Bolero (1984).

Review #2315: Bolero.

Cast: 

Bo Derek (Ayre “Mac” McGillvary), George Kennedy (Cotton), Andrea Occhipinti (Rejoneador Angel Sacristan), Ana Obregon (Catalina), Olivia d'Abo (Paloma), Greg Bensen (Sheik), Ian Cochrane (Robert Stewart), and Mirta Miller (Evita) Written and Directed by John Derek.

Review: 

The best way to talk about these weird Derek-Derek films is to just go with it. The Hollywood-born John Derek had the looks to score a few bit parts in the 1940s before getting a break with being cast in Nicholas Ray's Knock on Any Door (1949). Derek would do a handful of films in the studio system era along with a select group of European productions but was on record for saying he never liked acting, with one trouble listed by him being his "monotone voice". He pursued directing and photography while marrying and divorcing three wives. He did work on Nightmare in the Sun (1965) as a co-producer before making his feature debut with Once Before I Die (1966). In total, he made eight feature films as a director, half of which starred Bo Derek. Born Mary Collins, she had decided to go to Greece to do a movie with Derek rather than continue to attend high school (she was 16 in 1972). The two had an affair that just happened to lead to the two marrying and returning to the States in 1976 (as for the film, Fantasies was released in 1981). Anyway, it was her appearance in 10 (1979) that raised her presence to the public (cornrow hair and all). A Change of Seasons (1980) and Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981) would follow, with the latter being her first "starring" role that was directed by her husband. What better association for the Dereks to have with Bolero and Cannon Films? Menahem Golan served as an executive producer and apparently suggested to the Dereks to spice up the sex scenes. Amusingly enough, the movie was shown to the CEO of MGM in Frank Yablans in an attempt to get him to intervene against Golan...who in turn stated his disliking of the film to the point where MGM dropped releasing the film when it looked like it would get an X rating to the point where Cannon released it themselves without a rating. The Dereks did one more film together with the "release" of Ghosts Can't Do It (1989); John Derek died in 1998 at the age of 71 while Bo has appeared in a handful of films and TV since.

Honestly, some movies are so dull you can actually feel your body focusing on anything other than what is occurring in front of you. I have to confess that sometimes I write reviews for one film when watching a different film, mainly for attempts at "efficiency". You can imagine how this might get odd with a movie that strives for steamy passion but has the execution of a 78-year-old virgin. With a crap flick, sometimes one just feels the need to pause the movie to just breathe with the stupidity you are watching and sometimes you pause because you get distracted trying to wonder how you got on a tangent reading about the last non-practicing lawyer to win a Supreme Court case (Sam Sloan, for those asking). Other times you wonder how the hell George Kennedy could be involved in such a wide spectrum of movies in quality (you might remember the Academy Award winning actor tried his hand at singing with Lost Horizon along with all of those Airport movies). I wonder how my perception of the Dereks would be if I had checked out that Tarzan film (which somehow got Richard Harris to co-star), which also had nudity. Nothing will really prepare you for Bolero and its bizarre qualities in trying to make a love story that has no actual substance to it. The Dereks sure must have had fun making films as a couple, but I can't imagine many viewers had that same experience. You could probably write a better script of sexual awakenings with crayons, but I don't know if you would be able to get your spouse to shoot the film (seriously, how many movies are there where a husband is directing his wife going through love scenes and being the cinematographer?). I kid you not, the climatic lovemaking sequence takes place amid a great deal of fog meant to make one believe they are looking at clouds while an "ecstasy" sign is briefly seen in the background. All of this is far more interesting to talk about than the acting of the film, which is the type you might find in a bad *parody* of romance movies, particularly from Derek, who has no sense of believability in terms of "awakening" beyond seeming like she is doing a crappy home movie. Occhipinti actually is more known as a producer/distributor more than his acting, and it is easier to give credit for someone making a living rather than simply talking about how a crappy movie's chemistry between its lead actors stinks. Kennedy may be struggling to contain himself in rigid weirdness for a movie that gives him lines such as musing about the last time he saw a certain person naked (the context isn't any better) and so on that makes one hope he got to have some sort of vacation with the experience. In general, the movie strains at times with leaps in logic, even forgetting to show how one escapes a plane in the air (seriously she just is out the plane right there) amid the general lack of sexual tension that would be fodder for several puns (the movie sure is limp when coming to the point, you might say). One feels dirty watching this movie in a way that exploitation directors would shudder to think about in ways that you honest to God would not see nowadays (Olivia d'Abo was 14 when she did this film and no, do not Google what that means).  In conclusion, Bolero is the movie one thinks The Room (2003) is when it comes to terrible vanity projects, failing to achieve any sort of charm beyond making you realize that some married couples really can be the most insufferable people you know. In a sea of bad movies, there is very little to redeem in this flaming heap of crap.

Overall, I give it 0 out of 10 stars. 

Next up: Familiar actors and the 1970s clash in Laserblast.

All the King's Men (1949).

Review #1373: All the King's Men.

Cast: 
Broderick Crawford (Willie Stark), John Ireland (Jack Burden), Joanne Dru (Anne Stanton), John Derek (Tom Stark), Mercedes McCambridge (Sadie Burke), Shepperd Strudwick (Adam Stanton), Ralph Dumke (Tiny Duffy), Anne Seymour (Mrs. Lucy Stark), Katharine Warren (Mrs. Burden), Raymond Greenleaf (Judge Monte Stanton), and Walter Burke (Sugar Boy) Directed, Written and Produced by Robert Rossen (#702 - The Hustler)

Review: 
One can hope to make at least one great film or at least hope to be part of a prestige picture worth talking about. This is a film to be proud of in terms of its directing and acting. Robert Rossen directed just ten films before his death at the age of 57, but he managed to make films in a variety of genres successfully, such as noir, drama and thriller. He had gone from hustling pool as a youth to being a stage manager, with the passage of time leading to him writing and directing his own plays. He went to Hollywood as a screenwriter after being discovered by Mervyn LeRoy of Warner Brothers in 1936. In the eleven years that followed before his directorial debut, he served as a writer for a few films along with being chair of the Hollywood Writers Mobilization during World War II. He jumped around a few studios before finding himself with Columbia Pictures. If you can believe it, Crawford was not the first choice for the main role. It was actually John Wayne who was offered the role first. He angrily rejected the role in a letter, calling the script an acidic one on the "American way of life" (among other statements that make me roll my eyes). The son (and grandson) of vaudevillians, Crawford found himself on stage and film by the time he was in his twenties, with usual roles being in B-moves or in supporting roles. It was this film that he became a star, and he would later find himself with further notability with Highway Patrol in the following decade. The film was based off the 1946 novel of the same name by Robert Penn Warren, which had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year. There has been considerable discussion about the novel over its themes and inspirations, with the most notable being over the resemblance of its main character to governor/senator Huey Long, since Warren had taught at Louisiana State University at the time of Long's unexpected death, although Warren once said that book was never intended to be a book about politics, since to his eyes it merely served as a provider to the framework story to work out the deeper concerns. The book has had two further adaptations, in terms of an opera (named after the lead character), and a 2006 adaptation from Steven Zaillian that attempted to be more faithful to the general structure of the novel while changing the setting to the early 1950s.

One is swept into the film fairly quickly, a drama that plays like a noir with a sense of urgency and furor that sweeps a viewer away in making compelling entertainment. Crawford proves to be a master of intimidation, one who leaves an imprint on you every time he appears, a presence that strikes at you with all of his might that has the right mix of brashness alongside insecurity. Ireland follows along just fine, an observer of the noir kind that we follow through his brooding eyes. Dru and Derek accompany him just as carefully. McCambridge (a noted radio actress in her debut) proves to be quite electrifying, a hardboiled presence that resonates with rough versatility. The others prove to be worthy supporting presences that seem like pawns in the hands of material that desires as such. It is an urgent film, wrapped in cynical honesty that still works in relevancy for the most part after seven decades. The biggest achievement is that the film came out the way it did at all. There were problems in whittling the film to salvageability because of how much footage Rossen shot. Editor Al Clark could only edit it down to 250 minutes (in part because of Rossen's reluctance to really cut anything), so it fell to the hands of Robert Parrish to help with edits. Together, Rossen and Parrish agreed to edit the film like a series of impressions, where they would roll the film on the synchronizer and find the center of each scene and cut arbitrarily 100 feet before and after each center, regardless of dialogue or music. The result is a 110 minute quickfire winner. The film was certainly a deserving hit, and it later won for Best Picture at the Academy Awards the following year, beating out such films like A Letter to Three Wives (which won director-writer Joseph L. Mankiewicz awards over Rossen for directing and writing) for the main prize alongside Crawford and McCambridge. On the whole, this is a film that has plenty of blunt force in terms of what it wants to say about the nature of power and how one can find themselves ensnared in the same traps they held others to if they reach that point, headlined by Crawford and his domineering presence that makes this a fair one to recommend.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

And now, the list for next month. Several faces join the crowd for the 1950s, a mix of directors and stars that have either been covered before or haven't before, complete with a rollout of world cinema debuts.