Classic Soap Opera Adventure w / A History Lesson
This Is a Classic, Layered Soap Opera Adventure. It takes place over a Generation In a Fictional Country In South America. All of It's principal characters are quite striking In their Beauty. All Necessary for a Soap Opera to Proceed.
What I find Interesting Is that the Story evolves like so many of the Dictatorships In South America.
You have a Brutal Dictator, giving No Quarter to his Citizens, and then Resistance Develops to the Abuse, and You have Leftist type Rebels Intending to Overthrow said Regime and take Power to Improve Peoples Lives..........All In The NAME of The PEOPLE............
The New Victorious Regime then Evolves Into the Same Form of Governmental Rule that they Just Removed. ex: CUBA........
What Goes Around In all of these Oppressed Backward Countries, Always Seems to Come Around.

The Adventurers
A Geat powerful movie. I loved seeing it again on DVD and have watched it several times since my purchase.
BarryS41

LIKED THE BOOK
Liked the book. The movie kinda left me cold. Though I can watch Ernest Borgnine in any part even Gato Gorde.

A Delightful Bad Movie Smorgasbord!
This Harold Robbins smorgasbord offers kicks for everyone: Orgies! Drugs! Bloodbaths! Miscarriages! Lesbianism! High fashion! Satyrism! Thinly disguised characters based on real celebrities! A private torture chamber!

The fun begins in flashback, when a boy in revolution-torn "Corteguay" shoots the soldiers who raped and killed his loved ones. All this sex and violence must have screwed up "Dax" royally because, when he and his adopted kid sister happen upon a naked couple frolicking in the woods, he observes, "He's raping her." When the girl suggest, "Let's do it," he refuses. "No, you are too young, and I think I have to kill you afterwards."

We next meet "Dax" grown into Bekim Fehmiu. (Think how many stars must have turned down the role before the producers landed this Yugoslav unknown to play this filthy rich, world-class legend in the sack.) Before anyone can say "Porfirio Rubirosa," Fehmiu is screwing some starlet by Rossano Brazzi's swimming pool. Apparently desperate to justify the lofty screen credit "A Lewis Gilbert Film," the director's camera zooms in and out on the amorous couple, accelerating the tempo as their excitement peaks, all the while intercutting -- and here comes the artsy part -- flashbacks of rape and murder. (Auteur! Auteur!)

Fehmiu returns home, rekindles his relationship with Leigh Taylor-Young -- the Latina who wanted him to "rape" her when they were children -- then goes back to Europe and teams with Thommy Berggren (anyone remember Elvira Madigan?) In the rag trade. "We'll start with a fabulous show," Berggren enthuses, but all that glitz takes moolah, so Fehmiu sells his bod to rich American Olivia de Havilland (in a career-ender of a role).

Soon Fehmiu finds a younger fish in Barbara Huttonesque Candice Bergen, "the richest girl in the world" who, at the finale of the boys' first fashion show (a kitschfest of horse-drawn chariots and beefy centurions), ogles Fehmiu and says she'll buy "Everything - and the collection." They marry, she gets pregnant, then one day she goes hurtling off a swing and miscarries. "We'll try again," she promises, "I won't even sit on a swing." But the spark is gone, so, for lack of anything better to do, she marries Berggren.

Fehmiu returns home and, visiting his old flame Taylor-Young in the local nunnery, finds that she has borne him a son. Still, he won't commit. For filler, there's the party where Berggren intrudes on Bergen and another woman making love on the couch; for laughs, it's hard to top Fehmiu's and Bergen's finding out that Aristotle Onassisish Charles Aznavour has betrayed them by using their money to ship weapons to "Corteguay," so they tie him up in his very own private S&M torture chamber.

With Fernando Rey, Ernest Borgnine, Jaclyn Smith (as the Teen magazine reporter who asks Fehmiu, "Is it true you've made love to every woman in this room?").

a stylish guilty pleasure
My vague memory of THE ADVENTURERS was that it was a campily bad studio flick--one I'd never bothered to see when it came out in 1970. Nearly 40 years later, it turns out to be extremely entertaining as a DVD experience. On the big screen during the era of EASY RIDER and M*A*S*H, it's easy to see that this would be considered an overproduced, overblown bore. But with a pre-CGI cast of thousands and extravagant sets, it's now truly impressive.

I haven't been a reader of Harold Robbins, but this film explains his popularity. The fantasy elegance of the rich and ambitious is tremendous fun, and he crams more plot into his story that a whole shelf of Galsworthy. Except for a 4-yr-old in the second part of the movie (yes, there's actually an intermission!), even the kid actors are good in their roles.

I'd expected VALLEY OF THE DOLLS and instead found the epic sweep and sturdy dialogue of the Taylor-Burton CLEOPATRA. True, a number of the sex scenes look like PLAYBOY (not PENTHOUSE) layouts from the '60s (James Bondy but even more lavish), and a couple of daringly camp touches after the intermission are a hoot: a VALLEY OF THE DOLLS fashion show, and an UNDER THE YUM YUM TREE lothario's lair.

All in all, however, this DVD is a good investment and, of course, after large portions of such rich scenes and scenery, one can turn off the DVD for a while to recupe before plunging again into its fabulous excess!