''Bolero'' is a 1984 American romantic drama film written and directed by
John Derek
John Derek (born Derek Delevan Harris; August 12, 1926 – May 22, 1998) was an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer and photographer.Bo Derek. The film centers on the protagonist's sexual awakening and her journey around the world to pursue an ideal first lover who will take her virginity.
A box office flop, the film was critically panned, earning nominations for nine Golden Raspberry Awards at the
5th Golden Raspberry Awards
The 5th Golden Raspberry Awards were held on March 24, 1985, at Vine Street Elementary School in Hollywood, California, to recognize the worst the movie industry had to offer in 1984. Classic German silent film ''Metropolis'' was nominated for tw ...
and "winning" six, including the Worst Picture. It won the CVF Awards for "Worst Picture" (Golan-Globus), "Worst Actress" (Bo Derek), "Worst Actor" (George Kennedy), "Worst Supporting Actress" (Andrea Occhipinti), "Worst Director" (John Derek), "Worst Screenplay" (John Derek)", and "Worst Musical Score" (Peter and Elmer Bernstein).
Plot
Set in the 1920s, Ayre "Mac" MacGillvary is a virginal 23-year-old young American who graduates from an exclusive British college. An orphan heiress to a vast fortune, Ayre is determined to find the right man for her first sexual encounter wherever he might be in the world. Rich enough not to venture forth alone, she brings along her best friend Catalina and the family chauffeur Cotton.
Ayre first travels to Morocco where she meets an ideal lover, an Arab sheik who offers to deflower her. He takes her away in his private airplane to an oasis in the desert, but during foreplay, while rubbing her nude body with honey, he falls asleep almost immediately. Giving up on the sheik, Ayre goes on to Spain, where she meets the toreador Angel, and sets out to seduce him. Into this group comes Paloma, a 14-year-old local Gypsy girl whom Ayre and Catalina take under their wing. A minor subplot involves Catalina meeting and pursuing Ayre's lawyer, Robert Stewart, a kilt-wearing Scotsman whom Catalina chooses to deflower her.
After several days of courtship and flirting, Angel makes love to Ayre one morning and he manages to stay awake. Unfortunately, after Ayre has succeeded in her quest to lose her virginity, Angel is gored while bullfighting the next day.
The injury leaves Angel unable to perform in the bedroom, and so Ayre makes it her mission in life to see to his recovery. Along the way, she takes up bullfighting herself as a way of getting her despondent lover motivated to stop moping. During this, the Arab sheik flies to Spain to abduct Ayre, but she manages to convince him that she has already lost her virginity and he lets her go.
Eventually, Ayre is successful in aiding Angel to full recovery which leads to a climactic lovemaking session between them. Finally, Ayre and Angel get married at a local church.
George Kennedy
George Harris Kennedy Jr. (February 18, 1925 – February 28, 2016) was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 film and television productions. He played "Dragline" opposite Paul Newman in ''Cool Hand Luke'' (1967), winning the Academ ...
Mirta Miller
Mirta Miller (born 16 August 1948) is an Argentine film actress. She has appeared in more than 65 films since 1961. She was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Selected filmography
* ''No Exit'' (1962)
* ''Una chica casi decente'' (1971)
* '' Dr. ...
as Evita
*
Mickey Knox
Abraham Knox (December 24, 1921 − November 15, 2013) was an American actor with nearly 80 films to his credit. Knox was also a screenwriter, film producer, and novelist. Knox was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and he subsequently moved to ...
as Sleazy Moroccan guide
* Paul Stacey as Young Valentino #1
* James Stacey as Young Valentino #2
Menahem Golan
Menahem Golan ( he, מנחם גולן; May 31, 1929 – August 8, 2014, originally Menachem Globus) was an Israeli film producer, screenwriter, and director. He was best known for co-owning The Cannon Group with his cousin Yoram Globus. Cannon sp ...
urged the Dereks to make the sex scenes more explicit, despite the pair's objections that the scenes were strong enough. The film was to be distributed by
MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded on April 17, 1924 a ...
as part of an ongoing deal with Cannon, and Bo Derek screened the film for MGM's then-CEO
Frank Yablans
Frank Yablans (August 27, 1935 – November 27, 2014) was an American studio executive, film producer, and screenwriter. Yablans served as an executive at Paramount Pictures, including President of the studio, in the 1960s and 70s. As a filmmaker, ...
, hoping that he would intervene with Golan on the matter of the erotic content. Yablans disliked the film as much as all the other films Cannon was delivering to MGM.Hartley, Mark (2014). '' Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films'' (Motion Picture).
RatPac-Dune Entertainment
RatPac Entertainment (also known as RatPac-Dune Entertainment, a co-financing agreement it was part of) was an American motion picture production company owned by producer-director Brett Ratner. RatPac was founded by Ratner and billionaire James ...
.
When the producers refused to cut the film to avoid an
X rating
An X rating is a rating used in various countries to classify films that have content deemed suitable only for adults. It is used when the violent or sexual content of a film is considered to be potentially disturbing to general audiences.
Aust ...
by the
MPAA
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the five major film studios of the United States, as well as the video streaming service Netflix. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distribu ...
, MGM dropped the film due to standards policies and Cannon released ''Bolero'' themselves.Haller, Scot (September 3, 1984) "With the Help of Her Husband, Bo Derek Beds Down in a New Role: Madame X." ''People'' (Vol. 22, No. 10). The quality of ''Bolero'' and the other Cannon/MGM films led to Yablans using a
breach of contract
Breach of contract is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other party ...
clause to terminate the distribution deal with Cannon in November 1984. ''Bolero'' was ultimately released with no MPAA rating, with a disclaimer on ads that no children under 17 would be admitted to the film. Despite this, many theater chains that normally refused to screen X-rated films did the same for ''Bolero''.
The film is officially on DVD with an "R" rating with no cuts.
Olivia d'Abo, who had a nude scene, was 14 during filming. "I matured physically at 13. When I did 'Bolero' with Bo and John Derek, John thought I had implants. But I know I look young and innocent, which helps me get roles," she said.
Reception
Box office
The film earned about $8.9 million in American ticket sales against a $7 million production budget.
Critical response
The
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
average rating
In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...
of 1.43/10. The website's consensus reads, "''Bolero'' combines a ludicrous storyline and wildly mismatched cast in its desperate attempts to titillate, but only succeeds in arousing boredom".
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
reports a score of 13/100 based on nine critics, indicating "overwhelming dislike".
Audiences polled by
CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.
Background
Ed Mintz founded Ci ...
gave ''Bolero'' a rare grade of "F" on an A+ to F scale, making it the first of only 22 films that are known to have received this grade.
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
of the
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
gave the film 0.5 out of 4 stars, writing: "The real future of ''Bolero'' is in home cassette rentals, where your fast forward and instant replay controls will supply the editing job the movie so desperately needs". David Robinson of ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' said that the story was "the authentic stuff of mild pornography", and wrote that the film's climax "No doubt ... distracted the writer-director from the dialogue, which is in every sense unspeakable." David Richards of ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' wrote: "Bad as ''Bolero'' is, it is unfortunately not bad enough. Seekers of inadvertent high-camp hilarity will be as let down as those who are suckered in by the promise of Bo's golden flesh". Janet Maslin of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote that the plot "sounds like that of a straight porn film, which is what ''Bolero'' would have become with anyone other than John Derek directing", and criticized the dialogue as "tending to sound like very bad pulp romance". David Sterritt of ''
The Christian Science Monitor
''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...
'' wrote: "This tedious romance ... is a strong candidate for worst picture of the year".
It was nominated for nine Golden Raspberry Awards and won six, including "Worst Picture", "Worst Actress," "Worst Director", and "Worst Screenplay". In 1990, the film was nominated for the Razzie Award for "Worst Picture of the Decade", but lost to '' Mommie Dearest''. Also in 1984, the film was nominated for a Stinkers Bad Movie Awards for Worst Picture.
Home media
In 1985, U.S.A. Home Video released ''Bolero'' in both Unrated and R-Rated versions to the video rental marketplace. In 2005, MGM Home Entertainment released ''Bolero'' on DVD, after the rights to the majority of Cannon Film productions reverted to MGM.