A spectacular siege from Richard Oswald’s LUCREZIA BORGIA.
Post number 3001 at The Daily Notebook seems to require something special… but instead, it’s me, with another edition of The Forgotten, a whistle-stop tour through the cinematic history of the Borgias. The family that lays together, slays together!
Couldn’t really get on with William Castle’s SERPENT OF THE NILE, a William Castle micro-epic with Rhonda Fleming as Cleopatra, filmed in front of a purple curtain or through a few slightly shoddy glass paintings. Note to FX artists: study perspective! If a ship is actually ON the horizon, you’ve got something which is standing practically AT the vanishing point yet failing to vanish: that redefines BIG.
Speaking of BIG, Raymond Burr is always good for a laugh, but the bulk of this didn’t seem ridiculous enough. Castle directs like a heavily medicated mannequin, as usual.
But the floorshow with a gilded Julie Newmar is something –
Fiona: “These scenes are usually rubbish, but she can really move!”
Me: “Castle used up all the colour (or ‘color’) in North America for this. They had to import more violet from Mexico.”
Mildly drink-lubricated blabber among the film professionals assembled for Fiona’s birthday night out led to this word-image conjunction, which might not mean much to anybody living in a country blessedly free of SpecSavers or their TV commercials. So far, this image hasn’t been exploited to sell products, but it can’t be long. After all, if the late Humphrey Bogart (who died of cancer) can be used to sell nicotine gum (which happened some years back), anything’s possible.
Shadowplay
