The Night of the Iguana may be Richard Burton's finest hour on the screen: beautifully cast as an anguished, defrocked reverend, doomed to his own purgatory in Mexico as tour guide to a group of nattering biddies. (The expression on his face as the ladies warble "Happy Days Are Here Again" on the tour bus is worth a Shakespearian monologue.) John Huston's clean, black-comic adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play is a forceful snapshot of a man down to his last chance, and the superb black-and-white location photography by Gabriel Figueroa captures the end-of-the-world vibe. The women who tempt and taunt the reverend are Ava Gardner (with her maraca-shaking beach boys), Deborah Kerr, and Sue Lyon. The movie--and its backstage publicity, with Burton and Liz Taylor carrying on their Cleopatra affair--put Puerto Vallarta on the map, but it deserves notice for Burton's gutsy acting and Huston's characteristic sympathy for life's losers. --Robert Horton
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: Classic performances Comment: I had rented this video several times before I knew I had to buy it because of the great and entertaining performances by such a great cast lead by the one and only - Richard Burton. And you can't beat a Tenessee Williams play for plot, form and structure that gives the viewer his money's worth. Customer Rating: Summary: a super gift for a friend Comment: this is a wonderfully acted movie. it is not my favorite but it is a great favorite a close friend, who will recieve this copy for christmas.
if you enjoy an often comedic "serious" movie please take a couple of hours to enjoy this flick. you will not be dissappointed. it has some great lines, like all of the silver screen post 1970!
Customer Rating: Summary: The Jewel of Mismaloya Comment: This is a classic movie from a Tennessee Williams play with some of the finest acting talent available in the 60's. At the time it was filmed, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were carrying on with a very public illicit affair which was great tabloid fodder. Today that type of behavior only elicits a yawn. "Night of the Iguana" was filmed south of Puerto Vallarta in a gorgeous cove covered with jungle. The story is as steamy as the weather and even for the 60's this is pretty hot stuff. A defrocked preacher who can't control his urges for women is reduced to conducting cut-rate tours of Mexico. His latest busload of female tourists includes a precocious young blond (Sue Lyon) who is after him. Her chaperon is on to Burton and is trying to get him fired when he happens upon a hotel run by an old friend, Ava Gardner. Throw in the arrival of a father and daughter con artist team and you have the ingredients for a typical Tennesee Williams human stew which boils over before the story climaxes. The movie set still exists in this beautiful locale in the Mexican jungle on the grounds of a resort called La Joya de Mismaloya. You can eat a meal in the courtyard where most of the movie action took place or have a seafood dinner in director John Huston's house while you watch the sun set over the Pacific. A great film and a great place to visit. Customer Rating: Summary: Unwatchable. Comment: Richard Burton's character's actions are completely incoherent. Charlotte, who keeps chasing after him, is a little nympho. Her guardian, Miss Fellowes's voice gets on one's nerves after six minutes. If Ava Gardner's hotel is closed for August, why are there maraca-shaking cabana boys at the ready? Are they on retainer?
Deborah Kerr and her grandfather looked like they might have added an interesting element and maybe all of this comes together in one glorious ending but I had no desire to stick it out. Customer Rating: Summary: Best Williams, Best Burton, Best Huston Comment: A gorgeous film, powerfully acted and directed, and probably William's best script for the stage if you consider that here for the first time we have a play about women who are adjusted to the world and have a chance. "Streetcar" which is a better play in some ways, nonetheless is about maladjustment, neurosis, and death. It may a great tragedy, but it is not about living in the world and finding happiness. This one is. Hannah, the spinster, and Maxine, earth mother, have both found peace on their own terms. Shannon, the defrocked minister turned has-been tour guide, has also found a way to cope. At the end of the play we believe there is a future for them all. The play is suffused with a life-affirmation that is absent from much of William's writing. It is a grand, sprawling epic, not one of these tidy little 70-minute one-acts today's playwrights call full-lengths. Here, as directed by the great John Huston, we are deep into Puerto Vallarta, that Mexican oasis far away from the Texas border with its busy-bodies, baptists, and worldly responsibilities. Sex and rum-cocos are not metaphors down south, so Williams writes full out, in what finally is a celebration of survival.
