Casino Royale
by Don Medford, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Ken Hughes, Richard Talmadge
List Price:
Our Price: $2.91
You Save: $12.03 (81%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: David Niven, Harry Townes, Michael Rennie, Peter Sellers, William LundiganDirector: Don Medford, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Ken Hughes, Richard Talmadge
Brand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 137 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-10-15
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
DVD Reviews of Casino Royale
DVD Review: PLAYING AT A HEAD SHOP NEAR YOU
Summary: 3 Stars
Does everything have to be s-serious? Can't we all just g-get along? Alright! Ursula Andress' name (Bear Naked?) doesn't appear in David Thomson's BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONAR OF FILM, but so what? She's the best-looking piece of cineflesh in this hashish spectacle, and more than anything else, by far, partly naked, wiggling femenine bodies in every imaginable situation are in and of themselves all (or at least most) of what this movie has to offer. Wildly forgettable Jiggle Music by Burt Bacharach.
Hashish spectacle, you say? Well, mostly the result of confusion about production (who's in charge?); the primary star quits the show; there are at least three different, unresolved scripts; it appears there are four directors, each with his own favorite part of and kind of movie to direct, and casting is searching for any putative star or personality they can find to plug a hole as a cameo, and the scene designer(s) have gone stark, staring mad. Let's go back: It's 1967. Five years ago DR. NO and the new Sean Connery took the world by storm, launching the James Bond 007 craze. It was followed by FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, another sensation, and an even better movie. With what looks like a franchise in the bud, Albert Broccoli appears to have found a gold mine. How to get some of that money?
Fleming's first Bond novel, CASINO ROYALE, a wildly improbable story about an attempt by a novice agent to bankrupt a crack but corrupt soviet functionary with a gambling habit and millions of siphoned-off Soviet money to lose, at a crowded French casino, became somehow available. The Producers dove for it and began production as quickly as possible. Catastrophe! The story proved useless. They couldn't get Connery, but they got his co-star from DR. NO, the stunning Ms. Andress, gave her the name of Vesper Lind and kept her before the camera for as long as possible. Apparently Peter Sellers, headliner, was to have played a presumably comic Bond, but he bailed out and then into the more professionally produced and sillier PINK PANTHER movies. Was he miffed because the producers hired Woody Allen to play yet another version of Bond? And let him bring his own material? He needn't have been. Allen's appearances on screen, are about as amusing as watching gangrene fester.
The star of the mix-up appears to be David Niven, who manages to get through it without making an ass of himself. He plays in rather an over-longish, not terribly funny bit, against Deborah Kerr. She's the widowed lady of a castle staffed and stuffed with horny, nubile red-haired scotch maidens, and he's an interloper come to confront or to comfort her. Either or both.
What saves this dog and pony show is the fact that the Psychedelic Sixties are in full bloom, and the Western World turns for a decade, into Lotus Land. It was like the 20s, but instead of Gin, with Marijuana. It was everywhere. It was cheap. In big cities, people gave it away on street corners. People kept it on cocktail tables in sticks, rolled, or they offered it to you as a matter of course. People everywhere began to find other aspects beside the obvious desirable, in viewing cinema, and were often to be seen with the sound low or disguised or overriden by other sounds or music, simply watching the screen and laughing simplemindedly at what they took to be hallucinations. This social blowback it was that gave the movie its saving grace. It wasn't funny, it was preposterous, but in a drugged-up, high kind of way. The movie began in hard focus, but changed until wide swaths of it oozed and swam in psychedellic pattern and color, indicative of nothing so much as a good head trip. At one point, toward the end, a shapely woman named Joanna Pettet (possibly an English, Australian or New Zeland musical comedy personality) who was supposed to be James Bond's daughter by Mata Hari, began an interminable music and dance sequence -- a blonde woman dressed in sort-of Baliinese pagoda costume -- that goes in every conceivable and many inconceivable directions, up, down, side-wise, until, somehow, it ends. Or just, just... Disintegrates. Don't ask. And somewhere in there there's George Raft, doing... Please, don't ask.
The long anticipated Bacarat game with LeChiffre takes place, more or less as expected, with Orson Welles, a sweaty Hindenberg -- corpulent quite beyond belief -- doing magic tricks above the gaming tables. Charles Boyer, William Holden, John Houston, Jean-Paul Belmondo do their five minutes, variously, and take their money and run. And somehow, throughout all this, occasionally, there's an extraordinary-looking woman in a big black wig, called Daliah Lavi, (East Jordan movie star) who apparently came with the Producer(s). At her entrance on camera she is first thrown to the ground, fully dressed; and later appears naked, strapped to an operating table for Woody Allen to play with. (Ms. Lavi can be seen to advantage in THE RETURN OF DOCTOR MABUSE, as The Photographer.) Please, don't...
Anyway, I have the BOND collection, love them all for their eccentricities and excesses, and watch them frequently. If what TV broadcasts or newscasts show me have any truth, drugs of many kinds are coming into the country regularly, dependably, and in quantity, and consequently one thinks they must be available at reasonable cost. Somewhere or other... If so, why not enjoy this particular 007 fantasy in the way it was intended/marketed? Or any of the others, for that matter? What's the difference? I certainly used to escape regularly into them and, for an hour or so, imagine myself the dashing stud assassin of British Intelligence, wallowing in conspicuous consumption and the wet laps of magnificent women. As long as the images remain stable on their media, why not enjoy ourselves again, and yet again? Bond films are all Boss-Man sex dreams. Why shouldn't we too dream we are Boss-Men?
Description of Casino Royale
Welcome to Casino Royale, the ultimate psychedelic secret agent satire! Packed with girls, guns and gags galore, this "very funny picture" (The New Yorker) delivers "laughs all the way"(Cue)! Starring Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, David Niven, Joanna Pettet, Orson Welles, Daliah Lavi, Woody Allen, Deborah Kerr, William Holden and others, and with an original score from Oscar® winner* Burt Bacharach, this groovy spy movie is "even farther out" (LA Herald-Examiner) than all other spoofs combined! British Intelligence is waning in every possible way! When the diabolical SMERSH begins killing off Her Majesty's Secret Service, super-agent James Bond (Niven) recruits six more "James Bonds" to confuse and conquer their enemies. But it won't be easy. They'll have to face an army of irresistibly sexy female operatives, exploding robotic fowl, parachuting Indians and a germ that makes all women beautiful but kills all men over 4'6"! *1981: Original Song (with Carole Bayer Sager, Christopher Cross, Peter Allen), Arthur; 1969: Original Song (Lyrics by Hal David), Score, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance KidSimilar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
James Bond Ultimate Edition - Vol. 3 (GoldenEye / Live and Let Die / For Your Eyes Only / From Russia With Love / On Her Majesty's Secret Service)Release date: 2006-12-12; DVD
Best price: $38.00
Price in other shops:
OctopussyTWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2007-09-04; DVD
Best price: $10.17
Price in other shops:
For Your Eyes OnlyMOORE,ROGER; Release date: 2007-02-06; DVD
Best price: $4.08
Price in other shops:
The Living DaylightsDALTON,TIMOTHY; Release date: 2007-05-22; DVD
Best price: $8.35
Price in other shops:
Matt Helm Lounge (The Silencers/ Murderers Row/ The Ambushers/ The Wrecking Crew)Sony; Release date: 2005-12-06; DVD
Best price: $11.49
Price in other shops:
A View to a KillTWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2007-09-04; DVD
Best price: $14.95
Price in other shops:
What's New PussycatSony; Release date: 2005-06-07; DVD
Best price: $7.25
Price in other shops:
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Special Edition)Release date: 2000-05-16; DVD
Best price: $19.99
Price in other shops:
Ultimate Flint Collection (Our Man Flint / In Like Flint)Fox; Release date: 2006-11-07; DVD
Best price: $10.01
Price in other shops:
Never Say Never AgainTCFHE/MGM; Release date: 2000-10-17; DVD
Best price: $13.79
Price in other shops: