Forced out of retirement to investigate the deaths and disappearances of international spies, he soon battles the mysterious Dr. Noah and the ruthless counter-intelligence agency SMERSH, inspired by actual organizations in the USSR.

Mata uncovers a plan to sell compromising photographs of military leaders from the US, USSR, China, and Great Britain at an "art auction", another money-raising scheme from Le Chiffre.

Evelyn arrives at the Casino Royale accompanied by Vesper, who foils an attempt by seductive SMERSH agent Miss Goodthighs to disable him.

They discover that the casino is located atop a giant underground headquarters run by the evil Dr. Noah, who is revealed to be Sir James's nephew Jimmy Bond, a former MI6 agent who defected to SMERSH.

Caroline Munro, seen very briefly as one of Dr Noah's gun-toting guards, went on to play Naomi in The Spy Who Loved Me, and also appears with other models on the cover of the 1969 Pan Books edition of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

[citation needed] Well-established stars such as Peter O'Toole and sporting legends such as Stirling Moss took uncredited parts solely in order to work with the other cast members.

[10] In November 1952, several months before the publication of his first James Bond novel Casino Royale, Ian Fleming purchased the small theatrical agency Glidrose Productions Limited to produce a screen adaptation of the novel.

[16] In January 1956, The New York Times reported Ratoff had set up a production company with Michael Garrison to produce a film adaptation,[17] but their pitch was rejected by 20th Century Fox and they were unable to find financial backers before his death in December 1960.

[18][14] Albert R. Broccoli, who had held an interest in adapting James Bond for some years, offered to purchase the Casino Royale rights from Feldman, but he declined.

[19] Feldman and his friend, director Howard Hawks, had an interest in adapting Casino Royale and considered Leigh Brackett as a writer and Cary Grant as James Bond.

The attempt at a co-production eventually fell through, for Feldman frequently argued with Broccoli and Saltzman, especially regarding the profit divisions and when the Casino Royale adaptation would start production.

The racy plot elements opened up by this change of background include a chase scene through Hamburg's red-light district that results in Bond escaping disguised as a female mud wrestler.

New characters appear such as Lili Wing, a brothel madam and former lover of Bond whose ultimate fate is to be crushed in the back of a garbage truck, and Gita, wife of Le Chiffre.

The beautiful Gita, whose face and throat are hideously disfigured as a result of Bond using her as a shield during a gunfight in the same sequence which sees Wing meet her fate, goes on to become the prime protagonist in the torture scene that features in the book, a role originally Le Chiffre's.

[23] The script was then completely re-written by Billy Wilder,[22] and by the time the film reached production, only the idea that the name James Bond should be given to a number of other agents remained.

"[15] In addition to the credited writers, Woody Allen, Peter Sellers, Val Guest, Ben Hecht, Joseph Heller, Terry Southern and Wilder are all believed to have contributed to the screenplay to varying degrees.

[27] Jean-Paul Belmondo and George Raft received major billing, even though both only appear briefly during the climactic brawl at the end, Raft flipping his trademark coin and promptly shooting himself dead with a backward-firing pistol, while Belmondo appears wearing a fake moustache as the French Foreign Legion officer who requires an English phrase book to translate "merde!"

He claimed that he was originally asked to play "Super Pooh", a giant Winnie-the-Pooh in a superhero costume who attacks Evelyn Tremble during the Torture of the Mind sequence.

In this outtake, he calls for the car, à la The Pink Panther, to chase down Vesper and her kidnappers; the next thing that is shown is Evelyn being tortured.

Outtakes of Sellers were also used for Evelyn's dream sequence (pretending to play the piano on Andress' torso), in the finale – blowing out the candles while in highland dress – and at the end of the film when all the various "James Bond doubles" are together.

[citation needed] Many sequences were dropped, so that several actors never appeared in the final cut, including Ian Hendry (as 006, the agent whose body is briefly seen being disposed of by Vesper), Mona Washbourne and Arthur Mullard.

[42] For European release, Mireille Mathieu sang versions of "The Look of Love" in both French ("Les Yeux D'Amour"),[44] and German ("Ein Blick von Dir").

Soundtrack listing All lyrics are written by Hal David; all music is composed by Burt BacharachThe album became famous among audio purists for the excellence of its recording.

Afterward, Crowther felt, the script became tiresome, repetitive and filled with clichés due to "wild and haphazard injections of 'in' jokes and outlandish gags", leading to an excessive length that made the film a "reckless, disconnected nonsense that could be telescoped or stopped at any point".

Peary described the film as being "disjointed and stylistically erratic" and "a testament to wastefulness in the bigger-is-better cinema", before adding, "It would have been a good idea to cut the picture drastically, perhaps down to the scenes featuring Peter Sellers and Woody Allen.

Andrea LeVasseur of AllMovie called the film "the original ultimate spy spoof", and opined that the "nearly impossible to follow" plot made it a "satire to the highest degree".

"[63] Romano Tozzi complimented the photography, sets and special effects, but viewed the film as "senseless parody—a disconnected hodgepodge of all the gimmicks and sex-ridden cliches imaginable.

The website's consensus reads: "A goofy, dated parody of spy movie cliches, Casino Royale squanders its all-star cast on a meandering, mostly laugh-free script.

[74] In 1999, following the Columbia/MGM/Kevin McClory lawsuit on ownership of the Bond film series, the rights were transferred to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (whose sister company United Artists co-owns the franchise) as a condition of the settlement.

[77][78] Years later, as a result of the Sony/Comcast acquisition of MGM, Columbia would once again become responsible for co-distribution, as well as the entire Eon Bond series, including the 2006 adaptation of Casino Royale.