(There are Spoilers) Based on the 1963 Tennessee Williams play "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" the movie "Boom" is about a terminally ill rich high society widow who had outlived, not divorced, her six husbands and is now in the process of working on her autobiography before her final curtain call.
A horror to work for Flora "Sissy" Golforth, Elizabeth Taylor, treats her servants that includes her ruthless and diminutive chief of security Rudi, Michael Dunn, and the on call doctor Dr. Evilo, Romolo Valli,worse then dirt. Consequently going into wild and uncountable fits as she pops pills and gets daily injections to keep the pain of the unknown and unnamed illness thats slowly killing her in check.
Unexpectedly showing up at the island is poet Chris Flanders, Richard Burton, an odd sort of gentleman who hasn't really done anything worthwhile in the literary department in over ten years. Flanders is strangely attracted to the mad Mrs. Goforth who's looking to have one last fling before she goes out for good. The movie filmed off the island of Sardinia has Sissy living on this giant mansion atop a high cliff and just about driving everyone crazy to the point where they just, like her personal secretary Miss Black (Joanna Shimkus), can't wait to take the first boat out. Yet at the same time are stuck there knowing that it would be inhuman to leave the screaming but dying woman to face death all by herself.
Besides the somewhat odd-ball Chris Flanders there's also the utterly weird and even more mystifying Noel Coward playing, in a part that was originally written by playwright Williams for a woman, someone called The Witch of Capri. Coward, or the Witch, had so many blood-transfusions over the years that he doesn't have a single drop of his own blood left in his entire body. The Witch is also very privy to who Flanders really is, the Angel of Death, and knows of a number of persons, now all dead, whom he had visited over the years.
Flanders dressed, courtesy of the lady of the house Sissy, in a dark and ominous looking samurai outfit together with a razor sharp samurai sword is not at all fooled by Sissy's wild and crazy actions knowing that her time of earth is fast coming to an end. He also archives the odd and almost unenviable distinction of being the first and only man in the glamorous Sissy Goforth's life to refuses to jump into the sack with her after she invited him into her bedroom! A feat that must have taken almost Herculean will power on his part.
We learn from both Flanders and the mysterious Witch of Capri, Noel Coward, that he was just an ordinary man trying to make a living, writing poetry, until some time back in California. Then Flanders helped a rich old miser from a local nursing home kill himself, by strolling into the Pacific Ocean, who like Sissy just couldn't take the pain anymore. Later coming under the influence or wing of an old Indian, or Native American, mystic Flanders then found his true reason and role in life and that was to be at the side of rich and dying men and women,like Flora "Sissy" Goforth. Flanders noble work is to ease them into the next realm of existence, death, with as little pain as possible.
A bit hard to take at times with the then worlds most famous couple Dick & Liz having a ball interacting with each other on the screen to the point that you almost forgot that the very healthy and obviously well fed Sissy Goforth was actually on the brink of death. Richard Burton was a bit to old, at 42, to be playing the young and wondering poet of the Tennessee Williams play Chris Flanders and his wife Elizabeth Taylor was much too young, at 35, to be playing the much older Mrs. Goforth who had already been married six times. This took a lot out of the authenticity of the two parts that the leading two actors in the film played.
The beautiful photography of the Mediterranen coast with the sea waves majestically crashing into the rocks did make the movie "Boom" more then watchable. There's also Miss. Taylor in an unforgettable scene dressed in a mind-blowing all-white Japanese Bobuki outfit, at a private dinner with The Witch of Capri, which was so eye popping that it would have turned heads and stopped traffic even at the very accident prone Indianapolis 500.
A horror to work for Flora "Sissy" Golforth, Elizabeth Taylor, treats her servants that includes her ruthless and diminutive chief of security Rudi, Michael Dunn, and the on call doctor Dr. Evilo, Romolo Valli,worse then dirt. Consequently going into wild and uncountable fits as she pops pills and gets daily injections to keep the pain of the unknown and unnamed illness thats slowly killing her in check.
Unexpectedly showing up at the island is poet Chris Flanders, Richard Burton, an odd sort of gentleman who hasn't really done anything worthwhile in the literary department in over ten years. Flanders is strangely attracted to the mad Mrs. Goforth who's looking to have one last fling before she goes out for good. The movie filmed off the island of Sardinia has Sissy living on this giant mansion atop a high cliff and just about driving everyone crazy to the point where they just, like her personal secretary Miss Black (Joanna Shimkus), can't wait to take the first boat out. Yet at the same time are stuck there knowing that it would be inhuman to leave the screaming but dying woman to face death all by herself.
Besides the somewhat odd-ball Chris Flanders there's also the utterly weird and even more mystifying Noel Coward playing, in a part that was originally written by playwright Williams for a woman, someone called The Witch of Capri. Coward, or the Witch, had so many blood-transfusions over the years that he doesn't have a single drop of his own blood left in his entire body. The Witch is also very privy to who Flanders really is, the Angel of Death, and knows of a number of persons, now all dead, whom he had visited over the years.
Flanders dressed, courtesy of the lady of the house Sissy, in a dark and ominous looking samurai outfit together with a razor sharp samurai sword is not at all fooled by Sissy's wild and crazy actions knowing that her time of earth is fast coming to an end. He also archives the odd and almost unenviable distinction of being the first and only man in the glamorous Sissy Goforth's life to refuses to jump into the sack with her after she invited him into her bedroom! A feat that must have taken almost Herculean will power on his part.
We learn from both Flanders and the mysterious Witch of Capri, Noel Coward, that he was just an ordinary man trying to make a living, writing poetry, until some time back in California. Then Flanders helped a rich old miser from a local nursing home kill himself, by strolling into the Pacific Ocean, who like Sissy just couldn't take the pain anymore. Later coming under the influence or wing of an old Indian, or Native American, mystic Flanders then found his true reason and role in life and that was to be at the side of rich and dying men and women,like Flora "Sissy" Goforth. Flanders noble work is to ease them into the next realm of existence, death, with as little pain as possible.
A bit hard to take at times with the then worlds most famous couple Dick & Liz having a ball interacting with each other on the screen to the point that you almost forgot that the very healthy and obviously well fed Sissy Goforth was actually on the brink of death. Richard Burton was a bit to old, at 42, to be playing the young and wondering poet of the Tennessee Williams play Chris Flanders and his wife Elizabeth Taylor was much too young, at 35, to be playing the much older Mrs. Goforth who had already been married six times. This took a lot out of the authenticity of the two parts that the leading two actors in the film played.
The beautiful photography of the Mediterranen coast with the sea waves majestically crashing into the rocks did make the movie "Boom" more then watchable. There's also Miss. Taylor in an unforgettable scene dressed in a mind-blowing all-white Japanese Bobuki outfit, at a private dinner with The Witch of Capri, which was so eye popping that it would have turned heads and stopped traffic even at the very accident prone Indianapolis 500.