The worst film I’ve ever seen

Let me tell you about a movie that is so bad in every way that I felt obliged to watch it all the way through because I just couldn’t believe my eyes. There are basic rules of storytelling which, if you stick to them, will guarantee that at least your film or book will be understandable. Or, if it’s a crazy movie, at least it will be amusing or entertaining. The producers of this film ignored every rule and premise there is in cinematography and produced something so bad it isn’t even funny. Even after more than five decades, it is truly, lamentably awful. Film school students should study it to learn what not to do.

The name of this flop? Casino Royale, released in 1967, the alternative to the James Bond 007 franchise, made purely because the producer had secured the rights to the eponymous Ian Fleming novel. It’s so bad, that any subsequent Bond film from the Cubby Broccoli Studios was guaranteed to be a masterpiece by comparison. It was marketed as a Bond spoof, but it’s not even remotely funny or clever. At the very least, you can call it disappointing, at worst, it’s an equal opportunity offender, with the writing being patronizing and disrespectful to cultures all around the world, even then. What were those people thinking?

It made tons of money – surprise!

But, proving even then that the 007 franchise is a drawcard, and that people find a movie with a naked girl on the promo poster irresistible, the film had a budget of $12 million, and made $41.7 million at the box office! This despite the film having too many actors in the cast (61!), too many directors (4), and too many screenwriters (3).

Who’s in it?

The film stars an aging and effete (very effete) David Niven as “Sir James Bond, 007”, retired; Peter Sellers in a horrible turn as a seducer and card sharp recruited by the British Secret Service; and Woody Allen (good Lord), as a wittering Bond wanna-be, “Jimmy Bond”, the nephew of Sir James Bond 007. That sounds like a stellar cast for the time, and the list of actors is just packed with famous names; Orson Welles (as the baddie, “Le Chiffre”), Jean-Paul Belmondo, Ronnie Corbett, Jacqueline Bisset, Ursula Andress (as “Vesper Lynd”), Deborah Kerr, etc. Some even worked for free just to be associated with the A-grade leads. I wonder if, later in their careers, they didn’t just cringe with embarrassment at their performances in this film.

Plot? What plot?

The plot is incomprehensible. Really, really incomprehensible. Why they are doing whatever they are doing never makes sense. At one point the scene is invaded by cowboys, then by the worst bunch of clichéd Wild West Indians in the history of Western movies. One minute a woman loves Bond, the next she wants to kill him. Bond comes out of a hotel wearing one outfit, the next scene he is chasing after Vesper Lynd in a sports car, while wearing a different outfit, and the very next scene he is in a cell, caught by Le Chiffre. Logic? What’s that? Plot? Ain’t got no plot. Dramatic tension? Eh? Nope. And the dialogue! Oh, my sainted auntie.

Dreadful dialogue

Here’s a couple of lines – the voice-over narrator speaks in laboured rhyme, and the puns and innuendos are so heavy and clichéd you can paper walls with them:

Jimmy Bond: You can't shoot me! I have a very low threshold of death. My doctor says I can't have bullets enter my body at any time. I-I, eh, eh, oh, oh, what if I said I was pregnant?

Piper: Excuse me. Are you Richard Burton?
Evelyn Tremble: No, I'm Peter O'Toole!
Piper: Then you're the finest man that ever breathed.

Mata Bond: [In front of 10 Downing Street] Oh, Daddy, I do so long to meet him. All the girls do. He really turns me on!
Sir James: Did that finishing school teach you to talk like that?
Mata Bond: No, I taught them. Oh, do be a pet, Daddy.
Sir James: Be a good girl, do run along and watch the changing of the guard.
Mata Bond: I bet Mummy would have taken me in.
Sir James: Mummy took everyone in.

Narrator: [speaking in bad rhyme] Seven James Bonds at Casino Royale. They came to save the world and win a gal at Casino Royale. Six of them went to a heavenly spot. The seventh one is going to a place where it's terribly hot.

The Detainer: You're crazy. You are absolutely crazy!
Jimmy Bond: People called Einstein crazy.
The Detainer: That's not true. No one ever called Einstein crazy.
Jimmy Bond: Well, they would have if he'd carried on like this.

Miss Moneypenny: I really have to note your qualifications.
Cooper: Height: six foot two and a half. 184 pounds. Trophies for karate and judo, holder of the Kama Sutra black belt.
Miss Moneypenny: Very impressive. How do you spell that?
Cooper: I'll show you!

Cringy casting

This film is an example of the lesson that, just because you can do something, does not mean you should. It probably made Ian Fleming spin in his grave. The actors had all been mis-cast. The lead, David Niven, was, in his time, an actor who played himself – a charming, upper class British gentleman. He did not play dramatic or intense roles, except for Separate Tables in 1958, for which he won an Academy Award. Frankly, he was not the heroic type, even when playing military roles. He had bags under his eyes, lacked muscles, and always looked like he could have a drip at the end of his long nose. So, for him to play even an aging James Bond, the Scottish, 6 ft tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed killer imagined by Ian Fleming, was a misjudgment.

The role calls for Sir James Bond to have a stutter (rather than an upper-class lisp), which is supposed to be funny. David Niven could not do a decent stutter. One thing is certain about Fleming’s novels and his characters: there is no humour at all. Not a bit. There is nothing funny, or witty, and there are no innuendos or wink-wink-nudge-nudge lines. This film is full of it.

The script (not the novel) also called for Sir James Bond to have a femme fatale for a daughter, named “Mata Bond”, from his affair with the spy, Mata Hari. Joanna Pettet plays Mata Bond and enters the story in a scene with traditional Thai dancers (not actual ones, obviously) that is so inept it makes your toes curl. Later she gets kidnapped by aliens in a flying saucer. Why? Don’t know.

No suspense

What makes a spy, crime or action film enjoyable to watch? Tension and release. The viewer feels involved, feels tension, and, realizing it’s just a film, they feel relief and satisfaction. The more gruesome or suspenseful the film, the greater the sense of release. If there is no really bad villain, no really horrific situation or build-up of drama, and the viewer feels nothing much. Apart from confusion, I felt nothing for any character in this movie.

As for the female characters, it’s insult piled on insult. They’re all the same, they look the same, their characters are pointless, it’s all about boobs and bums. There is even a character, “Cooper” (as in the quote, above) who is supposed to be a master seducer and practices on a queue of willing women…to do what in terms of the crime to solve, whatever that is, I forget. He pops up in a few scenes, pointlessly.

I can’t even remember what the crime or threat is. At least in other James Bond films, as bad as they were at the start of the franchise, you got some idea of the villains and their intentions: ruining the gold standard, blowing up NASA rockets, getting atomic power, starting a new world order, and so on.

A villain not worth mentioning

The villain in this film is revealed to be Jimmy Bond, though Woody Allen makes the least funny, least convincing bad guy ever. He looks like a nervous squirrel, hopping around and bouncing up and down, and squealing in a little voice. I’ve never thought that Woody Allen is funny. His style of comedy is supposed to be self-deprecating and neurotic. But here he plays an ambitious criminal who believes that he is a genius, and that’s not self-deprecating. Yet he delivers the lines in the same whining, self-pitying way in which he delivers stand-up comedy. When he smiles, the smile does not go his eyes.

Peter Sellers plays the role of a master baccarat player. I could not figure out whether he is an antagonist or protagonist. The film was made after Sellers, around 1964, started taking on roles to change his image from that of a funny weirdo like “Inspector Clouseau” in the Pink Panther films, to that of a sexy ladies’ man and handsome, macho hero. No doubt at the behest of his doting mama. He’s not the type. He never was. Stanley Kubrick commented that the idea of having Sellers in so many of key roles during the 1960s was that “…everywhere you turn there is some version of Peter Sellers holding the fate of the world in his hands”. Poor world.

Creepy scenes

Sellers was not handsome. He had a face like a weasel (huge schnozz and no lips to speak of) and a voice so nasal it sounded like he had a clothes-peg tight on that large nose. Every time in this darn movie that he moved in to kiss some girl, my skin crawled. It’s acting, but hells’ bells, poor girls.

As part of his new sexy self-image, in early February 1964, Sellers (punching way above his weight) had met and quickly married Britt Ekland, a Swedish actress who had arrived in London to film Guns at Batasi. Ekland later starred as a clue-less sidekick to Roger Moore’s Bond in The Man with the Golden Gun, 1971. Many of the actors in Casino Royale went on to star in subsequent James Bond movies – proving that the casting in this film was riddled with favours for friends, and friends of friends.

Another example of a role in this film being a step up on the James Bond film franchise ladder, is the cringeworthy scene where Niven gets in a bath with a teenager, called “Buttercup”. The girl is Angela Scoular, who later went on to play another bimbo, “Ruby”, in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969).

You want to see just how discomforting this scene is? Read this:

Buttercup : I'm testing the temperature of the water. As I always did for my Daddy. He used to call me his little thermometer. Well, get in!
Sir James : Get in?
Buttercup : Get in!
Sir James : [Gets in the bathtub]  You're sure I'm not crowding you?
Buttercup : Get in! Ah, don't you want your back scrubbed?
Sir James : Thank you. What is your name, my dear?
Buttercup : Buttercup.
Sir James : How old are you?
Buttercup : Seventeen.
Sir James : Do you go to school?
Buttercup : Daddy taught us. There. You're as sleek as a baby. Now, turn round.
Sir James: What form are you in?
Buttercup: Can ye nae judge that for yourself, Sir James?

Well, folks, if you want to learn what not to do when writing a screenplay or a spy novel, watch this and thank the stars that Charles K. Feldman had not produced another Bond film. In my mind I’ve renamed this film Connerie Royale (no pun intended on Sean Connery, connerie in French means bulls**t.)

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