Climax! Mystery Theatre -- Casino Royale -- 1954

Full Title: Climax! Mystery Theatre presents Ian Fleming's Casino Royale 

In 1954, the television show Climax! produced a 60 minute TV version of Fleming's first Bond novel shifting the characters a bit for American audiences. It had Jimmy Bond of the "Combined Intelligence Agency" who was working with Clarence Leiter of the British Secret Service (He was Felix Leiter of the CIA in the book). This was filmed Live in 1954 and had 3 basic sets: the casino, Bond's hotel room, and LeChiffre's hotel room. This is included as a bonus feature on the DVD of 1967's Casino Royale.

For what it was, this show did a phenomenal job of portraying Bond and his habits. It showed him as a competent agent with little humor and just there for the job. I enjoyed the drama infused and hardly noticed the international shift on Bond to an American agent. He was a strong character and well-developed along with the other characters. 

This bonus feature alone is worth getting the DVD for that horrible "send-up."

Shichini no samurai (The Seven Samurai) -- 1954

At well over three hours long and in Japanese with English subtitles, this one was a challenge to watch, but a pleasure in the viewing. The story involves a town who realizes that bandits will invade their town after the harvest, so their town chieftain remembers one town who survived bandits by hiring samurai. He recommends four, if they can find some who are more interested in food than glory, since food is all the town has to offer.

The first hour-plus of the film follows the farmers going to town and hunting down the samurai they need. After the first one, they slowly gain their numbers. The first one is an older, wiser samurai who knows how to get the people they need and actually recommends seven, not four.

Once they get who they need, it's back to the village where everyone is initially afraid of them and through a fake-out, is forced to accept them. They fortify the town before the bandits come, and there's a slow build to a final battle.

The development of the seven samurai characters as well as many of the townspeople is excellent, and we get a good feel for their personalities and relationships. Some of the scenes run on a bit long for their own good, and even some of the individual shots are too long, in my opinion. I'm not voting for MTV-style, 3 second clips, but we hold on a flag for a good 20-30 seconds, when 10 would have been plenty. The ends of scenes hold for an inordinate amount of time. A good half hour could have been trimmed out of this film if the beginning and ends of scenes were trimmed just a little bit.

That being my only complaint, it's a great movie if you can endure reading subtitles for three hours.