The justification for how these sequences connect is so flimsy you’ll find yourself staring at the screen in utter bewilderment more than once, and it’s not uncommon for major plotlines to quietly disappear with no explanation. By itself this would make Casino Royale bad, but when you consider that Feldman managed to attract what feels like half of Hollywood to his pet project, then suddenly it becomes oddly fascinating. The result is a film that never once approaches cohesive, with its disjointed collection of styles and plotlines that spend the entire runtime fighting for attention making the whole endeavor borderline incomprehensible. This would be fine if Casino Royale was an anthology film, but since it’s trying to tell a singular narrative, the problems write themselves. Five directors took the helm, each contributing an average of twenty-five minutes to the runtime with little (if any) communication between them.

The biggest issue, however, was the lack of an authoritative figure. Feldman’s desire to carve out his own place in the spy genre is admirable, but his decision to do that by turning one of its most iconic stories into a comedic farce that resembles an early draft of Austin Powers received an immediate backlash. one of the most baffling experiences any moviegoer can subject themselves to. Which brings us to his version of Casino Royale, a.k.a. Trying to imitate the Eon films would be a fool's errand, but Feldman was smart enough to realize this. Indeed, Saltzman and Broccoli had already released four box office sensations by the time Feldman got his cameras rolling, putting him in the daunting position of having to make a Bond film without the established Bond elements – no gun barrel sequence, no signature theme song, no Sean Connery. Broccoli saw him squandering his opportunity to make his Bond the gold standard from which everything else would be compared. Feldman had acquired the rights to Ian Fleming’s seminal novel in 1960, but a revolving line-up of scripts and growing competition from Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Most notably, it was the first to be produced by someone other than Eon Productions, with that duty falling to Charles K.

The film is (once again) Casino Royale, a 1967 release that marked several firsts for the series. And then there’s the other film… that one whose presence has lingered over this series like an unpleasant smell for almost sixty years, and which these days seems to exist solely as the answer to annoying trivia questions designed to trick anyone but diehard fans.

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