The Last of the Mobile Hot Shots

Based on an overlooked Tennessee Williams play ,also known as " kingdom on earth";it was not the first time Lumet had filmed a Williams work :"the fugitive kind" in 1960 was not particularly memorable ,a vehicle for the playwright's good friend Anna Magnani.

"Last of"...AKA "blood kin" is ,in spite of a poor rating,a more interesting adaptation :Lumet is at ease when he works in an enclosed place (see for that matter "twelve angry men" "murder on the orient express" "a dog day afternoon" "deathtrap").James Coburn is cast against type as the owner of a southern property which has known better days but the actress is not exactly how Williams depicted her in his play:"a poor man's Marilyn Monroe" .

There are only three characters but interest is sustained till the end with a final unexpected revelation a la "suddenly last Summer" .There are many flashbacks ,not unlike those of Brooks' "cat on a hot tin roof" and the beginning of the movie is a good trick ,a spoof on stupid contests .It was a cinematographic play with its impending flood and its neglected yard where the new wife lets her domestic appliances Interracial triangle in which the Myrtle/Chicken relationship sometimes recalls Blanche /Kowalski;the sexual tension is represented by the rise of waters ,and "to go up on the roof" means "to make love" in Williams' language (it's the last line of the play).

"The seven descents of Myrtle" ("kingdom on earth" ) is to be staged in Paris next September with pop singer Johnny Halliday as the terminally-ill owner,under the French title " LE Paradis Sur Terre".

This Gore Vidal adaptation of Tennessee Williams' unsuccessful play "The Seven Descents of Myrtle", originally X-rated, is best known today as being (according to movie folklore) the first major studio film to use a certain 12-letter obscenity. However, after an hour of hooping and hollering between the three uninteresting principal characters, the shock of finally hearing the word must have been anticlimactic for audiences in 1970. Just out of the hospital in New Orleans with lung problems, James Coburn is wrangled into competing on a couples-only TV game show by crazy-cute redhead Lynn Redgrave. They win the top prize--major home appliances and a check for $3500--only if they get married on television. After the ceremony, Coburn takes Redgrave "back home" to his decaying plantation in the mud, where he hopes to conceive a son in order to prevent black half-brother Robert Hooks from claiming ownership of the property after Coburn coughs himself to death. If it's true that viewers will give a film the benefit of the doubt for the first 30mns, early exiting audiences here will miss a nude interracial love scene, red-tinted flashbacks set in slow-motion, the threat of the family plantation being flooded and, of course, that famous utterance from Hooks. Meanwhile, Redgrave's brand new dishwasher has been left out in the rain and nobody sees fit to cover it up. I'm sure Vidal and Williams thought this was the height of irony. * from ****

This is clearly lesser Tennessee Williams, and must be seen to be believed. Lynn Redgrave's character and James Coburn's character get married on a TV show (despite the fact that they barely know each other) and return to his family's derelict plantation. The only other occupant is his half-brother (Hooks). The action of the film involves Redgrave going back and forth between the two men while they flash back to scenes of their dissolute past. All the while, the river is threatening to overrun its banks. That's it. That's the film. I like Williams' major works as much as most people, though to be honest, I usually prefer the "cleaned up" Hollywood versions of his stories, not because of the sanitized plots but because of clarity. But lesser-known plays like "Seven Descents of Myrtle" (on which this film is based) and "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore" (on which "Boom!" is based lack even the compelling elements of his more familiar dramas. When producers tried to cash in on Williams's good name by buying up everything he ever did, they ended up making puzzling junk like this.