by Ryan Lewellen
Do yourself a favor and check out Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story Of Cannon Films. Mark Hartley’s swift documentary on the outrageous production partners, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, is the kind of film that reminds you why you love film. Film for film’s sake, good or bad, any movie, is movie enough for a real film nerd, and it was their volatile love of cinema which birthed such incendiary works as the latter four Deathwish episodes, The Apple, and Masters Of The Universe, just to name a small handful. You’ll need an art-affirming doc like Boogaloo after you see a couple of the most bonkers sexploitation films ever created, now available on a double feature Blu-ray from Shout Factory. The unbridled desires of Golan and Globus did result in the baffling, but watchable Bolero, but they had no part in the second film offered on this disc. There is just no explanation, or excuse, for Ghosts Can’t Do It.
John Derek was once a reputable actor in Hollywood’s classical era. He starred in The Ten Commandments and All The King’s Men, but he grew daunted by his acting career as time went on. He took up directing, and in the 80s, launched the career of his latest wife, Bo Derek. Together, they created a series of mostly incompetent, and completely bizarre erotic comedies. They drew the ire of Edgar Rice Burroughs, for example, when they took a big, sexy dump on Tarzan, The Ape Man. Only three years later, thanks to the pushy and generous bankroll of Cannon Films, they created what I can only assume was their magnum opus, Bolero.
Ayre “Mac” McGilvary (Bo Derek) is a fresh-out-of-girl’s-school, ultra-wealthy ingénue who sets out on an international quest to lose her virginity in the most unreal, exotic way possible. First she happens upon the whitest Sheik you’ve never imagined, who passes out before they can do the deed, but after he has already drenched her with honey. Then, she successfully makes it with a Rejoneador (a be-horseback’d bullfighter played by Andrea Occhipinti), but just a few days later, he is crotch-gored, and no longer able to perform what is apparently the single most important duty in a relationship. I suppose that logic is fair in this romance, since fucking is the entire basis for their having one. So, Mac sets out to “get that thing working again” by any means necessary, which in this case, means becoming a Rejoneador, herself.
Any of that make sense to you? Don’t worry, it didn’t make sense to me, either. This movie plays with a sort of frustrating wet-dream logic. The scenes often feel disconnected, and maybe even unplanned. That could be interesting and intimate, but not one gorgeous actor in this gorgeous cast seems to know what is happening or how to improvise, and yet, with stunning confidence, they wander through this nonsense like it’s the strongest script they’ve ever read. The dialogue sounds like it was run through a crashing Japanese-to-English translator, and if that didn’t make things goofy enough, everything in this film is painfully creepy. Mac’s chauffeur (George Kennedy on a serious career low) has apparently known her all her life, and is introduced in a conversation with a nude Derek about how much her body has changed since she was a child. The only aspect more squirm-inducing than that is the camera’s obsession with Olivia D’Abo’s then-fifteen-year-old nude body (not to mention her being cast a “Gypsy” concubine). That, or the sci-fi inspired costuming which suggests the entire production’s extreme lack of cultural understanding.
Inspite of, or (thanks to) it all, Bolero is the kind of cinematic outrage you really ought to see when you need your brain blown. Besides, any Cannon Films completist has to see it for the Golan/Globus connection. However, the title alone should drive anyone away from the final Derek/Derek collaboration: Ghosts Can’t Do It. Just give yourself a moment to let those words sink in.
Good? This time, Bo is left to grieve after her heart-diseased, super-rich husband (Anthony Quinn, somehow) commits suicide (again, a motivation based on the inability to screw). Fortunately, Quinn is given an opportunity to come back, semi-guided by a creepy guardian angel (eerily embodied by Julie Newmar). Speaking to her from beyond, he sends his equally bewildered and reinvigorated widow on a quest to find the perfect body for his return. There are some weak subplots involving a white voodoo priestess, a jewel thief, a romance between the widow and a former business associate of Anthony Quinn’s character, a corrupt mayor, and keeping the corporate wolves away from her late husband’s empire (scenes involving Donald Trump playing himself), but almost none of that matters. After watching this film, one has to wonder if anything matters.
GHOSTS dominated the 1989 razzies, and for good reason. Nothing in this movie works. The acting is atrocious, the screenplay is unfocused and insane, the shooting is bland and ugly, the editing is terrible, the sound mixing is noticeably careless (I can’t think of another time I made that observation), the jokes land harder than The Hindenburg, and despite the frequent lack of clothing on its star heroin, even a straight guy (take it from me) could be bored watching this dull and pointless, slightly erotic ripoff of countless similar (and superior) tales. Use the 90 minutes this movie requires to do… just about anything else.
