Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Madilyn Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

Kirpianuscus the air,the heat, the flavors, the traces of words, the clash between spirits. and one of the splendid roles of Richard Burton. result - more than a film. maybe, a form of spell. because all is so real, precise and seductive, bitter and full of salt circles , because to say than the performances are admirable is only a poor definition for a form of art who not only gives the essence of Tennesssee Williams universe but change the viewer in a manner subtle and powerful. poem of solitude, it reminds the small truths defining each life. one of motifs for define "The Night of the Iguana" as magic.

elevenangrymen 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/)

cormac_zoso 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.

mark.waltz The captured iguana is the symbolic figure of these pathetic character's lives in this engrossing Tennessee Williams drama based upon his hit Broadway play. The obvious "end of the rope" has come for supposedly defrocked Episcopal minister Richard Burton who went off on his congregation in a senseless tangent and ended up in the sorry position of hosting a series of tours for churches on a desolated Mexican coastline. He finds an instant enemy in the authoritative school teacher Grayson Hall whose obsession with young charge Sue Lyon has hints of lesbian attraction. Hall is furious with Burton whom she finds in various compromising situations with the underaged sex-pot, a non-virginal version of the same character that Sandra Dee played in "A Summer Place". When Burton realizes that his job is in jeopardy, he has the group of elderly women he is touring with kidnapped and taken to the practically abandoned hotel run by the blowzy Ava Gardner, an obvious woman of ill repute, and one of playwright Williams' signature "older" women who obviously have not accepted their advancing age. Toss in the seemingly innocent sketch artist (Deborah Kerr, sans much makeup) and her elderly grandfather (Cyril Delavanti) for some philosophical discussions of the human soul and how in life everybody does indeed become, like the iguana, tied to a rope that becomes more like a noose.All of these characters are facing the end of their rope. Burton faces the loss of his job to go along with the possible loss of his soul; Gardner must take a good look at herself, being a recent widow hanging onto her youth through two sexy Mexican amours; Delavanti's rope is the impending end of his life; young Lyon is obviously hanging herself with finding her womanhood way too soon; Kerr, the voice of truth, reveals herself not to be as noble as she comes off as. In fact, a conversation between Kerr and Gardner reveals that Kerr is quite the con-artist, and a brilliant one. The biggest rope, though, I found was for Grayson Hall's Judith Fellowes, a woman Burton describes as very moral that would be destroyed if she learned the truth about herself. Every now and then, there is a softness in Judith that is revealed, her love for Lyon not quite carnal, but certainly more than teacher/student. Unlike the butch lesbian Beryl Reid would play in "The Killing of Sister George", Fellowes' obvious lesbian is so repressed, both sexually and emotionally, virtually a walking corpse. When Kerr questions Burton's declaration of Gardner as a loose woman past her prime and his protection of the woman who had gone out of her way to destroy him, the answer is obvious: Gardner could survive such a truth; Hall could not.Certainly as melodramatic as most of Williams' work (only "The Glass Menagerie" slightly manages to avoid severe melodrama), "The Night of the Iguana" reminds us that we are all subject to becoming near to the end of our rope, and each emotion and feeling we deny, obsess over, or bring down on others, can bring undeniable trauma. Each of these characters has suffered some sort of trauma, yet not all will survive. They may continue to live and breathe, but survive is another thing. The other amazing thing about this play/movie is that none of the major characters are really totally likable (bus driver James Ward excepted) but each of them leaves an impression. The minor character of the frail Miss Peebles is played memorably by a stage actress named Mary Boylan who was only 50 when she played this part, yet made up to look so much older.The Oscar Nominated Hall plays one of the most delightfully dark characters in screen history, and would follow this up with her campy role on the daytime soap "Dark Shadows". Not quite villain, but far from someone you'd want to end up with on a bus tour like this, she is mesmerizing from the moment she dominates everybody on the bus with the choice of the songs they sing. Slightly resembling Eileen Heckart (another brilliant stage actress with minimal but totally memorable screen work and an equally awesome voice), Hall will stick in your memory, whether declaring her feelings to an absent Lyon, screaming out "Shannon!" over and over again before bursting into tears on a Mexican beach, or screeching at him "You Beast!".