Bolero  (1984)    Cannon/Drama-Erotica    RT: 105 minutes    Rated R (graphic nudity, strong sexual content)    Director: John Derek    Screenplay: John Derek    Music: Peter Bernstein    Cinematography: John Derek    Release date: August 31, 1984 (US)    Starring: Bo Derek, George Kennedy, Andrea Occhipinti, Ana Obregon, Olivia d’Abo, Greg Bensen, Ian Cochrane, Mirta Miller, Mickey Knox, Paul Stacey, James Stacey, Corinne Russell.    Box Office: $8.9 million (US)     

Rating: *

 Bolero is a dirty movie, plain and simple. It’s the kind of movie that will appeal to both dirty old men and horny teenage boys looking for copious amounts of gratuitous nudity. I was one of those teen horndogs back when this softcore skin flick hit theaters in August ’84.

 The producers ran into a bit of trouble with the MPAA over the strong sexual content in Bolero. It was threatened with an X rating if they didn’t tone it down. They refused, instead opting to release the film without an official rating, but with a “No One Under 17 Admitted” policy attached which theaters were expected to enforce. That didn’t stop me from trying to get in. My dad drove me to the theater even though he didn’t want me to see it. Thanks to some fast-talking on my part, I succeeded in my mission even though I’m 100% sure the manager knew I was lying my ass off.

 I certainly got to see quite a bit of naked skin and that’s about it. All that talk about Bolero being a pornographic movie was a lot of crap! So was the movie! There are a few sex scenes, but they’re hardly what I’d call hardcore. No, this one is a hybrid of dirty movie and art film. It’s like one of those Swedish flicks- e.g. I Am Curious (Yellow)- that made the rounds in the late 60s just after the abolition of the Hays Code. The whole thing is artfully photographed and directed by the star’s husband John Derek which makes it all a bit creepy. What kind of guy wants to see his hot young wife have sex with other men? The term “voyeur” comes to mind.

 The only nice thing that I can say about Bolero (and the only reason it merits a one-star rating) is that John knows to photograph his wife, Bo. There’s no two ways about it, she’s FREAKING HOT. Too bad she can’t act worth a damn. She can’t even deliver a single convincing line of dialogue. Not that the dialogue (written by John) is any great prize. If nothing else, Bolero makes one hell of an unintentionally hilarious movie.

 Dirty movies like Bolero aren’t normally known for their plots, mainly because they don’t usually have one. This one is no different. There is a storyline, but it’s really no more than an excuse for John to show off his wife’s hot body. Her character Lida “Mac” MacGillvary has just graduated from boarding school (high school or college, they don’t say) and that immediately poses a problem as Bo looks too mature for either scenario.  She celebrates by cavorting across the campus naked right in front of the headmaster. She’s also come into a lot of money and decides to celebrate with a vacation to Morocco. Her main purpose for this trip to an exotic country is quite simple, she wants to lose her virginity to an Arab sheik. This makes perfect sense given that Bolero is set in the 20s when every woman wanted to be ravished by Rudolph Valentino.

 Mac brings her best friend Catalina (Obregon) and chauffeur Cotton (Kennedy, Cool Hand Luke) along on her trip to womanhood. She meets her sheik (Bensen), but he turns out to be a real dud in the sack. The dope falls asleep before he can deflower her, but not before he licks honey off her naked body.

 Chalking this one up to failure, Mac and company head off to Spain where she hopes to be deflowered by a matador. She meets a handsome bullfighter named Angel (Occhipinti) and decides that he’s the man for the job. So what if he has a crazy ex-lover (Russell)? Or a 14-year-old “gypsy shadow” by the name of Paloma (d’Abo, The Wonder Years) who wants to be “his woman”?

 Mac eventually gets her man and he performs his task well, so well that she falls in love with him. Then tragedy strikes as it always does in these situations. Angel gets gored by a bull in the one place he can’t afford to lose in a movie like this. Needless to say, it renders him unable to perform in the bedroom and he becomes depressed. What’s a girl in love supposed to do? Easy, Mac vows to stand by her man and help him overcome his problem. As a way of motivating him, she trains to become a bullfighter. I’ll stop here, mainly because I think we all know how this will end.

 Oh, I almost forgot to tell you that the sheik resurfaces at some point and tries to kidnap Mac. Her friends come to the rescue and she jumps out of his plane mid-air. Now here’s one of the movie’s many problems. She jumps out of his plane mid-air and the scene promptly shifts back to Angel’s hacienda where our heroine is talking with her friends. How did she survive that jump without serious injury? The movie never bothers to answer that question. However, I don’t think it really matters because the audience is simply waiting for the next big sex scene.

 Let me tell you, the sex scenes aren’t that big of a deal. If anything, the only reaction they will elicit is derisive laughter. How else can you react to the final “big scene” in which a neon sign reading “EXTASY” appears in the background? I’m sure that John must have thought that he was filming his wife’s big scenes tastefully, but they actually come off as extremely pretentious. He might have been trying to make an art film, but Bolero plays exactly like one of those crappy European softcore flicks that Cinemax used to show after hours.

 The dialogue in Bolero is ludicrous! There are so many terrible lines, but one of my favorites has to be when the sheik says to Mac, “You are like the most precious flower. And your blooming can only be enjoyed once. Just once.” Their big scene is filmed like an old silent movie complete with title cards containing dopey lines like, “I take the nectar of the Gods from the belly of a Goddess!” Everything that comes out of Bo’s mouth is a real howler. She describes herself as having “good girl claustrophobia” when she tells Cotton of her plans for the remainder of the movie. Later she says “The fruit is so ripe, it’s ready to fall off the tree” referring to her virginity. Nobody and I mean NOBODY, talks like this in real life (or in quality movies for that matter).

 Bo may be a terrible actress, yet she doesn’t turn in the movie’s worst performance. That particular dishonor belongs to young d’Abo who affects an accent that nobody will be able to identify. If it helps (but it probably won’t), d’Abo is a Brit playing a Spanish girl. It bears mentioning that John sees fit to show the 14YO actress fully nude at one point. I’m wondering how this got by the censors. Isn’t this considered child pornography?

Kennedy manages to keep a straight face throughout the whole ridiculous affair and is rewarded with a romantic subplot of his own. I’m just eternally gratefully that he kept his clothes on the entire time, otherwise Bolero might have become an unintentional horror movie as well. Speaking of ridiculous subplots, Catalina hooks up with Mac’s Scottish lawyer (Cochrane) and just in case there’s any doubt about his ethnicity, he’s dressed in a kilt every time he appears on screen. This, of course, prompts Catalina to badger him about what he wears (or doesn’t wear) under his kilt. The only one who emerges unscathed from this fiasco is Angel’s dog who threatens to be a canine voyeur until his master sends him out of the room.

 So what about the title? Why exactly is it called Bolero when Ravel’s composition is NOT used in the movie? It was used in 10, the movie that made Bo a star. Perhaps John wanted potential ticket buyers to subconsciously make the connection. Either way, he and Bo were a match made in Heaven. He’s as incompetent a filmmaker as she is an actress. He directed her in two other equally terrible movies, Tarzan, The Ape Man and Ghosts Can’t Do It. At least he knows how to photograph his wife in a luminous manner.

 Softcore and soft-headed, Bolero has rightfully earned its distinction as one of the worst movies ever made. It’s so inept on every level that you just have to laugh at it. I think that even the dirty old men chuckled at this one as they wondered why they even bothered to wear their raincoats. If so-called erotica fails to please that demographic, then something is seriously wrong. Bolero is good for a few laughs and that’s about it.