The 13th James Bond film, starring Roger Moore. After a replica Fabergé egg is found on an assassinated agent, Bond is sent to India to infiltrate a circus gang led by Octopussy (Maud Adams, the only Bond girl actress to make a second leading appearance).007 soon discovers a connection between the priceless Fabergé egg, an elaborate smuggling operation and a meeting with a renegade Russian General Orlov who plans on detonating a nuclear device at Octopussy's circus as part of his plan to instigate World War III.Despite the title, it has surprisingly little to do a popular subject of Japanese pornography.
This film contains examples of:
Actor Allusion: Vijay plays tennis on his spare time and fights off some goons with a tennis racquet. He's played by a tennis player.
Affably Evil: Kamal, especially when discussing Bond's torture.
Bond: Well, supposing, for argument's sake, l don't feel like talking?
Kamal: Don't worry, you will.
Bond: Let me guess. Thumbscrews and hot coals?
Kamal:(insulted)Hardly. We're much more sophisticated than that.
Bond: Sodium Pentothal?
Kamal: A bit crude. Very unreliable. We prefer curare with an effective psychedelic compound. Guaranteed results.
Bond: But with permanent brain damage.
Kamal: An unfortunate side effect.
All Part of the Show: Bond's antics in the clown makeup is mistaken for being part of the show. Given that he's trying to warn people of a nuclear bomb, this is a problem.
Auction: Bond enters one to seek out the one who is interested in this Fabergé egg business.
Bedsheet Ladder: Magda uses a varation of this to escape from Bond: she ties one end of the sari she's wearing to a balustrade and jumps off the balcony, "riding" the garment down to safety as it unravels.
Did Not Do the Research: The blue rings on a blue-ringed octopus are visible only when it is about to attack.
Dirty Communists: One of the few in the Bond series, oddly enough.
It's emphasized that Orlov is acting independent of the Politburo, and that Gogol and the other Soviet leaders are more interested in making peace with the West. The Breshnev Expy explicitly states that the Soviet nuclear arsenal is purely defensive.
During the final third of the plot, Gogol is pursuing Orlov to stop him.
The Danza: Bond's ally Vijay is played by... Vijay Amritraj.
Disproportionate Retribution: Played with. Bond tries to avert a nuclear attack. But a woman hogs the only phone booth. Bond promptly steals her car, instead.
Exploding Fish Tanks: This time the fishtanks get their revenge! When the title character is targeted by assassins her pet blue-ringed octopus (who's clearly watched Alien) facehugs a thug to death after its tank gets broken during the struggle.
Bond actually manages to get in a good Double Entendre, when he complains that he loses his appetite when he's being watched (both the meal and Kamal's Dragon, who is intently watching him.)
Groin Attack. Narrowly averted — Bond is sliding down a stairway railing, blazing away at mooks with a captured AK-47. He then quickly uses the rest of the magazine to shoot off the knob at the end of the railing.
For that matter, what kind of Lovecraftian nightmare *is* an Octopussy, anyway? It'd certainly make for a hell of a bed scene, that's for sure...
Hero Stole My Bike: Bond swipes the car off a woman in a phone booth he wanted to reach.
Hey Catch: Done to a sword wielding mook at the market chase/fight.
Leave Behind a Pistol: What happened to Octopussy's father. Octopussy is grateful to Bond for leaving him that option, rather than be disgraced by a court martial.
May-December Romance: More like May-September. While still much younger than him, Octopussy is one of the few Bond girls too old to be his daughter (she's only 18 years his junior, as opposed to the whopping 30 that Carole Bouquet was in For Your Eyes Only), especially in the Moore-era.
It helps that the actress had already played a Bond girl opposite Moore eight years earlier in The Man With the Golden Gun.
Mood Whiplash: The movie bounces between the campier elements of Moore's tenure (uncovering a smuggling ring run by circus people and an all-girl army) with the darker tone created by the previous film, For Your Eyes Only (a mad Soviet general wants to start World War III!).
My Car Hates Me: Played with. When Khamal is leaving the Circus in US army base to escape the bomb, he is visibly worried when Gobinda can't get the car started. Then the second try is succesful and he is reliefed.
Never Smile at a Crocodile: Bond has a vehicle with an appearance of a crocodile. Later one, when his fight with yoyo mook is taken to water, a crocodile appears the dispatch the villain.
No More for Me: A drunken guard upon seeing a woman standing on an elephant's head.
Suspect Is Hatless When Bond speeds through the Air Base's security checkpoint:
Security Guard:: Captain, some nut went through here in a stolen car! Wants the base commander, and he's wearing a red shirt!
Suspiciously Similar Substitute: A new M apparently makes his debut in this story. No-one mentions what happened to the previous one, which has caused many to claim that this is actually a case of The Other Darrin, and that it's still the original M but with a different actor playing him.
There's also the theory that the new M is really Admiral Hargreaves, actor Robert Brown's character from The Spy Who Loved Me.
Note that this was because the original actor had died, which actually happened before For Your Eyes Only. M was absent entirely from that one, stated to be on leave, but here they had to get a new actor. And if it is Hargreaves then he's been demoted; he was a Vice Admiral in The Spy Who Loved Me, but is stated to be a Rear Admiral in The Living Daylights.
Technology Marches On: If this movie was set in the 21st century one fact remains: the entire last half hour of this film could have been avoided with the use of Bond's cellphone...
Cellphones existed since the 70s... but Bond would have probably been better off without one of those bulky, expensive, short-accumulator-lived things...
Theme Tune Cameo: Vijay introduces himself by playing a bar of the James Bond theme on a snake charmer's pipe.
Title Drop: Well, the main Bond Girl's nickname is Octopussy, but the first instance:
Bond:(looking at Magda's tattoo, on the small of her back) What is that?
Magda: That's my little Octopussy.
Traintop Battle: Bond has to fight Gobinda Grishka on top of Octopussy's circus train.
Understatement: How do you tell the audience of a circus that they were barely seconds from being in the epicenter of a nuclear detonation? "Ladies and Gentlemen, we had an emergency..."
You Killed My Father: Subverted. Octopussy is actually grateful to Bond for allowing her father to commit suicide, as it saved her father the shame of a military trial (Bond was tasked with arresting him).
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