The James Bond Film Festival. Part 13: Octopussy

Cafe Society
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The James Bond Film Festival. Part 1: Dr. No
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 2: From Russia with Love
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 3: Goldfinger
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 4: Thunderball
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 5: You Only Live Twice
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 6: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 7: Diamonds are Forever
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 8: Live and Let Die
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 9: The Man with the Golden Gun
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 10: The Spy Who Loved Me
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 11: Moonraker
The James Bond Film Festival. Part 12: For Your Eyes Only

Well, I’m back from my holiday and it’s time for the Octopussy thread.

The film opens in South America where Bond (Roger Moore) is sent to destroy a top secret aircraft. He’s caught, but makes his escape in a Bede BD-5J aircraft. My dad was building a BD-5A in the 1970s, and he contacted Jim Bede to ask if it would be possible to put a small jet engine in it, which was available from a friend of my dad’s. Bede said it was absolutely impossible… and soon afterwards came out with the BD-5J. Go figure.

The BD-5 scenes were good, except for a couple of technical inaccuracies. The BD-5 had removable wings, and the movie plane had folding wings and stabilators as well as a folding pitot tube. And of course, Bond couldn’t have filled up with gasoline after running out of fuel, since jet fuel is basically kerosene and gasoline would have burned up the engine. Just minor nitpicks. One thing though, is that you can see the dolly and arm assembly when the microjet “flies” through the hangar.

But that’s all pre-title stuff. The actual story involves a Russian General Orlov (Stephen Berkoff) who plans to take over western Europe. Here’s the scheme: Octopussy (Maud Adams) is an international jewel smuggler. She is in partnership with Prince Kamil Kamal (Louis Jourdan), who is in league with Orlov. Under the guise of a jewel smuggling operation, Orlov – with the help of Kamal and his henchman Gobinda (Kabir Bedi) – plans to hide a nuclear device in a circus cannon. Octopussy thinks that the jewels are in the cannon, but the bad guys pull the ol’ switcherooo. When the bomb explodes on an American military base, western European nations will think it was an accident and call for the removal of NATO nukes from European soil. Once the nukes are gone, Orlov plans to move in with the Soviet Union’s superior conventional forces. What does Kamal get out of this? I didn’t catch that. Probably a ton of riches from Orlov.

There are good points and bad points to this film. One of the major bad points is that it looks like a TV movie. I just didn’t care for the cinematography. On the other hand, there’s a nifty (and deadly) saw-tooth yo-yo. Indian tennis star Vijay Amritraj makes an appearance as agent Vijay, Bond’s contact in India. During a car chase early in the film he fights the baddies with a tennis racket. Crowds of people watch the battle, turning in unison as if they were at a tennis match. A little too cute. I liked the earler (Connery) films that left the comedy out of the chases.

But how does Bond get involved in the first place? Agent 009 turns up dead in a clown suit at the British Embassy in East Berlin. He is clutching a fake Faberge egg that was to be sold by Orlov. The real egg is to be sold at auction, and Bond swaps fake-for-real there. He flies to India to meet the buyer, Kamal. Kamal wants the real egg. Bond boffs Octopussy and ends up in the clutches of Kamal. When Bond escapes (after finding out some of the plan from an electronically-overheard conversation between Orlov and Kamal), Kamal has a Great Hunt in the Raj tradition. Bond is surprised by a rather unconvincing tiger (they did use a real one, but the lunging one was stuffed), fights his way out of the hunt, and escapes on a tour boat. Stupid highlight: The Tarzan yell as Bond swung through the trees on vines.

Next stop: Octopussy’s palace. How’s he get there? In a fake crocodile. Egads. It was even worse than the fake duck Sean Connery wore on his head in the pre-title sequence in Goldfinger. Turns out that Bond tried to arrest Octopussy’s father twenty years before, but the man committed suicide. Octopussy is grateful that Bond “allowed” her father to snuff himself, as it was more dignified than being put on trial. Whatever.

Naturally, Kamal tries to have Bond killed. Octopussy goes off on a smuggling mission with Kamal, under the cover of a travelling circus. And now we’re back to where I started.

I didn’t much care for the last fight scene. Gobinda and Bond fighting on the outside of a flying airplane was okay, but it had been used before. What I didn’t like was that the plane crashes for no apparent reason. Sure, Bond had his feet hooked over the elevators; but the plane would have been perfectly controllable after he moved forward. It just didn’t make since.

Nor did Bond’s arrival at Kamal’s palace in the previous scene. He and Q (Desmond Llewelyn) fly in on a hot-air balloon. The thing to know about balloons is that they are at the mercy of air currents. It doesn’t seem likely that they would trust their mission to the vagaries of the winds. No, it was just a way to show a balloon done up like the Union Jack. No reason for it in the story; just artistic masturbation IMO.

Another “Huh?”. In the beginning of the film Bond says to Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell), “Oh, Moneypenny. You know that there never was, and never will be, anybody but you.” I guess he forgot about Tracy. You know, his wife! :rolleyes:

But aside from the plot holes, the so-so cinematography, the general silliness, and the technical gaffes, I don’t think Octopussy is such a bad film. Remember, there’s always Moonraker to compare it to!

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To nitpick the nitpick, it’s not unheard of for gas stations to have kerosene pumps.

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CONS
I thought this suffered from a lack of a strong villain, instead having two mediocre ones —General Burkholter [ :slight_smile: ] and Louis – help make the plot way too convoluted. Which is my major complaint with this one.

Convoluted spy stories that have ‘OMG’ elements and surprises are awesome, convoluted spy stories that are confusing because there are two villains and the story rambles and isn’t edited well are well, convoluted and confusing.

Are there ANY memorable female performances in this? That is a staple of Bond films and in this film are almost entirely lacking
PROS
The stunts were better than average even for Bond. Because the rest of this film is so weak this can get lost, but truly the action sequences are probably among the top 5 in the series : from the opening between the jet and a heat-seeking missile, to the battle sequence that happens on the roof of the train. To the fight on the plane in flight (Johnny’s disgust noted) all were B+/A-.
Add in the clown fight (with knives) The India chase sequence (Tarzan thing among the lowest Bond moments) both C+/B- and this film is strong in the action areas.

SO
If you watch Bond for gadgetry, action and chases this IS a good film. If you want a good story with sophistication and “smarts”, and great female/villain roles and performances there are better Bond examples.

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I wouldn’t say I was “disgusted”. But the airplane fight was remeniscent of the freefall fight in Moonraker. My biggest complaint about it was that the airplane crashed for no reason. Bond’s escape and the crash itself were pretty good. (One of my favourite things is to speed along the ground and then go over a cliff. In a helicopter, of course.)

Which reminds me: Which Bond film had Bond skiing to an out-of-place Beach Boys tune?

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LOL! You must be referring to California Girls in View to a Kill! :slight_smile:
Did you know Brian Wilson wrote the Song now called Pet Sounds to be used in a Bond and Cubby rejected it?

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Octopussy was my first Bond film, so it shaped my view of what I Expect out of Bond. That’s probably why I dislike Roger Moore much less than most Bond fans, and why I like the humorous touches that most people think detract.

Some of my favorite bits from Octopussy:

“It’s all in the wrist”

The tennis-match spectators

Bond confounding his pursuers with a wad of money thrown into a crowd

Bond skewering one of the bad guys on a bed of nails

“The Most Dangerous Game”

The buzzsaw-yo-yo.

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Octopussy is my favorite Bond movie. I don’t know why, but I think it has to do with Maud Adams,. Maud Adams is probably the most attractive Bond girl, IMHO. The Tarzan yell always annoyed me, and the yo-yo saw freaked me out.

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That was the premise, more-or-less, of the short story Octopussy, in which Bond confronts a retired member of the wartime Secret Service, confronts him with evidence of a crime committed in the days after the German surrender, and then leaves the man alone. The former agent realizes it’s to allow him a chance to kill himself and while he ponders it, he goes for a last swim along his Jamaican beachfront property to visit a nearby octopus he has nicknamed “Octopussy” and is killed by a poisonous fish.

The man in the story was a widower, but had no children.

And Maud Adams is without a doubt the hottest babe to ever appear as a Bond girl, though Talia Soto comes close.

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Disappointing!

After the heights of For Your Eyes Only, which was one of the best Bond filmd ever, and which raised our expectations, we’re back to the same Roger Moore-Bond crap.

Well, almost. The pre-title sequence is pretty cool, if crude. The baby jet-plane is as cute a piece of Bondiana as any in the series. The film starts off well, too, with a believable setup. The Sotheby;s auction scene is straight out of the story “Property of a Lady” , which is in the skhort story collection “Octopussy”, which also contains the title story, of course. It looks as if they’re starting down the same road they were in FYEO – using two Fleming stories from the collection with the movie title to come up with a movie plot, and to play it straight. But they couldn’t keep it up. The movie soon falls to the lows of the Moore-period Bond.

– Bond stopping the Tiger by using the (at the time) famous dog-training lady’s “sitt-ttt!” technique

– Bond approaching the “Island of Women” in his crocodile getup

– The “Island of Women”

– Q and Bond in a hot-air balloon.
I can’t help it. These things make me cringe. Theu overpower the good things in the flick. The good things include:

– the girl stealing the Faberge egg by falling backwards and using a belaying sari.

– The buzzsaw yo-yo (we needed more of that – and a really good comeuppance)

– the fight on the outside of the airplane.
This movie also gets points for stealing the basic plot premise from Frederick Forsyth’s The Fourth Protocol – before that book even came out! But I could have done without Bond in a clown suit.

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While I agree with the other cringe-inducing moments mentioned, my parents and I got a good laugh out of the “sit-ttt” scene, mainly because they’re such devotees of the Barbara Woodhouse training methods.

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I think this was also my first Bond movie. The stuff with the fake and real jewels always confused me, but that may have been because of how young I was. I guess the jewel smuggling works if it’s just a front for the bomb smuggling into West Germany, but maybe I’ve never picked up on that.

Other random good bits/quotes/trivia:
Something we missed last time: For Your Eyes Only did not have M in it because actor Bernard Lee died in 1981. Octopussy marks the first appearance of Robert Brown.

When Bond meets Vijay for the first time, Vijay plays the opening few notes of the Bond theme on his shanai (sp?) and Bond compliments him.

On the aforementioned hot-air balloon scene:
Bond: I trust you can handle this contraption, Q?
Q: It goes by hot air.
Bond: Oh, then you can.
Then, when Q rescues some of the women and they’re helping him out of the balloon basket and kissing him, he quips, “Cut it out! We don’t have time for that! Later, perhaps.”

Fans of “That 70’s Show” should watch the episode where Bob and Midge (the neighbors) renew their wedding vows. Maud Adams and Kristina Wayborn (Magda, the sari-woman) play two of Midge’s bridesmaids. Maud Adams has aged superbly; Wayborn not as well, but she still looks fabulous.

That’s all I can think of for now.

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The Faberge Egg and auction are straight out of Ian Fleming’s short story Property of a Lady. In that story, a known (and thoroughly compromised) Russian spy inside British Intelligence gets paid for her work, by means of said egg. Bond theorizes that the spy’s handler would bid up the egg’s price to maximize the money paid to the spy (and taken from the nasty Western capitalists), and so he attends the auction to identify the handler.

I do like OP. I think Gen. Gogol made a very good showing in this movie, partly because he was fighting Gen. Orlov instead of Cdr. Bond.

As it happens, the fake crocodile shows up in Q’s store room in Die Another Day.

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The buzz saw yo-yo works only in a specific set of circumstances. You have to be ten or twenty feet above your unwitting victim, or it just doesn’t work.

How long did that guy carry around the big, heavy, dangerous yo-yo before he actually got a chance to use it? He must have been so damned excited to finally see an opportunity. It’s no wonder he missed Bond.

Oh, and the plane crashing because of the elevators being temporarily jammed! A plane that size would either have hydraulic controls, or at the very least a tremendous mechanical advantage. Smush go your toes, Mr. Bond!

But this is the only example in this movie of what I call the “Bond exit.” Fight a bad guy and leave, and the place has no choice but to blow up. The airplane had no choice but to crash, I’m afraid.

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“Charming tune.”

I thought this one was the last good Roger Moore Bond movie. I always liked Stephen Berkoff. (Did you know he was the detective that pinched Alex’s bandaged nose in A Clockwork Orange? “If you wanna give him a bust in the chops, Mr. Deltoid, it’s OK by us. He must be a real disappointment for you.”)

For me the best part was Kamal’s henchman. My brothers and I went around for months saying (sic) “Be sakkarovska!” to each other.

Silly stuff:

  • Kamal’s henchman crushing dice into dust with his bare hands. I’m pretty sure no human being is that strong.

  • When the tank breaks, and the Octopus attacks the bad guy and sucks on his face. Wouldn’t that octopus be, you know, trying desperately to breathe?

Also, the best last line of any Bond movie. “James!!”

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Really schizophrenic, this one; enormously silly in spots, but two great villains in Kamal (Louis Jourdan) and his Sikh henchman. Also, despite the climax resorting to the oldest one in the book (a race to disarm a timed bomb, complete with the required red digital display), the movie somehow still manages to generate a certain degree of tension, in part because for once Moore actually gives a convincing impression that if he doesn’t hurry a nuclear bomb is going to go off in his face.

OTOH, Maud Adams never did it for me the way she obviously does for lots of others, and once again, Moore is too long in the tooth to be convincing as an action hero.

Favorite bits: The whole pre-credits sequence; Moore, in ludicrous clown outfit, complete with big floppy shoes, shouting “But I’m a British agent!”; Kamal ordering his henchman to just, you know, step outside the plane and take care of Bond.

As a railfan, also enjoyed the Mercedes-train chase, although in reality the car would likely have lept off the rails the first time it hit a set of points (switches).

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Historical footnote: 1983 was the second of two times James Bond battled James Bond at the box office. Kevin McClory, who came up with the idea of Thunderball along with Jack Whittingham and Ian Fleming, attempted to make his own series of Bond films. In 1983, he sort of got his wish with Never Say Never Again, a Thunderball remake with modified character names, electroshock video games, an older Sean Connery, and a horse stunt that bothered the RSPCA to no end, among other things. NSNA battled Octopussy (Octopussy beat Never into theaters by four months). Depsite the name recognition of Connery, the real Bond won the bigger gross, just as he had done in 1967. McClory’s more recent attempts to start a new Bond series have been thwarted by MGM.

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Another Historical Note (suggsted by the last entry): within a year of the release of Octopussy all three actors who played Bond for Eon Productions were dong so again – Moore in Octopussy, Connery in Never Say Never Again, and George Lazenby was at it again, too.
He appeared as an un-named British Agent in the V movie The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. who drives by and gives “Napoleon Solo, UNCLE’s finest”, a hand. They don’t actually name him – they can’t, of course, without violating copyright – but, come on, it’s George Lazxenby, James Bond rom On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. And he’s playing a British agent while driving a gimmick-laden Aston-Martin.
So George L/ did come back and play Bond again.

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More on Lazenby in TROTMFU. I’d forgotten that his character was called “J.B.”, and the line about “Her Majesty’s Secet Service”:
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0086191/trivia