Jamie
There are times in BMT where we need to sit down and eat our broccoli. You’d think that would mean watching films that are kind of good (aren’t we aiming to watch the worst of the worst?) but really it’s the very bad films that aren’t just subjectively bad… but like… actually bad. Maybe they star Bill Cosby. Or perhaps they are spoof films (and not one of the few good ones). There are numerous flavors to these objectionable films and Bolero is one such film. Long considered one of the worst films of all time, you would think this would be primo, day-one type stuff for BMT. But like Blame it on Rio, it has a fatal flaw… it is gross. Like dirty old men ogling young women kind of gross. So we delayed, delayed, delayed. But you can only delay so long when a film is considered this bad. So here we are. Buckle up.
Bo Derek is a young woman just graduated from a prestigious college and thus able to inherit her considerable fortune. Now free to live as she wishes, she sets off with her best friend Catalina and her chauffeur Cotton to see the world (oh, that’s nice) and find a handsome rich man to give away her virginity to (uh oh). They first head off to Morocco where she meets a sheik, who seems like a nice candidate. However, just before they make love he overindulges and falls asleep. Immensely disappointed in the misadventure she insists they head to Spain. There she sees a handsome toreador, Angel, and decides he is an even better candidate. He has a GF and it’s implied he kind of sucks (and by that, I mean he’s kinda sorta maybe a bit of a sex criminal), but Bo Derek doesn’t care. She’s like ‘get outta my way’ and really very easily seduces him. Shortly thereafter, though, he is gored by a bull and to put it in medical terms: his dick broke. This broken dick situation is a real buzz kill for Bo Derek so she decides she gotta turn up the heat and fix his dick. This oddly involves her basically taking on his role in the relationship and becoming a toreador herself. Unsurprisingly, a bunch of this stuff doesn’t work cause it’s decidedly not sexy. After foiling the sheik’s attempt to kidnap her away from Angel, she returns and finally gets his mojo back. With his dick ailment cured, Angels and Bo Derek get married and that’s sweet as long as you don’t think about any of the other stuff in the movie. THE END.
This wasn’t nearly as unseemly as I thought it might be. Some aspects of the story definitely should be removed and never discussed again (looking at you, Paloma), but at its core the film is more about love than sex… and that’s not something I expected. The most unseemly aspect of the primary story is mostly that the sex scenes seem extraneous, which makes you think they were inserted for a particular, gross purpose. Which they were. Despite this, the film is quite bad. It’s boring and mostly just weird in how it presents the story to the audience. I like the supporting actors, but Bo Derek is not good. Basically whatever the Derek’s were up to wasn’t working, but the other non-Derek parts of the film were surprisingly fine. As for The Terror Within, I was impressed with how hard they tried in the end. The monster effects were pretty poor, which I would think would make it hard for the actors to take the film seriously, but they did. Kudos to them. That’s about all I can say though. Everything about it was mediocre to poor and there is only so much of that I can take before I lose interest.
Hot Take Clam Bake! I bet Angel’s dick worked the whole time. Literally Angel is mostly OK after the goring incident except these doctors specifically are like “his dick might not work.” You’re saying everything is working fine except just his dick. Just that one part of his body that also happens to be the plot of this film? How convenient. I bet the doctors were like “you gotta take it easy while you’re recovering.” and he was like “yo, docs, I got this lady and I can’t keep her off me… how about you just tell her my dick doesn’t work” and they were probably like good idea. But after they did that Bo Derek started doing all kinds of crazy stuff she thought was sexy (but he wasn’t into) like smoking cigars and battling bulls and he was so turned off that his dick started actually not working for non-medical reasons. It was an uphill battle from there. This is all leading to my spinoff film, Angel’s Dick: If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It. Hot Take Temperature: Desert Heat.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Bolero? More like Boler-oh-shit-this-movie-sucks! Amirite? There are a million things wrong about this movie, and most of them involve people behind the scenes being perverts. Let’s go!
- This is a movie we had to do for BMT, because it is considered to genuinely be one of the worst films ever made.
- At the same time this film is made by a director who twice divorced his wife to trade up for an underage (at least Bo Derek was) new wife. It is insanely gross. Both times the rumor seems to be that people surrounding John Derek were like “I’m going to call the cops if you do this” and then he went to Germany or Mexico to evade potential prosecution. Allegedly I guess. I’m just mostly repeating what I read on IMDb, you can read all about it there.
- This film had producers who were like “John … John, listen. We need it to be more erotic. I know it is already X rated and your wife has sex scenes so insane that people are thinking they are unsimulated, but for real, we need it more erotic to really get people’s engines going.” Apparently he said no, but you can hardly tell, the movie is mostly sex scenes.
- And the kicker? There are nude scenes involving a genuine 14 year old. What the fuck? How is this legal to watch in America? How did I watch this on a streaming service legally? You’ve soiled my brain John Derek goddamn you! At least Olivia d’Abo seems fairly open about the production and being seemingly completely on board with it.
- Ana Obregón is funny and fun in the movie. To some degree so is George Kennedy. And once they get past the initial “I want to lose my virginity to a Sheik” storyline the idea of this horse riding savant falling in love with an unconventional bullfighter and nursing him back to health works to some degree at least.
- Good Setting as a Character for Spain (Where?) for the bulk of the film. That’s about it. The film is closest to Bad, it is boring and disgusting once you think about all the shit that went into the production.
- We decided to bring along one of George Kennedy’s 80s creature features The Terror Within. Honestly, also a pretty gross film. The creature feature aspect is interesting, and the actors are very into it. The monster looks like shit, but overall the effects and the set design are decent enough to be entertaining. The problem is there is a huge underlying storyline involving the monster specifically seeking out, kidnapping, and raping women, and then this demon seed maturing and becoming a monster in a matter of hours. You know … the terror within. This feels like the hook for an early 80s Stephen King book where you’d shake your head and wonder exactly how much cocaine he was doing at the time. In a movie it ends up making it less palatable and grimier than I would have liked. D I think, I wouldn’t ultimately recommend it to anyone because I wouldn’t be sure if they would really enjoy it.
Man, what a downer of a review. But you can check out the sequel Bolero 2: Toro Enojado. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 