Unlike many Bo Derek classics, John Derek didn’t direct this one, but it’s just as bad as his (4.1 at IMDb). Screen icon Bob Mitchum was 76 years old in this film, and he must have really needed a paycheck to appear in crap like this, or perhaps he just wanted a trip to Capetown, where filming took place.
This was directed and co-written by Robert Ginty, who was best known for acting and for directing TV projects. He only directed three non-TV films, all rated below 5.0, and this was the last one.
As bad as the film is, it’s not difficult to watch Bo Derek naked. Aesthete just did some new videos from a 1080hd open-matte version of this movie!
Here are Aesthete’s sample captures
And here are the vintage DVD captures from Tuna.
Always a pleasure to see the original “10” at work.
I see she’s using the classic John Derek pose known as the “suck in your stomach so you can’t breathe but your lower ribcage is clearly defined.”
(see also Andress, Ursula and Evans, Linda)
Bo Derek began dating John Derek when she was 16 years old and he was 46.
They had to relocate to Germany to avoid John being arrested for statutory rape under penal code.
California penal code.
I’m trying to think if there’s been another star quite like Bo Derek, who achieved a massive level of public awareness, but their whole career was essentially soft-core?
Not her WHOLE career. She also played “girl who gets her leg bitten off” in 1977’s “Orca,” a JAWS rip-off starring Richard Harris.
Every time I see anything about Bo Derek, I immediately think back to that story of you sitting next to her on a plane flight. I always just find that story so amazing.
Just by the simple act of saying “hi” in the hotel breakfast room, she made me a legend in Peru. I believe troubadours still roam the countryside, singing ballads of El Marques de los Grifos.
OK, maybe I’m exaggerating its importance.
Of course, it was not anything more that the serendipitous coincidence that I sat next to her on the plane, and happened to be staying in the same hotel. It’s only memorable because I was just another corporate dipshit, and she was the “10.”
Surprisingly unsexy despite being naked all the time, but still the standard for a naked 10…. at least of my generation. The younger generation seems to go for that giant back porch more.
I agree. Bo Derek was supposed to be the “10” for teenage boys of my generation, but somehow I never found her to be all that sexy. She had a great body, to be sure, and striking facial features, but really did not have the vibe of a woman it would be fun to spend very much time with.
I second that. I didn’t even find her sexy in “10”, when her image was being drilled into everyone’s head culturally that we *should* find her sexy. She appeared in mostly awful sex schlock, was nude all the time, was a lousy actress, didn’t have compelling screen presence, projected very little (if any) intelligence, and seemed to be some kind of willing slave to creepy John Derek in a weird way.
I felt almost exactly the same about Tanya Roberts. Both were really just fodder for mags like Celebrity Sleuth to fill their pages with. They had to run more than just repeats of Angie in Big Bad Mama, Ursula in the Sensuous Nurse, Stefanie in Crescendo, and Lynda’s left tit in Bobbie Jo.
I forgot Patti D’Arbanville, whose roles in garbage like Bilitis always got her in those celeb nudie mags as a standard go-to, to fill pages.
I used to love Siskel & Ebert’s reviews when a new Bo film came out. They viewed her so laughably that I don’t believe they ever bothered to pick her movies as worst of the year, though Tarzan or Ghosts Can’t Do It might’ve come close. She was like a comedy figure to them, worth a brief chuckle and blown off. I miss those guys.
The keys to her success: great cheekbones, minuscule waist, great marketing.
She was fortunate enough that “10” became part of the zeitgeist. The film and its campaign sold her as the dream woman, then both John Derek and Hugh Hefner capitalized on that image by marketing the hell out of her.
Can we say that any woman who got that part would have become iconic? Maybe not. She did have a presence.
But I think we can say that Bo would not have become iconic without that movie.
Was she truly exceptional? Perhaps, perhaps not, but the world was hypnotized into believing that she was.
Thing is, though, Julie Andrews would have been a billion times more interesting to hang with.
Ol’ Dudley seemed to understand that by the end of the film.
The point, though, it that he was having a midlife crisis. When men try to capture what they missed in their youth, they don’t think of the warm companionship of a woman their own age. That just reminds them that they are no longer young. I can remember all the times when I was in my 40s when I ditched smart, reasonably attractive, older women, Marcia Gay Harden types who started conversations with me, to chat up a woman that looked like young Anna Kournikova. It was not the smart play, and I knew that, and yet …
Just for kicks, I gave a few minutes contemplation to actresses from Bo Derek’s era that I found sexier – MUCH sexier (i.e., much closer to an actual “10” for me) – than her:
Phoebe Cates
Kim Basinger
Kelly Preston
Sigourney Weaver
Michelle Pfeiffer
Molly Ringwald
Alyssa Milano
Annette Bening
Jennifer Connelly.
Monica Bellucci
Isabella Rossellini
And that is just a very quick partial list – I am sure that I am missing quite a few. And that list is personal to me – we all have our own favourites to be sure.
my adds would be Alicia Silverstone (short plaid skirts!) and Geena Davis ( the voice and the bikini in Earth Girls are Easy)
Rossellini had more talent than most of the rest, and intelligence, and courage. She went all out in Blue Velvet. Dennis Hopper’s very first day on the set was a sex scene with her, and they’d never met before. Lynch told her she needed to be fully naked, so she pulled off her panties and gave Hopper a full open view of her neener. And you can tell he’s enjoying it in that scene. He never takes his eyes off it.
Ebert was angry that she was ‘forced’ to be nude and famously trashed the film & Lynch for the rest of his life. When Siskel pointed out that the actress had willingly agreed to be nude, it didn’t matter. Ebert’s only point was that it must’ve been embarrassing for her, for the sole reason that Lynch wanted to involve her in his sick fantasies. Bizarre take on it from a respected critic like Roger.
And btw, Preston’s nude scene in Mischief is one of the hottest ever. That woman had a knockout body at the time, far sexier than Bo’s imho.
I remember this movie back in the day. I used to jack off to Bo Derek as a teen in the 1990s. She was quite hot although not very smart. I think she works best when she’s not being directed by her no-talent husband John who can take a good naked picture but can’t direct for shit.
BTW, Steven Bauer is 69 years old right now and he’s dating an 18-year-old. What the fuck? That is just wrong.