THE BOOK: OCTOPUSSY
The story: "OCTOPUSSY"
The Year: 1966
The Author: Ian Fleming
THE PLOT
A British officer murders a German civilian at the end of World War II after using him to find some Nazi gold, and retires comfortably to Jamaica. James Bond arrives to tell him the jig is up.
THE COMMENTARY
The story is mainly about Major Dexter Smythe, OBE, Royal Marines (Ret.). He served in World War II but is now an aging, alcoholic widower who is aware of how empty his life is on his small Jamaican estate.
One wonders how much of this is autobiographical.
Smythe's hobby is feeding and trying to train an octopus that lives in the waters off his beach. He feeds it from the end of his spear, with whatever he's caught that day.
He has named it Octopussy, and I think the p-word is used here in the sense of housecat. Smythe does refer to the cephalopod as "Pussy," as some referred to their cats 50 years ago, in my youth. (I thought it weirdly naive even then.) Later the octopus is referred to as a "sea-cat," further reinforcing this interpretation.
Smythe wonders if Octopussy would eat him if he got too close. This is called "foreshadowing."
Smythe is interested to see if Octopussy would eat a scorpion fish off his spear. He doesn't know if scorpion fish are as poisonous to octopi as they are to humans, and if they are, if Pussy would eat it, and if she did, what effect it might have, if any.
Smythe ruminates on how deadly scorpion fish are to people. Just a brush against the dorsal spines would kill a man in minutes, he thinks. This is also called "foreshadowing."
His maid tells him a man has arrived and wishes to speak with him. It's James Bond. Bond asks a number of questions about Smythe's service with the Miscellaneous Objectives Bureau after the German surrender. Bond doesn't come right out and say it, but the authorities know that Smythe committed a serious crime in 1945, and he's letting Smythe know they know. Bond gives Smythe some time to reflect on his options in his garden. Smythe realizes Bond's giving the old soldier the option of commiting suicide and keeping his good name, as a courtesy due his service.
Smythe does take the time to reflect, and this is where we get the story of Smythe's crime: He murdered a German civilian, Hannes Oberhauser, in the process of stealing Nazi gold. We are told that just after the end of World War II, when Smythe is still stationed in Germany with MOB, he learns of the location of two bars of Nazi gold on a Bavarian mountain. He bullies a local guide, Oberhauser, to take him hiking up the mountain with the threat of arrest for non-existent Nazi crimes. Once they arrive to the location of the gold, Smythe shoots the unsuspecting Oberhauser in the back of the skull twice, and throws him into a deep glacier crevasse. Then he smuggles the gold to Jamaica, sells it piecemeal to some black market Chinese, buys an estate and takes a wife (who dies before the story begins). He has been living off the gold for 20 years.
It's an interesting tale — I, for one, had no idea how to smuggle and sell gold, but now I have an inkling — but since it's a flashback, there's no drama. We know how it turns out.
Smythe doesn't opt for suicide, despite having heart problems that we are led to believe are severe. An interesting aspect of Smythe's angina is that he is told by doctors to cut back on his drinking for his health. He tries, but mostly fails, and in this story alone he's had three stiff drinks before lunch, one more than his daily allowance. One again wonders about an autobiographical angle from the late Ian Fleming, who was ordered by doctors to cut back on his drinking, but resisted. And Fleming died of a heart attack.
Smythe tells Bond the story and asks how he was discovered. Bond tells him; it's pretty straightforward police work.
Smythe asks how Bond got involved, and it turns out there was a Service connection to MOB, and Bond happened to run across the file. As Oberhauser was a ski instructor and father figure of Bond's in his youth, he took the opportunity of some spare time to deal with the matter himself. In other words, it wasn't an assignment — Bond was just avenging his dead friend in his spare time.
He says someone will be by in about a week to collect Smythe, and leaves.
Smythe goes fishing again, and spots a scorpion fish. Can you guess what happens next, boys and girls? That's right, the fish brushes up against Smythe as he spears it, and he has only minutes to live. He tries to finish his experiment with Pussy, but becomes paralyzed and comes too close. He is eaten.
Well, mostly. The half-eaten body is found, the death-by-fish-and-octopus scenario reconstructed. But the authorities, not wanting to scare off tourists, call it accidental drowning. (Holy Jaws, Batman!) Bond sees the report, assumes suicide, but signs off on the drowning conclusion anyway.
STRAY BULLETS
- Bond fights an octopus in the prose version of Dr. No.
- In Spectre (2015), Hans Oberhauser is revealed to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld's father, who raised both Bond and Blofeld together. Blofeld resents Bond because his father loved Bond better, and it's hinted that he killed Oberhauser because of it.
SUMMARY
This is a slight tale of crime and karmic justice, with very little James Bond.
THE MOVIES: OCTOPUSSY
The Year: 1983
The Director: John Glen
The Writers: George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum, Michael G. Wilson
The Cast: Roger Moore (James Bond), Maud Adams (Octopussy), Louis Jourdan (Kamal Khan), Kristina Wayborn (Magda), Kabir Bedi (Gobinda), Steven Berkoff (Orlov), David Meyer (Twin One), Tony Meyer (Twin Two), Desmond Llewelyn (Q), Robert Brown (M), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny), Michaela Clavell (Penelope Smallbone), Walter Gotell (Gogol), Vijay Amritraj (Vijay), Albert Moses (Sadruddin), Geoffrey Keen (Minister of Defence), Douglas Wilmer (Fanning), Andy Bradford (009)
The Music: The theme song, "All Time High," was written by John Barry with lyricist Tim Rice, and performed by Rita Coolidge. It spent four weeks at number one on the United States' Adult Contemporary singles chart and reached number 36 on the Billboard Hot 100. I don't think it made it to the radio stations I was listening to in 1983.
THE PLOT
A fake Fabergé egg, and a fellow Agent's death, lead James Bond to uncover an international jewel-smuggling operation, involving by the mysterious Octopussy, being used to disguise a nuclear attack on NATO forces.
THE COMMENTARY
In the opening sequence, Bond and his contact (a hot chick, of course) are at a horse show in Cuba, where Bond tries to take the place of an officer named Toro for reasons I didn't catch. But the real Toro shows up and blows Bond's cover, so Bond escapes in a microjet, an Acrostar BD-5J, he had stowed in his horse trailer. He evades heat-seeking missiles and flies through a hangar for a rousing opening.
Too bad it doesn't end there. Instead, Bond runs out of gas, and we get a lame joke scene of him pulling up to a rural gas station in Cuba and saying "fill 'er up."
I'd point out that his Acrostar needs jet fuel, not regular gasoline, but the joke is too groan-y to waste time dissecting the particulars.
This is a cold open that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, which begins with a clown being pursued by Micscha and Grischa, twin circus knife-throwers, through a forest. One of the clown's balloons — he brought balloons with him? — pops, revealing his location to the knife-throwers, who put one in his back. As he dies, the clown falls through the French doors of the British ambassador's house. A Fabergé egg rolls out of the dead man's hand.
Jump to the standard M/Bond meeting. We learn that the clown is MI6 agent 009, the knife-throwers are from the Octopussy international circus, and the egg is a fake. Bond has been called in to follow up on 009's mission and find the meaning of the fake egg.
All fairly standard so far. But then things gets complicated.
Bond goes to an auction where the real egg is being sold, drives the price up by bidding with money he doesn't have, then beats the egg's ultimate buyer, an exiled Afghan prince named KAMAL KHAN, at backgammon, with loaded dice, then follows him back to his palace in India, where Bond STEALS THE EGG and is chased, along with his Station I contact VIJAY, who despite the name does not work for MTV, through Indian streets by Khan's chief henchman GOBINDA, in those little golf carts we saw in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and gets away, but then Bond allows himself to be seduced by a woman with an OCTOPUS TATTOO named MAGDA (whom he had seen at the auction with Khan, so we know she's bad), and pretends he doesn't see her STEAL THE EGG BACK, which has a microphone in it (which he got from Q, a while further back), but is captured by Gobinda, taken to Khan's castle, where he escapes his room and stumbles onto the EXACT ROOM he needs to listen in on the microphone, where he overhears that Khan is working for SOVIET GEN. ORLOV (whom we learned is a "bad" Soviet general several scenes back, because he argues for invasion of NATO, against the advice of the "good" Soviet general, GOGOL, who argues for detente), and meanwhile Orlov is stealing priceless jewelry from the Kremlin, replacing the jewelry with fakes, then transporting the real ones to the West in Octopussy's circus train (we haven't met her yet, so you haven't missed anything), for reasons that remain murky to me, then Bond infiltrates Octopussy's palace (I've forgotten how he knew to do that), but is discovered and invited to stay, because Octopussy (NOW we've met her and she's played by Maud Adams, who played an entirely different character in The Man with the Golden Gun, so don't get confused) owes him a debt (more in a minute), and she's pretty useful, because she is the owner of the Octopussy circus that is transporting the stolen jewelry AND a wealthy businesswoman AND the leader of the octopus cult of which Magda (remember the tattoo?) is a member AND she has a pet octopus also named Octopussy, who kills a guy like a Facehugger in Alien, because he secretes poison AND when Khan's men break in to get Bond she has her all-female cult/circus people defeat them a la Ringmaster's Circus of Crime, while back in the USSR Gen. Gogol discovers the fake jewelry scheme (I've forgotten how) and starts pursuit of Orlov, who is now in East Germany with Khan, boarding the Octopussy TRAIN to the West with the real jewelry, which Bond also boards and disguises himself in a GORILLA SUIT
, where he overhears Orlov's REAL plan, which is to replace the jewelry with an ATOMIC BOMB in the circus, because the circus is going to a U.S. Air Force Base (presumably Ramstein, but they call it something else), and Orlov is going to make the explosion look like an accident which will convince the whole West to unilaterally disarm (I'm a little fuzzy on cause and effect here) so he can invade and conquer Europe, and kill all his confederates who might tell the truth, like Octopussy, as a bonus, while Bond is chased out of the train by Gobinda, and must pursue the train in a stolen car whose tires get shredded but wouldn't you know it, the car's axles are EXACTLY THE RIGHT WIDTH for the car to ride the rails like a train, but Bond gets shunted off to another track by an ALERT SWITCHMAN, so he has to jump on the train, and while he's HANGING ON FOR DEAR LIFE on top he's attacked by Khan's men, but oh yeah, he kills the knife-throwers first to avenge 009, and oh yeah, Khan's men killed Vijay a while back, too (forgot to say), so Bond fights on top of a speeding train and even wins, mostly, but falls off and has to hitchhike and eventually steal a car to get to the AFB, where he dresses AS A CLOWN
to evade guards and tries to convince a U.S. general (while in the clown suit) that there's a bomb in the circus, and oh yeah, Orlov is killed by border guards while trying to steal all the jewelry (I think he's pursuing Bond, but I might have lost track), and the jewels spill out of Orlov's trunk, and Gogol shows up and frowns, but MEANWHILE Bond convinces Octopussy that Orlov has betrayed her (although, technically, she betrayed him first by protecting Bond in India) and she helps Bond find and defuse the bomb (it's in the base of the Human Cannonball's cannon), but Khan and Gobinda escape and both Octopussy and Bond pursue them to India (separately) and as Octopussy's women cult/circus people attack Khan's palace, led by Magda (she's a good guy now), Khan and Gobinda escape with Octopussy as a hostage in an AIRPLANE, but Bond jumps on board and now he's HANGING ON FOR DEAR LIFE on a plane in flight and wouldn't you know it, Gobinda comes out to kill him like Grischka and Mischka on the train but Bond knocks him off the plane, like he did earlier to the knife-throwers, and he pushes the powerful ailerons down WITH HIS FEET somehow and forces Khan to almost land, where Octopussy and Bond jump off (separately) but Khan goes over a cliff with the plane and dies so Bond tells M he's too injured to come home straightaway and instead spends some time on Octopussy's yacht having sex with her.
Movie? It's a run-on sentence that you get when you ask a first-grader what happened at school today.
STRAY BULLETS
- This movie competed with the Sean Connery revival Never Say Never Again. I watched NSNA in the theaters in 1983, but skipped Octopussy ... until this week.
- When I thought of Octopussy in 1983, "I'll see the Connery one now and the Moore one later," how was I to know that "later" would be 41 years?
- I read that the producers were pulling out all the stops to beat Never Say Never Again, including the use of the James Bond Theme as much as possible (which Never Say Never Again couldn't legally use), and may explain the clown suit and the gorilla suit. Also this:
I noticed more gorgeous, half-dressed women as extras and background characters and pool sunbathers in this movie than any Bond movie since Goldfinger.
- While getting his gadgets from Q, the armorer chastises bond as he usually does. But this time he's right. Bond uses a camera to zoom in and out and in on a girl's breasts, which Q rightly calls "adolescent antics." Seriously, Bond should've grown out of that kind of stuff in high school. These days it would be labeled sexual harassment, and it wasn't funny even then unless you have the sense of humor of a 12 year old.
- At the auction, which lifts elements of the "Property of a Lady" short story, Bond name-drops "property of a lady" twice.
- Bond invokes "player's privilege" to take and use Khan's dice in the backgammon game, but there is no such rule in backgammon.
- Khan's reaction to losing at backgammon ("Spend the money quickly, Mr. Bond.") is lifted from the book Moonraker.
- In the Tuk Tuk chase in India, the director makes sure we know we're supposed to laugh, with spectators looking back and forth like at a tennis match, and with multiple double-takes, including one from a camel. Ha ha.
- This movie gives us every cliche about India you can think of, most of which were outdated even then.
- At his hotel, a gorgeous Indian twentysomething flirts with Bond. Roger Moore at this stage is at least 30 years her senior. It's kinda ick.
- Roger Moore is actually in pretty good shape in this movie for a 55-year-old guy. But you can't fight Mother Nature, and he's got a spare tire that is pretty obvious when he's climbing from balcony to balcony outside the hotel without his coat to cover, and he moves like a guy with a spare tire (and who's worried about hurting his knees), not like an athlete.
Speaking of which, Louis Jordan, a Frenchman playing an Afghan prince, is 62 in this film. Not only is he too old for the role — the care he takes walking up stairs is hard to un-watch once you've noticed it — but he was never a great actor. He always played suave Frenchman Louis Jordan, and that's not what this role calls for.
- Bond literally swings vine to vine in the Indian rainforest like Tarzan. Not only is it preposterous, but he does the Johnny Weismuller yell. Ugh.
- There's no reason for the cult/circus crew to be all-female, except to have a lot of hot chicks do acrobatic stuff for male edification. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that I'm aware I'm being pandered to.
- The movie is called Octopussy, because it's the name of Maud Adams' character. No, wait, it's because that's the name of the circus. No, wait, it's because that's the name of the cult. No, wait, it's because that's the name of the octopus. It's almost like the producers knew that everyone was going to snigger at the title, and kept throwing different reasons for it against the wall, hoping one would stick. Honestly, fellas, it's not such a great name that you should fight that hard to keep it.
- A throwaway couple of lines establish that Octopussy's dad was Maj. Dexter Smythe, whom you may remember as the lead character in the "Octopussy" short story. Instead of stealing Nazi gold as in the book, he had stolen Chinese gold. In prose Bond offers him the opportunity to commit suicide, but he doesn't do it (and dies by accident). In the movie Octopussy indicates that he does commit suicide, and she's grateful to Bond for offering him the opportunity to avoid disgrace. That's the entirety of the movie's connection to the book, aside from the name.
- This is the fourth movie where Walter Gotell portrays "good" Soviet Gen. Gogol, and he will return for two more. He also played a different character, Morzeny, in From Russia with Love.
- Octopussy is also the first film to feature Robert Brown as M, following the death of Bernard Lee in 1981.
The two Bond girls in The Man with the Golden Gun were both played by Swedish actresses, Maud Adams and Britt Ekland. In Octopussy, Adams returns and is joined by yet another Swedish actress, Kristina Wayborn (Magda).
- I'm not sure why the producers loved Maud Adams so much that they brought her back for another movie as a different character. I found her acting wooden in The Man with the Golden Gun, and this movie didn't change my mind.
- Twin knife-throwers Grischka and Mischka were played by real-life twin brothers David and Anthony Meyer.
- The film follows the fight-on-top-of-a-train scene with a fight-on-top-of-a-plane scene. It's a bit repetitive, and increasingly preposterous.
SUMMARY
This was not a good movie. It isn't Moonraker bad, and tries to be a serious adventure film (except for the juvenile bits). But it has an unnecessarily complicated plot, and enough time between the big action setpieces (which are unusually big) for the viewer to wonder, "What's going on here? And why should I care?"
Replies
THE BOOK: Octopussy is what it is: a short story told in Fleming's distinctive style. I have no problem with the short story, even thought there's very little James Bond in it. The movie, on the other hand...
THE MOVIE: Your run-on style summary pretty much captures the essense of how stupid this movie is. Here are just a few of the things I hated about it.
You did too good of a job skewering this movie in your "Stray Bullets" section and i don't want to spend any more time thinking about it than I have to. I personally think it's worse than Moonraker, but that's just horseraces. The only thing I really liked about it that they dropped in the original "Octopussy" as backstory and name-dropped "Portrait of a Lady." That's it.
I enyoyed the short story well enough. But like "Quantum of Solace" it's not really a James Bond story. The movie, on the other hand, was awful.
All I had to read was "Bond literally swings vine to vine in the Indian rainforest like Tarzan. Not only is it preposterous, but he does the Johnny Weismuller yell" and I remembered one of many reasons why I disliked this movie. Moore really should have packed it in by this point.
When I was first reading and collecting the 007 books in the early Seventies, Octopussy was the one book that I could never find. At the time there were at least three bookstores in my area that I frequented, none ever carried it. Was it because of the title? I finally read it in the early 2k's when my local library added a copy.
Was it because of the title?
I don't have any inside information, but I'd bet it was. I had neither read the book nor seen the movie until (checks watch) Monday, and I had a visceral, negative reaction to the thing for decades from the title alone. Why they didn't just re-name it "Octopus" or "Send in the Clowns" or "A Holiday in India" or something I'll never know. And the book should re-name itself "Living Daylights."
Why they didn't just re-name it "Octopus" or "Send in the Clowns" or "A Holiday in India"... I'll never know.
Or "Sounds like a lot of bull to me."
The publisher eventually solved the issue of the book title in 2008 by compiling all the Fleming short stories from For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy in a single volume titled Quantom of Solace.