Right from the Site:
IMDb Movie of the Day
The settings of Tennessee Williams tales were usually sultry, but The Night of the Iguana was downright steamy and tropical as it set its tortured characters in a comfortably rundown resort on the humid Mexican coast, where desires ran across the surface like a light coat of sweat on the skin of a sunbather. The earthy Maxine (Ava Gardner) runs the resort -- when she's not carousing with the young local boys -- and caters to her usually quiet guests, who suddenly find their idyll interrupted by a busful of old Texas schoolteachers. The prim tour group is being led by the defrocked Reverend Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton), who in turn is being led by the youngest member of the set, nubile teen Charlotte (Sue Lyon), a poster girl for hell and damnation wrapped in a highly neurotic and enticing package. Coming to old friend Maxine for support, Shannon fends off both the wanton Charlotte and her ferociously overprotective guardian (Oscar nominee Grayson Hall, in full repressed-lesbian mode) while striking up a touching friendship with artist Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr), whose virtue runs in direct opposition to Charlotte's carnality. One of John Huston's best literary adaptations, The Night of the Iguana tempers Williams' overwrought sensuality with a grounded emotional resonance (embodied perfectly by Gardner) that belies the strife that attended the making of the film, as the five lead actors clashed in a style worthy of Williams himself. On a sunnier note, Iguana was the movie that put Puerto Vallarta on the map as a hot tourist destination, a status it still holds to this day. - Mark Englehart (
