I finally have had the chance to see what maybe the worst Bond film ever, Octopussy, the 1983 farewell to the genre from Roger Moore. It was a film that served both as an unfortunate and fitting ending to his tenure as the British spy, displaying everything that had gone wrong with the series over his decade-plus in the lead role.
- Moore is obviously too old for the role, making the series of stunts seem even more absurd than they were.
- Moore doesn’t sweat — in fact, he never sweats and rarely has a hair out of place.
- Forget the story. It’s not even worth getting into, something about stolen jewels and missiles or something. Whatever.
- Bond is made at one point to wear a gorilla suit and ride a circus train. And then, if that wasn’t demeaning enough, he dresses as a clown and has to explain to a disbelieving American general that there is a bomb in the circus.
- Bond also hangs from a small-engine plane and then fights a crazed, knife-wielding, turban-wearing thug — on the plane.
At least Moonraker, silly and bloated, was fun. This was just a painful wreck.
The series, of course, only gets moderately better. I missed the Dalton years, but at least Pierce Brosnan, trapped in a set of bad stories and buried under an avalanche of bad effects, was a stronger, more sadistic Bond, combining Moore and Connery and returning some of the edge to the series. He brought in the cash, but it was still mired under the weight of irrelevancy.
The new Bond — the magnificent Daniel Craig in the best Bond film since the Connery days — has the chance to redeem the series, or at least atone for films like Octopussy.
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Hank Kalet 