The Night of the Iguana

Melodrama on the Mexican Coast with Burton, Gardner and Kerr

Released in 1964 and directed by John Huston based on Tennessee Williams' play, "The Night of the Iguana" stars Richard Burton as a defrocked Episcopal minister who resorts to a job leading bus tours on the Mexican west coast. As he guides a group of middle-aged Baptist women to Puerto Vallarta, he struggles with the attentions of a teen sexpot (Sue Lyon) and the antagonism of her curmudgeonly ward (Grayson Hall). The group ends up at a bed & breakfast where the effervescent proprietor (Ava Gardner) and a spiritual artist (Deborah Kerr) aid the ex-clergyman in coming to terms with the failures haunting him. Skip Ward plays the hunky bus tour assistant.

As much as I app...

Though we dont really know quite why at the time, its fairly clear the the Rev. Shannon (Richard Burton) has rather lost the confidence of his flock and so its not really surprising to find him now tour-guiding some evangelist American women round the sights of Mexico. This fellow has a penchant for the bottle and is little interested in his charges. Unluckily for him, the impressionable young Charlotte (Sue Lyon) is determined to seduce him, despite his own alarm bells telling him to leave well alone and her guardian Miss Fellowes (Grayson Hall) doing all she can to save the girl from the presumably menacing overtones of their manipulative host. As things get desperate, he resorts to retreating to an out of the way hotel owned by his feist...