Sahara (1983) MGM/Adventure-Drama RT: 111 minutes Rated PG (violence, language, mild sexual content) Director: Andrew McLaglen Screenplay: James R. Silke Music: Ennio Morricone Cinematography: David Gurfinkel Release date: March 2, 1984 (US) Cast: Brooke Shields, Lambert Wilson, Horst Buchholz, John Rhys-Davies, Ronald Lacey, John Mills, Steve Forrest, Cliff Potts, Perry Lang, Terrence Hardiman. Box Office: $1.4M (US)
Rating: ***
Here’s the ad campaign I mentally wrote as I watched Sahara:
Cannon Group is proud to present its latest film Sahara starring Brooke Shields of The Blue Lagoon and French superstar Lambert Wilson in his first American starring role. Passions and engines ignite in this sweeping epic of love, war and auto racing set in one of the hottest spots in the world, the blazing North African desert! Come along for the drama! Come along for the adventure! Come along for the thrills! Come along for the romance! Also starring Horst Buchholz, John Rhys-Davies, Ronald Lacey, John Mills and Steve Forrest. Don’t miss the greatest love story of our time! Don’t miss Sahara! It’s coming soon to a theater near you! Rated PG.
Obviously, I wasn’t present at the meetings where the subject of how to promote Sahara was discussed, but if I was I definitely would have suggested what I wrote above for two reasons. First, I know something about how films are sold to the public. After four decades, I’m familiar enough with the industry to know the tricks of the trade. Second, I have a twisted sense of humor. Everybody knows that Sahara is hardly the epic my proposed ad makes it out to be. It’s a bad movie. It was unanimously panned and lost a lot of money making only $1.4 million on a $25 million budget. It was released theatrically only on the West Coast. Shields took home the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor for the scenes where she’s disguised as a man. It’s a bad movie as only Golan-Globus can do it with all the bad acting, goofy melodrama and dippy dialogue. I LOVE it!
Shields stars as Dale Gordon, a strong-willed, independent-minded heiress who takes her late father’s (Forrest, Mommie Dearest) place behind the wheel of the racing car he developed in a big race through the Sahara Desert. The first big hurdle she must surmount is getting past the “men only” rule. Before you cry discrimination, note that Sahara is set in 1927 so it’s okay (is it?). In any event, it’s actually an easy fix. She dons a suit and fake moustache, tucks her long hair under her hat and voila, she becomes he. She figures she’ll be safe from prying eyes on the balcony of her own hotel room, but that is incorrect. She catches the eye of Sheikh Jafar (Wilson), the young, handsome, educated leader of a tribe about to go to war with another tribe. He’s instantly captivated by the “blue-eyed devil”.
A local official warns the drivers to stay on course and not take any shortcuts through the desert due to the impending tribal war. Of course, some of the drivers don’t heed this advice. One of them is the German racer Heinrich Von Glessing (Buchholz, The Magnificent Seven), a profiteer delivering a specially designed armored car to the leader (Lacey, Raiders of the Lost Ark) of the enemy tribe. How do we know they’re the enemy? In the opening scene, they mow down a group of desert nomads for no good reason. ANYWAY, Dale drives off course to save time on the suggestion of her two-man crew, Andy (Lang, Spring Break) and String (Potts, Silent Running). That’s where her troubles really start. They’re beset by a group led by Jafar’s brutish uncle Rasoul (Davies, Raiders of the Lost Ark) who take them back to their camp as prisoners. When Jafar sees that it’s Dale, he wants her for her own despite her protests that she’s nobody’s property. It doesn’t take him long to charm her right out of her clothes in a waterfall shower scene that feels cribbed from The Blue Lagoon. They soon fall madly in love. It’s a love that will be tested when the opposing tribe grabs Dale moments after she escapes from Jafar’s camp to finish the race.
What we have with Sahara is a mix of Lawrence of Arabia, The Blue Lagoon and The Great Race. It even has a refined older British gentleman in the form of Jafar’s valet Cambridge (Mills, Ryan’s Daughter) who tries to be sympathetic to Dale by telling her she really has no choice but to submit to Jafar. He’s a man and she belongs to him because he claimed her as his own. I’m sorry, but I can’t see this going over with today’s MeToo-minded audiences.
Of course, most viewers know not to take Sahara seriously. It’s one of the silliest dramas I’ve ever seen. Although her Razzie was technically for her scenes as a man, Shields is equally terrible as her own gender. She delivers every line of dialogue with zero conviction. Wilson does his best Rudolph Valentino impression with his looks-over-talent performance. Davies hams it up to the nth degree and beyond in his portrayal of a stereotypical Arab heavy, a brute who slaps Dale around and gets angrier when she fights back. Buchholz may as well be wearing a monocle and Kaiser helmet with his stock German villain. Mills escapes with his dignity more or less intact.
There’s plenty of action and adventure in Sahara with the tribal warriors shooting at and dropping fake boulders on each other. There’s a scene where Jafar repels into a leopard’s cage to rescue Dale from certain doom. There’s a lot of driving too although the race recedes into the background for a lengthy amount of time to allow the love story between Dale and Jafar to develop. Their chemistry is rather forced, but what do you expect from Golan-Globus?
To be fair to The Go-Go Boys, Sahara isn’t a total failure. Ennio Morricone’s dramatic score is a plus. Like most of his work, it’s quite beautiful. The costumes, cars and set design add a felling of authenticity. The filming locations in Israel are just right. It’s a nice picture to look at.
Artistic merits aside, Sahara is a laughably bad movie, a hysterical stinker right down there with The Greek Tycoon and Bloodline. The storyline is jumpy and the pacing is off. It sputters and stalls a lot running smoothly at only a few points along the way. I don’t care; I dig it! In my eyes, it’s a tremendous guilty pleasure the like of which they simply don’t make anymore. It’s also the last MGM-Cannon collaboration. After flops like The Wicked Lady and this one, can you blame MGM for cutting ties? Me either. On the other hand, I love a grand scale bad movie like Sahara. For me, it’s fun!
