Bolero (1984)

It is a brand new year: 2024! But commitment to the project remains the same. And if you're new, it's: to work my way through a definitive list of movies considered to be the worst ever made. And working in, mostly, chronological order, it is now the turn of 1984's: Bolero. A John Derek & Golan Globus movie which is, from what I can gather, a largely vanilla softcore porn film centred around a post-grad University student trying to lose her virginity. Respectfully. I am... well I hesitate to say familiar... but at least aware... of the output of John and Bo Derek, having watched suffered Tarzan The Ape Man before now, a movie which I described as "thoroughly boring", and I will be frank. I don't have any greater expectations for this one really to be honest. Tarzan at least having the novelty of it being set in the jungle and stuff. This... this just looks like a boring nigh on 2 hour slog of Bo Derek prancing around flirting with everybody hence why, and you will have to excuse the low quality screenshots, that I really did not feel like paying for this one. So instead I tolerated a slightly wiffy, potentially illegal steam that I managed to source on the internet. And Cannon Film Distro can fuck off quite frankly because what do you expect when you try and make people pay for this fucking garbage.

We make it less than 7 minutes into the movie before Bo Derek takes all of her clothes off... as rich American Heiress: Ayre 'Mac' McGillvary (Bo Derek) decides to celebrate graduating from University by stripping almost completely naked and mooning one of her late Fathers most eminent solicitors. Deciding initially she wants to travel to Morocco to find the perfect man to pop her cherry, Mac recruits her chauffeur turned "friend": Cotton (George Kennedy) a man who has worked for the family since he himself was 13 years old, and her University friend: Catalina (Ana Obregon) before jetting off to be introduced to a Sheik (Greg Benson) who is never explicitly given a name... -at this point I was going to make some comments about him being a suspiciously English looking Sheik but the movie later reveals the Sheik to actually be English, and having only visited Morocco three times beforehand... anyway as you were- Mac literally just rocks up to him and offers him her virginity (no, literally) to which the Sheik graciously accepts before whisking her away on an airplane the following morning, flying her to a secluded tent in the middle of the desert, getting completely wired on "puff", slathering her naked body in honey before promptly falling asleep. Much to Mac's disappointment. Catalina finds it hilarious though when Mac regales her with the story later and deciding to try somewhere else, the pair travel to Spain. After being introduced to a Matador, Angel (Andrea Occhipinti), Mac begins her quest to force herself upon the poor, unsuspecting bloke, but Angel resists at first, leading to Mac and Angel's.. Gypsy Girl (the movie's words, not mine); Paloma (Olivia d'Abo) to strike up something of a friendship. When Paloma takes Mac and the others to meet Angel in the evening, they learn that Angel, well, essentially picks up young girls on the street, waits until their old enough to have sex with, then slings them out when he gets bored of them. Paloma is his next conquest, as soon as she is old enough. Mac and Catalina take Paloma under their wing, letting her stay with them in Spain whilst they continue to pursue Angel for... some reason... by taking Paloma's advice on how to find him. Mac and Cat end up taking a moment to get stoned on opium with Angel one evening where they sort of make a deal to essentially buy Angel's vineyard and every bottle of wine it has produced so far. This appears to finally break down the barriers Angel had put up and him and Mac eventually begin to get a bit more cosy, he flinging out one of his former mistresses after she reacts jealously to Mac being around Angel. And after Mac offers him her virginity, Angel agrees to join her in bed "at sunrise." He returns, I think a little bit later than was expected, and there is a fabulously awkward exchange between the pair that is genuinely, embarrassing to witness... but it at least ends with Mac loosing her virginity. She literally announces it. Right there. During the intercourse. That could be the end of the movie right there but for some reason we have 45 odd minutes left? And after celebrating the sale of his wine business perhaps a little bit too hard... Angel is injured during a bull fight and the prognosis from doctors is that he won't ever be able to make love again (no I'm being serious.) Mac admits to Catalina that she wants to stay with him anyway and is hoping for the best. She later visits Angel as he is recovering and asks him to marry her but Angel refuses, citing his unspoken but very much existing inability to bang her as the main reason. In response Mac asks Angel to teach her everything he knows about horse riding so that he might grow to love her and overcome his little... problem... Then, for some reason, a very Scottish man who just so happens to also be a Solicitor: Robert Stewart (Ian Cochrane) turns up at the vineyard to assist Catalina with the legal stuff. Catalina is more interested in "what is under the skirt." Bit unprofessional really. But ok. Then after a brief scene where it seems Cotton has scored himself a lady who... I assume is some kind of housekeeper or something... The Moroccan English Sheik from earlier has Mac kidnapped and smuggled onto his plane, but Mac jumps out before the plane gets too high and err... yeah that was the end of that scene. Now able to walk again, Angel begins to help Mac train to become a Matador herself, whilst off screen, Catalina and Robert appear to have bonded enough that they are prepared to get naked together and Catalina ends up losing her virginity also. And after Mac tries and fails to re-ignite the passion in her future husband by riding around on a horse naked, Mac proceeds to have her first public bullfight in front of Angel, which, after a challenge from Mac seems to be enough to get the ol' boy working again and the pair eventually end up getting to make love again. In the closing scenes we watch on as Angel and Mac end up getting married.

Wow this was incredibly boring. Like, astonishingly boring. Almost, impressively boring. There are some films that I watch where I just know going in that I am not the target audience. But they are usually things like Musicals, Romance movies, or Disney young audience stuff. I kinda felt the same here, like this movie is 100% not intended for me as an audience. But that being said, I can't really define who it's intended audience is even supposed to be? People who want to watch porn but like, not too much porn... just a little bit, and it has to have a needlessly convoluted plot thread throughout the whole thing that is massively distracting? That's... quite a small target audience to be honest. And I'm not even completely sure this would satisfy them?

If nothing else, Catalina was at least infinitely more interesting a character than Mac was. Whilst the movie mostly focused on Mac and Angel's developing relationship, Catalina served as a kind of side plot as she too conquested to lose her virginity and to be honest I was mostly more interested in her than I was the main character. She at least came across as a bit more genuine than Mac and was much more straightforward and honest. Even if she ended up being portrayed as just another sex obsessed nympho with it... 

Mac on the other hand is just Bo Derek but in a different movie. She was completely the same here as she was in Tarzan; naïve, blunt, singleminded. Exactly the same character. And in her portrayal equally as wooden and vanilla. Again, she looks a million dollars, I... think... bit difficult to tell with such a low qual movie stream... but it's literally looks alone carrying her through this movie and she has absolutely fuck all personality or character depth. I guess it doesn't help that I don't find her really that attractive either, maybe if I did that would at least swing a bit a bias for her in my direction, but I don't. And err no. She doesn't really have anything here that I feel was much in the way of substantial.

Also something I picked up on fairly early was that half the dialogue in this movie was delivered like an English dub of a foreign language that had been poorly translated and slightly misunderstood. Only it wasn't... because it was English speaking actors delivering the lines?! I think the foreign actors actually spoke English better than some of the actual English speaking roles in this movie! I can't say much for Angel and Paloma as characters but when they actually said things, it actually sounded like they were convincingly saying something and not sounding like they were reading a handful of words strung together in a language they couldn't comprehend!

I think... really... there isn't much else I can really say about this movie. I will say that it at least mostly competently produced in that it was filmed and scored fairly professionally. There was an obtuse amount of close up shots of peoples faces that at times felt a bit uncomfortably close but otherwise, mostly ok. I refuse to talk about the production of the sex scenes on the grounds that I mostly tabbed through them to be honest... I'm sure they were just fine if you are after that type of thing. So err... yeah... maybe some positives there.

And I guess, to a degree, there is a least a sensibly coherent... mostly... plot and some semblance of a story line! A wealthy lady travels to Europe to lose her virginity, falls in love with a man and stays behind to marry him. There was some bumps in the road along the way and some moments when the plot took a massive nosedive for seemingly no reason: there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to do a recall of the English Sheik and have him kidnap Mac. It went nowhere and accomplished nothing. But those moments excused there was at least a structure that the steamy love making scenes were baked into. I can't criticize it for lack of a plot. Some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard delivered in a movie though and just some of the worst script writing. Painfully bad.

So err yeah, not for me this one. It was mostly quite boring, Bo Derek does nothing for me really, and I find her mostly unentertaining to watch, she just has like fuck all charisma. And after you get over the fact that it's largely just 1 hour 45 minutes of women getting their boobs out for hardly any reason at all, there isn't really much else beyond that that makes it a respectable and viable movie. I have watched worse, movies that are like offensively bad. This was just not really good, like at all, and just not an easy or enjoyable watch. Unless you just really, really like watching Bo Derek naked. Like alot. But I err... didn't. Or don't. I think: 1 out of 5 but mostly just for Catalina.