Octopussy is a 1983 spy film and the thirteenth in the James Bond series produced by Eon Productions. It is the sixth to star Roger Moore as the MI6 agent James Bond and the second to be directed by John Glen. The screenplay was written by George MacDonald Fraser, Richard Maibaum and Michael G. Wilson.
The film's title is taken from a short story in Ian Fleming's 1966 short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights. Although the events of the "Octopussy" short story form part of the title character's background, the film's plot is mostly original. It does, however, contain a scene adapted from the Fleming short story "The Property of a Lady" (included in 1967 and later editions of Octopussy and The Living Daylights)
In Octopussy, Bond is assigned the task of hunting a megalomaniacal Soviet general (Steven Berkoff) who is stealing jewellery and art objects from the Kremlin art repository. This leads Bond to the exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan), and his associate Octopussy (Maud Adams), and the discovery of a plot to force disarmament in Western Europe with the use of a nuclear weapon.
Octopussy was the first Bond film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which had absorbed United Artists, the previous distributor of Eon Bond films. It was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and executive-produced by Michael G. Wilson; it was released four months before the non-Eon Bond film Never Say Never Again. The film earned $187.5 million against its $27.5 million budget and received mixed reviews. Praise was directed towards the action sequences and locations, with the plot and humour being targeted for criticism; Adams's portrayal of the titular character also drew mixed responses.
Octopussy was followed by A View to a Kill in 1985.
Plot After an encounter with knife-throwing twin assassins Mischka and Grishka in East Berlin, mortally wounded British agent 009, dressed as a circus clown and carrying a fake Fabergé egg, crashes into the British ambassador's residence and dies. MI6 suspects Soviet involvement and, after the real Fabergé egg is to be auctioned in London, sends James Bond to identify the seller.
At the auction, Bond switches the fake egg for the real one and engages in a bidding war with exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan, forcing Khan to pay £500,000 for the fake egg. Bond follows Khan to his palace in India. Bond defeats Khan in a game of backgammon using Khan's loaded dice. Bond and his MI6 contact, Vijay, escape Khan's bodyguard Gobinda in a taxi chase through a marketplace. Later, Khan's associate Magda seduces Bond. Bond allows Magda to steal the real Fabergé egg, which is fitted with Q's listening and tracking device. Gobinda knocks Bond unconscious and takes him to Khan's palace. After Bond escapes, he listens in on the bug and discovers that Khan works with Orlov, a corrupt Soviet general seeking to defy his superiors and expand Soviet domination to Western Europe. Orlov has been supplying Khan with priceless Soviet treasures stolen from the Kremlin, replacing them with fakes while Khan has been smuggling the real objects into the West using a circus troupe belonging to a mysterious woman named Octopussy.
Bond infiltrates a floating palace in Udaipur and meets Octopussy, a businesswoman, smuggler and Khan's associate. She also leads the Octopus cult, which Magda is a member of. Octopussy has a personal connection with Bond: her father was the late Major Dexter-Smythe, whom Bond arrested for treason. Octopussy thanks Bond for allowing the Major to commit suicide rather than face trial, and invites Bond to be her guest. Khan's assassins break into the palace to kill Bond, but Bond and Octopussy defeat them. Bond learns from Q that the assassins have killed Vijay.
Orlov is planning to meet Khan in Karl-Marx-Stadt, East Germany, where the circus is scheduled to perform, while back in Moscow, General Gogol begins to pursue Orlov when the fake jewels are discovered. Travelling to East Germany, Bond infiltrates the circus and discovers that Orlov has replaced the jewels with a nuclear warhead, primed to explode during the circus performance at a United States Air Force base in West Germany. The explosion would cause Europe to seek unilateral disarmament in the belief that the bomb belonged to the US and was detonated at the airbase accidentally, which would leave the unprotected borders open to a Soviet invasion.
Bond drives Orlov's car along the railway tracks and boards the circus train. Orlov gives chase, but is killed by border guards when he tries to catch the train as it crosses the border. Bond kills Mischka and Grischka to avenge the murder of 009, and after falling from the train, hitch-hikes a lift from a passing motorist to reach the airbase, eventually stealing a car from a nearby town to complete his journey. Bond penetrates the base and disguises himself as a clown to evade the West German police. He convinces Octopussy that Khan has betrayed her, and realizing that she has been tricked, she assists Bond in deactivating the warhead.
With the plan stopped, Khan has returned to his palace and prepares to flee. Bond and Octopussy also return separately to India. Bond arrives at Khan's palace just as Octopussy and her troops launch an assault on the grounds.
Octopussy attempts to kill Khan, but is captured by Gobinda. While Octopussy's team overpowers Khan's guards, Khan and Gobinda abandon the palace, taking Octopussy as a hostage. As they attempt to escape in their plane, Bond clings to the fuselage and disables an engine and the elevator panel. Struggling with Bond, Gobinda falls to his death, and Bond and Octopussy jump off the plane onto a nearby cliff seconds before the plane crashes, killing Khan. While the Minister of Defence and Gogol discuss the return of the stolen jewels to the Kremlin, Bond recuperates with Octopussy aboard her private galley in India.
Cast
Roger Moore as James Bond, MI6 agent 007. Maud Adams as Octopussy, a jewel smuggler and wealthy businesswoman. Adams previously played Andrea Anders in The Man With the Golden Gun. Louis Jourdan as Kamal Khan, an exiled Afghan prince. Kristina Wayborn as Magda, trusted subordinate and henchwoman to Octopussy and Khan. Kabir Bedi as Gobinda, Khan's powerful bodyguard. Steven Berkoff as General Orlov, a renegade Soviet general who works with Khan to bomb a US airbase, and destabilise NATO. Vijay Amritraj as Vijay, Bond's MI6 ally in India. This was Amritraj's acting debut after gaining prominence as a tennis player. David Meyer and Anthony Meyer as Mischka and Grischka (credited as Twin One and Twin Two): Orlov's knife-throwing henchmen who are performers in Octopussy's circus. Douglas Wilmer as Jim Fanning, antiquities expert who accompanies Bond at the Fabergé auction. Robert Brown as M, head of the Secret Intelligence Service and Bond's superior. Walter Gotell as General Anatoly Gogol, director of the KGB. Desmond Llewelyn as Q, MI6's gadget designer. Llewelyn was disappointed that he was unable to travel to India since his scenes were filmed at Pinewood Studios.Hume, 121 Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary. Geoffrey Keen as British Minister of Defence Frederick Gray (credited as Minister of Defence). Albert Moses as Sadruddin, head of MI6 station in India, assigned to assist Bond. Bruce Boa as U.S. Air Force General Peterson, the American base commander in West Germany. Michaela Clavell as Penelope Smallbone, Moneypenny's assistant. Paul Hardwick as the Soviet Chairman who presides over the meeting between Orlov and Gogol. Hardwick was cast due to his resemblance to Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, but Brezhnev died during production in November 1982, making his presence an anachronism. This was Hardwick's final film role, as he himself died in October 1983, four months after the film's release.
Other actors in smaller roles include Andy Bradford as MI6 agent 009, Dermot Crowley as Lieutenant Kamp, Orlov's nuclear weapons expert; former Pan's People dancer Cherry Gillespie as Midge, an Octopussy subordinate; Peter Porteous as Lenkin, the Kremlin art expert; Eva Rueber-Staier as Rublevitch, Gogol's secretary; Jeremy Bulloch as Smithers, Q's assistant; Richard LeParmentier as General Peterson's aide; Sneh Gupta as the hotel concierge; and Gabor Vernon as Borchoi. Ingrid Pitt has an uncredited voice cameo as Octopussy's galley mistress. Former beauty queens Mary Stävin, Miss World 1977 and Carolyn Seaward Miss United Kingdom 1979, had non speaking roles as two of Octopussy's all female troupe.
Production Writing Despite financial problems at United Artists after the release of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate, the studio greenlit another James Bond film to be produced and released in 1983. In May 1981, one month after the announcement, UA was purchased and merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Michael G. Wilson, Richard Maibaum, and George MacDonald Fraser were hired to write a film based on short stories from Ian Fleming's posthumous collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights. Fraser later said his work on an unfilmed script of James Clavell's Tai Pan led to his hiring.
Little of the plot of the short story "Octopussy" is used, however, with its events simply related by Bond as the family backstory for one of the main characters. The scene at Sotheby's is, though, adapted from the short story "The Property of a Lady" (included in 1967 and later editions of the collection), while Kamal Khan's reaction following the backgammon game is taken from Fleming's novel Moonraker. After initially intending the film to be set in Japan, Fraser chose India as the setting because of his extensive research on the country for his novel Flashman.
Fraser was hired to work on an early draft of the script and he proposed that the story be set in India, as the series had not yet visited said country. The first draft was delivered shortly after the release of For Your Eyes Only, whose writers Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum went on to rework the script. They discarded his idea for the opening sequence, featuring a motorbike chase set at the Isle of Man TT, but still retained moments that producer Albert R. Broccoli had first criticized, where Bond dressed as a gorilla and later, a clown. The film was rewritten to focus on jewellery smuggling after a scandal in the Soviet Union involving General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev's son-in-law in which the Moscow State Circus was being used to smuggle jewellery.
Casting
Following For Your Eyes Only, Roger Moore had expressed a desire to retire from the role of James Bond. His original contract had been for three films (Live and Let Die in 1973, The Man with the Golden Gun in 1974 and The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977) which was fulfilled. Moore's following two films (Moonraker in 1979 and For Your Eyes Only in 1981) were negotiated on a film-by-film basis. Given his reluctance to return for Octopussy, the producers engaged in a semi-public quest for the next Bond, with Timothy Dalton and Lewis Collins being suggested as a replacement and screen tests carried out with Michael Billington, Oliver Tobias, and American actor James Brolin. However, when rival Bond production Never Say Never Again was announced with former Bond Sean Connery playing Bond, the producers persuaded Moore to continue in the role as it was thought the established actor would fare better against Connery. Brolin stated that he had actually been hired and was on the point of moving to London to begin work on Octopussy until Moore changed his mind and returned, while Broccoli refused to dispute Tobias's public statements that he was about to be cast as Bond.