BOOM! —make that Barf! This legendary thud echoed thru sparsely attended cinemas as one of 1968’s biggest flops. For power couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton warning shots had been fired in the previous year’s triple tripups Reflections In A Golden Eye, The Comedians and Doctor Faustus, but Boom!‘s doom accelerated their fall from star-crossed to Earth-cursed. Unlike their previous and succeeding misfires, this one found a second life as a camp fest, championed by the likes of taste monger John Waters as a ‘drag queen classic’. You don’t have to pack extra eyelashes and shoulder pads to enjoy the abject awfulness of Tennessee Williams’ wackiest fever dream. *

“The chopping of a head is the sure cure for a tongue that’s too big for a mouth.”

‘Christopher Flanders’ (Burton) staggers ashore on a privately owned Italian island, the lofty denizen of a rich, terminally ill woman (Taylor) named ‘Flora “Sissy” Goforth’ (if that isn’t a drag queen name I’m a talking turtle), attended by a prissy secretary (Joanna Shimkus, terrible), a malevolent dwarf (Michael Dunn) dressed like a mini-Mussolini, a silent, turban-bedecked manservant and a few harried cooks and maids. Sissy is also visited by her ‘friend’ (Noel Coward at his prissiest) the, uh–waspish–‘Witch of Capri’. Not to be out-pretensed by the bitchy Witch, the mumbo-jumbo intoning he-stud Frayling is better known as ‘L’Angelo della morte’ aka ‘The Angel of Death’.  Though one of the movie’s taglines, “She outlived six rich men!”, was Taylor-made, it’s obvious early on that Sissy is on borrowed time.

Whether you’ll survive the 113 minutes without developing a malady depends on your constitution’s ability to withstand truckloads of steer manure disguised as caviar. With select friends who are up for a gluttony of guffaws you might stick with its fascinating badness all the way thru. Copious consumption of something besides food may help–it did for the cast, who apparently drank a Mediterranean’s worth of booze during the shoot, director Joseph Losey competing with Liz & Dick for blood alcohol levels. We think it best enjoyed/endured in ten-minute chunks. That way you can better appreciate the striking location (the rocky island of Isola de Presa, off the coast of Sardinia) in Douglas Slocombe’s rich cinematography, John Barry’s calliope scoring and especially the wildly imaginative set, a $500,000 creation from production designer Richard MacDonald and art director John Clark. Full-length or in segments you’ll find much to goggle and giggle over in costumes whipped up by ‘Tiziani of Rome’, with that insane headpiece Liz sports the work of Karl Lagerfeld.

“My name has been in lights since scarcely more than a child. And marriage to five industrial kings, all who had vast fortunes; which, according to the looks of them, they deposited in their bellies. A pyramid of tycoons. But then, after them, was once love. My sixth and last marriage was to a young poet. Light as a bird, who had a passion for altitudes far above sea level…”

The once-dynamic Burton duo pinned hopes on Tennessee Williams wordsmithing and way with characters, skills that had served Elizabeth well in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly, Last Summer and done beautifully for Richard in The Night Of The Iguana. Williams script adapted his play “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore” (it was a notable failure, twice, one ran five performances with Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter—you can’t make this stuff up! ), a biting brew of brooding he regarded as his best work, which would indicate to anyone not half-composed of vodka that he was more than a shawl off his rocker.

Reams of the most desperately ridiculous dialogue are bleated, mumbled or intoned by one and all (save the silent butler in the turban and caftan). Burton, trying to make the nonsense carry actual meaning, plays it in a lower register than some of his more robust paychecks. Former model Shimkus is pathetic (did she study Jill St. John?), preener Coward possibly unaware (or uncaring) that his cruise ship had docked a long time ago. Then there’s the almighty Liz, slipping in & out of American and British accents, ripping apart scenery like a famished hyena (with great eyes); her harsh cawing, bellowing and screaming eventually results in PIVM (performance induced viewer migraine), so over-any-top it almost achieves a bizarre self-reflective strain of narcissistic magnificence. To be fair to her fearless emoting, she didn’t write the drivel or direct it (what was Losey drinking thinking?)  Reviews were dire, box office dismal, camp placement deified.

With Romolo Valli, Fernando Piazza (the mysterious turbaned servant) and Howard Taylor (Liz’s real-life older brother).

 * Boom! was a bust/bomb/boondoggle costing $4,592,762, with at least that much for prints and marketing.  Once again those tracking such details bonk into a labyrinth of ‘sources’. Cogerson has it 58th in ’68 for the US, taking $5,700,000. In his “Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life” biographer David Caute presents a worldwide gross of $2,898,079, with another $1,207,681 gleaned off TV broadcasts. A loss of $3,795,452 is mentioned. Warring discrepancies force quoting this site’s About tab: “Figures on production costs and grosses are included with the caveat that they are rarely 100% reliable, as accounting often was/is/will be shifted around by studios to address other outlays, punish errant producers or stars, hide, shift blame, cheat…With demonic inflation, things get ever more screwy to pin down.”   Amen.

Shimkus, afterwards: “I think people in America are tired of the Burtons, with their diamonds and airplanes and yachts.”  Granted, but you’ll tire of Shimkus’ version of “acting” after about two minutes.

Curses, soiled again—Joseph Losey immediately followed with Taylor in the flop Secret Ceremony. A few years (and many drinks) later he buried Burton in the floppier The Assassination Of Trotsky.

Good Bad Taste dictates pointing you to Ken Begg’s long but hilarious dissertation at the site ‘Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension’ : we bow in submission. http://jabootu.net/?p=5372