Harold Robbins’ guess-who novel about the jet set and South American politics was as commercial as it was trashy, and this film version may be fairly said to make the novel look even better.
The dialogue is banal, the acting is lifeless and embarrassing, the violence is indulgent, gratuitous and well, just plain boring, and the sex is luridly non-erotic.
At the centre of the story is troubled playboy Dax (Bekim Fehmiu). Raised far from his South American homeland of Corteguay amid the high society and political intrigue of Italy, Dax uses romance as a stepping stone to success, all the while scheming to wreak vengeance on those who once wronged him and his family.
On the romantic front, there is Candice Bergen, about the only principal to salvage anything from the film, playing a fabulously wealthy girl who marries the hero but loses their baby in a swing accident and eventually turns lesbian.
Dax Xenos
Bekim Fehmiu
Rojo
Alan Badel
Sue Ann Daley
Candice Bergen
Fat Cat
Ernest Borgnine
Amparo
Leigh Taylor-Young
Jaime Xenox
Fernando Rey
Marcel Campion
Charles Aznavour
Deborah Hadley
Olivia de Havilland
Mr Hadley
John Ireland
Baron de Coyne
Rossano Brazzi
Colonel Gutierrez
Sydney Tafler
Sergei
Thommy Berggren
Sergei’s father
Ferdy Mayne
Mrs Erickson
Yolande Donlan
Denisonde
Angela Scoular
Belinda
Jaclyn Smith
Dax’s mother
Roberta Haynes
Trustee banker
Peter Graves
Director
Lewis Gilbert
