BEFORE: Another one of these "snow-pocalypse" winter storms, only from where I live, it wasn't so bad. We had about a half-inch of snow, but it sort of melted as it fell, so I didn't see the point of doing any shoveling, since my walk was already a combination of snow and slush. With the temperature today in the low 40's, I figure it's mostly going to melt in the next day or two, anyway, so why bother? This is why my neighbors probably all hate me.
It's Day 3 with Richard Burton, and this was going to be my Friday film initially, but noting the subject matter, I've moved it here, to follow "The Sandpiper", which also featured Burton as a minister engaged in a scandal. His character here is seen in Mexico, post-scandal, so it's almost like one film is a continuation of the other - only this one was made first, but you get the idea.
AFTER: I forgot to mention how literary this Richard Burton chain has been - "The Comedians" was based on a novel by Graham Greene, and while "The Sandpiper" wasn't based on a book, the screenplay was co-written by Dalton Trumbo, and now tonight's film is adapted from a Tennessee Williams play.
But it's the same symbolism here, only with an iguana instead of a sandpiper. Supposedly the locals catch lizards and then fatten them up before eating them, so I guess in some way the iguana represents the preacher stuck in his situation. Because in some way, aren't we all just tied-up iguanas waiting to be fattened up? Umm, no. Ah, Wikipedia suggests that this works because the preacher is at "the end of his rope". Nice try, but I'm not buying it.
Look, this preacher got in trouble for fooling around with a young girl, so now he's stuck in Mexico as a sort of tour guide - and just like in "My Life in Ruins", everything seems to go wrong on this tour. The bus gets a flat tire, the tourists aren't interested in watching the Mexican people do their laundry in the river, and this young blonde keeps trying to seduce the preacher. I mean, what's he supposed to do, NOT go swimming with her? Then the group's leader, who's also this young girl's chaperone, finds the young girl in his hotel room and flat out accuses him of seducing her.
Desperate to keep his job and not get into trouble, he brings the tour group to a cheap hotel run by his friend, Fred. Only Fred's dead, baby, and his widow is running the place. The preacher was hoping the hotel didn't have a phone, so he couldn't get reported for being with the young girl, only he's out of luck, they JUST got the phones installed last week or something.
Then a female artist turns up at the hotel with her elderly grandfather, who's a poet, and they've got some kind of deal where they go around the world paying for their hotel rooms by doing caricature sketches and reciting poems. (Sounds a bit like my boss at Comic-Con.). Surprisingly, they get to stay there too, and for a while it seems like the artist woman is a good match for the preacher, that is, if he could ever stop drinking and chasing young tail. But why wish for things we can't have?
In the end, the hotel gets a new owner, the preacher gets a new job - because God knows he can't go back to preaching, and not everyone makes it out of Mexico alive. And, since it's a Tennessee Williams play, everyone's probably gay and not able to discuss it or deal with it.
Also starring Ava Gardner (last seen in "Show Boat"), Deborah Kerr (last seen in "Marriage on the Rocks"), Sue Lyon (last seen in "Lolita"), Skip Ward, Grayson Hall, Cyril Delevanti (last seen in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man"), Mary Boylan.
RATING: 4 out of 10 shards of broken glass
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