FROM THE VAULT: 1967

Casino Royale

Starring: Woody Allen, Ursula Andress, William Holden, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Orson Welles

Directors: Val Guest, Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joe McGrath, John Parish

The film: Surely the most unlikely screen adaptation of Ian Fleming's James Bond sagas, Casino Royale is a riotous spy spoof that really casts a shadow on the more recent and highly derivative Austin Powers movies.

The motivation for this zany interpretation was that an attempt to make a straight version failed.

When producer Charles Feldman brought the Casino Royale rights and was unable to sign up Sean Connery, he felt he was left no option but to take a stroll into lampoon country. Decision made, an amazing crop of A-list British and American actors were enlisted to play the Bonds and other characters in this comic psychedelic romp.

'Bonds' is correctly mentioned in the plural here, as this film's plot takes a wide detour from Fleming's original. The real James Bond (David Niven) is cajoled from retirement by his old British secret service boss M and his counterparts in the CIA, KGB and the French secret service because a common enemy, SMERSH, has been killing off their agents. A posse of international agents are named Bond to confuse the foes.

Feldman drafted five directors and each worked independently on different sections of the film. This was a deliberate attempt to capture the spirit of 1960s psychedelia. With the final edit running to two and a quarter hours, one has to presume several hours ended up on the cutting-room floor.

What is left is what might be expected from such an approach: a disjointed comic epic. Though perhaps a little too long, the film has some memorable scenes.

After accepting the job, M gets killed in a bomb attack and Bond (the real one), goes to Castle McTarry in Scotland to give his boss' toupee - all that is left of him - to his widow, but SMERSH has filled the castle with beautiful women, overseen by Agent Mimi who is posing as the widow. They plan to ruin Bond's image by enticing him to cavort with the harem but, a reformed man, he declines and Mimi falls in love with him.

Back at HQ, Bond orders super-sexy office assistant Moneypenny (Barbara Bouchet) to find a man who can resist the world's most beautiful women. Agent Cooper is selected as his right-hand man in a plan to take out SMERSH's card sharp Le Chiffre (Orson Welles), who will be gambling a fortune to recover his organisation's debts - at the Casino Royale. Bond amasses a crack team of more assistants, including baccarat expert Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers), part-time spy Vesper Lynd (Ursula Andress), his half-Indian daughter Mata and his nephew Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen, above), a bumbling incompetent agent; these all get re-named James Bond.

One of these agents turns out to be the SMERSH boss. The organisation's underground headquarters is deliberately more over-the-top than in real James Bond films. And the final showdown in the casino degenerates into total mayhem.

The extras: A 1954 made-for-TV Casino Royale allows the true nature of Fleming's tale to be understood, with Bond (Barry Nelson - there is only one in the original version) going up against a mafia boss-like Peter Lorre incarnation of Le Chiffre at the card table.

Director Val Guest sheds humorous light on the production in a making-of feature. And the included original film trailer is pretty groovy.