We three stopped in our tracks, and the rest came charging past us. “War’s fuckin over for you fuckin idiots,” Hookey chuckled as he came by. “It’s our fuckin turn now!”
    As we trudged back toward the clearing by the river where the company had halted for a re-supply, we observed that the guy Hookey had dropped had crawled away. Maybe there was a chance to die a hero left to us yet. We followed the blood trail and it disappeared into the river. Far off, we heard gunfire–the others had caught and killed their prey, but we stood, scratching our heads, none of us wanting to get wet.
    “Cunt musta fuckin swum away,” Snowy said.
    “Maybe the fuckin current carried the fucker off,” Greyman suggested.

​

You see, in 1954, US TV bought the rights to Casino Royale, which is why Saltzman and Broccoli were never able to include it in their long-running movie franchise. They made a telemovie which I’ve never seen—nobody much has seen actually—no copies of it survive. It starred an American (Barry Nelson) as a Yankee James Bond, Australian Michael Pate as Felix Leiter, and Peter Lorre had a fine old time as Le Chiffe. Later, when the Bond series became a success, the owners reasserted their rights and gave the job to Blake Edwards who made a truly rotten comedy. It’s is interesting to watch as a remarkable cinema oddity, a fascinating piece of misguided attempts at feeble comedy in which a heap of stars, notably David Niven as an aging Sir James Bond, Peter Sellers as his son James and Woody Allen as the villainous Jimmy Bond Jnr, were quite  unable to rescue, despite a few divine comic moments. Only Herb Alpert’s theme along with the opening credits attained the required heights. A fine reward for mean-spiritedness.