Who Would You Cast As Dax?

As we fans of The Adventurers {and we know who we are} are well aware, the casting of unappealing non-entity Bekim Fehmiu in the leading role of Dax almost blows the movie because of his dead-on-arrival performance. Fehmiu has all the charismatic appeal of a hole in the screen, yet, with so much else outrageousness going on, this monsterpiece of Epic Trash gets on in spite of him.

But what juice this picture would gain with a super-hunky star actor as Dax! Of course it would still be super-trash but with a Real Star it could have been Great Trash.

So let's play a game... Who would you cast as Dax? The rule is, it has to be someone contemporary to 1970 who was the right age, not skinny or dorky or effete like Fehmiu, humpy, handsome, ultra-sexy and star material; either an established star or talent on the way up. And a good actor, slumming.

The challenge is, of course, that the character is South American. At the time the film was made, PC concerns did not exist so the actor could be Latin or passing. (Anyone but George Hamilton or George Chakiris is eligible.)

Franco Nero, who played Lancelot in Camelot (1967), comes to mind. He tended to be wooden but, wow! what a sizzler. And he eventually did play the lead in a Harold Robbins adaptation, the TV mini-series The Pirate. But he never was a Star... and that's what this movie needed.

So who comes to mind?