What the heck was this movie?

Movies
#1

I have some foggy memory of this movie…

Old Brittish guy in a kilt, in a castle somewhere. It looked to have been filmed in the 60s. He gets into some sort of scottish stone tossing contest with a burly henchman sort of guy. Later he’s out duck hunting, but the ducks turn out to be robot exploding bomb ducks - or something.

I had the impression it was like a 007 farce sort of film. Perhaps Austin Powers’ great grandfather?

#2

Heh, I figured it out… it actually WAS a bond flick. Casino Royale 1966. I’m surprised more than a little that the bond movies started out this way.

#3

Heh, the 60s Casino Royale is not a “real” Bond movie – it’s a spoof of Bond movies. The fact that Woody Allen is one of the Bonds in the movie is something of a giveaway. ;)

What happened is that the movie rights to Casino Royale, the first Bond novel, got separated from the rights to the later books. When the Sean Connery Bond movies became massive hits, the guys who owned the movie rights to Casino Royale decided to cash in on the Bond craze. Only instead of making Casino Royale a straight Bond picture for some reason the producers decided to make it a big budget all-star psychedelic spoof.

The result was a gloriously incoherent mess that is a prime example of 60s excess, with 3 directors (including John Huston), a sprawling cast (including, for no reason, George Raft, who just stands there and flips his trademark Scarface coin,) a cool Burt Bacharach soundtrack, and a story that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

#4

It’s also the classic question in pub quizzes - name all of the actors who have played James Bond. Everyone always thinks that George Lazenby is the tricky one but in reality everyone always forgets that David Niven played Bond as well.

#5

Hey, don’t forget Barry Nelson as Jimmy Bond. He was the first of them all.

#6

Well, if you want to get really obnoxious about it, there are hundreds of them in Casino Royale. Indians, chimpanzees, etc. etc.

#7

Is that the first version of Casino Royale, where Bond is an American agent? I think that counts in letter only, because it’s not really the same character.

#8

Hey, he’s a secret agent, his name is Bond, he’s got a buddy named Leiter, he plays Baccarat vs a dude named Le Chiffre… shrug