The James Bond 007 Dossier

Vintage 16mm TV Spot/Trailer for the 1967 version of Casino Royale. Generously loaned to us by a film collector (thanks Harry!) and captured by Q-branch.

I must confess that while there must be some people who have a soft spot for this film - perhaps they are hypnotized by the colossal badness of it or perhaps they genuinely enjoy it, personally I think it's awful. it might be fun to watch after a few drinks and some wacky backy, but sitting down to watch it sober? No thank you.

As Sinclair McKay puts it in his excellent book, The Man with the Golden Touch, "The only explanation... is that everyone at that time felt that excess in itself was a good thing. And that surrealist slapstick was automatically sidesplitting... There is a UFO; there are spinning custard pies; there are deadly mechanized flying ducks [and] a quasi-Indian dance number... There is a scene of Sellers being harried by a mass pipe band, against a bare white backdrop. For some reason that no one in this day and age would ever be able to explain, this was deemed sufficient to make the film's audience faint with laughter." (P.95-96)