Amour fantôme

Well, I watched the whole movie over a 4 day period. This movie cant hold my attention. No matter how beautiful Bo Derek is, this movie DID NOT WORK... I dont even get it?? I was totally confused, the plot was terrible, as was the acting, and Quinn as Dereks husband??? I cant understand the age difference... At least in rel life, John was a decent looking guy... Quinn was not. This movie was terrible, I place it on the bottom with Myra Breckinridge... I did nothing for me (except seeing Bo dance around the beach naked talking to the clouds... that was interesting... Seeing Bo can usually capture my attention and keep me into as movie "Change of Seasons" and "10" were both good, but this once flopped...

Scott (Anthony Quinn) and Katie (Bo Derek) are happily married living on a remote ranch. Scott suffers a heart attack and cannot get it up anymore. In despair, he commits suicide by gunshot. He finds himself in an empty purgatory and able to communicate only with Katie. They work for him to possess men who have sex with her.

This deserves every Golden Razzie it won. The only shame of this is that it taints the legacy of Anthony Quinn by turning him into a talking floating head. He's not romantic. He comes off as a sex-obsessed controlling dirty old man. Bo Derek is never a good actress. This one has walking around talking to herself. She makes her naked body less attractive. I imagine this is what real life with the Dereks look like. It's a lot bickering where sex is reduced to an ugly transaction. This is simply the worst.

Ghosts Can't Do It (1989)

BOMB (out of 4)

Director-writer John Derek and wife Bo made a total of four films together starting with FANTASIES and then moving onto TARZAN THE APE MAN and BOLERO. All three movies were pretty bad but nothing in them was bad enough to prepare for you how downright awful their fourth and final film was. In the film, Bo plays a young woman married to a much older man (Anthony Quinn) who ends up killing himself. The old man's spirit sticks around to have conversations with his woman and soon the two of them decide it's best for his spirit to enter a younger man so that they can have sex again. GHOSTS CAN'T DO IT is without question one of the worst films I've ever seen and especially one of the worst romances I've seen. I really would have loved to have been a fly on the wall whenever the Derek's were discussing the films that they should make. There's no question that John loved his wife and was proud of her body and thankfully he wasn't a prude about showing it off. Bo has always been an amazingly beautiful woman and that's true here as she has several scenes where she's totally naked. Without this cheap nudity the film would be completely horrible so at least John was smart enough to add nude scenes but this could be said for all four of their films. As for acting, I've never quite found Bo to be as bad as many others but there's still no question she doesn't give that much of a performance here. Quinn basically stands around behind some filter meant to make him look like his in another world. His performance is pretty campy and over-the-top. Vets Don Murray and Julie Newmar also appear but add very little. Again, I'm really not sure what John Derek was trying to do here unless he was really preparing his wife for his own death since he was much older. Perhaps this was just some sort of perverted fantasy that he had about dying himself. I'm not sure what the goal was but the end result is just a complete disaster that's certainly not romantic, never funny and just a real painful experience to try and make it through.

"Ghosts Can't Do It" has the distinction of winning the Razzie Award for the Worst Picture of 1990. This isn't surprising, as Bo Derek has won three Razzies for Worst Actress (including one for this film). For this reason, I decided to watch this movie.

When the story begins, Kate (Derek) and Scott (Anthony Quinn) are desperately in love despite the huge age difference between them. However, when Scott has a heart attack and is unable to make love to her, he takes his own life. Out of the blue, however, he's magically able to talk with Kate and carries on a detached relationship with her. As for the audience, they can also hear him and see his giant head floating on the screen...an odd effect to say the least.

Because Scott and Katie cannot touch each other, Scott devises a plan. Despite having no assurance whatsoever that it will work, he wants Katie to make love to other guys so he can inhabit their bodies and experience her. Later, he even suggests they arrange for a studly guy to die so Scott can take over his body...and the duo can live happily ever after.

The plot is silly and it seems like it's all just an excuse for Derek to take off her clothes again and again. While she is not much of an actress, she at least handled the nude bits well...and the film is sort of like a soft core porno film with too much story.

So is it any good? Certainly not. It's an embarrassing role for Quinn...he is capable of doing better and you wonder WHY he accepted this role. The same can be said for veteran actor Don Murray. I assume both must have needed the money. The plot is stupid, the dialog is even stupider and Derek, though gorgeous, brings nothing more to the movie. A silly, misguided movie.

"Ghost" did this kind of story better.

Of course, comparing "Ghost" to "Ghosts Can't Do It" is like comparing a banquet line to a compost heap.

As much as I like a good Bo Derek nude scene (for all the umpteen times I've seen them), here they're all just so... and I can't believe I'm saying this... BORING.

Yes, you heard me.

She gets naked, yes. She dances seductively in what John Derek must have thought was a clever variation on the same type of dance scene in "Flashdance". She strips down to nothing on the beach. Dips down into a hot tub, sans clothes. And blah blah blah....

But she just stands there. Yes, she stood there in her other movies, too. But it was the WAY she stood there that got to you, if you know what I mean, guys. Yeah, sure you do.

And let's not even get into what Anthony Quinn, Julie Newmar and Donald Trump are doing in a movie where everyone is more interested in seeing how Bo is going to get naked in the next scene.

Oh, I'm sure John had his own ideas of making Bo the next Helen Hayes (snicker, snicker...), save for one big difference: BO CAN NOT ACT. Nudity. Standing around with her mouth partially open. If that were all acting were, then yes, Bo would already be the next Helen Hayes.

But here in the real world....

One star. Even I was bored by this one, and that's not easy to do with me. I'd give this one no stars but darn it, Bo, when you look at me with your mouth partially open....