Octopussy *** (1983, Roger Moore, Maud Adams, Louis Jourdan, Steven Berkoff, Vijay Amritraj, Kristina Wayborn, Kabir Bedi) – Classic Movie Review 698

Gizmos and gadgets take first place in the Roger Moore 1983 James Bond film Octopussy, but the humour is quite a lot of fun and there is plenty of action and adventure.

Directed by John Glen in 1983, the 13th James Bond film Octopussy is another 007 movie where the gizmos and gadgets seem to take first place to the also-ran spy story, the innuendo-led witticisms stand in for real dialogue, and the stunts and special effects are more impressive than the performances or attention to suspense and tension.

Nevertheless, the humour is quite a lot of fun and there is plenty of action and adventure.

The 56-year-old Roger Moore, in his sixth, penultimate 007 adventure, travels from East Berlin to India to stop suave villain Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan), a wealthy Afghan prince, and his buddy Russian general Orlov (Steven Berkoff) from unleashing a nuclear bomb on the helpless Western military. And he also has to halt the fake Fabergé egg-smuggling activities by hot-air balloon of the sexy jewel smuggler Octopussy (Maud Adams).

By the way, a hand with a pair of eights in the card game Texas Hold ‘Em Poker is called an octopussy. Such a hand is seen in Casino Royale (2006) featuring the card game.

Glen handles the action and stunts with great professional precision. And some of the jokes aren’t bad – tennis player Vijay Armitraj fending off would-be assassin with a racquet, Moore in a crocodile mini-sub. But Octopussy lacks the spark and surprise of earlier adventures. Adams makes a very reasonable impression, but the subdued villains seem less than iconic this time.

Happily the old regulars Desmond Llewellyn (as MI6’s gadget designer Q), Lois Maxwell (as M’s secretary Miss Moneypenny) and Geoffrey Keen (as the British Minister of Defence) are all present and correct, while Robert Brown takes over from the late Bernard Lee as M, the head of the British Secret Service.

After Bernard Lee died in 1981, Brown was recommended as M to the producers by the ever-loyal Moore, who knew him from the TV series Ivanhoe (1958–59) where he played Gurth, the faithful companion of Moore’s character Ivanhoe. Brown had played a castle guard in the unrelated 1952 film Ivanhoe, the galley-master in Ben-Hur (1959), grunting caveman Akhoba in One Million Years BC (1966), and Admiral Hargreaves in The Spy Who Loved Me.

Also in the cast are Kristina Wayborn as Magda, Kabir Bedi as Gobinda, Walter Gotell as Gogol, Douglas Wilmer as antiquities expert Jim Fanning, David Meyer and Tony Meyer as Twin One and Two, Albert Moses as Sadruddin, Michaela Clavell as Moneypenny’s assistant Penelope Smallbone, Jeremy Bulloch as Q’s assistant Smithers, Patrick Barr, Bruce Boa, Philip Voss, Richard LeParmentier as General Peterson’s aide, Andy Bradford as MI6 agent 009, and Paul Hardwicke as the Soviet Chairman.

Penelope Smallbone!

Richard Maibaum, George MacDonald Fraser and Michael G Wilson’s jokey screenplay is based on two of Ian Fleming short stories, Octopussy and The Property of a Lady, though the plot is mostly original. It is a pity that it doesn’t take the spy game a bit more seriously, and then this would have been a better movie.

Octopussy faced sharp competition at the box office from Sean Connery’s simultaneously released, non-Eon Productions 007 film Never Say Never Again. But it still did very well. On a $28 million cost, it grossed $68 million in the US alone, and $187.5 million overall.

Moore’s final Bond movie is A View to a Kill in 1985.

George MacDonald Fraser chose India as the film’s setting because of his extensive research on the country for his 1969 novel Flashman and because the Bond series had not yet visited India. Fraser’s first draft was delivered soon after the release of For Your Eyes Only, whose writers Michael G Wilson and Richard Maibaum reworked Fraser’s script. They retained ideas that producer Albert R Broccoli had disliked at first, such as Bond dressed as a gorilla and then a clown. Maybe they should have listened to Mr Broccoli.

They rewrote the script to focus on jewellery smuggling after a high-level Soviet Union scandal involving General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev’s son-in-law in which the Moscow State Circus was used to smuggle jewellery. This is odd and awkward, because it is not really a Bond-style fantasy plot, more of a real-life crime thriller. There is a sense of trying to go in new directions, but uncertainty over what they are.

The cast are Roger Moore as James Bond, MI6 agent 007. Maud Adams as Octopussy, Louis Jourdan as Kamal Khan, Kristina Wayborn as Magda, Kabir Bedi as Gobinda, Steven Berkoff as General Orlov, Vijay Amritraj as Vijay, David Meyer and Anthony Meyer as Mischka and Grischka, Douglas Wilmer as Jim Fanning, Robert Brown as M, Walter Gotell as General Anatoly Gogol,  Desmond Llewelyn as Q, Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, Geoffrey Keen as British Minister of Defence Frederick Gray, Albert Moses as Sadruddin, Bruce Boa as US Air Force General Peterson,  Michaela Clavell as Penelope Smallbone, Andy Bradford as MI6 agent 009, Dermot Crowley as Lieutenant Kamp, Peter Porteous as Lenkin, Eva Rueber-Staier as Rublevitch, Jeremy Bulloch as Smithers, Richard LeParmentier as General Peterson’s aide, Gabor Vernon as Borchoi, Patrick Barr, Bruce Boa, Philip Voss,  and Paul Hardwick as the Soviet Chairman.

Ingrid Pitt has an uncredited voice cameo as Octopussy’s galley mistress.

Swedish actress and model Maud Adams (born Maud Solveig Christina Wikström on 12 February 1945) is best known for her roles as two different Bond girls. She previously played a different character – Andrea Anders, the doomed mistress of villain Scaramanga (Christopher Lee) – in The Man With the Golden Gun. Her acting career started in the 1970 film The Boys in the Band, playing a photo-shoot model in the opening credits.

RIP beloved Sir Roger George Moore KBE, who died on 23 May 2017, aged 89. He played James Bond in seven films (1973-85), Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe in the TV series Ivanhoe (1958–59), Beau Maverick in the Western TV series Maverick (1960–61). Simon Templar in the TV series The Saint (1962-69) and Lord Brett Sinclair in 24 episodes of The Persuaders (1971). He said: ‘Connery was the killer, I was the lover.’ Nobody does it better.

Louis Jourdan, the debonair French leading man who was brought to Hollywood by producer David O Selznick in 1947 to appear in Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case, died on 14 February 2015, aged 93. He famously romanced Leslie Caron in Gigi, as well as starring in Octopussy.

Douglas Wilmer died on 31 March 2016, aged 96. His movies include Cleopatra (1963), Octopussy (1983), Patton (1970), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), The Vampire Lovers (1970), The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966), The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967). He was especially renowned as Sixties TV’s Sherlock Holmes.

RIP Jeremy Bulloch, who died in hospital on 17 December 2020, aged 75, from health complications after living with Parkinson’s disease for many years. He is also in The Spy Who Loved Me as HMS Ranger Crewman, and was Boba Fett in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 698

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