Octopussy

WHAT DOES THE BAD GUY WANT? General Orlov wants to start a conventional war between the USSR and Eastern Europe. To do this, he intends to set off a nuclear bomb on an American Air Force base in West Germany. He believes the detonation of a nuclear bomb on an American Air Force base will be seen as an accident and will therefore cause, presto! nuclear disarmament. And then the USSR can invade a helpless Eastern Europe.  Can’t miss!

General Orlov is played in a Kubrickian fashion by Kubrickian actor Steven Berkoff. Which is fitting, as Orlov recalls no one so much as General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove. And that is probably the last time you will ever see anyone use the word “Kubrickian” in a discussion of Octopussy.

Now, it turns out that Orlov is not the “A Villain” in Octopussy. That honor belongs to Kamal Khan, played by Louis Jourdan. I have told you the “B Villain”‘s plot instead of the “A Villain”‘s plot because, frankly, I can’t for the life of me figure out what the “A Villain”‘s plot is. Khan knows Orlov somehow and is connected to him via a smuggling operation (Orlov is smuggling priceless artifacts out of the USSR in order to, I think, finance his nuclear-bomb scheme. But we see in Act III that Orlov’s got both his bomb and his priceless artifacts, so what did he sell to whom and why, and what does it have to do with his bomb plot?)

Anyway, Khan is a fabulously wealthy ex-prince or something who lives in Delhi and helps Orlov smuggle his priceless artifacts out of the USSR. He does this with the assistance of Octopussy, a similarly fabulously wealthy woman who has a private island where she supports an army of beautiful young smugglers who are also circus performers. You can tell how dedicated they are to their work because they wear their circus costumes every day. Octopussy, as one might imagine, has an extremely high self image, as one must in order to carry around a name like “Octopussy.” Especially when one learns that she got this nickname from, gulp, her father. Octopussy is played by Maud Adams, who looks great since being shot dead in The Man With the Golden Gun.

Um, so Octopussy is a smuggler who runs a gigantic, hugely profitable smuggling operation out of her circus.  Because you know, if you’re smuggling priceless artifacts, the last thing you want to do is attract attention to yourself, and people generally flee in terror from a circus.  (The plot begins with a circus clown being beaten and stabbed to death in the midst of a German forest, and all I could think is “Man, I’ve dreamed this a thousand times.”)

WHAT DOES JAMES BOND ACTUALLY DO TO SAVE THE WORLD?  The nicest thing I think I can say about Octopussy is that it evokes fond memories of Moonraker.  In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that Moonraker is freaking North by Northwest compared to Octopussy.  I can’t say I really blame the screenwriters — who would bring their “a-game” to a movie called Octopussy?

For the third or fourth time, Bond is hired to check into a smuggling ring.  Why?  Because the clown we see murdered in the opening is a 00 agent, and is found clutching a stolen Faberge egg.  It is discovered that a number of stolen Russian artifacts have been showing up at auction houses and this is somehow the business of the British Secret Service.

Now then: the 00 clown is found dead in Germany, murdered by a pair of circus performers, so it’s reasonable to suspect that the 00 agent was undercover in a circus (as opposed to just happening to be dressed as a clown), and I can’t imagine that there were any other circuses in town besides Octopussy’s, and one doesn’t readily forget a circus named Octopussy’s Circus, and yet it takes James Bond, World’s Greatest Detective, over an hour to trace the bad-guy scheme to Octopussy and longer still to realize that she has a circus that is somehow central to this plot.

No, first he goes to an auction for this stolen Faberge egg, where he meets this Khan fellow, who’s buying the stolen egg, then follows this Khan fellow to Delhi, then falls into Khan’s clutches.  Only then can he escape Khan, make the connection from Khan to Octopussy, from Octopussy to Octopussy’s circus, and from Octopussy’s circus to General Orlov and his nuclear bomb plot.  Phew!

But then we’re not done!  No, after defusing the bomb and saving the world, Bond must then go after Khan, because, um, because —

— well —

because —

— because otherwise he might get away with — um —

— well, like I say, I never figured out what Khan was getting out of all this.  He’s not helping Orlov for money, he’s not helping Orlov for political gain, he’s not helping Orlov in order to spend time with Octopussy, he’s, he’s —

— well anyway.  Screenwriters take note: One villain with one goal is ideal.  One villain with two goals is weaker.  Two villains with one goal is okay, but two villains with two goals is weak.  Two villians, one with a goal and one without, weakest of all.

WOMEN?  Roger Moore is okay in my book until he starts putting the moves on the ladies; then he just screams skeeviness.  In Octopussy there is a stick-insect femme fatale and Octopussy herself.  Neither seduction is remotely believable.

HOW COOL IS THE BAD GUY?  Remember how Goldfinger took time out from his evil scheme to destroy the world in order to hustle some gin rummy in Miami?  This is even less cool than that: Khan takes time out from his ill-defined scheme to do whatever the fuck he’s doing in order to hustle backgammon in Delhi.  Backgammon!  A backgammon hustler!  What’s next, shuffleboard?  And don’t get me started on the tiger hunt.

He also makes a common Bond-villain choice, one that makes no sense to me.  Once he knows Bond is onto him, he hires two competing teams of assassins to kill him.  Now, I’m no supervillain, but it seems to me you hire one team of assassins to kill a guy, and if they fail you might have a second team standing by, but why would you send both teams out at the same time?

For that matter, how many different people would a guy have to kill in a week that he has two separate teams of assassins on his payroll?

Khan also wears the classic “Dr. No” Nehru jacket, but let’s face it, Khan is no No.

FAVORITE MOMENT: Bond stumbles out of the woods, looking for a ride to the circus.  A bunch of kids in a sports car come by and slow down, waving for him to get into the car.  As he approaches, they laugh and speed off.  The image of the aging James Bond being literally left behind by a bunch of laughing teenagers is heartbreaking and the truest moment in the movie.

NOTES: To say the least, a major step backwards for James Bond after For Your Eyes Only.  It suffers from a nonsensical plot, an interminable Act II, and a motiveless villain.  It contains both a fight scene ended by a fortuitous crocodile and a thug with a circular-saw yo-yo.  The last half-hour of the movie, everything past the point where Bond is required to dress up as a clown to save the world, is just one jaw-dropping travesty after another.  The big climactic set-piece involves a team of circus performers storming the bad-guy’s fortress in their circus costumes, including a team of women in leather bikinis toting tranquilizer guns.

No wait, I almost forgot, before Bond dresses up as a clown he must dress up as a gorilla.

For some reason, the title song is not titled “Octopussy.”  Rather, Rita Coolidge sings a soft-rock number called “All Time High.”  To sing as song titled “All Time High” for a movie titled Octopussy strikes me as either the definition of hubris or the epitome of faith.

CONTEST! I invite my readers to come up with a title more childishly offensive and stupid than Octopussy. It must involve (a) a pun, (b) a Latin word for a number, and (c) a vulgar name for genitalia (male or female will do). I’ll start: Septemember. (I had another involving the word “Prime” but it was too disgusting even for this journal.)