Maud Adams

The James Bond Project #14: Octopussy

~ Randy Blazak ~ 15 Comments

February 27, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

Octopussy (1983, directed by John Glen)

Fifteen years after the Beatles went to India, Britain’s second biggest export headed to the Asian subcontinent. It wasn’t to study meditation, but to fight the Cold War with an army of fembots. Octopussy sees our man Bond caught up in a conspiracy that includes fake Faberge eggs and loose nukes. Star Roger Moore had wanted to retire after For Your Eyes Only, feeling he was to old to play Bond, but word that Sean Connery was returning to play Bond in a non-Eon Productions film had worried producers that Bond-in-Waiting Timothy Dalton (and a few other potential contenders) would not be ready to compete with the O.G. 007.

The result is a film that tries to capture the Bond magic with a middle-age spy who has more lines on his face than stinging lines of dialogue. There are challenging scenes of Bond swinging from vine to vine with a dubbed in Tarzan yell, Bond fighting a henchman on top of a flying airplane, and Bond fighting two henchmen on top of a moving train (a scene that almost killed another stuntman). Watching this film made me wonder if they had Ibuprofen in the 1980s. Producers brought back Maud Adams, who had played Andrea Anders The Man with the Golden Gun. It made sense to have a slightly older Bond “girl” in the title role. This was Bond for aging Baby Boomers.

The film primarily takes place in India and East Germany, with a fun intro scene in some random Latin America country that has Bond flying a cool one-man plane out of the back of truck being chased by some banana republic types. We have a new M, played by Robert Brown. Desmond Llewelyn is back as Q and this time he’s got tons of gadgets for James to play with (including one Bond uses to zoom in on an MI-6 worker’s cleavage). James is back in his white dinner jacket and tux and there he is riding a horse through the jungle and crossing a river inside an alligator submarine. (Someone should have told filmmakers that India has crocodiles, not alligators.)

Octopussy is Bond in a holding pattern but let’s discuss it anyway.

Driver of Action – Bond is back on his own. We do get a lot of Q. There’s a local agent named Vijay, but he’s not long for this world. There’s a real missed opportunity to tell the story of Octopussy (Maud Adams) who has created an island of misfit women in India who are also (how?) circus performers in East Germany. I’d love some Octopussy fan fiction because that would be a great story. But later in the film, James raids the bad guy’s compound with Octopussy’s all female army of circus warriors in their Electra Woman costumes and it’s glorious.  Why did it take 21 years to get Bond to lead an army of fembots in an invasion of an evil-doers lair??? Oh, and Bond arrives in a Union Jack hot air balloon! I’m serious!

Role of Violence – Old Bond is pretty good at killing henchmen, including some rogue Soviet soldiers. That’s about it.

Vulnerability – Bond’s wall is way up with a few weird exceptions. There’s a moment that he laments that thousands of innocent people will be killed if the renegade Russian General Orlav detonates an A-bomb in Berlin. There’s a scene where James, desperate to save the world, can’t get a ride to the circus to defuse the bomb. Cars full of young people laugh at the old man desperately trying to hitchhike. 007 seems supremely uncool in his manic state. There’s also a bizarre sequence of James dressed as a clown trying to tell everyone there’s a nuclear bomb about to go off and they just laugh at him. Sad clown Bond must have been hard on 007’s ego. 

Sexual Potency – It’s interesting watching this Bond age. There’s a scene in Moneypenny’s office where he perks up at seeing her new assistant, Miss Penelope Smallbone. (These names are such a crack.) There’s a great interchange where Moneypenny calls him on the carpet for his leering:

Bond: What can I say, Miss Moneypenny, except to say that she is – as attractive and, eh – as charming…

Moneypenny: As I used to be?

Bond: I didn’t say that.

Moneypenny: You’re such a flatterer, James.

Bond: Oh, Moneypenny, you know there never has been and, there never will be, anybody but you.

Moneypenny: So, you’ve told me.

The bedding three women per film quota is waning by 1983. James does sleep with Magda, who is kind of a double henchwoman to two bosses (played by Kristina Wayborn, Miss Sweden 1970). And, of course, he sleeps with Octopussy, after forcibly grabbing her. She resists and then relents as all women do. “Oh, James,” she says, falling into her bed in a scene that seems like a mirror of the same encounter between the two in The Man with the Golden Gun.

Connection – Bond’s connection to Octopussy is uber-flimsy. Even though the actors have a previous relationship, there is zero chemistry. Regardless, as is required by international law they end the film in a bed in a boat. (I literally laughed out loud.) This time the boat is a slave galley rowed by Octopussy’s army of circus ladies. Where they are rowing to, we don’t know. James is in her bed and has been injured in a crazy stunt (dem bones) and she says, “I wish you weren’t in such a weakened condition.” Then he breaks loose of his leg brace and amorously grabs her. “James!” The end and yawn.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 3

Octopussy gets points for having an army of bad ass women fighting evil henchmen and having a Bond “girl” that’s only 18 years younger than our James. But there are some tired tropes. James sleeping with Magda seems pro forma. There’s a scene where Octopussy gets slapped by the bad guy that could be cut and pasted from a half dozen other Bond films. And there’s a hotel pool populated by bikini-clad babes that seems like a now required sequence. But we do get 007 in the casino, this time playing backgammon. (OK, grandpa.)

India looks great in this film. There’s an exciting Tuk Tuk chase scene in the streets of Udaipur and plenty of elephants, tigers, cobras, and spiders to let you know we’re not in London anymore. The Berlin scenes were shot in Britain and look it. It was great having John Barry back to do the film score after the super cheesy CHIPs music Bill Conti provided for For Your Eyes Only. But Octopussy never really gets off the ground with much peril or charm.

Octopussy premiered in London June 6, 1983, the week that the UK’s Conservative party, led by Maggie Thatcher, was re-elected in a landslide. At the time, I was living in a part of London called Brixton, famous for its riots against Thatcher and the very conservative world of Commander Bond. Prince Charles and Lady Diana were at the premiere while I was probably at some little punk rock club nearby. Moore’s Bond in this film seemed to be even more removed from the world he inhabited. Roger would have one more chance to make James Bond relevant. But first he’d have to contend with the return of a certain Scotsman to the role.

Next: Never Say Never Again (1983)

The James Bond Project #13: For Your Eyes Only

The James Bond Project #12: Moonraker (1979)

The James Bond Project #11: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

The James Bond Project #9: Live and Let Die (1973)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)

The James Bond Project #10: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

~ Randy Blazak ~ 18 Comments

February 1, 2025

This series is intended to evaluate each product of the James Bond film franchise through a feminist lens, and the relevance of the Bond archetype to shifting ideas of masculinity in the 2020s.

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974, directed by Guy Hamilton)

This is the first “meh” of the Bond series. Guy Hamilton is back in the director seat, for the last time, and he seems to have run out steam. If Live and Let Die was meant to crib from blaxploitiation films, 1974’s entry is meant to riff on Kung Fu flicks popular at the time. (Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon grossed over $400 million in 1973 dollars.) Richard Maibaum turned in a flaccid script then bailed. The Man with the Golden Gun was the last Bond film to be joint produced by Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman for Eon Productions and their falling out would end the “Bond film a year” schedule. That’s probably a good thing.

The good news is TMWTGG gets away from the Bond in America motif of the last two films. We’re back in the “exotic” far east. There’s no army of henchmen, no sharks, not even any Q designed gadgets, but there is (thank God) an underground lair. In the middle of the 70s Energy crisis, there’s a convoluted plot about how a former circus performer with three nipples named Francisco Scaramanga plots to control the solar energy market, as if that is not just called “capitalism.”.  Scaramanga is played wonderfully by Dracula icon Christopher Lee, who had just appeared on the cover of Band on the Run, the new album by Live and Let Die theme-singers Paul McCartney and Wings. The scenery in Hong Kong and Thailand is spectacular (even if the scene in Beirut was shot on a soundstage in London).

Roger Moore was back in his second 007 installment, already a bit weary. His quips fall flat (except for one at the end) and his mojo is dragging. TMWTGG was meant to be Moore’s entry into the Bond canon after You Only Live Twice. One wonders how 1967 Moore would have treated the role compared to 1974 Moore. As has become cliche, Scaramanga has a reluctant “lover,” played limply by Maud Adams (another Melania Trump clone). And, like the last film, there’s a bumbling but beautiful female MI-6 operative. This time it’s Mary Goodnight (Lord, these names) played by Swedish model/actress Britt Elkland, who was so great in 1971’s gangster classic, Get Carter. The great addition to the cast (and highlight of the film) is Hervé Villechaize as Scaramanga’s pint-sized right hand man, Nick Nack. Villechaize would go on to play Tattoo on TV’s Fantasy Island, cementing the words, “De plane!” into the English lexicon.

The Man with the Golden Gun was not well received upon its release in December 1974, the same week Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in as vice president, after Gerald Ford became president to replace “Tricky” Dick Nixon, who had resigned. A dozen years in, TMWTGG was seen as boilerplate Bond, dropped in for 1974’s chapter for fans of the franchise. There’s a super-70s car chase that ends with one car jumping over a river (with an Evel Knievel reference!) and a car literally flying away and a Swedish sex symbol in a bikini, but not much else to write home about.

Let’s plug it into our analysis.

Driver of Action – Again, this is all Bond all the time. We don’t even get Felix. There is a minor sidekick in Lieutenant Hip, the Hong Kong cop played by Soon-Taik Oh (who was a staple on 70s TV shows like MASH and Charlie’s Angels). In one scene, he and his teen nieces rescue James with some serious (and seriously dumb) Kill Bill Kung Fu action. But yeah, it’s the Live and Let Die formula with much less payoff. Maybe it’s Bond’s polyester suits.

Role of Violence – Surprise, surprise, Bond smacks Maud Adams’ character, Andrea Anders, hard in the face and threatens to do it again. Was Bond striking women in the face required in all 007 scripts? Didn’t someone say something? I mean, Helen Reddy’s “I am Woman” was #1 on radio while they made this. Someone could have said SOMETHING. Bond pulls out his little pistol a lot in this movie but only shoots Scaramanga in the climatic end scene, posing as a wax figure of himself (don’t ask). Bond also takes out a kung fu master, manly man that he is. His violence is balanced by Miss Goodnight, who throws Kra, Scaramanga’s only henchman, into a vat of liquid oxygen.

Vulnerability – Yeah, no. James loses his gun at one point. He seems a little annoyed that Goodnight wants to reconnect. This is Stepford Bond on autopilot.

Sexual Potency – We get glimpses of the Bond of old when James tries to suck a golden bullet out of a belly dancer’s navel and when he encounters a nude woman swimming in a Chinese crime lord’s pool. She introduces herself as Chew Mee, to which Bond replies, “Really?” The main sexual conquest is Bond’s bedding of Scaramanga’s lover, Andrea. In an über creepy scene he sneaks into her hotel room and watches her shower and then man handles her only to learn that (shock) she is a damsel in distress. Later, he’s decided that, why not, he’s going to have sex with Agent Goodnight, but Andrea shows up so he throws Goodnight in the closet and has sex with Andrea Anders instead. It’s pretty messed up.  Bond can’t keep his work life and his sex life separate. He does end up back in bed with Goodnight at the end of the film, but it feels more obligatory than romantic. 

Connection – 007 is even more isolated in this film. Even Moneypenny gets the brush off. Q and James seem annoyed by each other. James knocks a kid who fixes his boat into the river. When Andrea Anders is shot, he’s not phased. There are zero fucks given by this Bond. The film ends, are you ready for it, with Bond and Bond girl Britt Ekland in a boat! (This time it’s a Chinese junk.) James and Agent Goodnight are finally back in bed on a slow boat from China. But, as is now tradition, it’s a false ending. Tick Tack is waiting (for some reason) to kill 007. In an unnecessarily funny scene, there is a Bond vs. little person battle to expedite before James can get Mary back in the sack. When he does, in another moment of coitus interruptus, Q calls and asks to speak to Agent Goodnight. “She’s just coming, sir,” says James. Ah, there’s our man Bond. Then he sets the phone down so Q can listen them making the MI-6 agent with two backs. Really creepy.

Toxic Masculinity Scale: 6

Summary The Man with the Golden Gun does a little bit better on the race issue than Live and Let Die. We do get some cool street-level views of Thai culture, including some great moments of Thai boxing. The contrast of free Hong Kong (with casinos) and Red China is flirted with. But the martial arts bit is weak. There’s no way 007 bests a Kung Fu master so easily, let alone an army of them. We get the comedic return of the racist Sheriff J. W. Pepper (from Live and Let Die), here on vacation in Thailand. (That’s a hard sell.) And a scene where Kra, Scaramanga’s black henchman, gets a little rapey with Goodnight. The hope is that mainstream audiences might have used TMWTGG as a gateway drug into the explosion of brilliant martial arts films that were coming out of Asia in the 1970s.

There are some great moments in this film. Bond flying a seaplane through island outcrops in the China Sea must have looked brilliant on the big screen. The ahead-of-its-time concept about the power of controlling renewable energy sources is noteworthy. Hervé Villechaize is an absolutely brilliant foil and steals every scene. And (recognizing that this might not be the most feminist bit of analysis) Britt Ekland is completely loved by the camera, which, of course, in Bond-land represents the male gaze. But there’s just a lot of silliness here. How did Scaramanga build an underground lair in an outcropping? And why did he include a funhouse, like some Disneyland attraction gone horribly wrong? James is going save his kept woman, but not really. James fancies Agent Goodnight, but not really. There is a car spinning 360 through the air and another flying off into the sunset. It’s like the writers just threw every leftover idea at the wall without the energy to see them through.

Roger Moore’s Bond smokes a ton of cigars in this film (calling Dr. Freud), drives a 1974 AMC Hornet through the streets of Bangkok like a madman, and kills guy who might have prevented global warming. It’s a mess and partly so because Bond is stuck in a tired model of manhood that had already become a caricature.

Next: The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The James Bond Project #9: Live and Let Die (1973)

The James Bond Project #8: Diamonds are Forever (1971)

The James Bond Project #7: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

The James Bond Project #6: You Only Live Twice (1967)

The James Bond Project #5: Casino Royale (1967)

The James Bond Project #4: Thunderball (1965)

The James Bond Project #3: Goldfinger (1964)

The James Bond Project #2: From Russia With Love (1963)

The James Bond Project: #1: Dr. No (1962)