i must have seen a different film!!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

I was immediately captivated by Katharine Hepburn's early monologue and the astonishingly well written play (Tennessee Williams) and screenplay (Gore Vidal) held me agog until Elizabeth Taylor's towards the end. It is an amazing start and a triumphant end whilst almost everything in-between is as good. The dialogue simply tingles the spine with its humour, doom laden gothic horror and barely believable implied depravity. I once thought fans that spoke of 'loving' a certain actress and being able to watch/listen to them all the time were having me on, if not themselves, but I have it for Elizabeth Taylor. I watch in awe as she spills out her character and imbues already dramatic scripts with even more involving and inspiring emotions. And, she looks fantastic. I thought she looked amazing in the early institution scenes and then she is glammed up! A great play given the very best treatment here and if Montgomery Clift was suffering during his performance he is still very effective in what he is asked to do, which as it involves mediating between the two ladies is no mean feat. Excellent.

If you're a Tennessee Williams fan, you probably know a little bit about his personal life. Tennessee's sister was mentally ill and underwent a lobotomy in the 1940s. The procedure's aftermath was devastating, and she was institutionalized for the remainder of her life. Knowing this, and knowing the persona of his overbearing mother, it's easy to see Suddenly, Last Summer as a partially autobiographical work, as were most of his plays. In this story, a strong, domineering mother tries to convince a young doctor to perform a lobotomy on her unstable niece.Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift became lifelong friends in real life after their pairing in A Place in the Sun, and not only do audiences see them reunited for a third time in this film, but it's interesting and entertaining to see the reversed dynamic. Before, Monty was striving for the upper-class Liz, and in this one, he's the classy doctor she keeps trying to shock and flirt with. They both give excellent, Tennessee Williams-esque performances; it sometimes seems like Monty was born to act in his plays.Katharine Hepburn plays the mother. She was known for her forceful characterizations in her later years, and when you watch Suddenly, Last Summer, it's easy to see why. Kate and Liz were pinned against each other in the Best Actress category during the 1960 Oscar ceremony, but neither one took home the gold. The following year, Liz won a make-up Oscar for BUtterfield 8, so if you watch this movie and think she was robbed, you can relax knowing she was honored for her next film.

Elizabeth Taylor is gorgeous. Montgomery Clift a very talented actor.Elizabeth Taylor plays a very embarrassing role (goodness, what actresses were put through during those days...) and strangely enough does alternatively well at it. It's a very difficult and totally central role, and she acts both superbly at times, and then unconvincingly during other scenes.Ultimately, the film attempts to be subtle in many different ways, summoning philosophical dialog between the Clift and the tortured Katherine Hepburn characters, a sense of plot and evil vs truth and purity (Taylor vs Hepburn), but really there's too much talking, it's a film that is more "theoretical" than anything else where the viewer is almost being spoonfed plot, overwhelmed with script, rather than discovering a story. Of course it is a psychological film, and such is the nature of such productions, but it's still really rather slow and the ending is just way over-the-top dramatic and the revelation seems too graphic, gratuitously, like there's no need for that much shock and it just doesn't come round well enough.Lots of time spent building something up that's just not worth it.

Ironically, Elizabeth Taylor, who plays a woman who is used as a decoy to attract young men in this film, was also used to attract customers to the film. The film was advertised with a picture of Elizabeth in a bathing suit. She was a wonder of nature, indeed.This was made during the heyday of psychoanalysis. The psychoanalysts felt free to talk about cannibalistic fantasies, relating them to everything from their beloved Oedipus complex to hot dog eating contests.Thus, the cannibal behavior was a familiar trope to that segment of the population who were likely to see this movie. It wouldn't have been strange at all.Family members regularly interfe3rred with the treatment of mental patients in the era which is depicted in the film. This would not have seemed strange to a 1960 audience either.Nevertheless, the whole endeavor still came across as overheated pretentious nonsense. Hepburn was being uberHepburn, Taylor was also over the top at times, and Clift seemed so lost that he looked like he was a patient at the institution.