The 1954 unofficial adaptation of Casino Royale deserves credit for one genuinely inventive touch: Zoltan’s gun disguised as a cane. It’s a clever, forward-thinking gadget that’s later wielded by Valentin Zukovsky in The World Is Not Enough some 45 years later. It’s a gadget that feels unmistakably “Bondian” long before the franchise started or even fully understood what that meant.

But unfortunately, Casino Royale’s poor execution of the gadget’s featured scene undermines it almost immediately. Zoltan’s exaggerated prodding and overt threats strain credibility, especially in a public setting where such behavior would hardly go unnoticed. The tension then awkwardly and almost comically dissolves when Bond escapes through a contrived fake fall after being generously granted a count to ten. What could have been a memorable, suspenseful standoff instead plays like amateur theatrics.