Never Say Never Watch Never Say Never Again Again

Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: Never Say Never Again

1983 was a good year for fans of Bond, James Bond. Not only was that the year that Octopussy came out, there was also a second Bond film released, starring Sean Connery again.

Its title supposedly refers to Connery saying "never again" when he was asked if he wanted to come back and be James Bond, although the addition of the "never say" suggests that it may actually have been based on what his agent said when telling Connery how much they were going to pay him.

It starts with the theme song and titles, which already seems strange because by now we cats are all well used to there being a pre-titles sequence in Bond films - this is the first one without such a sequence since Dr. No. But when the theme song continues over some scenes of Bond on a mission, it becomes clearer - this film is combining the usual pre-titles bit with the titles, perhaps to save time so we can get to the main plot sooner. That's a clever idea.

Don't get used to us saying that about this film though, mew.

Bond has some fights with a bunch of mannys, and then he rescues a scantily clad lady, but then she stabs him. It cuts to M (Edward "the Jackal" Fox, who has recently done a very good job of infiltrating British Intelligence) watching Bond's fight on video. It turns out that this was a training exercise (in which case Bond and the manny we saw him garrote were really getting into their parts) and Bond is not actually ded. M says Bond got killed twice when on the training course, while Bond argues he only got killed once - this may or may not be a deliberate reference to You Only Live Twice, we can't be sure. Then Bond gets sent to a health clinic to get the main plot started, just like in Thunderball.

To save time repeating the phrase 'just like in Thunderball' over and over, it is worth pointing out at this stage that the reason this film has so many bits that closely resemble bits from Thunderball is that that was the only James Bond story the makers had the rights to, so they had no choice but to copy Thunderball. Expensive Luxury Cat gave Thunderball a rating of Expensive and Luxury, so let's see if this film can do any better.

I think as well as having the rights to remake bits from Thunderball, they must also have had the rights to remake scenes from the BBC TV sitcom Porridge, because there's a bit at the health clinic when a nurse asks Bond to "fill this beaker" for a urine sample and Bond replies

"From here?"

There is then a shot of the nurse looking embarrassed at the corny material.

It cuts to the baddys. SECTRE Number 12 arrives at a secret underground lair and we see...

SECTRE Number One! He is being given pets by his latest Blofeld, this time played by Max von "Ming the Merciless" Sydow (no doubt Number One had to replace the last one after Bond dropped him down a big chimney). The SECTRE mannys tell each other some exposition, which we already know because we have seen Thunderball before. A rare case of the audience knowing the exposition before the characters do.

At the health clinic, Bond spots Number 12 beating up a manny. This manny is Jack Petachi, played by Gavan O'Herlihy, best known to us cats for playing Captain Leroy in Sharpe's Eagle. Bond clearly knows he's onto something - perhaps he has also seen Thunderball before?

Number 12 recognises Bond and sends a manny to kill him while he is exercising. They have a big fight which is mostly played for lols, such as when mannys appear to be cheering on the baddy but they are actually just watching TV. This is otherwise quite a traditional Bond-vs-a-big-manny fight, although this being post-Moonraker it is obviously not as good as any fight involving Jaws. It does go on for a while, though, and they do properly wreck the place before Bond eventually defeats the baddy by throwing Chekhov's his urine sample in the baddy's face, lol.

Jack does his bit in helping the baddys to steal two nuclear missiles, then Number 12 kills him by making his car crash using a snake. She then rescues the snake and blows up the car to make sure. 

The nuclear missiles look a lot more high-tech in the 1980s than in the '60s - in fact they look a lot like the big missile from Superman 3, which was made in the same year and (by a curious coincidence) also had Gavan O'Herlihy in it. They fly straight to the baddys but instead of blowing them up they just land in the water where the baddys can get to them.

Number One sends his ransom demand to NATO Headquarters, where the British are in charge for some reason. Blofeld does the talking, but as the camera is on Number One the entire time, it is clear who is really in charge. The Foreign Secretary (who, despite what his title implies, is British) orders M to put "the double-ohs" on the case.

There are some scenes with "Max" Largo and Domino, both of whom have one name the same as in Thunderball and one name different. There is quite a good moment where we see that undeneath their laughing and friendliness Domino is really Largo's prisoner, but it is not exactly played with any subtlety.

Bond meets with Algernon, who is this film's equivalent of Q. He is played by Alec McCowen, who would later get promoted to being Mr. Palfrey of Westminster. Algernon complains about the CIA being better funded than British Intelligence and having "28 flavours of ice cream in the restaurant", which is a very '80s joke. He gives Bond a watch with a laser in it, which is one of the more archetypal Bond gadgets. He says

"Good to see you, Mr Bond. Things have been awfully dull round here. Bureaucrats running the whole place. Everything done by the book. Can't make a decision unless the computer gives you the go ahead. Now you're on this, I hope we're going to have some gratuitous sex and violence."

To which Bond replies

"I certainly hope sho too."

This film has already been high on the komedy even by the standards of the Roger Moore era Bond films, but it cranks it up another notch when...

Rowan Atkinson appears. He is playing Bond's Bahamas contact, Nigel Small-Fawcett. I don't think that's a joke name, or if it is one then it obviously doesn't W-word in British English. And this film is not particularly given towards subtlety - even Largo's ship, called the Disco Volante in Thunderball, has been translated to the Flying Saucer for this version.

Number 12 water-skis into Bond and pretends not to know him, although we viewers all saw her recognise him earlier on, just before she set the big manny on Bond. She gives her name as Fatima Blush, which also doesn't sound like a joke name. Given how full of little jokes and komedy moments this film is, it seems curious that they drew the line when naming the characters - and they clearly weren't limited to only using names from Thunderball either. Bond and Blush go onto Blush's boat where they get up to some naughtiness, in what is possibly the most risqué love scene in a Bond film until Die Another Day.

They go scuba diving together, for the first of some extremely slow underwater scenes. I suppose since they were copying so much of Thunderball, they couldn't really avoid copying at least some of that, mew. Blush sends a remote control shark to chase Bond. I'm sure one of the sharks gets smaller when it is played by a glove puppet (did Alec Guinness still need the money after Star Wars?) for some shots.

Blush tries to blow Bond up in his hotel room, but he is busy getting up to naughtiness with a woman in her room at the same time and so the bomb blows up the wrong room. There is some neat misdirection where the camera cutting is intended to convince us that the bomb is in the same room as Bond, before the explosion shows it is not - simple but effective.

The scene changes to the south of France, where Bond meets Felix Leiter as well as his French contact Nicole. They spy on the Flying Saucer and see Domino, realising that she is Jack Petachi's sister. Bond poses as a masseur (well, he is in France) in order to get close to Domino and have a good old perv over her, naughty Bond! She tells him that Largo is "giving a charity ball tonight at the casino for children." I know it was the 1980s but, even so, a casino for children seems a bit much.

Bond goes to the casino where he discovers it has two parts - one a high class casino like he visits in what seems like most of his films (certainly he did in Thunderball), the other an arcade full of video games. Well, it was 1983... so it must have seemed cutting-edge, even futuristic, to have such a place.

Largo confronts Bond and they show off in front of Domino. Largo challenges Bond to play a video game with him - but one made of SFX rather than an actual early-80s video game. This is probably for the best, since the effects for this bit have dated less badly than the 8-bit games of the period, though this is never going to achieve the iconic status of a proper casino showdown between Bond and the baddy over Baccarat - or, for that matter, the Backgammon scene from Octopussy that same year.

The game is played for money to the winner and electric shocks to the loser. Largo has the advantage at first because he has played the game before, while Bond is more used to Jet Set Willy.

Bond loses all the games except for the last one, and Largo gets to utter the classic baddy line

"It seems I underestimated you, Mr Bond."

Bond dances with Domino and tells her that her brother is ded in an attempt to get her to turn against Largo - well, it W-worded for him last time.

When Bond returns to where he is staying he calls out "Nicole?" but there is no answering call of "Papa?" because Nicole has gone

Bond chases Blush in her car using a motorbike. Some henchmannys in cars join in the chase but Bond uses some gadgets in the motorbike to make them crash. Blush knocks Bond off his bike and captures him.

Before she kills Bond, she wants him to write her a note saying that "the greatest rapture in my life was afforded me in a boat in Nassau by Fatima Blush, signed James Bond 007." Bond writes with his gadget pen, and uses it to blow up Blush.

Bond teams up with Felix to explore the Flaying Saucer. Bond finds his way on board and gets captured in a moment that is so contrived it is as though the writers just couldn't be bothered writing a scene that moved the plot from Bond killing Blush to getting captured, so just had him turn up and get captured.

Largo treats Bond as his guest and lets him roam about the ship, so he certainly knows how to act the part of a baddy. Bond asks Domino about the "Tearsh of Allah" which is very convenient because she is the only person apart from Largo who knows about it, and she shows Bond the necklace that Largo gave her earlier on. This contrivance can't even be blamed on Bond having seen Thunderball because this bit isn't from that.

Bond kiffs Domino knowing that Largo is spying on them. Largo goes mental with an axe while Bond uses this distraction to send a message to M saying that the Flying Saucer is headed for North Africa. There's another missed opportunity for a lol here when M takes Bond's warning seriously and doesn't question why Bond is messaging him about UFOs. Or perhaps after the scene ended M was straight on to Ed Straker at SHADO?

Largo leaves Bond and Domino imprisoned, but Bond escapes with the help of his laser watch. He rescues Domino and they escape on a horse, leading to another chase scene when henchmannys pursue them on their own horseys.

This all builds up to a completely absurd bit where Bond rides the horse off the top of the castle to plunge into the water below, in what is possibly the most ludicrous use of CSO in a Bond film until Die Another Day.

Bond and Domino travel on Felix's submarine to the next part of the plot. Bond thinks that the Tears of Allah necklace must be relevant due to the Law of Conservation of Narrative Detail, and he deduces that it is really a map showing where Largo has hidden the nuclear missile. Oh, and there's only one missing nuclear missile now, because the other one got recovered off-screen, mew.

Bond and Felix use some experimental, top secret jetpacks to secretly land near Largo's base while causing as much noise and drawing as much attention to themselves as possible. To be fair, this scene is both better than the equivalent use of the jetpack in Thunderball and considerably less ludicrous than the horse scene from earlier. Mind you, almost anything would be. There's still no actual need for it, since it is followed by some tedious underwater scenes as Bond and Felix follow Largo and his henchmannys to their base.

There is a brief cutaway to Number One and his SECTRE mannys celebrating their upcoming victory, perhaps to make up for the dullness of the underwater scenes.

Number One is even prematurely drinking a toast to their success. Or maybe he was just thirsty?

Bond and Felix start a gunfight that takes care of most of the henchmannys, but Largo gets away with the missile.

Bond has a slow-motion underwater fight with Largo, and then while Bond tries to stop the missile from being launched, Domino turns up and shoots Largo. I think she had to do that only because she does it in Thunderball, since she was otherwise nowhere near this scene until the very last moment. This is a very poor climax to the film, and a rubbish ending for this version of Largo.

It cuts to Domino and Bond relaxing. They hear a manny approaching them and sinister music plays, so Bond throws him into the pool. Then it turns out it was only Nigel Small-Fawcett. Well what does he expect if he's going to have sinister music playing whenever he sneaks up on somebody? He pleads for Bond to come back because 

"M says that without you in the service, he fears for the security of the civilised world."

Is a resigned Bond really that much of a security risk? If only there was somewhere that they could put their former agents...

Bond says

"Never again."

To which Domino replies

"Never?"

It's not quite a title drop to end the film on, but it is not exactly subtle, especially as the theme song starts to play as soon as she says it, which includes the title as lyrics. But then, 'not exactly subtle' has been this film's entire modus operandi.

Bond breaks the fourth wall when he winks at the camera as the final shot.

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Expensive but not Luxury

Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: Octopussy

Having brought back SECTRE Number One for 1981's For Your Eyes Only, the makers of the expensive luxury James Bond films knew they had to go the extra mile for their next film, the sixth of Roger Moore's seven expensive luxury James Bond films, 1983's Octopussy.

Like with "Pussy Galore" before it, the name "Octopussy" immediately conjures up, in the mind of the viewer, the image of many cats. And, as we all know, the only thing that is better than one cat is lots of cats.

It starts with Bond already doing a mission. He disguises himself as a manny with a moustache, which succeeds in fooling the baddy soldiers right up until he meets the real manny with a moustache. Bond gets captured while he is planting a bomb, which means he can't blow up the place he was trying to blow up, but he very quickly gets rescued by his friend when the soldiers that captured Bond can't help perving over her - naughty baddys!

Bond escapes in a tiny plane and the baddys shoot a missile at him. The missile chases Bond for a bit until Bond flies his plane into the place he was trying to blow up earlier on, and the missile blows it up for him.

Bond's plane starts to run out of petrol, so he lands and drives it into a petrol station where he says

"Fill her up, please."

with a big Roger Moore grin on his face. This is a classic opening scene - a bit of action, a bit of naughtiness, and end on a lol. Cue titles.

The title sequence is a return to the classic nudey-ladies-and-aquariums after For Your Eyes Only's slight variation on the theme. The song promises us "an all-time high" though we will be the judges of that, thank you very much. I mean, For Your Eyes Only had a cat in its pre-titles sequence, while this one didn't, which means that so far this film is behind on points. But it is called Octopussy, so let's not write it off just yet.

After the title sequence it cuts to a circus. Presumably not the circus that Jaws fell on at the start of Moonraker, or did they get the pre-titles sequences for these two films mixed up? A clown runs away and gets chased by another manny with a knife. Wow, he must really have Coulrophobia. The clown keeps unintentionally giving himself away by leaving his hat for the pursuing manny to find, or his balloon bursting. Or perhaps the clown is just such a professional that he can't help it?

It turns out there are actually two mannys chasing the clown, and they are twins. They throw their knives at the clown, and one of them gets him, but he survives long enough to burst into the British Embassy and die dramatically.

The British Ambassador is played by Patrick "Hobson from The Moonbase" Barr, and he picks up a fancy egg that the clown drops.

In London, Bond tries to be smoove with both Miss Moneypenny and her new assistant Miss Smallbone. This is a gently comic scene where the joke is on Bond, as Miss Moneypenny is wise to his ways - she should be, after six thirteen films.

Bond meets the new M (Robert Brown) and the old Minister (Geoffrey Keen) for his briefing, along with art expert Jim Fanning (Douglas "Professor Van Dusen" Wilmer). M has the fancy egg from the previous scene, which is a fake of a real fancy egg that is about to be auctioned on behalf of a mysterious seller, and so M and the Minister want to know who the seller is in case it turns out to be the film's baddy.

General Gogol (still played by series regular Walter "Chief Constable Cullen" Gotell) is at a meeting with other senior Soviet mannys, including Brezhnev and General Orlov (played by Steven "Heavy Electricity" Berkoff). Orlov gives himself away as a baddy when he immediately starts overacting disgracefully, almost from his first line. He wants to invade Europe, but Gogol says 

"NATO will counterattack with nuclear weapons!"

showing that Gogol has been playing Civilization recently. Orlov argues that they will not risk using nuclear weapons in case the Russians use their own nuclear weapons, but Brezhnev sides with Gogol. This is a crucial establishing scene that shows us that, while some Russians are the baddys in this film, not all Russians are the baddys.

The next scene shows us Orlov is connected to the fancy egg plot when he meets with one of the knifemannys from earlier, and another henchmanny who has spotted that their fancy egg is missing. Orlov's cunning plan is to buy back the real fancy egg from the auction and use it in place of their fake fancy egg, since that will be quicker than making a new fake fancy egg.

As the auction of the fancy egg begins, Bond immediately suspects the most attractive and '80s-looking woman in the room, and so keeps his eye on her. Naughty Bond!

Bond is nearly right, because she sits next to the real baddy, Kamal Khan (played by Louis "Count Dracula" Jourdan). Bond starts bidding against Khan (not that one), which makes Fanning ask

"Have you gone mad?"

when Bond bids £425,000 for a fancy egg. But Bond is just forcing Khan to pay even more for the egg, and eventually Khan has to pay half a million pounds for it, which is about twice what Fanning told Bond it was worth. Expensive Luxury Cat would like me to point out that this makes the fancy egg both expensive and luxury.

Back in M's office Bond reveals that he swapped the fake fancy egg for the real fancy egg while nobody else was looking (you can actually see Roger Moore do this bit of sleight of paw if you know to watch out for it), so Khan has the fake egg not the real one - Orlov will be pleased! M sends Bond to follow Khan to Mexico India and find out what he wants with this fancy egg.

The sight of the Taj Mahal is as good as a shot of the Eiffel Tower for France or the Temple of Artemis for Ephesus for letting us know we are now in India.

Bond meets up with Vijay, who alerts Bond to his presence by playing the Bond theme music diegetically. Bond wastes no time in going to the casino where he sees Khan and the same henchwoman from earlier. Khan is busy cheating at Backgammon, so Bond approaches the woman to remind her that they already met before in London.

"You have a very good memory for faces."

"And figures."

Smoove.

Bond plays Backgammon against Khan for high stakes. When Khan asks if Bond has enough moneys, Bond produces the real fancy egg and says that it "should provide ample security". Bond needs "a double six" to win, which he has just seen Khan get twice with his own dice, so he knows Khan is using loaded dice to cheat. He takes Khan's dice and thus wins, beating Khan at his own game. This is a great scene and one of the film's highlights - even if it is only short - in particular the way Bond knows he has won even before he looks at the dice, letting Khan know that he knows Khan was cheating.

Bond acts smug, as well he might after such a good scene, until Khan's henchmanny takes the dice and crushes them in his bare paws - an obvious call back to when Oddjob crushed the golf ball in Goldfinger, but it doesn't feel crowbarred in just for the sake of a call back.

The henchmanny then chases after Bond and Vijay, with both chaser and chased driving small taxis. There are a number of gags in this chase - both visual and verbal - to do with tennis, such as Vijay fending off baddys with a tennis racquet and saying "Game set and match" when he wins, which only really make sense when you know that the actor who played Vijay used to be a famous tennis player.

Bond meets an unnecessarily browned-up Mark Heap who is juggling sticks that are on fire, and Bond takes one of the sticks to fend off a baddy. Bond then uses the moneys he won from Khan as a distraction to allow him and Vijay to get away.

Bond and Vijay visit Q so that Bond can get some gadgets. Q puts a homing device and microphone in the fancy egg, as well as giving Bond a pen with acid in it.

Bond has dinner with Khan's henchwoman, then they go to bed together. Naughty henchwoman!

Bond notices a tattoo on the woman's back and asks her about it. She replies

"That's my little octopussy."

Clang! It looks more like an octopus than a cat though, mew. We cats are not happy about this. We were expecting at least eight cats in this film, which would indeed have made it an all time high for the series, but now we're not so sure.

In the morning the henchwoman steals the fancy egg and escapes back to Khan. But we know that this is just what Bond wanted, since the egg has Q's homing device and microphone in it. What we don't know is that Khan's other henchmanny is about to knock Bond out with the classic karate-chop-to-the-back-of-the-neck move.

Khan meets with a mysterious superior who we hardly get to see but who has fishy noms in a tank, so we are obviously supposed to conclude that this is SECTRE Number One from the similarities to his first appearance back in From Russia With Love, except that the new Blofeld manny is a woman

with an octopus instead of a manny with an expensive luxury cat. When she hears Khan has captured Bond, she asks for him to be brought to her.

Bond wakes up in Khan's palace and is taken to have dinner with Khan - this is a Bond villain who knows his business, even greeting Bond with the classic

"Good evening, Mr Bond."

Khan finally introduces Bond (and us) to his henchwoman Miss Magda. The dinner Khan serves Bond is "stuffed sheep's head" with eyeballs (we'd prefer the fish), which has a strange similarity to the dinner scene in 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - was there a wider trend for films in this part of the 1980s that were set in India to have their protagonists encounter exotic noms, or was it just these two films?

Bond uses his acid pen to escape in accordance with the law of conservation of narrative detail. This escape is such serious business that Bond only pauses for a brief moment to perv at Magda undressing as he escapes past her window. 

When Bond sees General Orlov arriving in a helicopter to meet with Khan he spies a chance to find out more about the plot, and he listens to them discussing their diabolical plot using the microphone in the fancy egg. Er, I mean Bond uses the microphone in the fancy egg to listen to them discussing their diabolical plot, not that their diabolical plot uses the microphone in their fancy egg.

At this point there is a nice little easter egg (a fancy easter egg) for those viewers who have been paying attention to which fancy egg is fake and which is real - Khan attempts to double-cross Orlov by giving him the fake egg and keeping the real one for himself, but Orlov smashes the other egg thinking it is the fake - but he really smashes the real one, lol!

No wonder Khan does a big komedy wince when he sees this. But he also sees Q's microphone, so he now knows there is a chance their diabolical plotting has been overheard.

Khan's henchmanny discovers Bond has escaped so Khan goes out hunting for Bond dressed like a big game hunter. When he sees Bond he says

"Good. Let the sport commence."

Khan is turning out to be an underrated Bond baddy, although he is obviously never going to be as good a baddy as the other Khan. He and his mannys chase after Bond while riding elephants.

The film suddenly gets a lot more expensive and luxury, even more so than it was before, when a tiger appears. This single-pawedly makes up for the lack of eight cats. Bond tells the tiger to

"Sit!"

Silly Bond! That is never going to work on a tiger, you're thinking of doggys...

Oh.

The tiger sits.

Forget Moonraker and Bond going into space, this is by far the least believable thing to have ever happened in a Bond film... and I do include Blofeld turning out to be Bond's adoptive brother in Spectre, mew mew mew. 

I can only conclude that the tiger must have been going to sit down anyway.

Bond also has encounters with spiders, and then a snake, which he tells to "Hiss off" lol. This is followed by a rubbish bit with Bond swinging through the trees to escape from Khan and his mannys, while yelling like Tarzan. This is one of the more questionable choices that must have just seemed like a good idea to the filmmakers at the time, a bit like the way the great car stunt (careful now) in The Manny With The Golden Gun was spoiled by the addition of the komedy sound effect. Or possibly it is just the law that mannys swinging through trees in films must be accompanied by that sound, because how else do you explain the same thing happening in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, made 25 years after this film so they must have known it was a mistaik by then.

Bond gets away when he finds some tourists, so Khan cannot shoot him in front of them. He gets back to Vijay and Vijay's boss Sadruddin between scenes, and asks them about the octopus tattoo on Magda... because clearly that was his top priority, naughty Bond! Sadruddin tells Bond about the mysterious woman who uses that as her sign:

"No one knows her real name, but she's known as Octopussy."

Clang! Again. When he hears from Vijay that Octopussy's island is full of beautiful women, Bond goes there immediately - he can hardly even wait for the scene to change, naughty Bond!

Bond arrives at the island disguised as a crocodile and stealths into Octopussy's base, but she sees him on the CCTV.

We only get to see Octopussy's face at the same time that Bond does - a trick that was previously used with Blofeld in You Only Live Twice, but this time without multiple films' worth of build up. Octopussy is played by Maud Adams, who was previously Andrea in The Manny With The Golden Gun (presumably this is her second life), so it is no wonder she recognises Bond.

Actually she knows Bond from the events of the Ian Fleming short story "Octopussy", since the main character in that story was her father. Octopussy summarises it in a few lines of exposition. This is a pretty neat way of incorporating the original story into the film, and we will see something similar when we get to The Living Daylights.

Khan comes in and tells Octopussy that Bond has escaped. Octopussy then introduces Khan to Bond, lol. Khan says to Bond

"You have a nasty habit of surviving."

That might not seem like the best villainous line, but Jourdan does deliver it well. Octopussy does not let Khan kill Bond, but she does keep Bond her prisoner. Bond seduces Octopussy with a couple of rather forceful kiffs - it's not quite Pussy Galore levels of instant conversion, since Octopussy had already hinted at interest before (such as shielding him from Khan) but it is close.

While Bond is getting up to naughtiness with Octopussy, Khan sends some henchmannys to kill Vijay. This disturbs the birdys on the island, and they wake Bond up - a subtle and interestingly original way to alert Bond that something is wrong, but he does not yet know what. The baddys get onto Octopussy's island and attack Bond, leading to a fight. One of the henchmannys gets nomed by Octopussy's octopus, and another falls in the water with Bond and gets nomed by a crocodile. Octopussy thinks Bond has also been nomed, but really he has used this fight as an opportunity to escape.

Bond follows the trail of clues to East Berlin, by combining what he overheard Orlov and Khan talking about with Octopussy's circus, and connecting that to the ded agent disguised as a clown at the start of the film. At the circus we see the knife twins from the start of the film. When Bond arrives we see, at the same time as he does, all the film's baddys are gathered here - Orlov, Khan, Khan's henchmanny, Octopussy, and Magda.

Bond follows them, but then we get a scene that shows us that General Gogol is also investigating the plot from the Russian side. He discovers the fake jewels, just before we see Orlov pawing over the real jewels to Octopussy for putting on her train. Orlov, Khan and Octopussy all then leave, but Khan and Orlov send their henchmannys with the train so they can then secretly load a bomb on board without Octopussy knowing about it. Bond sees the bomb getting put on the train as well as a manny explaining, presumably for the audience's benefit, how the bomb W-words.

Bond gets into a fight with one of the knife-throwing henchmannys and knocks him out with a circus cannon. The komedy inherent to Bond using such an item as a weapon means that Bond doesn't even feel the need to make a quip afterwards. Bond disguises himself in the henchmanny's clothes so that he doesn't get spotted when Orlov comes to remove the jewels.

Bond captures Orlov and finds out Orlov's plan - to smuggle an atomic bomb into West Germany and set it off there, where the NATO countries will not know it was a Soviet bomb.

Orlov says little and lets Bond do most of the talking, but his smile when Bond sees how clever the plan is says enough by itself. Also, whenever Berkoff does talk he tends to go over the top really quickly, so it might be for the best that his dialogue is kept to a minimum here.

Bond gets distracted by a soldier (not like that, naughty cats!) so Orlov gets away, and Bond chases him. But then Orlov sets his soldiers on Bond (I said not like that!) and it is Bond's turn to run away. He gets to Orlov's car and steals it, so it turns into a car chase when Orlov and his mannys pursue in another car. There are a couple of shots of Orlov in his car shouting orders at his mannys, but where we don't hear him shout we can only see it - this is perhaps even more effective than if we could hear Berkoff, because the visual image of him yelling his hed off is more than enough already.

Bond catches up to the train in his car, and there's a pretty good stunt whereby he jumps from the car to the train just before another train smashes into the car, although the quick cutting reveals more than it hides about how this was done. The train passes across the border between East and West Germany without the border guards finding either Bond or the bomb. Or, for that matter, the unconscious knife henchmanny, who is presumably still hidden where Bond left him. It is possible the border guards have been bribed to deliberately not find anything, but the film does not make this clear.

General Gogol and his mannys find the wrecked car and discovers the real jewels inside. They catch up with Orlov at the border, but he runs after the train and gets shot. Gogol still doesn't know about the bomb, so he thinks Orlov's plan was only to steal the jewels. 

"A common thief. A disgrace to the uniform."

"Yes... But tomorrow I shall be a hero of the Soviet Union..."

Confused Gogol is confused.

Bond tries disguising himself as a monkey, but Khan's henchmanny spots him so Bond escapes onto the roof of the train where he has to do stunts avoiding bridges and things the train passes under, as is traditional for action scenes set on top of a moving train, but you can easily tell that, unlike Sean Connery in The First Great Train Robbery, when asked to do his own stunts Roger Moore said lolno. And probably raised his eyebrow as well.

Bond gets into a fight with the henchmanny, who is now armed with a sword, and the remaining knife henchmanny. Bond and the knifemanny fall off the train and have a fight in a small hut, where Bond uses the knifemanny's own knife to kill him, thus avenging the clown from the start of the film.

Bond races to the circus where the bomb now is, hidden underneath the circus cannon. He hitches a lift with some komedy Germans, and we must be thankful for small mercies that they aren't Sheriff J W Pepper conveniently on holiday again. Bond steals a faster car and immediately gets into a chase with some local police... who we must presume are the German equivalent of Sheriff J W Pepper.

Khan and his henchmanny leave the bomb in place and drive away, so they don't get blowed up by mistaik. They see Bond drive past them trying to get to the bomb, and Khan hopes that the bomb will blow up Bond as well.

Bond arrives at the base and gets chased by both the police and the American mannys who think Bond is a baddy. He hides for a bit and then he disguises himself as...

...a clown, just like the manny did at the start of the film. When the American mannys realise Bond is dressed as a clown, they arrest a real clown instead, lol.

With Octopussy's help, Bond gets to the bomb just in time, and because he saw how to arm the bomb he also knows how to disarm it.

Octopussy is not at all happy at Khan leaving her behind to get blowed up, and she is now on the side of the goodys, so back in India she stealths into Khan's palace with the help of Magda and all the women from her island. But the henchmanny spots the women and does what any sensible henchmanny would do under the circumstances - starts a big fight.

Into the middle of this fight arrives James Bond in a Union Jack Hot Air Balloon, knowing that he doesn't need to be inconspicuous when the fight has already started. The balloon is piloted by Q, leading to a very weak joke that, let's be honest, probably lowers the IQ of anyone who hears it by about ten points.

"I trust you can handle this contraption, Q?"

"It goes by hot air."

"Oh then you can."

Mew. Even Roger Moore and Desmond Llewelyn look like they think this skit is a load of shit as they perform it half-heartedly.

Khan and his henchmanny escape with a captive Octopussy, who has gone from being the leader of the attack on Khan's base to a become a damsel in distress the moment Bond arrived in the scene. Bond chases after them, while Q ends up in the paws of Octopussy's lady henchmannys and is last seen considering attempting a little 're-entry' of his own with Magda, naughty Q!

Khan and his henchmanny reach their emergency escape plane and get on board with Octopussy. Bond has to do a traditional grab-onto-the-outside-of-the-plane stunt as it takes off.

Khan does a great 'whyioughtta' face when he realises Bond is still chasing him even on the plane, so he sends his henchmanny to

"Go out... and get him!"

Perhaps unwisely, the henchmanny does attempt this, but Bond wins the ensuing fight and the henchmanny falls off the plane - luckily for him he acquired a parachute just as he did so, lol.

Bond rescues Octopussy and they jump out of the plane just before it crashes and then explodes. Khan is blowed up, which is a karmically satisfying death for someone who had tried to blow up so many mannys with his bomb plan, but... it just isn't very dramatic, and features no final confrontation with Bond.

The final scene sees General Gogol visiting M and the Minister in M's London office, which seems a bit much even in these days of "Anglo-Soviet relationships." It cuts away before we see the Minister give Gogol a manly handshake. Meanwhile Bond is busy having kiffs with Octopussy. It's not a great ending, but at least it doesn't make us cringe ourselves inside out (not a pleasant feeling, even if you are made from socks) like the final scene of For Your Eyes Only did.

Far from being "an all-time high," Octopussy is a benchmark for a typical, average Bond film - still expensive and luxury, with many enjoyable moments, but there are plenty of other Bond films that are even more expensive and luxury than this one.

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Expensive and Luxury

Big Gay Longcat and Expensive Luxury Cat review James Bond: For Your Eyes Only

After having gone into space in Moonraker, where could James Bond go next? This was the challenge facing the filmmakers in 1981 when they came to make the next expensive luxury James Bond film.

Thinking they couldn't go bigger, they chose to go smaller, but at the same time brought back some of the elements of earlier Bond films that had perhaps been lost along the way: the Cold War, baddys who didn't want to take over the world, and, of course, henchmannys that aren't Jaws.

Mew, I'm not sure that last one wasn't a terrible mistaik.

The result was For Your Eyes Only, the fifth of Roger Moore's seven expensive luxury James Bond films.

It starts with Bond putting flowers on the grave of Teresa Bond. The gravestone says

"TERESA BOND 1943 - 1969 Beloved Wife of JAMES BOND We have all the time in the World"

which, apart from the irregular capitalisation which suggests a cat was in charge of the engraving, all but insists that the James Bond of On Her Majesty's Secret Service is the same as the current James Bond, despite the former being played by George Lazenby and the latter by Roger Moore. Unless, that is, the new James Bond is putting flowers on the grave of another manny's wife as part of an elaborate, decades-spanning ruse. Hmm, no, I don't  think this proves anything conclusively one way or the other, mew. Also, a full third of the gravestone is taken up with being sarcastic.

A helicopter arrives and Bond gets on it. As it flies away the camera cuts to...

SECTRE Number One!

This immediately makes this the most expensive and luxury James Bond film since we last saw Number One in Diamonds are Forever. As usual, he has a new Blofeld with him, who is a bald (classic choice there, Number One!) manny in a wheelchair with a lot of controls in front of him. He uses the controls to electric the helicopter driver and the helicopter starts to crash, but then it turns out that Blofeld has the helicopter under remote control.

Blofeld flies Bond around for a bit while taunting him. Bond gets out of the helicopter and climbs along the outside. He spots Blofeld and Number One sitting on a roof. Bond gets in the driver's seat and unplugs Blofeld's remote control. Number One hisses, because he has realised that Bond is about to turn the tables on this Blofeld so soon he is going to have to start looking for another one. Bond gets control of the helicopter and Number One does a mew. He jumps out of Blofeld's lap and, sadly, that is the last we see of him in this film.

Bond flies the helicopter to pick up Blofeld and his wheelchair. In his panic at being captured, Blofeld improvises a very strange poem:

"Mr Bond! Mr Bond!

We can do a deal.

I'll buy you a delicatessen

In stainless steel!"

Bond drops Blofeld down a very long, tall chimney (long chimney is long!) and then it cuts to the opening titles.

The title sequence is unusual in that we can see one of the ubiquitous nudey ladies is actually singing the song. Other than that it is pretty standard for the era - there seems to be an underwater theme to it, which if we are lucky means that this will be as expensive and luxury as The Spy Who Loved Me. Or if we are unlucky then it will only be as expensive and luxury as Thunderball.

This would seem to be borne out by the first scenes after the titles, which start with the camera rising out of the sea to show a ship. Some mannys are catching lots of nomable fish, meanwhile inside the ship some other mannys are doing the far less interesting job of secret spy stuff. 

The mannys doing the fishing accidentally catch a bomb (silly mannys! A cat would never mistaik a bomb for tasty fish, mew) which explodes and sinks the ship. We might have expected this, seeing as they were British mannys doing spy things but neither Bond nor any other of our regular characters were on board.

The Minister of Defence is visited by the First Sea Lord (played by Graham "Soldeed" Crowden), who has come to tell him how many Nimons electronic surveillance ships they have lost today: one, called the St Georges, which by the law of conservation of narrative details was most probably the one we saw sink in the previous scene. He is accompanied by a Vice Admiral, played by Noel "Charles Grover from Invasion of the Dinosaurs" Johnson, and since they both played baddys in Doctor Who we have to suspect that they are secretly up to no good in this film too.

When last we saw Colonel Preston he was in charge of the British soldiers who were held captive in Colditz castle. Since the war he has moved to Greece to become an archaeologist which, as the film Pimpernel Smith made clear, gives perfect cover for espionage. But somebody has obviously found out his secret, because they shoot him from a plane and then fly away, leaving his daughter Melina (Carole Bouquet) and his parrot Max as surviving witnesses. They don't say how many days he was away from retirement, but I'm guessing it wasn't many.

Bond arrives for his briefing in M's office, where he meets the Minister and the Chief of Staff (as played by James Villiers, an actor so posh that he only rarely condescended to play anybody less important than a lord). They already know who killed Colonel Preston, a hitmanny called Gonzales. Bond's mission is to find out who hired Gonzales.

The Chief gives Bond a folder which says "FOR YOUR EYES ONLY" on the cover. It probably contains the script, lol.

Bond drives to Gonzales's house in an inconspicuously fancy car and then spies on him for a bit. Bond doing actual spy stuff? Well it has to happen sometimes, mew. He sees Gonzales get a suitcase full of moneys from a manny, which may as well be conclusive proof by the standard of most clues Bond normally has to go on.

Bond gets captured, but then another manny shoots Gonzales and he goes

Bond escapes in the confusion and meets up with the manny that shot Gonzales, who turns out to be Melina. The rest of Gonzales's henchmannys chase them. Two of the henchmannys find Bond's car and try to steal it, but it explodes for no adequately explored reason except that it means Bond and Melina have to escape using her car instead. This increases the peril for Bond since it means he doesn't have access to any of his usual array of car-based gadgets.

A car chase ensues, with Bond using their car's small size to his advantage over the normal-sized cars of their pursuers. This chase manages to be both exciting while also containing moments played for laughs, and the last car full of baddys ends up stuck in a tree, lol.

Like Bond, Melina has a mission to find the manny who paid Gonzales to kill Colonel Preston, only she has given herself the mission, for revenge. Bond tells her:

"The Chinese have a saying: before setting out on revenge, you first dig two graves."

The Scottish have a similar saying: Before setting out for Perth, you first make two sandwiches.

Bond visits Q to see if he can help him identify the manny he saw paying Gonzales, by using technology. This scene with Q is an outright komedy scene, with Q being portrayed as an absent-minded professor who, while he may have invented all these gadgets, can't actually use them properly without Bond's assistance.

But after some silliness along the way they are able to identify the manny as Emile Locque, a known baddy. Bond sets out to find him. which naturally means going on a skiing holiday. There Bond makes contact with Luigi Ferrara, whose job it is to get killed off in a few scenes' time. Ferrara introduces Bond to Kristatos, played by Julian "Scaroth" Glover, another former Doctor Who baddy who will turn out to be the baddy here as well. One does not simply get Julian Glover in to not be the baddy, even Blakes 7 managed that.

Kristatos pretends to be friendly and helpful to Bond, telling him Locque W-words for Columbo. On the face of it this seems implausible at best, since Columbo is an American police lieutenant and not a Bond villain, but it turns out he does not mean that Columbo.

As they say goodbye Kristatos gives Bond a manly handshake, which is surely a bit racy for 1981. Ferrara also wants a manly handshake but Kristatos evidently isn't into threesomes since he turns away from and ignores Ferrara instead.

Bond turns down an offer of naughtiness from Bibi Dahl, Kristatos's ice-skating "protégé", which might be because Bibi is on the young side even for Bond, or (since that doesn't always stop him) it could be because he only just recently had a manly handshake with Kristatos. She tries kiffing him anyway, but Bond is wise to that old game, having used it himself many a time. They do go skiing together, and while doing that they spot Erich Kriegler, played by John Wyman who was the fake Cancer in Assassin. 

Here the twist is that he actually is an assassin, and he shoots at Bond. Bond loses his gun, so he has to escape from Kriegler and his henchmannys on his skis. Locque himself joins the chase, in case it wasn't obvious enough that Kriegler was on his side. This is another great chase sequence, which again mixes the dramatic with the comedic - the latter mainly involves innocent bystanders falling over on their skis, but we also see a manny getting a slapstick cake full in the face, and the blink-and-you'll-miss-it final appearance of Double-Take Manny.

They decided to get him back but not Jaws? Mew!

Bond finds that Ferrara has been killed and a dove badge placed in his paw. This is supposed to be the symbol of Columbo which, very conveniently, the baddys have all started wearing ever since Kristatos told Bond that Columbo was the baddy.

Bond hasn't been to a casino for a while, so he goes there to play Baccarat. Also to meet Kristatos again, to get more manly handshakes clues about Columbo. Columbo is also present, played by Topol "only Dr Hans Zarkov, formerly of NASA" Topol. He has been listening to Bond and Kristatos's dialogue.

No more manly handshakes for Kristatos, next thing we know Bond is after some naughtiness with "Countess Lisl" who he spied arguing with Columbo. The next morning they are walking on the beach when Locque and his henchmannys turn up and attack them. Locque runs over Lisl who goes

and then they capture Bond. This is only for a moment because then some other mannys turn up, scare away Locque, and they capture Bond instead. These new mannys W-word for Columbo.

Oops, wrong picture!

Columbo tells Bond that Kristatos is really the baddy (what a twist!) who is secretly W-wording for Russia - the biggest baddys of all (except when they aren't). Columbo takes Bond with him to see what Kristatos's evil plan is. This immediately turns into a big fight between Columbo's mannys and Locque's mannys.

Locque tries to blow them all up with a bomb, so Bond chases him and makes Locque crash his car. The car ends up at the edge of a cliff, and before Locque can even say "hang on a minute lads, I've got a great idea" Bond helps push the car the rest of the way off.

"He had no head for heights."

Bond quips, though best not think about that one too hard or you might notice that it doesn't make sense.

Bond visits Melina on her ship and he meets Max. They go looking for the wreck of the St Georges.

They know they have found it when they see a very convenient sign telling them.

Bond wants to go inside in order to stop any secret intelligence that might have been left on board from falling into Kristatos's paws, because then he might give it to his Russian friends. They find the ATAC machine is there, which is a top secret coding machine of the kind that Blake was always trying to steal from the Federation so we know it must be important. Also "ATAC" sounds a bit like "Orac".

They are just in time because the baddys have also sent mannys to try and steal it and they have a fight with Bond. The slow-motion nature of underwater fight scenes mean they are never as exciting as the filmmakers want them to be, but they have obviously learned a lot since the days of Thunderball because these are much better than they used to be in the '60s, with an emphasis on making the baddys visually distinctive so that we can always tell which side is which.

Bond and Melina get away with the ATAC machine, but as soon as they get back to the ship they are captured by Kristatos and Kriegler. They are thrown into the water where Kristatos hopes that sharks will nom them, but obviously they escape and Kristatos is too lazy to check, saying

"Ah, the sharks have them. Make for port."

It becomes clear to us viewers that Kristatos and Kriegler do not trust each other, and Kristatos will not let Kriegler take the machine to Russia until after he has ben paid for it. They agree a neutral place where they will exchange the ATAC for the moneys. But it turns out that we weren't the only ones that saw and heard their plan - Max the parrot also heard it, and he tells Bond and Melina that the baddys will be taking the

"ATAC to St Cyrils."

Max would later be recruited by British Intelligence and we will see him again when he returns in a later Bond film. Just the one so far, sadly, but there is still time for him to get his own spinoff since he is clearly one of MI7's more competent agents.

At St Cyrils, Bond goes to a church where he meets Q disguised as a priest. This is only an excuse for a weak joke:

"Forgive me father for I have sinned."

"That's putting it mildly, Double-Oh Seven."

It turns out that this is the wrong St Cyrils. Bond decides that Columbo will be of more help than Q in finding the right one.

Columbo takes them to the St Cyrils that would be the most cinematic location for the film's big climax - he's no fool is this Columbo, perhaps he takes after his namesake?

Bond climbs up the mountain (why is he climbing the mountain?) to get into a fight with Kristatos's henchmannys - one of whom is Ferguson from Smiley's People, the traitor! They try to push him off the mountain but he stays on using a cunning arrangement of ropes and pulleys. Bond is followed up the mountain by Melina, Columbo and some of Columbo's own henchmannys.

They try to be stealthy but inevitably this turns into a big fight. Bond fights with Kriegler until the baddy falls off the mountain. But with General Gogol about to arrive to collect the ATAC from Kristatos, Bond doesn't even have time to make a quip at Kriegler's demise. Or maybe this shows Bond's level of disdain for Kriegler was such that he didn't even consider him worthy of a quip - after all, he was hardly a henchmanny of the same stature as Jaws, was he? Mew. 

Kristatos and Columbo have a fight while Bond nicks off with the ATAC. Melina is about to shoot Kristatos when Bond tells her that killing for revenge is not the answer she really wants. This ties back to the way the film opened with Bond at Tracy's grave. He got his revenge on Blofeld by tipping him down a chimney, but he knows that it wasn't the end of the story for him because the film didn't end there and he still had to do a whole other mission afterwards. Melina decides to shoot Kristatos anyway, but then Columbo gets there first when he throws a knife at Kristatos and Kristatos goes

General Gogol arrives and wants Bond to give him the ATAC machine, but Bond smashes it instead, saying

"That's detente, comrade. You don't have it. I don't have it."

Knowing the embarrassment that Bond will shortly cause to the British Prime Minister will easily outweigh any advantages he might get from killing Bond now, Gogol just laughs and goes back to his helicopter. Also, Gogol is by now an established regular character in these films, so killing Bond would be bad for his chances of coming back for the next one.

For the now traditional final komedy scene, Q telephones Bond just as Bond is about to get up to naughtiness with Melina. She says

"For your eyes only, darling."

Clang! Naughty Melina - dropping the title as well as her clothes.

They leave the telephone with Max, so it is Max that ends up speaking to the Prime Minister. For some reason Q, the Minister and the Chief of Staff all mistaik Max for Bond and so they do not stop this from happening. Although another theory might be that they all well knew this was Max and did it on purpose to troll Mrs Thatcher, lol.

For Your Eyes Only has many great moments, including Roger Moore's only encounter with Number One, but somehow the whole is less than the sum of the parts. The relatively low rating that Expensive Luxury Cat gives it should not be taken as a judgement that this film is bad, only that there are several other expensive luxury James Bond films that do it better... and not just The Spy Who Loved Me, lol!

Expensive Luxury Cat's rating: Expensive but not Luxury