Boom!

As a 24-year-old back in '68, I thought Liz and Dick were gauche, but time has mellowed my judgments (particularly after seeing "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe" for a 2nd time and really appreciating it this time around.) So, given the chance to see "Boom" for the 1st time, I said "Sure!" Well, Boom got ole Granny all shook up! I LOVED it! If someone disparagingly says "Camp!" to describe this movie, it isn't me. I watched the movie with complete seriousness, took the story and characters literally, and came away from the experience very moved! Liz Taylor is at her luminous, beautiful best. So she's a little chunky. I was mesmerized by her famous deep purple eyes and thick black eyelashes. But it was her acting in this film that really knocked me out. Yes, her accents vary - but that is Liz being true to the character. Sissy Goforth is a grand lady now, but her lapses into vulgarity suggest humbler beginnings.

I think Liz' acting is superb throughout. After all, this character IS over-the-top. Liz goes from grandiose viciousness to moving pathos and I found her believable at all times.

As for Burton, that sexy devil/angel - who cares if he was a little old for the part. To this 62-year-old, he looked delicious, and that mellifluous voice really m-o-v-e-d me.

The spectacularly beautiful scenery of Sardinia and the magnificent mansion provided an awesome setting - and Liz' costumes and jewelry were to drool over.

What a treat to see Noel Coward. Who cares if this movie was beneath him. He looked like he was having fun! Of course there's a "message" to the movie, but to me it was secondary to all the glorious glamour and glitz (Oh. Did I just describe "camp?")

Adaptated by Tennessee Williams from "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore", he obviously pulled in a few of his old friends to get this done. It's a gender-bending allegory with Liz Taylor as rich, dying Sissy Goforth, a bad-tempered recluse in her remarkable clifftop Mediterranean villa. Along comes Dick Burton, a freeloader-cum-Grim Reaper figure who sees it as his mission to help ladies in extremis.

Neither of them are right for their roles, but that only adds a certain fascination - a totally earnest rendition would be dull and pretentious. Taylor lets rip here and it's a riot. The highlight is her dinner with Noel Coward playing a role originally meant for a woman. She is wearing an utterly outrageous kabuki outfit while Coward camps it up like there's no tomorrow, which is no doubt the film's theme.

The script is full of naff psychology, Taylor is shrill and unpleasant, Burton looks like he's on vacation. With this set-up, Losey hasn't the slightest chance of delivering his usual sophisticated, simmering subtlety, and maybe that was fortuitous - this is so godawful it's brilliant.

Well, this is certainly SOME kind of classic!

I recently saw this film as it was meant to be seen, in a theater with a packed audience of Gay men and Lesbians (and don't panic, some token Heteros too)! This was at the 2nd Annual Provincetown Film Festival, and this evening was hosted by John Waters. (If I need to explain who he is, then forget EVER seeing this movie)

John Waters informed us that this was the movie that he shows to friends of his as his "litmus" test, if they don't enjoy it, he claims to never speak to them again! I'm inclined to agree.

If you're a fan of camp, SEE THIS FILM! If you're a fan of Elizabeth Taylor, SEE THIS FILM! If you're a fan of Joanna Shimkus, well I don't know what to say then, except congratulations! You're the first one! (although, she is great in this movie)

What more can you say about a film that has Elizabeth Taylor decked out in Kabuki-Vegas drag holding an intimate bitchy dinner party with an aged and drunken Noel Coward (in a role written for a woman, and first offered to Katharine Hepburn!) To watch Miss Taylor in action, is to behold a true screen legend fully embrace her diva acting self. She lets rip with such abandon and power, she manages to wipe everybody else off the screen, including HERSELF!

While Richard Burton, Noel Coward, Joanna Shimkus, and Michael Dunn (of Ship of Fools and Wild Wild West[tv version, please!] fame) manage to deliver the goods in this Tennessee Williams free for all, it is the incredible Miss Taylor who grounds this late 60's arthouse flop, and manages to transcend it's failing qualities, to make it a screen orgy of bad taste and over the top drama!

Try and keep a straight face during Miss Taylor's prolonged coughing fit on the balcony! I thought I was going to be sick just watching her hack up her lungs. Watch Richard Burton somnambulistically maneuver his way through a role played on stage by Tab Hunter! (I can't help but think, that this film might have actually been pulled off as a straight drama with the original casting of Simone Signoret and Sean Connery!)

We lovers of camp and all things over the top should revel in this failed artistic masterpiece!

This film gets a 10 Star rating as Camp, and a 4 Star rating as anything else!

endnote: Where is the DVD/Video release of this film????!!!!!!

Joseph Losey would have turned 100 on 14 January 2009 had he lived and it seems appropriate that I should commemorate that anniversary a day late and with this very film because: a) it deals with a much-married dying woman looking back on her life and b) it misses the mark of being a good movie. Actually, for most people, it does much more than the latter and is an unmitigated disaster, a serious blot on the careers of a handful of talented people: director Losey, playwright-screenwriter Tennessee Williams (who boldly claimed this was the best film ever to be made out of his own plays!) and lead actors Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. On the other hand, the ones who generally escaped the critical trashing with their dignity intact were cinematographer Douglas Slocombe (shooting in the lovely Mediterranean island of Sardinia), composer John Barry (who provides a terrific and playfully eclectic score) and supporting players Noel Coward (making a droll appearance as the Witch of Capri) and Joanna Shimkus (as Taylor's long-suffering secretary). For one thing, the Burtons were both miscast, with her being far too young – she was just 36 at the time – and him too old for their roles (Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter, respectively, had originally played those parts in the equally catastrophic stage version)! The fact that BOOM is one of eccentric film-maker John Waters' all-time favorites is a clear sign that the movie's reputation (bad or cult, depending which side of the fence one happens to be on) rests squarely on its high camp quotient: Taylor's constantly shrill, foul-mouthed delivery (including the occasional line in massacred Italian) – which, again, can be downright annoying or mildly amusing – and her parading in an incredible Kabuki costume to the strains of live sitars; "Angel of Death" Burton's walking around (hair blowing in the wind) in a samurai warrior's attire and brandishing the proverbial sword on the ledge of Taylor's clifftop villa; diminutive bodyguard Michael Dunn unleashing his pack of wild dogs on intruder Burton, etc. In the long run, however, what really saves the film for me – apart from those assets already mentioned at the top – is Losey's mise-en-scene which, from the very first shot to the last, is remarkably cinematic and inventive – in spite of his allegedly hitting the bottle quite hard during production (which did not prevent either of the Burtons from working for him once more, albeit separately)!

Where to begin in discussing the rococo lunacy of this ill-fated project? Would it be Tennessee Williams' overripe script ("My heart beats blood that is not my blood, but the blood of anonymous donors")? Elizabeth Taylor's screeching performance ("S*** on your mother!", she yells at a clumsy servant)? Richard Burton's near-catatonic recitation of the title, or his reading of Coleridge's "Xanadu" (which Taylor interrupts with a "HUH?")?

Director John Waters' favorite movie (he calls it "failed art" and, thus, "perfect") is a non-stop laugh riot, and since "Boom!" is not available on video, you owe it to yourself to catch it on screen on those rare opportunities when it is presented. (The LA County Museum of Art recently screened it as part of its celebration of the Noel Coward centenary -- despite the fact that Mr. Coward appears in it for about 10 minutes -- and it drew hearty laughs throughout its seemingly interminable running time.)

So loony, so overdone, so 1968, this one's a camp classic.