Boom! is a 1968 British drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 starring Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

, Richard Burton

Richard Burton

Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

 and Noël Coward

Noël Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...

. It was directed by Joseph Losey

Joseph Losey

Joseph Walton Losey was an American theater and film director. After studying in Germany with Bertolt Brecht, Losey returned to the United States, eventually making his way to Hollywood...

 and adapted from Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

' play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore

The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore is a play written by Tennessee Williams.It debuted at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy, in July 1962. Its first American production was in January 1963, but it only ran for 69 performances at the Morosco Theatre in New York. Reviews of the play...

.

Plot

Flora 'Sissy' Goforth (Taylor, in a part written for an older woman) is a terminally ill woman living with a coterie of servants in a large mansion on a secluded island. Into her life comes a mysterious man, Angelo Del Morte (then-husband Burton, in a part intended for a very young man). The mysterious man may or may not be "The Angel of Death".

The interaction between Goforth and Del Morte forms the backbone of the plot, with both of the major characters voicing lines of dialogue that carry allegorical

Allegory

Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

 and Symbolist significance. Secondary characters chime in, such as "the Witch of Capri" (Coward). The movie mingles respect and contempt for human beings who, like Goforth, continue to deny their own death even as it draws closer and closer. It examines how these characters can enlist and redirect their fading erotic drive into the reinforcement of this denial.

Reception

The film was received poorly by critics, and maintains an 8% rating at Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

. It would lead to an array of other later movie bombs that both Burton and Taylor did together and apart, and while they tried to make good movies, Burton and Taylor found themselves hit with poor scripts, miscasting, fights with the studios, and bad reviews. They even found themselves fighting each other, leading to separation and divorce later