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Bolero<\/strong>\u00a0 (1984)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Drama-Erotica\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 105 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (graphic nudity, strong sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Derek\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: John Derek\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Peter Bernstein\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: John Derek\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 31, 1984 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Bo Derek, George Kennedy, Andrea Occhipinti, Ana Obregon, Olivia d\u2019Abo, Greg Bensen, Ian Cochrane, Mirta Miller, Mickey Knox, Paul Stacey, James Stacey, Corinne Russell.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $8.9 million (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Bolero<\/strong> is a dirty movie, plain and simple. It\u2019s 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 \u201984.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The producers ran into a bit of trouble with the MPAA over the strong sexual content in Bolero<\/strong>. It was threatened with an X rating if they didn\u2019t tone it down. They refused, instead opting to release the film without an official rating, but with a \u201cNo One Under 17 Admitted\u201d policy attached which theaters were expected to enforce. That didn\u2019t stop me from trying to get in. My dad drove me to the theater even though he didn\u2019t want me to see it. Thanks to some fast-talking on my part, I succeeded in my mission even though I\u2019m 100% sure the manager knew I was lying my ass off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0I certainly got to see quite a bit of naked skin and that\u2019s about it. All that talk about Bolero<\/strong> being a pornographic movie was a lot of crap! So was the movie! There are a few sex scenes, but they\u2019re hardly what I\u2019d call hardcore. No, this one is a hybrid of dirty movie and art film. It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u201cvoyeur\u201d comes to mind.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The only nice thing that I can say about Bolero<\/strong> (and the only reason it merits a one-star rating) is that John knows to photograph his wife, Bo. There\u2019s no two ways about it, she\u2019s FREAKING HOT. Too bad she can\u2019t act worth a damn. She can\u2019t even deliver a single convincing line of dialogue. Not that the dialogue (written by John) is any great prize. If nothing else, Bolero<\/strong> makes one hell of an unintentionally hilarious movie.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Dirty movies like Bolero<\/strong> aren\u2019t normally known for their plots, mainly because they don\u2019t usually have one. This one is no different. There is a storyline, but it\u2019s really no more than an excuse for John to show off his wife\u2019s hot body. Her character Lida \u201cMac\u201d MacGillvary has just graduated from boarding school (high school or college, they don\u2019t say) and that immediately poses a problem as Bo looks too mature for either scenario. \u00a0She celebrates by cavorting across the campus naked right in front of the headmaster. She\u2019s 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<\/strong> is set in the 20s when every woman wanted to be ravished by Rudolph Valentino.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Mac 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.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Chalking 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\u2019s the man for the job. So what if he has a crazy ex-lover (Russell)? Or a 14-year-old \u201cgypsy shadow\u201d by the name of Paloma (d\u2019Abo, The Wonder Years) who wants to be \u201chis woman\u201d?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Mac 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\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019ll stop here, mainly because I think we all know how this will end.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Oh, 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\u2019s one of the movie\u2019s many problems. She jumps out of his plane mid-air and the scene promptly shifts back to Angel\u2019s 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\u2019t think it really matters because the audience is simply waiting for the next big sex scene.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Let me tell you, the sex scenes aren\u2019t that big of a deal. If anything, the only reaction they will elicit is derisive laughter. How else can you react to the final \u201cbig scene\u201d in which a neon sign reading \u201cEXTASY\u201d appears in the background? I\u2019m sure that John must have thought that he was filming his wife\u2019s big scenes tastefully, but they actually come off as extremely pretentious. He might have been trying to make an art film, but Bolero<\/strong> plays exactly like one of those crappy European softcore flicks that Cinemax used to show after hours.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0The dialogue in Bolero<\/strong> is ludicrous! There are so many terrible lines, but one of my favorites has to be when the sheik says to Mac, \u201cYou are like the most precious flower. And your blooming can only be enjoyed once. Just once.\u201d Their big scene is filmed like an old silent movie complete with title cards containing dopey lines like, \u201cI take the nectar of the Gods from the belly of a Goddess!\u201d Everything that comes out of Bo\u2019s mouth is a real howler. She describes herself as having \u201cgood girl claustrophobia\u201d when she tells Cotton of her plans for the remainder of the movie. Later she says \u201cThe fruit is so ripe, it\u2019s ready to fall off the tree\u201d referring to her virginity. Nobody and I mean NOBODY, talks like this in real life (or in quality movies for that matter).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Bo may be a terrible actress, yet she doesn\u2019t turn in the movie\u2019s worst performance. That particular dishonor belongs to young d\u2019Abo who affects an accent that nobody will be able to identify. If it helps (but it probably won\u2019t), d\u2019Abo 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\u2019m wondering how this got by the censors. Isn\u2019t this considered child pornography?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Kennedy manages to keep a straight face throughout the whole ridiculous affair and is rewarded with a romantic subplot of his own. I\u2019m just eternally gratefully that he kept his clothes on the entire time, otherwise Bolero<\/strong> might have become an unintentional horror movie as well. Speaking of ridiculous subplots, Catalina hooks up with Mac\u2019s Scottish lawyer (Cochrane) and just in case there\u2019s any doubt about his ethnicity, he\u2019s dressed in a kilt every time he appears on screen. This, of course, prompts Catalina to badger him about what he wears (or doesn\u2019t wear) under his kilt. The only one who emerges unscathed from this fiasco is Angel\u2019s dog who threatens to be a canine voyeur until his master sends him out of the room.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0So what about the title? Why exactly is it called Bolero<\/strong> when Ravel\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019t Do It. At least he knows how to photograph his wife in a luminous manner.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \u00a0Softcore and soft-headed, Bolero<\/strong> has rightfully earned its distinction as one of the worst movies ever made. It\u2019s 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<\/strong> is good for a few laughs and that\u2019s about it.<\/p>\r\n Bolero\u00a0 (1984)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cannon\/Drama-Erotica\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 105 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (graphic nudity, strong sexual content)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Derek\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: John Derek\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Peter Bernstein\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: John Derek\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 31, 1984 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Starring: Bo Derek, George Kennedy, Andrea Occhipinti, Ana Obregon, Olivia d\u2019Abo, Greg Bensen, Ian Cochrane, Mirta Miller, Mickey Knox, Paul Stacey, James Stacey, Corinne […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1097,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Bolero-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1099,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions\/1099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Bolero-POSTER.jpg?resize=620%2C948&ssl=1\")
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