cult film freak: ORSON WELLES, DAVID NIVEN & PETER SELLERS IN 'CASINO ROYALE'

ORSON WELLES from CASINO ROYALE Year: 1967 Rating: *1/2

The infamous James Bond Spy Spoof CASINO ROYALE from the much-too-colorful 1960's could be deemed unbelievably awful but with a collection of writers and directors (including Val Guest and John Huston) desperately herding their all-star cast into what wound up resembling a high-priced TV variety show, it IS believable to have turned out so... well... unbelievably awful...

Chopped into vignettes, by far the most awkward has David Niven's retired/reserved James Bond in Scotland (some kind of homage to Sean Connery) being tempted by a castle of gorgeous "daughters" of John Huston's newly-killed M...

Woody Allen in CASINO ROYALE

Which could have inspired "Castle Anthrax" from MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL (both have tons of sexy British girls failing to entice a basically sexless male) while the anything-goes cast-of-hundreds barnstorming climax might've providing Mel Brooks' his own BLAZING SADDLES finale...

One person ACTUALLY inspired was the completely wasted comedic talent of a young Woody Allen, who witnessed the overboard extravagance and thereafter made his own low-budget quality comedies (yet even he lifts a firing squad bit for LOVE AND DEATH)... Here he plays who turns out the main-main villain, neurotic nephew of Niven's Bond...

Orson Welles in CASINO ROYALE

And that's only after Orson Welles's Le Chiffre, Ian Fleming's first literary Bond antagonist and the built-up menace throughout, is "vanished" before the final act since he didn't get along with not only the biggest drag but who provides the worst performance in Peter Sellers as Evelyn Tremble, a monotone gambling expert strategically pretending to be James Bond 007, and here, without a funny bone in his body, most of the quips fall flat as if intentionally...

Seller's overall input, including psychedelic hallucinatory-sequences to please hippie audiences, makes Niven's (along with a lusty Deborah Kerr's) rudimentary Scottish segment seem hilarious by comparison as he's romanced by Jacqueline Bisset and the leading "Bond Girl" in real DR NO Bond Girl Ursula Andress, almost as pointless as Joanna Pettet as a modern Mati Hara, actually the orphaned daughter of...

David Niven and Barbara Bouchet in CASINO ROYALE

Well the technical stuff really doesn't matter and seems thrown in... just in case something/anything resembling a plot might stick: Even for a spoof of a genre with twists around every corner, these are simply bad detours, making CASINO ROYALE a waste for fans of the Bond franchise or any of the actors or actresses herein...

That's except the most humble and unassuming: As Miss Moneypenny's daughter, Barbara Bouchet tries her genuine best to play along with the famous cast... all seeming asleep at the wheel of an endless/overlong trainwreck.