Forbidden Sun (1988) User Reviews

Good idea spoiled by mediocre direction {spoilers included}.

[ignazia · 3/10 · 29 February 2004]

Being keen on ancient civilizations I was intrigued by the story outline: an elite gymnastics camp in Crete is run by an American couple who also teach their students about the culture of the Minoan civilization that once inhabited the area. The Minoans worshipped the bull so the legend of the Minotaur is included along with a reference to the "Bull Dance" during which ancient-Cretian athletes were said to somersault a charging bull.

** Warning: spoilers follow **

What the film really becomes is a voyeuristic saga of young women in flimsy clothes. There are no male students but a convenient all-male rock band using a villa on a neighbouring island as a studio provide opportunities for inter-personal bonding.

The coach (Beltran) is a single young man whose voice is about one-half octave too high (Hutton's voice has more timbre) and the only other member of staff who ever materializes is another non-local woman who teaches local history. The gymnasium routines happen early in the movie, are very standard yet lovingly filmed in slow-mo. Enjoy, because you ain't gonna see any more.

There's a sub-plot about a sexual attack on the newest student - we find out later the perpetrator is the batty professor/husband whose physical frustration has been brought on by his wife's lack of interest in bed. The curious finale shows the classic Rebellious Student Who Has Been Emotionally Traumatized making a stumbling vaulting somersault over a very stationary real-life bull as some sort of cathartic measure. The special effect is not very realistic even for the era this film was made.

I watched it to the end in the vain hope of some improvement but this was not to be. A waste of viewing time and unworthy of either Lauren Hutton's or Robert Beltran's efforts.

Cretins slander Cretians, gymnasts and rapists

[charlytully · 3/10 · 6 January 2008]

I picked this out as one of about 1,000 VHS close-outs for 50 cents each because the box made the movie sound interesting. This is the "spoiler" spelled out on the packaging for this flick: A brutal rapist despoils a gymnast against the backdrop of a scenic Greek island, so her gym-sisters revive a harrowing ritual to exact swift revenge.

Guess what? Here's what the movie delivers: No gymnasts! No Greek Island! No rape! No revenge! Sure, there's a few chunky overage female extras dressed in leotards who tumble for a several minutes during the first fifth of the show, but the girls I was in middle school with did better, not to mention the members of the NCAA II mid-tier team I followed for a few seasons. The quality of the athletes here can be grasped if you picture the first day of a community service gymnastic rehab program for Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears (only with women five years older who know how to eat). Unfortunately, this movie requires the viewer to believe the strapping assault victim is the defending gold medalist from the 1984 Olympics!

The geography of the film is quite confusing, which is easy to understand when one finds out that the movie crew thought Croatia was a Greek island! Sure, not every flick can film on location, but if you are telling me girls are running through the actual maze of the Minotaur--and if you are filming in a cheap labor country--at least hire a carpenter, painter, and a plasterer or two and build something that RESEMBLES a maze, rather than trying to pass off the nearest Croatian rubble pile as one!

Maybe not every rape scene has to be as graphic as Julie Christie's in Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, but don't tackle a girl, cut to the next scene, relate no further details about the attempted assault during the movie, and then hype a "brutal rape" on the box.

Finally, the harrowing ritual of revenge--the deciding factor in my watching this flick in the first place--turned out to be a lot tamer than several of the high school girls athletic team hazing rites making news on American TV the past three years--PLUS THE GIRLS DO IT TO THE INNOCENT TEACHER, not the guilty one! At one point in this ludicrous farce, three of the gymnasts emerge gaily laughing from the supposedly cold ocean waters after swimming a mile in open seas on a whim. This is the film's unintentional highlight for accuracy in its subject matter; though most of the gymnasts I've known would expire from hypothermia in half that distance, the ladies passing for Olympian balance beam strollers in this movie certainly look like they'd be more at home swimming the English Channel.

Some intrigue but ultimately quite disapponting

[grantss · 4/10 · 23 July 2022]

The film had some intrigue, due to the subject matter, the location and the mystical background. The presence of Lauren Hutton and Samantha Mathis as well as, to a much lesser extent, Cliff De Young suggested this would at least be better than a B-grade thriller.

Turns out, not really. The production values are good but Cliff De Young hams it up and ultimately the plot is fairly basic. Quite disappointing.

Craptastic movie!

[l-rossitto · 6/10 · 22 May 2008]

I think what makes this movie magical is the idiocy of the plot itself: I challenge filmmakers everywhere to cross gymnastics with ancient Cretan culture, sprinkle it with a a pseudo-rape storyline and a teenage rock band and come up with a serious movie! I came across it on late night TV and literally could not stop watching it. It has a slightly insane vibe to it, with performances are abrupt and melodramatic and a finale so bizarre you'll be left shaking your head. I also enjoyed the loving filming of the girls gym workouts, one of the only times in the film when the viewer is lulled into a state of equilibrium. An absolutely stupid, yet entertaining movie.

Attn screenwriters: wackiness needs some blue-pencilling

[lor_ · 3 May 2023]

My review was written in November 1989 after watching the movie on Academy video cassette.

A belated followup to the cult classic "The Wicker Man", "Forbidden Sun" (better known by its shooting title "Bulldance") is a lamentably silly exploitation film, delving into ancient myths; it's headed directly for U. S. video stores.

A brief cause celebre due to having gone over budget (putting its production company behind the eight ball), film awkwardly combines the talents of director Zelda Barron, a helmer of pics about school girls such as "Shag" and "Secret Places", and "Wicker Man" helmer Robin Hardy, this time the scripter. It's not the production but the concept that went awry.

The school girls this time are American beauties training as Olympic gymnasts at Lauren Hutton and Cliff De Young's school on the island of Crete (actually filmed on rugged Yugoslavian locations, with Slavic thesps in the supporting cast portraying Greeks). Samantha Mathis is the new arrival from whose perspective the story starts being told, though picture structurally goes askew midway when she is raped and written out of the film.

Leading role actually goes to lovely blonde Viveka Davis, a headstrong student who's a former juvenile delinquent. She's in love with handsome instructor Robert Beltran, and goes nuts when she spots him in a sexual tryst with Hutton. Davis goads the girls to exercise vigilante justice against the rape suspect (Svetislav Goscic) and then proceeds to persecute Beltran for a different type of revenge.

The classical myth of the Minotaur, half-man/half-bull, is the basis for the film's most ludicrous motif, as Davis becomes obsessed with the ancient ritual of the bulldance -a gymnast vaulting over a live bull's horns, landing on its back and flipping over via dismount. At first practicing this with men wearing bull-masks, by film's end she's trying the real thing. Under Barron's "Shag"-gy direction, such antics emphasize plenty of jiggle rather than Olga Korbut-style beauty of movement.

Add a British rock group, Hard Rain, which appears on camera and provides the music score, and the film becomes more a package of incompatible ingredients than mythic fantasy. Tech credits are fine but acting leans to the gee whiz end of the spectrum.

I love a revenge movie

[hcurrie77 · 10/10 · 17 December 2019]

This is actually a great movie. The real star was Viviaka Davis. So beautiful. I believed her as a gymnast and the troubled girl. She was able to pull it off and still be likable something most women cannot do