150 Word Review: 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof' (1958)

Mendacity.

Photo: MGM

Everybody's tortured in director Richard Brooks' hot and humid adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Brick is tortured because he doesn't understand the feelings he had for his dead friend, Skipper. His wife Maggie understands. She's tortured because she's horny for her husband. And his money.

Then there's Big Daddy, tortured by regret. He's dying and still lusts. Who should he leave his Mississippi plantation empire to? The suck-up son or the has-been with a secret? Burl Ives won an Oscar for the role, a mix of Colonel Sanders and the MCU villain Kingpin. His drawl is thicker than country gravy.

Elizabeth Taylor lives up to Maggie's nickname: she purrs and hisses. Brick is an unlikable drunk, but Paul Newman's charms make him more sympathetic. This is one of Williams' best Southern soap operas, a family fracturing, fabulously. The queer subtext isn't subtle.

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