Like the Curate's Fabergé egg, Octopussy is good in parts. Despite everything, the sequence in East Germany works very well: it maintains tension and shows that Bond can still be relevant within the Cold War setting of the Eighties. This film is mostly rubbish though. And the problems start on the first line of the script.
At this point there are almost no more Fleming stories left to adapt: the producers have worked over all the novels (except Casino Royale, the rights for which are tied up elsewhere) and are now having to pick through the bones of the short stories. This worked with FYEO, when they had all the short stories to choose from - but now they are getting down to the dregs and, although they are having to produce a lot of original plotting, they still feel obliged to smear something of these lesser works on to the screen.
The producers settle on a vignette about an old soldier who stole some gold during the war. Many years later his crime is discovered and a man from London comes to tell him he's going to be court-martialed. The old soldier is devastated and the man, who's name is James Bond, decides to allow him to kill himself instead of facing disgrace. It's called Octopussy, because the old soldier has a pet octopus and commits suicide by provoking the animal to attack him. Whatever its merits as a short story, one does not spend a lot of time wondering whether the title is particularly good or pertinent - but as soon as the production team chose it as the title for Bond 13, 'Octopussy' had to mean something within the context of the film.
The problem of justifying a silly title is not unique to Octopussy. In Thunderball, the title is excused by being a blink-and-you'll-miss-it codename. Those of YOLT and OHMSS enjoy the fig leaf of being thrown into random lines of dialogue. And we mustn't forget QOS, the title of which perplexed almost everybody, gets no reference within the film itself, and only really makes sense if one is prepared to thoroughly digest the short story from which it is taken. But all these clumsy efforts are nothing when compared to Octopussy.
It is a terrible, silly title and EON's solution, to give it as a name to the female lead, is even more terrible and silly. We are faced with the prospect of Roger Moore and Louis Jordan having to call Maud Adams 'Octopussy' and keep a straight face, pretending that this a reasonable state of affairs. It isn't of course and the Bond series ends up pushed as close to resembling a Carry On film as it ever does. Lumbered with this baggage, the film now has to justify it. Who is this Octopussy woman? What is she like? Well with a name like that she'd obviously have to be an exotic Eastern madame, living on an island with her spandex-clad harem of lesbian jewel-smuggling circus acrobats or whatever that's supposed to be. I hope I'm not being unfair on Maud Adams if I suggest that her sincere efforts to sell this are about as convincing as Roger Moore's legs in the picture at the top.
I'd hate to single Adams out though - none of this is her fault and she even manages to imbue her ridiculous character with a quantum of dignity. And the unwarranted silliness infects the whole Indian portion of the film in which the story is daft, the characters are limp, the action is weak and the jokes are wearisome. I won't spend too long sticking the boot in, but I can't pass up mentioning a few of the larger problems with this section.
Quickly then - India is just the latest developing country to be treated as an exotic backdrop for some Bond japes. With its palaces, tiger-infested jungles, crocodile-infested lakes and streets crowded with beggars, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers and fakirs, this is an India only of the British imagination. A Raj-themed playground in which posh Brits can muck about without having to engage in any uncomfortable post-colonial soul-searching. George MacDonald Fraser (author of the Flashman books) was hired to write the Indian bits but there's no way of knowing if what appears on screen is his fault or if it was mangled by the producers into something less interesting.
Louis Jourdan strikes me as an odd choice to play exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan. I can see that he has the easy sophistication that so often graces Bond villains, but his chilled urbanity is almost soporific. He's very much a mirror image of Moore's Bond in fact: suave and unflappable to the point of utter blandness. That's not to say that Jourdan isn't trying here, because he turns in a performance that is subtle and clever in places (there are some lovely nervous bomb-related glances, for example), but this is hardly the point of a Bond villain, where understatement is nearly always pointless. And Khan is such a boring villain! He has no grand scheme, no megalomania - he's just a posh petty criminal. It all seems rather a waste.
No the real villain of the piece is General Orlov, the deranged and off-message member of the Soviet Praesidium played by Steven Berkoff. He is an unusual baddy for a Bond movie: they are (as you know) nearly all private citizens of wealth and taste with impeccable manners. Orlov is a soldier and his villainous scheme is born of a frothing raging frustration. How he is supposed to know, let alone fall in with, Khan is unclear (nothing is made of the USSR invasion of Afghanistan for example) but it is an unlikely pairing to say the least. But never mind that because he is a great baddy here and a wonderful change from all the Draxes and Strombergs.
Orlov's plan is a great piece of Bond villainy too and provides Octopussy with its real saving grace: a brilliant twenty minute sequence through East and West Germany as 007 races after a nuclear bomb. Orlov wants to force unilateral nuclear disarmament in the West by faking an accident at a US airbase, leaving NATO without its deterrent. It's a wonderful example of how an evil scheme's very plausibility can raise the stakes and make it more frightening. Dropping orchids from space to sterilise the Earth? Who's going to worry about that? But Orlov's plan, with his bomb hidden inside a circus tent, brings the threat of nuclear death right into the reality of family outings.
The mechanics of the sequence, a long convoluted chase involving trains and cars and many fights, are excellent and the drama is well above average for a Bond film, with 007 cast as the secret agent who alone knows the truth of the conspiracy. It's a proper (albeit mini) Cold War thriller and it works so well, in fact, that it doesn't really matter, as the last few beeps of the countdown sound, that James Bond is a middle aged man in a clown costume.
It's impossible to ignore Moore's age in Octopussy. I'm not actually sure that the film, or his portrayal suffer very much because if it, but it can distract the attention if, like me, you are waiting for signs of decrepitude, knowing that his time is nearly up. Always a visibly relaxed actor, it's hard to tell if he's merely going through the motions here or not, but I doubt it. There is perhaps a slight loss of intensity compared with FYEO but that could be as much down to the excessive amount of jokes as anything else. Moore's still in good shape here for a man of 56 and, thanks to some hard-working stunt men, Bond is able to save the world once again. But this would have been a good time to call it a day.
* * *
Pre-Credits Sequence: For the first time in ages, Bond is on a mission rather than just getting randomly set upon or tangled-up in something. This is the one with the mini-jet hidden in a horse's backside. The aerial work is not unimpressive but, as spy-gadgets go it's rather ostentatious isn't it? Interestingly, the target here is South American military hardware - I'd always assumed it was supposed to be Cuba, but now (what with the polo references), as I write this I wonder if it wasn't supposed to be Argentina. That's a bit much isn't it? Let bygones be bygones and all that, I say. [Moore's biography claims it's Cuba, just so you know, but the credits refer explicitly to 'South American' troops.]
Theme: Raise your glasses, this is the last hurrah of that mighty lumbering dinosaur, the Bond Ballad. All Time High is yet another innocuous three minutes of blandness but from now on it's going to be MOR rock-pop numbers all the way. Meanwhile, Binder can't leave the gymnastics alone, even if somebody has bought him a laser pointer to play with.
Deaths: 44. Slightly below par but then everyone seems to be taking it easy this time.
Memorable Deaths: 009, dressed as a clown, crashes through the British Ambassador's french doors with a Fabergé egg in his hand. I'd say that was memorable.
Licence to Kill: 39 - it's high, but then Bond did blow up a large aircraft hangar full of South/Central American troops. Many of them were seen to escape but there were certainly some left inside - I've estimated 25. More unusually, Bond's kill tally is a very high proportion of the overall death toll: 89% in fact, fact-fans!
Exploding Helicopters: 0. Again. Next time though, eh? Must be one next time?
Shags: 2. (Magda, the 'bad' Bond woman here, must have the highest ratio of hair-to-body mass of anyone in the series.)
Crimes Against Women: Bond complains that having an island just for women is "sexual discrimination" and then stages a sort of Fathers4Justice style protest, going there in a crocodile-shaped submarine and shagging the boss woman. That'll learn them pesky women's libbers. He also uses government equipment to ogle a co-worker's breasts. Otherwise he's quite well-behaved. The production team make the most of Octopussy's all-woman outfit by ensuring that the costume designer makes their outfits out of very little.
Casual Racism: Bond is helped by a very stereotypical-looking couple of sausage-munching Germans. As for India, well, perhaps this is an apt point at which to mention the great work Sir Roger has done for UNICEF for many years.
Out of Time: Can't really imagine Bond being given a fountain pen these days. The Barbara Woodhouse reference is classic 1983. There were plans (apparently) for a Charles and Diana cameo à la FYEO but this never happened, luckily.
Fashion Disasters: The clown costume is surely an all time low for 007. Everything the women of the Octopus cult wear is highly suspect. There's an honest-to-goodness Nehru jacket for Jourdan and one last safari-suit for Moore.
Eh?: The Egg plot just disappears, but that might be because it didn't make any sense in the first place. Let's get this as straight as we can. Khan and Orlov are stealing art from the USSR and smuggling it out of the country. To cover their tracks they are getting fakes made and leaving them in Russia. 009 somehow gets involved with this and steals a fake Fabergé egg which then ends up in London with 007. But if this fake was made by Orlov then why is the original up for auction in London? If it is missing from the USSR, won't they notice it reaching £500,000 at Sotheby's? And why do Khan and Orlov need the original back? It's the fake that they end up buying and it's the fake that was stolen from them by 009, so... they're sorted then aren't they? When they do get the original back from Bond, Orlov smashes it thinking it's the fake - so where is the fake? Khan seems to know that it is the original that's been smashed but doesn't say anything and the fake is never seen again, not even in the pile of treasures that gets smuggled on the train. And finally, was the whole jewel smuggling operation thought up just to create a way to get the bomb into West Germany? >> If not, their smuggling operation is a LOT more complicated than it needs to be given that Orlov can just take the jewels to India in his helicopter. >> If Octopussy's circus is based in Europe, why do so many of its staff live in India? >> Famously, each clown's make up is unique, so how come there's another clown that looks just like Bond? And even if 007 has just nabbed a spare costume and miraculously accidentally copied another clown's face, then surely having two identical clowns would be blindingly obvious to the circus people? All of which misses the obvious point which is how come Bond - who is racing to defuse an atomic bomb, remember - thinks he has time to apply clown make up? >> This weeks top-ranking British intelligence officers off on a wander: M saunters around Checkpoint Charlie and Q is sent to India where he sits by himself on a river bank all night, keeping watch. >> There are obviously staffing issues in MI6 though as Q's right-hand man, Smithers, (from FYEO, keep track) is doubling up as a taxi driver to follow suspicious foreigners. >> Bond has about 8 seconds to climb out of that gorilla suit. >> But then he manages to get in and out of that ludicrous crocodile submarine too? >> If the lake is full of crocodiles, how did the assassins swim across? >> When Bond is trying to listen in on Khan, the bug picks up interference from Magda's hair-dryer - but why is she using it? Her hair's not wet! She also spots Bond creeping about the house and doesn't raise the alarm. >> Is it really practical for the circus to put on two shows in one day in different cities? How long does it take them to take down/put up the marquee? And Karlmarxstadt (now Chemnitz) is a good way from the border with West Germany... >> When Bond is 'driving' the car along the rails he keeps wiggling the steering wheel for some reason. >> Why does Khan take Octopussy on the plane? What's he going to do with her? >> Why does the plane crash once Bond jumps out? Khan just seems to forget how to pilot it. >> Proving that the KGB are just as reckless with their top officers (or that Anglo-Soviet relations in the Bond universe are massively better than in ours), General Gogol visits M in his office for a chat. Which is nice.
Worst Line: Argh! Bond channels Barbara Woodhouse (and somehow quietens a tiger) by shouting "Si-it!". Reporting Bond's break-in, a USAF guard adds "And he's wearing a red shirt!" as if this was yet another crime 007 had committed. Worst of all though is Bond's quip, having just thrown a load of money at some impoverished Indians, as he pushes a wadge of cash into his Indian co-worker's hand: "That'll keep you in curry for a few weeks!" Stay classy, James.
Best Line: I didn't spot one. Let me know if you do.
Worst Bond Moment: Hmm.. The Tarzan yodel? The clown costume? The tuk-tuk chase? Probably that last one.
Best Bond Moment: There's a neat trick in the PCS where Bond escapes from a pair of guards by pulling the rip-cord on their parachutes. But the best bit - and you can tell it's the best bit because the Bond theme drops in - is where 007 swerves the Mercedes-Benz onto the railway and the wheel rims fit on the tracks just so.
Overall: With the clever use of the Cold War, the Germany bomb chase and Gogol's Internal Affairs subplot there's quite a bit to like here really. Imagine this with Dalton and with the Indian scenes completely rewritten and it would quickly begin to smarten up. Unfortunately, as it is, it's all a little too easy going and a little too pleased with itself. Remember: dishipline, 007, dishiplin!
James Bond Will Return: ... in From A View to a Kill (although they contrived to drop the 'From' at a later date - that's why the marketing department get paid the big bucks).
Loving your work. How Moore manages to inject tension into the clown countdown is miraculous
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