Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The justification for making this movie, I'm convinced, was John Derek's need to show off just how hot the woman he came home to was, while cashing in on her international fame. In today's world, they simply would have put a sex tape on the internet. To be fair, Bo was pretty hot and more interesting on screen than say, Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton. Nonetheless, this movie fails spectacularly as cinema, but has something of a legacy as having pushed then-acceptable boundaries of celebrity exhibitionism. The initial theatrical release of the picture was held up while the MPAA rating board squabbled with the studio (MGM) over cuts. Eventually it was released in an 'unrated' version which looked pretty racy at the time, although it would be routine now on Cinemax late at night. The set decoration is quite sumptuous in a Playboy pictorial sort of way and that's where the money got spent. The script is an embarrassment, full of throwaway nonsense about 1920's libertinism, as the Valentino-obsessed main character goes looking (very slowly) for first a Sheikh and then a matador to fulfil her romantic needs. That's the whole story and pretty thin it is even for a sex film. Not the worst movie ever, but pretty bad overall and excruciating to sit through unless you're a Bo fan. I was.

Bolero (1984)1/2 (out of 4)After years of being stuck at a strict boarding school, virgin Lida (Bo Derek) breaks free and plans on meeting a shriek who will take her sexual gift. After that doesn't happen she heads off to Spain to try and bed a bullfighter. This notorious disaster is a complete mess of a movie that is so painful to watch that I'm sure many would be willing to jam knives into their eyes. The only reason no one would actually go this far is because of Derek and her beautiful, often naked body. There's no question she's a beautiful women and her husband, director John, loves showing her off. I've always been curious if he was just wanting to make money or if he had some sexual thing about seeing her with other men. The one thing this film has going for it is that a couple of the sex scenes are highly erotic. Outside of that the movie is pretty dreadful from start to finish. The 105-minute running time is very hard to sit through and there's no doubt that the fast-forward button was invented for movies like this. One of the biggest problems is that the film, much like the Derek's previous film TARZAN THE APE MAN, just keeps going and going and going without any real reason. I'm still not sure why on Earth either film had to run as long as they did and this one here is just one boring situation after another. We see Bo and her friend (Andrea Occhipinti) constantly talking about what they'd "like" to do yet we rarely see it. We have George Kennedy cashing a paycheck and looking incredibly lost as the chauffeur. The supporting cast also includes 15-year-old Olivia d'Abo playing a gypsy pretty well but I doubt many will be prepared for her full nude scenes where it's obviously here and no double being used. The biggest fault of this film is just how poorly made it is and the spotlight has to be shined on John Derek. He certainly had the money to create good movies but why he chose the scripts he did and why he decided to direct them is beyond me, there's no doubt that his wife was hot but sitting through the movies are a pretty rough job to matter how beautiful she is. How much pain one can put up with for the sake of beauty is certainly on full display here.

Bo Derek and her friend, 'Catalina' (Ana Obregon) have just graduated and now they want to lose their virginity - preferably to a sheik - but they'll settle for a bullfighter and a Scotsman, respectively.The two pretty girls go to Spain to satisfy their goal accompanied by Bo's chauffeur 'Cotton' (George Kennedy). Bo tries to corral her bullfighter (Andrea Occhipinti) while fending off a jealous woman and a wild bull as Catalina is romanced by her handsome Scotsman (Ian Cochrane).Bo produced this passionately sexy film and her husband John Derek's direction is erotically beautiful.

The sad part -- provided it really matters two decades on for such a dud of a movie -- is that under different circumstances this could have been a perfectly sprightly "B" sex comedy. George Kennedy did a workmanlike job as the chauffeur, while Ana Obregon was perfectly charming in her only English-language role as Derek's sidekick and school chum. Much worse scripts in the hands of better directors and leads have produced decent movies, and movies twice as sophomoric have been box office hits.Unfortunately, John Derek wanted to showcase the silicon- and plastic surgery-enhanced charms of his bride Bo, and that sabotaged the movie right there. Now Bo Derek is not completely without talent -- try cantering a horse naked and bareback sometime -- and she might be a heck of a swell person, but act she cannot, and her range runs from wooden smile to wooden frown, quite aside from that she looked far too old to play a schoolgirl (unlike Obregon, ironically, who is a year older than Derek). She likewise projects the eroticism of a turnip, and her sex scenes are among the dullest ever filmed. We'll leave aside the kiddie porn moment of 14-year-old Olivia D'Abo in multiple nude scenes.With a different lead, with a director less hellbent on making his wife A! Great! Star!, Bolero might have had a chance.3/10.