Hilarious mess based on a Harold Robbins novel. It starts in 1945 in the (fictional) South American city of Corteguay. A young boy named Dax sees his dog shot dead in front of him. Then he sees his mother stabbed to death and his sister raped and murdered. He then shoots to death several men responsible. He goes to another place and everybody there gets murdered too! This is all in the first 20 minutes--and the film runs three hours! Eventually Dax escapes to Rome with his father. He grows up and is played by that international star (cough cough) Bekim Fehmiu. The rest of the film follows him through his life and his frequent sexual couplings and desire to help Corteguay.
Wow--what a disaster! To say this is bad is putting it mildly. It's incredibly stupid but keeps throwing in so much sex, nudity and violence that you're never bored. Some of the things here are so badly done they boggle the mind. At one point Dax is romancing a young woman (Candice Bergen looking so young and beautiful) but the montage of the two of them falling in love is so clichéd it's hilarious. Then there's the scene where they first make love--with actual fireworks bursting overhead! There's a hospital scene between the two of them that was so stupid I actually laughed out loud! There's a fashion show about two hours in that's a real eye popper. Most of the dialogue sounds (and looks) badly overdubbed. Old pros Ernest Borgnine, John Ireland and Olivia deHavilland are shamefully wasted but still manage to give good performances despite the script. Leading man Fehmiu is (to put it mildly) a bad actor. He's totally expressionless throughout the whole movie. He's also ugly and not in good shape at all.
There are a few good things about this movie. The location shooting in Rome and South America is just great--there's some beautiful locations and cinematography here. Fehmiu aside everyone else gives pretty good performances. There's also some cool battle sequences too. As a serious movie this is a disaster. But, as camp, it's a laugh a minute! This was originally R rated mostly for the frequent female nudity. It was reissued a few years after its initial release and was cut to get a PG. The DVD says it's the PG version but it's not. The PG version runs 170 minutes--the R rated runs 177 minutes and that's the one on the DVD. Worth catching for laughs.
Wow--what a disaster! To say this is bad is putting it mildly. It's incredibly stupid but keeps throwing in so much sex, nudity and violence that you're never bored. Some of the things here are so badly done they boggle the mind. At one point Dax is romancing a young woman (Candice Bergen looking so young and beautiful) but the montage of the two of them falling in love is so clichéd it's hilarious. Then there's the scene where they first make love--with actual fireworks bursting overhead! There's a hospital scene between the two of them that was so stupid I actually laughed out loud! There's a fashion show about two hours in that's a real eye popper. Most of the dialogue sounds (and looks) badly overdubbed. Old pros Ernest Borgnine, John Ireland and Olivia deHavilland are shamefully wasted but still manage to give good performances despite the script. Leading man Fehmiu is (to put it mildly) a bad actor. He's totally expressionless throughout the whole movie. He's also ugly and not in good shape at all.
There are a few good things about this movie. The location shooting in Rome and South America is just great--there's some beautiful locations and cinematography here. Fehmiu aside everyone else gives pretty good performances. There's also some cool battle sequences too. As a serious movie this is a disaster. But, as camp, it's a laugh a minute! This was originally R rated mostly for the frequent female nudity. It was reissued a few years after its initial release and was cut to get a PG. The DVD says it's the PG version but it's not. The PG version runs 170 minutes--the R rated runs 177 minutes and that's the one on the DVD. Worth catching for laughs.