FAQ

When British agent 009 turns up dead holding a fake Faberge egg, MI6 director M (Robert Brown) sends 007 James Bond (Roger Moore) to follow the path of the real Faberge egg, which is currently being auctioned at Sotheby's Auction House in London. That path leads to an international smuggling operation, headed by a beautiful jewel smuggler known only as Octopussy (Maud Adams) along with exiled Afghani Prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan), whom Bond observes meeting with renegade Russian General Orlov (Steven Berkoff) and planning to detonate a nuclear bomb at a U.S. Air Force Base in West Germany in hopes of forcing Europe into unilateral disarmament, leaving the borders open to Soviet invasion.

All of the James Bond movies are based, in some part, upon novels by British author Ian Fleming (1908-1964). The title Octopussy comes from Fleming's posthumous collection of short stories in Octopussy and The Living Daylights (1966). However, very little of the short story "Octopussy" is featured in the film. The short story "Octopussy" deals with Bond and a character called Major Dexter-Smythe. This character turns out to be the father of Octopussy who, in one scene, recaps the events of the original short story to Bond. The scenes where Bond is bidding on the Fabergé egg at auction are taken from "Property of a Lady." This title is referenced in the catalog announcing the sale of the egg. The remainder of the film is an original story crafted by the screenwriters although some elements, such as Gobinda (Kabir Bedi)'s crushing of the dice, are clearly inspired by events in earlier Bond films.

Unlike most previous Bond movies, Octopussy does not have a true title song. The song that plays during the opening and closing credits is All Time High, sung by American singer, Rita Coolidge. However, a phrase from the song, "...we're two of a kind..." is used in the movie when Octopussy tells Bond that she and he are "two of a kind" and Bond agrees.

Following the death of Bernard Lee, who played the role of M in previous Bond movies, Brown took over the role for Octopussy. Some fans have speculated that Brown is playing a different character, promoted to the position of M; perhaps Admiral Hargreaves, the character Brown played in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). M is the head of British intelligence in Fleming's novels (a reference to the real-life chief of the Secret Intelligence Service who is known as C, short for Cumming, as in Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, the first chief of SIS). M's full name is Admiral Sir Miles Messervey, K.C.M.G. Author Gary Giblin (James Bond's London) interviewed Octopussy director John Glen who confirmed that Brown was playing Lee's character M, not someone promoted to the position of M, and that only he and Brown would have remembered the character of Admiral Hargreaves anyway!

The movie opens in an undisclosed Latin American country (presumably Cuba) where Bond is finishing a mission that has no relation to the rest of the movie. Bond is next seen in London where he is being briefed in the death of 009 in East Berlin. Because M suspects Russian involvement in both the death of 009 and the sale of the Fabergé egg, Bond is ordered to follow Kamal to Delhi, India in order to find out why he wants the egg so badly. When Bond hears that Orlov and Kamal are planning to meet at Karl-Marx-Stadt in East Berlin, it's off to Germany. In the finale, Bond returns to India just in time to save Octopussy.

As Bond describes it, a Fabergé egg is "one of the jeweled eggs made by Carl Fabergé as an Easter gift for the Russian royal family. They're priceless and very rare." Each year between 1885 and 1894, Russian jeweler Carl Fabergé (1846-1920) fashioned a jeweled egg for Czar Alexander III to give to his wife, the Empress Maria. The practice continued with the next Czar, Nicholas II, who ordered two eggs each year, one for his mother and one for his wife Alexandra, until his abdication in 1917. All totaled, Fabergé fashioned 105 eggs, of which only 69 are known to still exist.

Kamal is a cog in a network that smuggles priceless treasures out of Russia. He employs jewelers that create well-crafted replicas of the pieces. The thefts of the real items are accomplished by General Orlov, who steals the items from the Soviet Fine Art Repository and then replaces them with the fakes. Orlov does not know that 009 managed to get the fake egg to the British ambassador and believes that it was lost when 009 fell into a river, so now there is no replacement egg for the real one about to be auctioned. With no time to fashion another replacement before a scheduled inventory of the Repository, Orlov orders Kamal to buy back the real egg at any price.

The path of the eggs goes like this: 009 steals the fake egg and is killed for it, but, before he dies, he gets the fake egg to the British ambassador in East Berlin who sends it on to MI6. The real egg goes on auction at Sotheby's, where Bond switches the fake egg for the real one, causing Kamal to unknowingly buy the fake egg. Bond follows Kamal to Delhi, taking another fake egg with him and using it for security in a game of Backgammon with Kamal. Kamal's accomplice, Magda (Kristina Wayborn), steals back tat fake egg from Bond. Of course, Bond knows that she has stolen this egg, but he says nothing because he Q installed a homing device in it. Magda returns it to Kamal, who is now in possession of both fake eggs. Kamal then gives apparent real egg to Orlov who smashes it, believing it to be a fake.

They are the forgers Kamal used to create the fake Romanov jewels. Bond overhears Orlov say "Can you trust them?" and Khan says he can assure Orlov of their silence (it's very quiet). They are followed off screen by Gobinda, who killed them or had them killed and hung them in the freezer. In the morning, they are thrown into a ditch for the tigers to dispose of them (though Bond takes the place of one).

Although she makes a brief appearance (her back only) in the first half of the movie, Octopussy's face isn't seen until the second half. Octopussy is one of Kamal's accomplices. She owns a traveling international circus, and she uses it to help Kamal smuggle various jewels and treasures across the Soviet border into the Western world. She lives on a floating palace in Delhi. No one knows her real name. She got the name Octopussy from her father, Major Dexter-Smythe, who studied octopi. She uses a picture of a blue-ringed octopus as the icon for her Order of the Octopus and as tattoos on the women she employs as bandits, smugglers, guards and commandos.

Bond was responsible for the capture of her father, Smythe, 20 years ago, after he was suspected of stealing a cache of Chinese gold and killing his partner. However, Bond gave Smythe 24 hours to settle his affairs. Smythe used those 24 hours to commit suicide and avoid the disgrace of a court martial. Instead of revenge when she finally meets Bond, Octopussy thanks him for giving her father an honorable way out of his predicament.

Including Octopussy, Moore made seven movies in which he played James Bond: Live and Let Die (1973), The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Moonraker (1979), For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), and A View to a Kill (1985).