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Product Description
In the sleepy village of Puerto Vallarta, the defrocked Reverend T. Laurence Shannon works as a tour guide. While leading a group of school teachers, he attracts the attention of their junior member Charlotte Goodall. To save money, he takes the group to a rundown hotel owned by his friend, Maxine Faulk. Once there, his interest shifts to Hannah Jelkes, a poor artist. But in the end it may be Maxine whom he stays on with.
Amazon.com
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
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