Bolero (1984)

I don't know about you, but I didn't go watch 10 (1979) to catch glimpses of Dudley Moore.

And I certainly didn't see Tarzan the Ape Man (1981) to see how much O'Keeffe they could put in that movie (MILES O'Keeffe, by the way).

Bo Derek was the only reason either one of those movies made any money (okay, maybe 10 had Blake Edwards going for it, too), because not only was she strikingly beautiful in both, she showed a good amount of skin and was an understandable object of desire.

Acting? Forget it; if you go into a Bo Derek movie to see her act, you're missing the whole point. Bo Derek doesn't act, she just...is.

Husband John Derek got the point. An actor from the old days and films like The Ten Commandments and many swashbuckling epics, not to mention the past husband of such lovelies as Linda Evans and Ursula Andress, he had an eye for beauty, that's for sure. Which also explains why he got such prime directing gigs as the aforementioned Tarzan and our subject for today, Bolero.

He had a direct line on the lead actress. So to speak.

What John was trying to do here, you see, was set up wifey Bo as the next Emmanuelle - another lithe chanteuse who found herself in many sexy, softcore, situations. So he not only directed but concocted a script where, in the 1920s, newly graduated college student Lida MacGillivery (Bo) moons her professors then sets off on a whirlwind world tour with her faithful chauffeur (George Kennedy, of all people) and best pal Catalina (Ana Obregón) to discover the ultimate sexual encounter.

In her (s)exploits Lida encounters a milk-and-honey obsessed sheik (Greg Bensen) and a nice-guy Spanish bullfighter (Andrea Occhipinti) who do their level best to help Lida lose that cumbersome virginity hanging about her neck like some metaphysical albatross.

There's the plot, and really the only setup you need if you want to see Bo Derek strip off her clothes and act all beguiling and come-hither-y. Which she does.

I am about to turn the shower over onto "cold" now, as I describe the many many shortcomings of Bolero. A naked Bo Derek, you see, was all that Bolero had going for it.

John Derek may have been many things in his life, but "director" was not one of those things. For him, "softcore" meant "soft focus" and several scenes here are so blurry, over-exposed, or have sunlight glinting into the lenses at the worst times that you can't see any of the good stuff (ifyouknowwhatimeanandithinkyoudo). And John also had this habit of cutting away from an important scene to get reactions of animals, other characters, crowd scenes, plants, a rock in the road, you name it, that it's almost like he'd seen this done in other movies but then took such an idea out of context for what he was doing without good reason to. Bo's face gets many loving close-ups, but he owed it to her.

After all, he had to show her his dailies each night. So to speak.

Bo's plight is one for the history books. Being cast as a horny college student may or may not have been a stretch but it's not characterization that's a problem here. She hits her marks, says her lines, looks alluring and, when called to, disrobes on cue. She even rides a horse naked at one point, not only bareback but bare! That must have been one happy horse, but anyway....

Bo Derek's performance can be boiled down to the fact that she employs "wide-eyed innocence" (for lack of a better word). Meaning? She keeps her baby blues open as wide as she possibly can during every scene she's in, whether casually talking about sex over coffee, kneeling waist-level to a belly dancer, breathlessly telling her lover to do everything to her, whatever.

You almost expect, halfway through, to get a close-up and find Bo wearing those same eye-opening clamps used on Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. Which would explain a lot about Bo's performance, that's for sure.

The rest of the cast looks like they could have benefited from a little bit of the old ultra-violence however. George Kennedy seems to be either the most bored, most embarrassed or the most drunk ever in his career as a chauffeur whose job it is to drive his employer hither and yon to her next sexual encounter. This is a man who was in Cool Hand Luke! Thunderbolt and Lightfoot! Every Airport movie ever made! All three Naked Guns! ...and yes, Death Ship and Chattanooga Choo Choo, so maybe this wasn't as much a step back as a step sideways.

Ana Obregón, better known in her native Spain, had a much longer career in her homeland, in spite of being in films like the Sean Connery drama Cuba (1979) and the 3D extravaganza, Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983). Maybe it's a case of charisma not traveling well overseas. Or something. Yet when your character is simply around to chew her thumbnail and listen to Bo talk about sex, maybe your character isn't all that important. You think? No wonder Ana's been more of a local girl as of late.

I think many of you regulars here may only recognize Andrea Occhipinti from the fact that he was featured in two Lucio Fulci films (Conquest and The New York Ripper) than as a romantic lead. Word is he was brought in when the original actor got a cold sore and Bo thought it too "yucky". That's Hollywood for ya. And for as dull and boring as he acts, at least he's enthusiastic at the prospect of getting intimate with our leading lady.

Speaking of which, Bo gets only a couple of such scenes, and both are with Andrea - which looks kind of weird in print, but anyway.... These are the scenes that most of you male sexist pigs out there are going to pay any attention at all to Bolero for. And, for better or worse, both Bo and Andrea give their all (or at least their simulated all). Even if hubby John chooses inappropriate music for the background (by Elmer Bernstein...son Peter Bernstein got regulated to scoring the remainder) or bad lighting. At one point she even lets drool drip off of her tongue and into her lover's ear. Why? Guess John thought it felt sexy when she did it to him so he wrote it in.

The worst thing about Bolero is that it's like watching someone else's home movies when they didn't know how to use the camera. Every moment in Bolero gives you the feeling of an art student who had a cute girlfriend and wanted to make the greatest film ever...but oh, watch my girl do this great Kama Sutra move...whoo!!

Come on, the innocent among you may be saying. Is this really as bad as you're making it sound? It's got Bo Derek getting naked. How bad can it be?

Bad enough to win six Razzie Awards plus earn another Razzie nomination for Worst Picture of the Eighties. Bad enough to guarantee that Bo would never again get a starring role in a film as highly-publicized as this one. Bad enough to make certain that the last movie John Derek would direct was another Bo-themed flick even worse than this one called Ghosts Can't Do It.

And THAT one starred Anthony Quinn!

You thought George Kennedy had it bad!

I see I'm this far in the review and failed to mention who executive-produced this beauty. Ready? Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Surprised? Didn't think you would be.

In the end, though it was lucky enough to earn back its $7 million budget and little else, Bolero didn't do anything for any body. Not even softcore sex hounds. The only ones who got any satisfaction out of this hazy ordeal were John and Bo Derek. Heck, they were a couple of crazy kids in love who made a movie.

At least it was a project on which each of them would be able to stay on top of the situation.

So to speak.