I can't agree with those who rate this as one of those "so bad it's good" movies of its era, like Valley of the Dolls, Poseidon Adventure, Airport, etc. As trashy as they were, one thing those films were not: boring. Indeed, the very melodrama and bravura over-acting that made them trashy also made then compulsively watchable. But The Adventurers is very, very boring.
Nothing coheres. There seem to be at least three movies being made at once. There's the story of revolution and politics in the fictional Latin American country of Corteguay, which is competently filmed (big battle scenes, crowd scenes, etc.) but not very compelling.
Then there's the "racy" melodrama of Dax's days as a gigolo in Rome and his marriages to rich women; this part is really dull. The actors seem to be sleepwalking through their scenes (granted, the script gives them little to do); the result is neither trashy nor soapy, just shrug-worthy. We don't even get a scenery-chewing performance out of Olivia De Havilland, which should have been a given.
And then there are two scenes that seem to have wandered into this movie from some other sound stage at Cinecitta, the fashion show-a-go-go in the second half, and the bizarre torture chamber concealed in Dax's Manhattan apartment. Those scenes feature wild, over-the-top production design, but they go nowhere and don't fit with the rest of the film at all. (Mario Bava could have built a whole movie around that "groovy" torture chamber, and it would have been a hundred times more interesting than The Adventurers.)
This movie is just a long, boring misfire.
Nothing coheres. There seem to be at least three movies being made at once. There's the story of revolution and politics in the fictional Latin American country of Corteguay, which is competently filmed (big battle scenes, crowd scenes, etc.) but not very compelling.
Then there's the "racy" melodrama of Dax's days as a gigolo in Rome and his marriages to rich women; this part is really dull. The actors seem to be sleepwalking through their scenes (granted, the script gives them little to do); the result is neither trashy nor soapy, just shrug-worthy. We don't even get a scenery-chewing performance out of Olivia De Havilland, which should have been a given.
And then there are two scenes that seem to have wandered into this movie from some other sound stage at Cinecitta, the fashion show-a-go-go in the second half, and the bizarre torture chamber concealed in Dax's Manhattan apartment. Those scenes feature wild, over-the-top production design, but they go nowhere and don't fit with the rest of the film at all. (Mario Bava could have built a whole movie around that "groovy" torture chamber, and it would have been a hundred times more interesting than The Adventurers.)
This movie is just a long, boring misfire.