Octopussy (1983)

Octopussy is the Bond film where Roger Moore puts on a clown costume to defuse a nuclear bomb, and I’m not going to pretend that scene doesn’t work. The film around it is ordinary.

John Glen directed it in 1983, the year of the rival Connery film. I give it a 6.

The Premise

A 00 agent dies clutching a fake Fabergé egg. The trail leads to an exiled Afghan prince smuggling jewels out of India and to a woman called Octopussy who runs a circus and a smuggling ring from a floating palace. Behind both is a Soviet general who wants to detonate a nuclear device on an American airbase in West Germany, so that Europe disarms and the Red Army walks in.

What Works

The general’s plan is the best Bond scheme in years, because it’s political instead of megalomaniac: he isn’t holding the world to ransom, he’s staging an accident. The auction scene, where Bond and the prince bid against each other knowing exactly what’s happening, is a good, quiet piece of tension. The tuk-tuk chase through Udaipur is fun.

The Clown

Bond arrives at the airbase after a chase, is refused entry, and gets inside by putting on a clown costume from the circus, then defuses a bomb in full makeup while nobody will listen to him. It should be humiliating. Moore plays it perfectly straight and it’s the most tense the film gets.

What Doesn’t

Everything around it. Bond swinging on vines with a Tarzan yell. A crocodile submarine. The double-taking animals during the chase. Maud Adams is good as Octopussy and the romance is written like a contractual obligation. Louis Jourdan’s villain is elegant and inert. Moore was fifty-five and looks it.

The Context

This came out three months before Never Say Never Again, and the press spent that summer on the battle of the Bonds. Octopussy won at the box office. Neither film is anyone’s favourite.

Craft Note

Is Octopussy worth watching?

It’s a 6. The nuclear plot and the clown sequence are genuinely good, and the rest is the series running on habit.

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