DVD highlights one `Royale` mess of 1967 Bond spoof

Will James Bond addicts really be interested in seeing a disastrous version of Casino Royale?

The odds are they will. And no, we're not talking about the taut 2006 film that restored the ailing 007 franchise to health and ushered Daniel Craig into the Bond role. We're referring to the ill-fated 1967 movie version of Fleming's first 007 novel, which featured a cast that included David Niven, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen as various incarnations of Bond, and employed five different directors, who were mostly working independently of each other - reports Canada.com.

Near the end of the chaotic filming process, the most prestigious of those directors, John Huston, jovially suggested to veteran British filmmaker Val Guest, another hapless participant in the proceedings, that their movie was essentially "a load of crap."

We hear this story from a 92-year-old Guest in the course of an amusing interview he gave in connection with Casino Royale's original's DVD release. The interview is still part of the film's new 40th anniversary DVD issue from Fox Home Entertainment. And the movie itself can be purchased singly or as part of a bargain-priced Peter Sellers set.

Sellers looms large in the Casino Royale fiasco: after all, his predictably bad behaviour shipwrecked an already foundering project -- and, it is suggested, contributed to the subsequent death by heart attack of embattled producer Charles Feldman.

More to the point, the disc also includes a tantalizing bonus that few have ever heard of -- a fascinating 1954 TV version of Casino Royale.

No Fleming novel has had a more turbulent time when it comes to movie treatments, and here's why. By 1967, the Bond film franchise was off and running, thanks to the brilliant work of Sean Connery as 007 and to the box-office success of Doctor No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger.

Producer Albert Broccoli's Eon Films had options on every Fleming novel except the first one, Casino Royale.

In the 1960s, Casino Royale belonged to Feldman, who had acquired the rights from Ian Fleming in 1953, long before Bond had become an international phenomenon. Now, 007 was hot property -- but with the Sean Connery image embossed on it. What was Feldman to do?

He opted for a radical alternative: disregard most of the Fleming plot, apart from Bond's famous card game with the villainous Le Chiffre, and do a parody involving not just one Bond but five or six.

Niven was the aging Sir James Bond, summoned from retirement to deal with a new international crisis. Then other 007s were thrown into the mix: Woody Allen, very funny as Sir James's feckless nephew Jimmy Bond; Joanna Pettit as Mata Bond, illegitimate offspring of Sir James and notorious spy Mata Hari; and Peter Sellers as card expert Evelyn Trimble, who impersonates Bond in the classic baccarat encounter with Orson Welles' Le Chiffre at the Casino Royale.

The bizarre screenplay was attributed to Wolf Mankowitz, John Law and Michael Sayers; uncredited contributors included such legendary names as Ben Hecht and Billy Wilder, plus Woody Allen, Val Guest, Joseph Heller, Terry Southern and Peter Sellers.

Forty years ago, critic Roger Ebert labelled the resulting film a "definitive example of what can happen when everybody working on a project goes simultaneously berserk."

The movie is a fiasco, the equivalent of a multi-vehicle smash-up, which perhaps explains why you can't take your eyes off it.

As an antidote of sorts, there's that 1954 TV treatment starring a very American Barry Nelson as Bond waging wits with Peter Lorre's deliciously oily and menacing Le Chiffre.

Once again, if you're a Bond freak, you won't care that it's drek; it's still irresistible.

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