Octopussy (1983)

One more installment in the James Bond series with Roger Moore playing the famed British agent

Summary

-James Bond is off on his next mission. This one involves a fake Faberge egg, a fellow agent's death and a nuclear attack on NATO being disguised by an international jewel-smuggling ring

Cast

-Roger Moore: James Bond

-Maud Adams: Octopussy

-Louis Jordan: Kamal Khan

-Kristina Wayborn: Magda

-Kabir Bedi: Gobinda

-Steven Berkoff: Orlov

Did You Know?

-In a book called As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride, Cary Elwes says that prior to becoming an actor, he worked as a production assistant on this movie. One of his tasks was ferrying Sir Roger Moore around. He states he was a "nervous wreck" when he had to drive. He was constantly afraid of getting into a wreck and killing them both. On one occurrence, Roger Moore looked up from the paper he read and said "You can speed up a little if you want to."

-While filming this movie, a doctor had misdiagnosed Roger Moore with heart problems. Maud Adams had a boyfriend, who was a doctor, check him out and state that Moore was medically fit and that there were no heart problems

-Robert Brown's first appearance as M. He replaced Bernard Lee, who had passed away between 1979's Moonraker and 1981's For Your Eyes Only

-The blue-ringed octopus, which is featured in this movie, is a highly poisonous sea creature. It produces something called a tetrodotoxin, which is also found in puffer fish. It's a deadly neurotoxin causing paralysis and then death. There is no known antidote for it and one milligram can kill a person

-A list of several actors was compiled to do screen tests as James Bond. The reason for this is because Roger Moore was fifty five at the time and some felt he was too old. But producers ignored this and decided to retain Moore so the film could go up against 1983's Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery

-Kabir Bedi is the only actor out of Bollywood to earn a role in a James Bond film

-Vijay Amritaj is a professional tennis player trying to make a break into acting. Parts of the role he plays included inside jokes to his tennis career

-While filming in India, most of the cast and crew had diet problems

-A location in India had been chosen initially for 1973's Live and Let Die, but had not worked out. Later on, it became a possibility and even chosen as the location for this movie because location scouts discovered the city of Udaipur and were stunned by the beauty of the area and the architecture

-In the game Texas Hold 'Em, a hand of cards with a pair of eights is called an octopussy

-The island Octopussy lives on is located in Udaipur, India. It's the Jag Mandir or "Lake Garden Palace"

-Producer Albert Broccoli first met Vijay Amritaj at a Wimbledon match when Amritaj was still playing tennis

-In the scene where a fight breaks out in Octopussy's bedroom, a man is thrown into the aquarium where a blue-ringed octopus lives. It attaches to the man's face and is almost the size of his head when in reality, the species of octopus is actually the size of a golf ball

-This is the second film with Roger Moore to be filmed in India. The first was 1980's Sea Wolves, along with David Niven and Gregory Peck. As an interesting side note, Roger Moore's mother was born in Calcutta (Kolkata), India

-For this film, Roger Moore had to grow out and lighten his hair to make him appear younger