# Casino Royale **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 6, 2001, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884 "2001-03-06T03:33:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/1 "2001-03-06T03:33:23Z")
I just got done watching _Casino Royale_ on AMC, and I’m trying to figure out what I just watched. That’s got to be one of the most bizarre movies I’ve ever seen. It started out as a good spoof on Bond movies, but the last half hour or so just went completely nuts. I understand there were five directors on this movie, which may explain how disjointed it is. Great actors, including Peter Sellers (one of my all time favorites), David Niven, Woody Allen, Orson Welles. Some very funny lines and scenes (I think Peter O’Toole’s cameo was hilarious). But I just don’t know whether I liked it. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/2 "2001-03-06T04:23:44Z")
I watched it 9 times over a three day period while working as a projectionist. Unlike most movies, it got better each time I saw it. Someone stuck an awful lot of odd references into the script. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/3 "2001-03-06T04:39:07Z")
Just watched it, also. Very uneven. Hilarious & “WTF”? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/4 "2001-03-06T05:41:06Z")
I read the book before I had ever heard of the movie. As you may know, the movie has even less to do with the book than in most of the James Bond series. The book is a grim spy story in which, among other things, James Bond gets strapped into a seatless chair and beaten in the testicles with a cane until he passes out, bleeding heavily from the crotch. So, imagine my suprise when I saw an ad for the movie, and there’s Woody Allen, and a bunch of wacky stuff going on. I was bowled over, in fact. How in the hell did they get this story out of that novel? ---
**Author:** ![dr\_hermes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/dfb087/32.png) [@dr\_hermes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dr_hermes)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/5 "2001-03-06T08:28:27Z")
In the original novel, James Bond is tortured by the villain Le Chiffre with a carpet beater, not a cane, and in the movie, Orson Welles as Le Chiffre has a carpet beater by his chair. ``` I think this is the movie AUSTIN POWERS is based on, so Mike Meyers is doing a take off on a spoof... ``` The rights to CASINO ROYALE were sold seperately by Ian Fleming, which is why Sean Connery is not in it and why it is as different from the canon as possible. I would greatly enjoy seeing the novel made into a serious film. It’s 007’s first big case; he starts out cocky and overconfident, has everything go wrong, has to be rescued by a SMERSH agent and is deceived and betrayed by a woman he cares strongly about. At the end, he buckles down, vows dedication to his job and becomes the James Bond we know. Quite an origin story. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/6 "2001-03-06T10:54:51Z")
_Casino Royale_ was actually the first James Bond story to hit the screen, in a 1952 TV movie version featuring Bond as a CIA agent. Peter Lorre played Le Chiffre. I believe you can buy it on video. The later and goofier version, had very little to do with the original story, and may improve with drug use. [hijack]If you liked _Casino Royale_ (the psychedelic version), you might also like _Head_, the Monkee’s foray onto the big screen. Weird and angry.[/hijack] ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/7 "2001-03-06T12:54:31Z")
Watch it again! Dig that groovy Bacharach soundtrack! I saw it several times on network teevee as a child in the late '60s-early '70s, and it became one of my favorite comedies, along with many other of the overblown mid-'60s films. When I started taking acid in the neo-LSD boom of 1978 in an effort to see Gawd, there was a definite feeling of “Oh, yeah…THIS seems familiar.” Did you know that God bears a REMARKABLE resemblance to Peter O’Toole? “My doctor says that I should not have bullets enter my body at any time.” – Jimmy Bond ---
**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/8 "2001-03-06T14:00:36Z")
**Ike** , you’re right – the soundtrack **is** great. I wondered if drugs were involved in the making of this movie. I read that Peter Sellers didn’t finish the shooting, which would explain some of the discontinuity with his character. Wasn’t it Sellers character who appeared very briefly during the opening credits as James Bond? Here’s more info on the TV version of [Casino Royale](http://www.bond.00go.com/films/casino_royale_1.htm) that **jr8** was talking about. It was actually a one hour live broadcast on CBS in 1954. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/9 "2001-03-06T15:34:07Z")
Was anything cut from the theatrical version for tv? Some of the scenes seemed to end abrubtly and some cuts were strange but then again the whole movie is strange. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/10 "2001-03-06T16:10:37Z")
Don’t think so. The original theatrical release didn’t make any sense, either. Saw it, as I recall, June 7, 1968. The first, and last until 1999, movie I saw by myself. Absolutely fell in love with Joanna Pettet (Mata Bond), but the mental math based on her being the daughter of Bond (the Niven Bond, not one of the several others in the movie) and Mata Hari resulted in an age for her that didn’t match up with her youthful appearance. Oh well. Not the only thing that didn’t add up. Plot holes you could drive a Lotus Formula Three (tee hee) through. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/11 "2001-03-06T16:35:28Z")
So it’s uneven! So it’s got plot holes! So the climax makes absolutely no sense! C’mon, what other movie (aside from IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD) boasts a cast list like THIS? David Niven Orson Welles John Huston Woody Allen Peter Sellers Jean-Paul Belmondo Charles Boyer George Raft William Holden Peter O’Toole Ursula Andress Deborah Kerr Jacqueline Bisset Elke Sommer …and the incredilbly yummy Dahlia Lavi? ---
**Author:** ![jcgmoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9adbd/32.png) [@jcgmoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jcgmoi)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2001, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/casino-royale/56884/12 "2001-03-06T17:18:28Z")
**Ukulele Ike:** > [@](#): > > Did you know that God bears a REMARKABLE resemblance to Peter O’Toole? As does His Son. See _The Ruling Class_.