Casino Royale (1967)

Factual error: When M and his entourage arrive at Bond's estate, their cars are surrounded by sheep. They then drive on down an unsurfaced road to Bond's house, past a pride of lions he keeps on the grounds. A series of sweeping overhead shots shows us that it is all one huge field, with no fences or the like. Those sheep aren't going to last very long.

Bacillus Box: ...Handle these capsules with care. Dr. Noah's bacillus is highly contagious. This germ, when distributed in the atmosphere will make all women beautiful and destroy all men over 4'6." Please handle these capsules with care.

Trivia: During the "torture of the mind" sequence, one of the bagpipers stops Peter Sellers and asks him if he is Richard Burton, to which Sellers responds, "No, I'm Peter O'Toole." The piper then says, "Then you're the finest man who ever breathed." The piper in question is Peter O'Toole in a cameo, and the exchange is a two-fold reference to the 1965 film "What's New Pussycat?", which starred both O'Toole and Sellers: first, Richard Burton had a cameo in that film and had a similarly surreal exchange with Peter O'Toole; and second, there is a dialogue between O'Toole and Sellers in that film where Sellers says O'Toole is the "finest man who ever breathed."

Question: At the beginning, M and agents representing the USA, Soviet Union and France try to convince James Bond to come out of retirement. Bond steadfastly refuses; whereupon, M lights his cigar as a signal for British troops in the distance to destroy Bond's estate with mortar fire (M is accidentally killed in the mortar attack). But what was the purpose of destroying Bond's estate? Wouldn't that action only drive Bond further away from rejoining the spy corps? Why would the British government go to such lengths to punish Bond? And then why did Bond return to the secret service, anyway, after such treachery?

Charles Austin Miller