The one movie Sharon Stone hated making: “Just horrible”
Sharon Stone has starred in some serious big movies. She famously burst onto the scene in Total Recall, playing the scheming wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character. She then re-teamed with director Paul Verhoeven a few years later to make Basic Instinct, solidifying her star status and creating one of the most-paused moments in cinematic history. The likes of The Specialist, Silver, and Casino all followed, before her well-publicised career drop off.
It wasn’t always plain sailing for the popular pin-up. Stone famously fell out with Sam Raimi on the set of The Quick and the Dead, the first sign that all that glitters in Hollywood may not be gold. Before she broke through, she regularly took jobs solely for the money, appearing in some truly dreadful fare just to earn a living. One of these jobs was so bad that she was still complaining about it over 30 years later.
In conversation with Playboy last year, Stone used the phrase “just horrible” to describe working on the movie Blood and Sand. “Nobody spoke English, everybody started drinking wine at 10 o’clock in the morning. Everybody was bombed during the entire making of the picture,” she explained. “It was more like Drunken Spanish Keystone Cops Make a Bad C Movie.”
Directed by Javier Elorrieta – a filmmaker so obscure he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page – Blood and Sand is one of many adaptations of the Spanish novel Sangre y arena. Sharon Stone stars opposite Christopher Rydell, son of On Golden Pond director Mark Rydell, as Lady Doña Sol, a wealthy Spanish woman. She becomes romantically involved with Juan Gallardo (Rydell), an aspiring bullfighter who has the talent but lacks the focus needed to succeed in the cutthroat business. It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that neither ‘Christopher Rydell’ nor ‘Sharon Stone’ sound particularly Spanish…because they’re not.
The only truly notable thing about this film is that Sharon Stone appears in it. Critical consensus – what little of it exists – suggests it was little more than a cynical attempt to revive an existing property by adding a dose of sex appeal. It plays like a film more interested in provocation than substance, with flat direction, tired dialogue, and a script that never earns its stakes. Even among fans of cult cinema, it has largely faded into obscurity—a footnote in Stone’s early career rather than any kind of hidden gem.
1989 proved to be a bad year overall for Stone. The other movie she appeared in that year, Beyond the Stars (Personal Choice in some markets), was also a flop. Despite giving her the opportunity to act alongside Martin Sheen and Christian Slater, Stone’s name was also attached to a project that was deemed so uninteresting that it was never released in American theatres, destined for straight-to-TV purgatory. Luckily for our plucky heroine, better things were on the horizon. Total Recall rolled around just one year later, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Every actor has to slum it for a while while they build their profile, but Stone had to put up with more rubbish than most. Dross like Blood and Sand is the perfect example of what big stars have to put themselves through before they get famous. Who says being in the arts is glamorous?
