Imagine inkin’ tasty tidbits like Hamlet while people were droppin’ dead from the plague, and you had to wear those itchy fuckin’ tights!? Heck, even movie producers–those numbskulls–can’t resist adapting the wiggy Brit’s plays. Friends, Romans, and countrymen, lend these your ears ‘n eyes:
•Forbidden Planet (1956) One groovy s.f. classic! Walt Pidgeon
plays a far-future Prospero (of The Tempest) marooned on a far-off planet-island
with his Miranda-like daughter (Anne Francis, aka Honey West). There’s also
a nifty Robby the Robot. ‘Tis got Leslie Nielsen, too, before he became embarrassing
in those Airplane/Police Academy farces.
•The Tempest (1979) A more direct adaptation of the play. This is the
late Derek Jarman’s masterpiece: gorgeous, thoroughly Brit, hipper than Shakespeare,
and oh-so-gay. (Would make an over-the-top double-header with Ken Russell’s
Oscar Wilde-meets-De Sade bon bon, Salome’s Last Dance, if you’ve a mind to.)
•Ran (1985) Kurosawa totally nails King Lear in this hallucinatory
two-and-half-hour joy ride. The twenty-minute silent battle scene is totally
fab cine-poetry. And Mieko Harada takes no prisoners as the Lady of the Kingdom
who pushes the King’s two evil sons into a bloodbath. What a monster of a flick!
•The Big Knife (1955) Great star-crossed playwright Clifford
Odets penned this savage send-up of Hollywood greed, and hack director Bob Aldrich
rises above himself trying to keep up. Jack Palance is a kind of hatchet-faced
Hamlet. Ida Lupino is a long-suffering Lady Macbeth. And Rod “Virginia Smoked
Ham” Steiger is bleach-blond, sexually confused, and screamin’ his fool head
off. This is bargain-basement Bard to boggle the bean!