Dir. by John Huston - 2 hrs. 5 min.
Trailer
by Clayton Hollifield
I've probably DVR'd this movie three separate times (only to fail to watch it before I switched cable providers, so I have copies of this languishing on hard drives somewhere), but only just now finally got around to watching it. There are a lot of things that appeal straight off about this one; it's about a disgraced priest (instantly sold), the vaguely Saul Bass-ish pink poster is awesome, plus I couldn't swear that I'd ever seen Richard Burton or Ava Gardner in a movie before. And I also usually like stuff that's set in a locale that I haven't been to before (largely in Puerta Vallarta, here). So I've been curious about "The Night of the Iguana" for a while, and really got rewarded once I hit play.
Trouble brewing!
In order for a priest to be disgraced, something has to happen. We don't get to that right away, but we start off with the Reverend Dr. T Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) delivering a sermon that quickly devolves into a meltdown, and a pointed criticism of all the looky-loos who came to judge. The next thing you know, Rev. Shannon is leading tour guides in Mexico for church groups, and looking like he maybe hasn't showered in the intervening unspecified time since his meltdown. That doesn't stop the precocious Charlotte (Sue Lyon) from setting her sights on Shannon, and rather relentlessly. Shannon is caught between trying to shake off his teenaged stalker and the accusations of her chaparone, Miss Judith Fellowes (Grayson Hall), who promises that she will "take steps" if Shannon continues trying to pursue Charlotte. It's not apparent if there is any merit to those accusations, but Charlotte is definitely looking at Shannon like he's a snack. As the tour falls apart, Shannon eventually insists on driving the bus (wildly), skipping the hotel the tour was supposed to stop at, and heading to a more friendly (for Shannon) hotel, which is run by Maxine (Ava Gardner). And the fireworks commence.
One of the things that you might have to deal with is your tolerance for overacting. This film is based on a play by Tennessee Williams, and it very much feels like a play, with it's limited settings and emphasis on interaction between characters (and a compressed period of time). It also feels a lot like a low-budget 90s indie film, for the same reason. So while there are rather scenic views, you're not going to get much action or movement. For that reason, I didn't have a problem with Gardner and Burton's hamfest - it added to the charm of the film quite a bit for me. There are also a number of characters who are quite debauched, and Burton's alcoholic priest and Gardner's throaty loose-bodied performance captured my attention well. By contrast, there are also a number of characters that are pretty tamped down and repressed (like Grayson Hall's character and Hannah, played by Deborah Kerr), and some characters that are just spaced out most of the time. It left me wondering which way a scene would play out, which kind of personality would take over a scene.
Even more trouble brewing!
Other than finding "Iguana" a compelling story, one of the mild surprises of the film was it's forthrightness about sexual matters. I'm not going to go through a checklist, and it wasn't visually explicit, but there were a number of times I said "dang" to myself. This is a salty-ass movie, and it gets into people's business without much shame. Probably the most aggressive aspect of this involves Maxine (who has been recently widowed), who is pretty up front about the fact that she's been getting served for quite a while by a pair of locals who are always dancing shirtless with maracas (their fight scene is a riot, too). Girl's got needs! You may expect because a movie is in black and white that some things are not going to get addressed, but this is a movie that is pretty much centered around what has happened to and what will happen to Richard Burton's donger, but that's definitely not to say that everyone else doesn't have a past and also has current desires. It's very egalitarian in that respect.
I was very pleasantly surprised by "The Night of the Iguana." Like I said before, I was sold once I knew it was about a disgraced priest (hey, we all have our soft spots), but it totally took that idea and ran with it. I had no idea that John Huston directed it, I'm not even sure I knew who the actors were when I first DVR'd it. I often find the less you know about a movie going in, the better experience it ends up being. And this a very good experience, even if you have to deal with the baseless accusations of a nit-picky church group on a tour bus, multiple women individually trying to get your attention, possibly detoxing while tied up in a hammock, and the relentless heat of a summer in a Mexico resort town.
4 / 5 - TV
