Some movies are hard to swallow, but Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) is truly indigestible. John Huston's overheated flop is Tennessee Williams by way of Pier Paolo Pasolini, a cocktail of sexual hangups, caricature southerners and baroque direction. It might be fun if it weren't so aimless, boring and stupid.Tensions run rife on a Southern military base. Major Weldon Pendleton (Marlon Brando) teaches tactics to new recruits. Outwardly an ideal soldier, his impotence and self-absorption repulse his wife Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor). Leonora takes up with Colonel Langdon (Brian Keith), whose own wife Allison (Julie Harris) is going insane. Rounding out the freak show are Ancaleto (Zorro David), Allison's gabby Filipino servant, and Private Williams (Robert Forster), a mute soldier obsessed with Leonora.
Based on a Carson McCullers novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye resembles some dystopian novel where emotion is outlawed. Leonora and Langdon chat about Alison's self-mutilation as if discussing the weather. Everyone's similarly blase about Williams' midnight panty raids and bareback horse rides. All except Pendleton, who takes Leonora's horsewhip unflinchingly but grows obsessed with the peeping tom. He becomes a country-fried Aschenbach, primping before a mirror and stalking Williams around the base. Yes, another repressed gay soldier - and Southern too! Who'da thunk?
Scenarists Gladys Hill and Chapman Mortimer shovel on the pomposity. Pendleton speaks endlessly about leadership and barracks life, drooling like Ernst Rohm over soldiers living "clean as a rifle." Yet his own manhood's forfeit when he can't ride a horse, or grow aroused by naked Elizabeth Taylor. Landon holds forth on manliness, less passionate than constipated. Meanwhile, Anacleto rambles about peacocks and Rachmaninoff, in a bid to be the most obnoxious character in movie history. Williams is lucky, relieved the burden of reciting Reflection's mush-mouthed script.
Perhaps the proceeding paragraphs make Reflections sound like fun. Too bad Huston plays this absurd material completely straight, without any hint of humor or irony. What's left is aimless, pretentious junk strewn with unaccountable bursts of style. Aldo Tonti's photography comes tinged in a yellow haze, presumably to literalize the title. Huston stages weird set pieces, like Pendleton's breakneck horse ride, that expend energy to little purpose. It culminates in the worst-directed climax in Hollywood history, a dizzying collage of overacting and horrendous camerawork.
Marlon Brando revisits his Boomhauer impression from The Chase, mumbling about them dang ol' soldiers not adhering to his concepts of leadership. Elizabeth Taylor mostly contributes dandified shrieks, Brian Keith lobotomized growls. Robert Forster spends half the film nude, the other half face-deep in Taylor's undies. Julie Harris's scenery-chewing seems authentic in comparison. And Zorro David makes Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's look like Sessue Hayakawa.
Reflections in a Golden Eye is one of Classic Hollywood's strangest failures. So many skilled artists collaborating and yet it's completely unwatchable, even as camp. Ultimately it's a black hole, sucking cast and director into a void from which no talent can escape.
