Boom!

Director: Joseph Losey Joseph Losey

Overview

In this widely-reviled version of Tennessee Williams' stage play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, with an absurdist screenplay by Williams and tone-deaf direction by Joseph Losey, Elizabeth Taylor is Flora Goforth, a six-times divorced millionairess who is spending her summer holidays on a Mediterranean island to dictate her memoirs and to die. Arriving on the island is besotted poet Chris Flanders (Richard Burton), dubbed the "Angel of Death" by Flora's swishy Noel Coward-esque friend (Noel Coward) because of Chris's uncanny ability to hone in on rich, dying widows and reap financial boons from the terminally ill dowagers. Flora, nevertheless, ignores her friend's prescient wisdom and permits Chris to stay at her villa. As her health continues to fade, she becomes more and more attracted to "the Angel of Death."

Product Details

Release Date:	05/15/2018
UPC:	0191329053867
Original Release:	1968
Source:	Universal
Language:	English
Time:	1:53:00
Sales rank:	37,378

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Elizabeth Taylor	Flora 'Sissy' Goforth,Journalist
Richard Burton	Chris Flanders
Noel Coward	The Witch
Joanna Shimkus	Miss Black
Michael Dunn	Rudy
Romolo Valli	Doctor
Fernando Piazza	Etti
Veronica Wells	Simonetta
Claudye Ettori	Manicurist

Technical Credits

Joseph Losey	Director
John Heyman	Producer
Norman Priggen	Producer
Gerry Humphreys	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Boom! is a ridiculous exercise in excess, the kind of misfire that destroyed the careers of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton . Taken from a Tennessee Williams play this is definitely one of the playwright's lesser efforts, Boom! is an overblown wallow from start to finish. Mind you, there's definitely some entertainment value in it; if nothing else, the bizarre spikey headpiece that adorns Taylor's cranium at one point and becomes the distracting focal point of every shot in which it appears provides some laughs and inspires a sense of wonder at what costumer Tiziani of Rome could possible have been thinking. Not all of Taylor's get-ups inspire this reaction, but the sheer number of them does give one pause -- or it would, if one were not already pausing constantly to wonder what Williams was thinking as one florid monologue or symbol-drenched passage after another cascades from the mouths of his characters. Taylor and Burton appear as caricatures of themselves, in the kind of performance that makes one rush to re-view Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf just to be reassured that, yes, these two stars do indeed have real talent. Joseph Losey's direction is inconsistent; there are a few nice touches here and there, but they are more than compensated for by some truly dreadful touches and a general air of confusion in his work. The only truly successful part of Boom! is Noel Coward's delightfully bitchy turn as the Witch of Capri. It's not enough to save Boom!, but it's a welcome oasis in a desert of a movie.