It is no secret that 1967 James Bond spoof Casino Royale is an unholy mess.
This is a movie which took 5 directors to make and it and includes multiple actors as different incarnations of James Bond (played by David Niven and Peter Sellers amongst others). I have only seen this once (on TV, years ago). It has its moments – in the spirit of the swinging sixties – but the chaos surrounding its making shows through. What remains is essentially a series of disjointed set pieces which make little or no sense, and one gets the impression that the cast also had no idea what was going on!
Casino Royale came about because producer Charles K Feldman had bought the rights to Ian Fleming’s novel back in the 50s. After the rights to Fleming’s other novels were sold for what became the ‘official’ series of James Bond movies, Feldman did not know what to do with Casino Royale and decided to turn it into a spoof.
I once owned the UK quad poster – which boasted the movie is ‘too much for one James Bond’ (refreshingly honest, in a way…) I never loved it nor the movie so sold it years ago – maybe a mistake in retrospect as (with all things Bond) copies are now fetching crazy high prices.
This French ‘moyenne’ poster is more appealing I think – it has the same image of the girl but the montage of stills around the border is an interesting design feature. I was happy to sell this one recently – a case of too much James Bond perhaps?