For their podcast The Talk Show, John Gruber and Dan Benjamin have been watching the James Bond movies in order and discussing them on the show. Now that Netflix has added the bulk of the series to its instant watch library, I thought I’d play along. Warning! Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk!
Oh, boy. If we’re rating Bond movies on a simple “this one is good” and “this one is bad” scale, Octopussy definitely falls in “bad” category. First of all it has not one, but two double-0 agents dressed as clowns, including 007. I could stop right there since clowns frighten and annoy me, but of course I must go on.
Before I get too far I’ve gotta say that the opening was awesome. I might go so far as to say that it was among the best openings of any James Bond movie with that awesome little jet. And mad props to the stunt pilot who flew the plane sideways through the partially closed hanger doors. According to Wikipedia, that was a real stunt! I also found the Rita Coolidge theme song to be pretty good, though I’m not a huge fan of the saxophone parts.
I found the plot of this movie to be extremely hard to follow, but fortunately the good folks at Wikipedia were there to help. Let me see if I can make sense of things. Here goes. So General Orlov, a Soviet general (Steven Berkoff), is out for Soviet domination of Europe, so he’s going to blow up a bomb at an American military base in West Germany and make it look like an accident so no one will suspect Russia. Europe will demand a curtailment of nuclear weapons deployments, and the Soviets can waltz right into Western Europe and take it. Orlov is doing this without the knowledge of the Soviet government. First of all, hat’s off to Peter Lamont, production designer on this movie. The Soviet war room was one of the coolest sets in motion picture history. It was like a huge light-colored marble room with a semi-circle table with Soviet military men sitting around it. At one point Orlov opens a view screen in the wall, and the entire floor rotates over so the men at the table can see it. My description doesn’t do it justice, you’ve gotta see it. Also, check out Lamont’s IMDb page. He’s got some movies featuring excellent production design on his resumé.
The weird part is that while Orlov is technically the big baddie since the whole thing was his plan, he’s not in the movie all that much, and Bond doesn’t even kill him. The main bad guy in the movie is Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan), described as an Afghan prince. And no, Bond at no point screams, “Khaaaannnnn!!!!” Pity. Now this is the part I found very confusing, but my understanding is that Orlov and Khan are making fake jewels so they can smuggle the real ones into the West, while at the same time smuggling the bomb. 009 is killed bringing a fake Fabergé egg to the British ambassador which sets Bond off on this case.
In order to smuggle the bomb onto the military base, Khan hires a female smuggler, known as Octopussy (Maud Adams) who also luckily has a circus. (Ok, side note. Would you got to a show called “Octopussy’s Circus?” I didn’t think so.) Octopussy thinks she’s just smuggling jewelry, but they’re also using her to smuggle the bomb unbeknownst to her.
At any rate, there’s an exciting chase scene involving Bond hanging off of a the circus train. At some point he falls off and has to race to get to the military base in time to diffuse the bomb. What follows is a decently hilarious set of mishaps in which he has trouble acquiring transportation. He tries to hitch a ride to no avail before a sports car with a load of teenagers stop and beckon him to join. He starts to run to the car and it speeds away, the kids laughing at him. Clichéd prank, but I actually laughed out loud at that one. Then he hitches a ride with a super-stereotypical overweight German couple in a Volkswagen Beetle. They even offer him sausage and beer in the car. I’m not making this up. They drop him off at a town where he tries to enter a phone booth, but a German woman beats him to it. At that point I actually got pretty fed up. I mean, thousands of lives and the balance of power in Europe are at stake and James Bond isn’t going to yank a lady out of a phone booth? But then he totally makes up for it by stealing the woman’s car.
He finally gets to the base and is able to diffuse the bomb, sadly having to disguise himself as a clown to do so. *sigh* Octopussy finds out she’s been conned and she and her all-female circus troop assault Khan’s palace. Lame city. Khan kidnaps Octopussy and Bond chases down his airplane as he’s trying to take off, jumping onto the back of it. So it apparently wasn’t enough that twenty minutes ago we had Bond hanging off the side of the train. Oh, no. We’ve also got to see him hang on to the top of an airplane while it barrel rolls. Then to take it to the next level, Bond has to have a fight on top of the plane in mid-flight. Somehow Bond disables the tail of the plane with his foot. (Didn’t seem realistic.) That combined with his earlier sabotaging of one of the plane’s engines causes it to crash, killing Khan, but not before Bond and Octopussy roll out after Khan tries unsuccessfully to land. Just a bad ending.
Some specific complaints:
Octopussy? Really? You named a major character and the entire movie Octopussy? It’s completely laughable. Whenever any character utters her name it just invites eye-rolling. All of them take it completely seriously, but it had to be hard to say those lines. It’s also interesting that Maud Adams got that part since she was a minor but significant Bond girl in The Man With the Golden Gun. Sadly nearly everything about her character is just ridiculous in this movie.
Most of the movie is set in India, and that’s neat and all, but early on in the film James Bond has a fight scene in the middle of a huge stereotype of Indian culture. There’s snake charming, sword swallowing, a guy on a bed of nails, and another guy walking on a bed of hot coals. Maybe there’s a market in India somewhere where all that really happens, and I’m not even saying it wasn’t a little cool, but just seemed a little like they were stereotyping. I’m also thankful to Wikipedia for reminding me about the awful scene where the Indian agent Vijay plays the James Bond theme song with his snake charming horn. Terrible. Oh, and I mustn’t forget the Tiger. While trying to get away from Khan, Bond is stalked by a presumably wild tiger. He tells it to sit and it does. Grrr…
Later there’s the guy with the yo-yo buzz saw which, admittedly, is a pretty cool weapon for a Bond henchman to have, but I somehow doubt it could function like that in real life. The crocodile submarine was downright cool, but they way Bond escapes Octopussy’s palace by making it look like he had gotten eaten just didn’t seem plausible.
Also, why does Octopussy continue to do business with Khan? He tells her he wants to kill Bond and she tell him she’ll handle it. But then he sends his goons to attack Bond (and her) at her palace anyway. And she still wants to smuggle the jewels for him? Are you kidding me?
I’m sure there was more I’m forgetting to rant about, but I’ll leave it at that for now. I always like to look for the “James Bond will return in” moment in the end titles, and this said, “From a View to a Kill.” Or course the next movie was titled, “A View to a Kill.” No big deal, just an interesting item of interest.
