful charm and yet a sharp wit and sharp wits. As a 007 interpretation, it holds up pretty well, and the subtle hints about Miss Moneypenny Junior that we get in David Niven's expression in Moneypenny's opening scene hint at the possibility of her also being his daughter. Add to this the fact that Mata Bond IS his daughter, and it kinda sells Sir James as a changed man. It's a wonderful characterisation that I almost feel sorry for, that it was trapped in this script and film.
You won't hear me say this often, but this is probably one of the few occasions when Peter Sellers didn't perform up to his usual standard. Why this is, is unknown, but it's said that he had parts of the script rewritten to make it more serious, as though he was taking the James Bond role to heart, and there are definitely parts of the film where you can feel that it is taking something more seriously than it has in other parts. The sequence in the casino director's office with Mathis, Vesper and Tremble/Bond certainly feel a lot straighter and a lot more serious than other parts of the film, and that in itself might not be a bad thing, as doing that can sometimes set up a wonderful punchline at the end. In this case however, it never delivers any real punchline, and the sequence just adds to the sense of confusion that this film portrays.
Barbara Bouchet's Moneypenny is definitely not your standard secretary and actually that kinda helps her, because she plays the role quite well, I mean it's no Lois Maxwell, but there is a good Moneypenny character here, and it's great to see the character get a decent bit of screen time.
The only other hero who gets any decent screen time is Mata Bond, and Joanna Pettet is pretty good here, nothing special, but she has some decent dialogue and plays her role in this pretty well. The mix of sixties sass, and Mata Hari-ness that Pettet brings into the role makes her work better than many other "Bond girls" in the official series.
Terence Cooper is alright in the few scenes that we see him in, and is definitely the closest to the Sean Connery 007 character, but he just isn't seen enough to make much of an impact, though he does have a couple of good fight moments in the big final battle.
Dahlia Lavi as The Detainer is okay, but once again we don't really get enough of her for her character to really have much of an impact in the overall film.
OTHER NOTES
Most films actually film most of their shots in a space of about 3 or 4 months. Production on this film began in January 1966 and didn't finish until November of that year. 10 months of prodcution. A lot of this is down to the fact that Peter Sellers would be off the set for days on end, and even on the set, he was warring with Orson Welles. His firing, or walking out was inevitable and I think it was a mistake that they left those scenes in there. They should have rewritten the Tremble stuff and maybe re-assigned it to Cooper, or recast the role, but to not do anything is partially what doomed this project to critical failure, even if did make almost $30million profit for Columbia Pictures.
This film at times does feel like a collection of unrelated sequences, which are loosely tied together, and the thread just can't keep it all together. It's enjoyable in places, but there is too much just outright crazy silliness that has no place in the picture really. The best parodies are the ones that pick their target and zero in on it precisely, like a Goldfinger laser beam. Here; the parody is broad, and isn't particularly well focused. It takes some excellent shots at the official series, but it just isn't precise enough, or indeed funny enough, to make you ignore the gigantic leaps of logic between certain scenes, unlike a film like Masters Of The Universe, which is a bad movie, but done so well in its badness, that it's actually kinda enjoyable and you don't really care about the huge leaps of logic there.
It's not a good good film, and it's not a good bad film, it comes in as a bad good film, not totally bad and unwatchable but not good enough to make it anything other than okay, I guess. In terms of being a James Bond film, most of the other films do stuff better than in this film, and even the stuff they do really well here isn't enough to overcome the messy production and the discordant nature of the whole film. I really don't think there's enough to make me recommend this to anyone, but it has enough reasonable about it to make it come in just ahead of Moonraker on my list.
Next time, number 23... and a serious film that tried to be a sequel, and we know from Moonraker how those just never work...
No comments:
Post a Comment