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Salome's Last Dance (1987)

Director: Ken Russell

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From Time Out Film Guide

Russell's worst film to date. Stagily constrained to a single set, it has Oscar Wilde (Grace) taking time off from enviable epigrams to suffer a private production of his banned play, put on by his friends, the staff and clients of a singularly decadent Victorian brothel. They're a motley crew: Johns made up like a pier-show performer as Herod, Jackson whining Mrs Cravatt-style as Herodias, and our Ken himself as a dementedly salacious photographer. The petulant nymph, as incarnated by Millais-Scott - seemingly a graduate of the Toyah Wilcox School of Over Emphatic Diction and Hyper-active Eyelids - is depressingly tiresome; as is Russell's spastic balancing act between reality and illusion, which tenuously ties the text to Wilde's tormented longings for handsome young Bosie (Hodge). The in-jokes are plain silly, Russell's customary irreverence a matter of flatulent, leering Carry On-style humour, the decor sub-Beardsley, the whole thing redolent of a retarded pornographer's revue.

Author: GA 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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Cast & crew

Director: Ken Russell

Producer: Penny Corke

Cast: Glenda Jackson, Stratford Johns, Nickolas Grace, Douglas Hodge, Imogen Millais-Scott, Denis Ull, Russell Lee Nash, Ken Russell full cast

Duration: 89 mins


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