I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Sick Product of a Sick System

Great Film overall

Excellent but underrated film

An excellent 1964 film showcasing the fine acting talent of Richard Burton, Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr at their very best. Despite wonderful performances, these three perennial Oscar losers were all denied Oscar nominations for this interesting film which explores the inner-self. As the chaperon for Sue Lyon, Grayson Hall, (nee Shirley Grossman)garnered a best supporting actress nomination. I disagree with a previous reviewer. We don't know if her Miss Fellowes character is of lesbian nature. What we have here is a conservative minded individual, fearful of sex and over-protective to her charge and is willing to go all the way to beat down the Burton character.The movie splendidly shows the conflicts of the inner-self of 3 people. As the defrocked priest, Burton gives a towering performance. His spiritually is conflicted by his sexual desires. Gardner was never better as the recently widowed hotel owner searching for meaning and excitement in her tedious life. As the sketch artist, accompanied by her 97 year old grandfather, Kerr explores life around her, but in a restrictive way.The film often has comic over-tones, but its understanding of the human spirit makes it a superb vehicle.

In the annals of twentieth history American art and entertainment, it's a wonder the works of Tennessee Williams didn't worm their way into the thoughts of director John Huston sooner. Seemingly always focusing on damaged people on the end of their ropes, Williams's output has the steamy, melodramatic tinge that a natural adventurer and provocateur like Huston would have enjoyed. While I am a big fan of Elia Kazan's A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), there's a dark, destructive part of me that yens to see what kind of on-location tumult Huston could have mustered.Yet in comparison to "Streetcar," or for that matter "The Glass Menagerie" and "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof", "Night of the Iguana's" script doesn't quite gel as confidently. Somewhere underneath the familiar lusts and libations there's just something a bit off that sabotages the film from within.The Night of the Iguana concerns a wayward priest whose inappropriate relationship with a young Sunday school teacher got him ostracized by his congregation. Two years, and a nervous breakdown later, Reverend Shannon (Burton) now guides Christian tours for a tacky Mexican bus outfit. He spends a few days on tour with a flock of Baptist women, and sees history repeat itself when a 17-year-old Texas flirt (Lyon) gets him hot and bothered. High noon occurs at the Costa Verde Hotel where the vitreous Miss Fellowes (Hall) vows to have Shannon fired, defrocked and possibly arrested for messing around with a minor.Along for the ride are two additional women who help stir the sticky pot Shannon finds himself in. The first is Maxine (Gardner) the bawdy hotel owner whose late husband was a dear friend of Shannon's. The second is a chaste and impoverished painter named Hannah (Kerr) whose serendipitous arrival at the hotel befalls Shannon like a guardian angel. As an un-eclipsed star of the silver screen, Deborah Kerr is, as always a demure, stately vision. Despite being written inexplicably as a charlatan with a heart of gold and a gift for talking people off the ledge, she still carries through with the same verisimilitude she gave Sister Angela in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957).Unfortunately she and perhaps Miss Hall are the only people who seem to bring surprise and depth; a tall order considering their characters are pigeonholed as lesser versions of Mother Teresa and the Wicked Witch of the West. Ava Gardner, by all accounts a fine actress can't seem to find Maxine's center. One minute she's cloyingly passive aggressive in the way all Tennessee Williams vamps are. The next minute she's in histrionics, trading libidinous kisses with the cabana boys.Though if there be any performance that outright sinks this boat, it's Richard Burton, the flop-sweaty captain of this unlucky tug. His silver-tongued screeching and bellowing flies thick like mole over beans and rice, yet the thespian can't seem to grasp he's not on stage this time. He never takes the subtler, quiet moments that celluloid can afford him but rather blows up like a cannon every time a modicum of drama can be had. One particular scene involving him, the young Sue Lyon and a floor of broken glass feels almost cartoonish if it wasn't so airless and uncomfortable.Night of the Iguana is an overcooked mess made memorable less for its story and more for the drama behind the scenes. Unwanted set visitors included Tennessee Williams and Burton's second wife Elizabeth Taylor whose relationship still lives in Hollywood infamy. Additionally Burton was famous for being a petulant drunk during filming. This in turn attracted the paparazzi to the secluded coastal set and guaranteed headaches for the majority of the shoot. Rumor has it that Huston bought the cast custom pistols with engraved bullets, each having the name of the other cast members. The idea was whenever someone wanted to kill the other, they could do so in style. With so much gone wrong with this thing, I'd be going out guns blazing.

Reverend Shannon is a defrocked priest. He roams the wilderness of Mexico as a tour guide for a cheap bus company. He is a drunkard, and in his party he contains a bunch of baptist teachers from Texas. One girl in his party, Charlotte has a crush on Shannon. Her guardian is deeply suspicious, and Shannon tries to ward off her advances, but he is unsuccessful. He is caught, and when threatened by Charlotte's guardian the fear of losing his job becomes too much. He drives his party to an old hotel in the middle of the jungle, to meet Maxine, and old friend.He keeps the tour group in the hotel until he can change their minds, and possibly save his job. At the same time, an old poet and his granddaughter also arrive in the hotel, and then day fades into night...I do not like Tennessee Williams. I've seen A Streetcar Named Desire, Suddenly Last Summer and this film. While Streetcar is very overrated, it at least had great performances, and some kind of cohesive plot. Suddenly Last Summer is a plot less mess, and only Katherine Hepburn's performance made it bearable. However, this film is an exception. I genuinely enjoyed it, even on my second viewing.The performance's are excellent, for the most part. Richard Burton gives his character a crazed energy that showcases exactly how good an actor he was. The material is putty in his hands, and he morphs it into a man whom could be deemed disgusting, and who becomes quite relatable. His character is pitiful yet entertaining at the same time, thanks to Burton's talent. Ava Gardener, whom one could deem as past her prime in this film, sparkles with a repressed sadness.Gardner may have been popular in the 40s and 50s, but here she truly shows that she can act. Her Maxine is similar to Burton's character, she contains a repressed sadness that only bubbles out in the end. However, the true delight of the film for me was Deborah Kerr. I've always thought that Kerr was immensely talented, but here she shows exactly how talented. She never succumbs to being over the top, and dominating the film. Instead the exact opposite occurs. It is only later, when one reflects on the film that Kerr's true brilliance is revealed.For example, there is one monologue that she gives that takes up about five minutes, but I never got bored. I did not because I kept watching Kerr's face and admiring her talent. It is only on re watching the film that I truly understand what drew me to Kerr's portrayal in the beginning. Sheer brilliance. Also excellent is Grayson Hall as the cloying chaperon, and Cyril Delevanti as the world's oldest poet. However, if there is a weak link in the cast, it is certainly Sue Lyon.Fresh off her debut in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, Lyon here does a lot of pouting. And flirting woodenly. Don't get me wrong, she certainly looks the part, but she doesn't act it well. Her line deliveries come off as flat, and uninteresting. She was good in Lolita, but perhaps it was the director that shaped her performance in that film. Here, she is the most boring character, instead of one of the most interesting.While I do not like Tennessee Williams as a writer, he could certainly write great parts for actors. He was also a quick thinker, apparently. In Huston's autobiography, he states that a scene in the film was coming off flat, and then Williams told him to have Burton knock over a glass bottle, and have him walk over. That little thing immensely helps the film.The writing is good for the most part, but the story is kind of soapy. Still, if you go with the flow, the end result is quite entertaining. The cinematography is vibrant and although the film feels stagey in some parts, the cinematography elevates it from the stage, and into the jungle's of Mexico. The score is also quite good, especially for a Huston film.Speaking of Huston, his direction here is vibrant and it feels alive. It feels as if he just recharged his batteries and came out of the gates running. To be fair, it does appear as if Huston directed the film in his normal style, but I can't help feeling entertained. His relaxed direction is confident and it works well. While Huston mainly directed novels, after this film, I'd love to see him do another play.While, it may be outdated and stagey, this film is still incredibly entertaining and the cast is uniformly terrific.The Night Of The Iguana, 1964, Starring: Richard Burton, Ava Gardener and Deborah Kerr, Directed by John Huston, 8/10 (A-)(This is part of an ongoing project to watch and review every John Huston movie. You can read this and other reviews at http://everyjohnhustonmovie.blogspot.ca/)

if for some reason you come across someone who just doesn't understand why Richard Burton or Tennessee Williams are two of the most important persons in American film or theatrical history, a viewing of "Night of the Iguana" should answer their questions.While "Igunaga" is the last of Tennessee's big plays (it debuted on Broadway on my birthday and perhaps that is why I have something of a cosmic obsession with this work), it is not a minor or faltering work in any manner of speaking. Tennessee's unspoken past psychological beatings of central characters and the hopeless devotion of at least one character to a loved one are both here ... these two ingredients almost always fuel a Tennessee play as they play against each other like a hot and cold weather front, approaching and retracting throughout until they collide and the tornado is born. Other ingredients common for this final maelstrom is the over-righteous and hateful 'Christian' who is so repressed they can only convey their thoughts through the meanest spirit they can muster. Also a young and overly-sexed vixen who is hellbent on ruining a man hanging by a thread rounds out the madness that swirls and swoops to the degree that each play deserved several readings or viewings before you can start lacing together all the symbolism and innuendo to complete the tapestry Tennessee is weaving.I would think only Eugene O'Neil can stand alongside Tennessee in the greatest of the American playwrights though I cannot call myself an expert on such things. I only know when I discovered Tennessee Williams' work in the sixth grade and started to devour everything written by him, I never understood many of the intricacies of his stories until I was much older. But the movement and lyrical dialog and the mysteries laying just beneath the surface fascinated me to no end. They were publishing series of Tennessee's play at this time in books entitled, "Three by Tennessee" or "Two by Tennessee" which were a great bargain and a great way to collect his plays. Also I found that the late movie on various channels always seemed to rely on the film versions of Tennessee's works and though it was disappointing not to be able to follow along with my copy of his original work, many of them are film classics that introduced me to even more of the finest American culture has produced.Of course, one of these late night movies was "Night of the Iguana". Not only did I love the rhythm of the title, I seemed to know many of the characters, mostly from the church I was raised in if truth be told. Many were like the chaperone, completely shut off from any sensual part of their person and wanting nothing more out of life than to ensure others are equally bottled up (this was apparently what Christianity meant to them). Even a struggling minister hanging onto the water-logged life preserver tossed to him made his way through my early years as he stumbled through a final assignment and a final chance at redemption, not from Christ but from his employer, and who was shipped off in a short time to wherever wayward and lost souls once entrusted with the shepherding of a flock of souls are relegated to.Burton I had discovered in 'Beckett', a stunning movie and one of his best roles (not to mention one of Peter O'Toole's as well) and once you are hooked on hearing Burton run through the English language with his exquisitely clipped and precise diction, a young boy with a speech impediment can do nothing else but hold him up as an idol though it is known in his heart he will never reach such heights of speech.For these personal reasons the combination of Burton and Tennessee work better than even Brando and Tennessee imho. Burton seems to completely understand the fraying rope Shannon is hanging onto just as Tennessee knows how to work the madness in and out with scenes of lucidity that make one think and hope that perhaps Shannon will grab hold of a more solid reign ... but for anyone who knows Tennessee, he doesn't deal in fiction to that degree but in what is real life and failure is far more a reality than success.So get a nice strong Rum Coco and sit back and enjoy what is truly a marvelous film. Have your friend nearby so you can see the realization dawn as to why these two men are so vital to 20th century art.