Movie review: ‘Octopussy’

FloridaGator80
A promotional photo from the movie “Octopussy.”

“Octopussy” was Ian Fleming’s last of 14 “James Bond” stories. The actual title from 1966 was “Octopussy and the Living Daylights” and was published after the authors death in a variety of publications, including Playboy magazine. While the world was changing at that point of the ’60s, the title was more than just a bit scandalous. I recall it was an answer with quite a bit of double entendre twitters on the original “The Hollywood Squares” TV show hosted by Peter Marshall. So, along came the film version of “Octopussy” with Roger Moore and, meanwhile, “The Living Daylights” would be its own 007 film starring Timothy Dalton – the first of his pair of Bond films and the one following Moore’s final turn as the “double naught” spy (as TV’s “Jethro Bodine” called him).

‘Octopussy’
(1983; 131 minutes; rated PG; directed by John Glen and starring Roger Moore, Maud Adams and Louis Jourdan)

THE BEST, BUT MOSTLY THE WORST OF BOND FILMS ALL IN ONE

(NOTE: I expanded this review with additional opinion and trivia and the updating of links on Dec. 8, 2018. I again expanded the review on Sept. 8, 2025.)

Just as I wrote about “The Spy Who Loved Me” in my review, “Octopussy” with Roger Moore is one of the 007 films that is good to watch despite its limitations. However, unlike “The Spy Who Loved Me,” “Octopussy” clocks in worse with its stretches of tedium and is barely rescued with the typical Bond-film flourish that itself comes up short of the spectacular endings fans expect — such as the outstanding underwater battle in “Thunderball” (click here to read my review).

I guess the best thing you can say about “Octopussy” is that it isn’t George Lazenby’s lone, lame effort or all of Daniel Craig’s misfires.

“Octopussy” is certainly the worst of the Sean Connery-Roger Moore era but it truly starts out with promise: It has the international touch of take-over-the-world madness and we have “James Bond” coming to the rescue with his impressive knowledge and the wonderful international flavor brought by the initial montage where the film moves from Sotheby’s auction house in London to dazzling views in India. It even has a neat supporting role by then top-tier pro tennis player Vijay Amritraj (he plays Bond’s associate unsurprisingly named “Vijay”).

A promotional photo from the movie “Octopussy.”

However, after an inspired game of backgammon and a quick chase through a congested street, the moment comes where the screenwriters (shared among three people with a nod to writer and Bond creator Ian Fleming) must have suffered a collective stroke and let the film dissolve into tedium that, frankly, isn’t very interesting save for the fact that it is 007 and Moore.

A promotional photo from the movie “Octopussy.”

The movie plays out with Moore meeting “Octopussy,” a mysterious woman with ties to the super-criminal “Khamal Kahn,” played to perfection with suave insouciance by the equally suave actor Louis Jourdan. “Octopussy” is played by Maud Adams and she has a unique role in the Bond universe as having played separate characters in two films (she played the villain’s mistress who was killed in “The Man with the Golden Gun” – click here for my review). Unlike Jourdan’s effort or her own in “The Man with the Golden Gun,” Adams sleepwalks through this one and doesn’t make much of an impression. Well, frankly, she makes no impression at all.

“Octopussy” has a link to Bond via her deceased father and then the film begins to dissolve into tedium: From a TV-movie kind of “hunt” of bond in India to a tedious train chase across Germany as part of the threat-of-nuclear-war bombing done by hardline Communist elements in the Soviet Union. The group of women who work for Adams and their antics are tedious, too, and only a neat final chase with Moore hugging the top of an airplane doing acrobatics even somewhat tries to save the film.

Here’s a rundown of the interesting members of the principal cast:

  • A promotional photo from the movie “Octopussy.”

    With his Bond career having one more film to go, Moore was getting a bit long in the tooth for being the dashing, debonair “James Bond” (he was 56 at the time of the release of “Octopussy”). Pierce Brosnan was an “old” 49 at the premiere last of his four 007 films. Moore gives his usual solid 007 effort here, but still there’s a little something lacking that could have made the film better, but he might have been discouraged by how the lame the film had to appear to him. Moore was in the complete stinker called “ffolkes” (click here for my review) and he did a nice parody of himself in Burt Reynolds’ “The Cannonball Run” (click here for my review). Although he mostly did good work, his career is punctuated with wickedly bad flicks such as “The Wild Geese” (click here for my review). Moore died at 89 in 2017 and his work as “James Bond” made him a legend on the big screen.

  • A promotional photo from the movie “Octopussy.”

    As I already wrote, Adams, like several others here, is just mailing this one in and she gives her character all the spunk of a dose of Valium. She was marginally better in the original “Rollerball” with James Caan (click here for my look at how the remake of that one stunk compared to the original). Adams has had only a modest 48 acting credits in a career that began in 1970 and after a tee-vee movie in 2010, she did an episode of the TV series “Blood Legacy.”

  • A promotional photo from the movie “Octopussy.”

    A Golden Globe nominee (not for this one), Jourdan is smooth as silk here and a terrific super-villain in the Bond world. He is perfectly at ease playing high-stakes backgammon (remember that game?) or shooting at our hero while riding an elephant. Jourdan, who died in 2015 at 93, had a career spanning seven decades until his last film in 1992 (“Year of the Comet”). He was a versatile actor doing work from classics such as “Gigi,” which won all nine Oscars for which it was nominated (but not one for Jourdan – he got his Globe nomination for it, though), to schlock-turned-cult-classic “Swamp Thing” and its sequel.

  • A promotional photo from the movie “Octopussy.”

    Every super-villain needs a henchman and while Kabir Bedi’s “Gobinda” isn’t as famous as the character “Jaws” in other Bond films, but he is every bit as formidable and much better acted. Bedi exudes a powerful presence on screen. Bedi’s menacing look and countenance (he’s 6-foot-2 against Jourdan’s 5-foot-11 and Moore’s 6-foot-1) has him bristling strength in every scene he’s in. Bedi, who is a legend with Bollywood productions, has 135 acting credits (most from Bollywood) since his first from a U.S. soap opera in 1963.

  • A promotional photo from the movie “Octopussy.”

    Steven Berkhoff plays hard-line Soviet general “Orlov” and is better remembered for his work at the bad guy in “Beverly Hills Cop.” Berkhoff’s tough-guy stance here can be appreciated by real-life post-Soviet huckster Vladimir Putin with his fantasy of Soviet supremacy (the character’s, but remember that Putin still has the same fantasy). However motivated Berkhoff is, the character just comes off wooden and stereotypical of the Cold War age. He was much better in “Beverly Hills Cop” and has an impressive resume of films including “A Clockwork Orange” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.”

  • A promotional photo from the movie “Octopussy.”

    Amritraj does a very competent job on screen and appears truly comfortable in front of the camera in this low-key effort. He’s not asked to do much, but there is a humorous chase scene where filmmakers go tongue-in-cheek with his tennis skills. Amritraj was also in “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” in a brief career of eight credits. He was inactive between 2001’s episode of TV’s “Walker, Texas Ranger” and the project “Of Gods and Kings,” which was in post-production in late 2018.

I haven’t reviewed the actors who play the British Secret Service staff surrounding 007 in the past and won’t here, other than to say filmmakers tried to introduce a new secretary into Bond’s life named “Penelope Smallbone” (cue the wretched double entendre). Just like the movie, the introduction didn’t work.

If you haven’t seen the film and are wondering, an aging Lois Maxwell continues here as the venerable, lovelorn “Miss Moneypenny” – she was the age same as Moore here.

In the end “Octopussy” isn’t a very satisfying 007 film, but even the worst Bond films (save “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”) are watchable, although Craig has nearly dipped to Lazenby’s incompetence because his lone emotion on camera is as if he’s having a bowel movement at the moment.

“Octopussy” was the sixth-ranked film at U.S. theaters in 1983 with $67.8 million in ticket sales, according to Box Office Mojo. Of course 007 plays to a much wider audience and “Octopussy” made $183.7 million worldwide on a budget of $27.5 million, according to Wiki. It was in competition with another Bond film that year, “Never Say Never Again” with Sean Connery (a legal split brought the pseudo-007 with the legend himself reprising the role he made famous), but it didn’t stack up as well and was No. 14 with $55.4 million. The No. 1 film was “Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi” with $252.5 million. Other films from that year I have reviewed include:

Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):

  • Moore’s middle name was George; Adams is a native of Sweden and her birth name is Maud Solveig Christina Wikström; Jourdan’s birth name was Louis Robert Gendre; and Berkoff’s birth name is Leslie Steven Berks.
  • Maxwell was a Canadian-born actor who played “Moneypenny” from “ No” in 1963 through 1985’s “A View to a Kill” (Moore’s final turn as 007). She died in Australia in 2007 of cancer at the age of 80 and her real name was Lois Ruth Hooker.
  • The character “Octopussy’s” full name is Octavia Charlotte Smythe.
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “Robert Brown appears as ‘M’ for the first time, replacing Bernard Lee, who died between Moonraker (1979) (Lee’s final appearance as M) and For Your Eyes Only (1981), which left M out entirely.”
  • “Octopussy” was the last Bond film to give the name of the next: “A View to a Kill” … but it said “From a View to a Kill” in the closing credits.
  • Rita Coolidge’s song “All Time High” is the first Bond theme song not to use the film’s title in the lyrics.
  • The Aerostar aircraft used in the beginning of the film was hung from the ceiling of a Clearwater restaurant here in Florida.
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “The Fabergé Egg as seen in the movie was actually the Imperial Coronation Egg designed by Peter Carl Fabergé. It was made 1897 to commemorate the 1894 Coronation of Tsar Nicholas II.”
  • Click here for IMDb.com’s extensive trivia page for “O” …
  • Finally and directly from com: “Barbara Carrera turned down the role of Octopussy in order to appear in the competing Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983) because she wanted to work with Sean Connery.”

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