Dreadfully Boring

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

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.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I don't think Myra Beckinridge is quite as bad as its reputation suggests. However that's not saying very much, as a film it is an interesting curiosity but also its a mess. Starting with the good things, I liked the soundtrack and some of the fashions and scenery. Farrah Fawcett and Mae West are decent, and Raquel Welch also gives a good performance despite having some of the worst lines of the film. On the other hand, what Myra Breckinridge suffers from especially are scenes that jump wildly and frequently all over the place with no smoothness, this is both in editing and storytelling and the incoherent script. The story was interesting at first glance, but became very disjointed, while the direction fares no better. The film is only about 95 or so minutes, but because the pace is so uneven sometimes it feels longer. The rest of the cast are not good at all, Red Reed is horrible, Roger Herren is bland and John Huston-who I love both as an actor and director-is overbearing and chews the scenery to pieces. Overall, Myra Breckinridge is interesting, but it is a mess as well. 4/10 Bethany Cox

This fetid stinkbomb of a film has a notorious reputation as one of the worst movies to ever ooze its disgusting way onto celluloid. Is it really that bad? Well, yes it is, but it's often so strange and perverse that it ultimately becomes downright mesmerizing in its unapologetic freakishness. Raquel Welch, looking absolutely gorgeous and carrying herself with admirable flair and poise, gives it all she's got as Myra Breckinridge, a ruthless, predatory and venomous femme fatale who tries to nab a sizable inheritance from blustery millionaire acting school dean Buck Loner (an outrageously hammy John Huston) and cheerfully destroys any hapless males and females who get in her lethal way. You see, Myra was originally the preening homosexual Myron (a terrible and insufferably smug performance by popular movie critic Rex Reed) prior to having a successful sex change operation (done by none other than John Carradine!). Director/co-writer Michael Sarne delivers a brutal no-holds-barred satire on Hollywood decadence, libertine permissiveness run insanely amok, and the swingin' early 70's sexual revolution which unmercifully mocks both the stuffy old guard and hip youth culture with equal seething disdain; this fierce in-your-face mean-spiritedness gives the picture a shocking acidic edge that certainly isn't subtle or sophisticated, but still gets the nasty job done in a hilariously vicious way all the same. The hysterically broad acting further enhances the all-out lunacy: an aged, yet spry Mae West is positively sidesplitting as blithely bawdy talent agent Leticia Van Allen (the sequence with West heartily belting out "Hard to Handle" on stage is a total gut-busting riot), Calvin Lockhart camps it up to the ninth degree as fey gay Irving Arnadeus, Farrah Fawcett is a bit too convincing for comfort as giggly bimbo Mary Ann Pringle, Roger Herren likewise does dumb with unnerving conviction as macho stud Rusty Godowski (the scene which depicts Myra joyfully sodomizing Rusty is genuinely sick and startling), and Tom Selleck sans trademark mustache even makes his ignominious film debut as one of Van Allen's handsome and virile boy toys. Moreover, there's also lots of clips from vintage golden oldie 30's features edited into the main narrative throughout; this just throws the picture even more off kilter and hence adds to the bizarrely entrancing train wreck quality of the whole misguided enterprise. Now, this isn't a good film by any conventional standards, but man is this wonderfully wretched abomination a one-of-a-kind piece of remarkably vile and depraved kitsch.

THAT'S certainly a strange way to promote a film upon which a great deal rested. And it seems like plain suicide on the part of the studio, given that (1) The feuds between the cast were well known long before the movie's release. (2) The feud between the Producer(Robert Fryer) and Director ( Michael Sarne) was also common knowledge. (3) The cast made no secret of their contempt for the film and made it public at every opportunity, with daily bulletins from the set gleefully reported by gossip columnists everywhere.And (4) The author, Gore Vidal hated it practically from day one. Nevertheless, that tagline just about sums it up. Raquel Welch does give a decent performance as Myra, and she looks lovely besides. John Huston is very funny as Buck Loner, the ex-Cowboy Star who runs a phony acting academy. Mae West, (in her first screen appearance since 1943) naturally rewrote her part to suit herself, and she is great as ''oversexed'' (and that's putting it mildly) ''Talent Agent'' Leticia Van Allen. Still, she must have wondered (after waiting so long for a good vehicle in which to return) how she ever ended up in this mess.Tom Selleck (in his film debut) is one of her ''clients''. John Carradine and Jim Backus, as Doctors, also amble in briefly. Rex Reed as Myron, Farrah Fawcett and Roger Herren, as the victims of Myra/Myron's sexual passion, are neither here nor there. The same goes for the script, which not only fails to focus on the basic plot of the book, but seems to head in at least three different directions at once. Although West's part was originally larger, she was reduced to a cameo role by the time Sarne was through with the editing. And, partly because of this, she seems to be in a different movie. Apparently, at some point, the Producers realized that Mae was going to be the film's big draw, and, unable to replace most of her cut footage, they rushed her back to the set at the end of filming for the second of her two songs, both of which come out of nowhere. The device Sarne used of throwing in old film clips of bygone stars to emphasize whatever points he was making, doesn't work at all. By the time the movie concludes, all a weary spectator can do is wonder what in the hell it was all about. Not surprisingly, just about everyone connected with the production felt the same way, and it died at the box office. A technically flawless DVD includes, (among other extras) separate commentaries from both Welch and Sarne, each of whom have completely opposite opinions of just what went wrong.No doubt it's home video re-release was prompted by a 2001'' Vanity Fair'' piece, which attempted (in great detail) to do the same thing. True, the structure of the novel made a screen adaptation a dubious undertaking, but, with Sarne at the helm of what was obviously a ''troubled'' production, it really never had a chance.

This movie is so bad it's awful. I'm amazed that screenwriter David Giler actually went on to write good films, like "The Parallax View" and "Aliens." In fact, I'm amazed that he and co-writer/director Michael Sarne - or anyone else connected with this abomination - were ever able to find work in the industry again.I never read Gore Vidal's novel, so I can't compare that story to what I saw on the screen, but I'm guessing the book was just a tad more coherent. I'm really not sure what the movie was all about, actually. I think it involved a man named Myron (Rex Reed) who had a sex change operation and became Myra (Raquel Welch), who then set out to redefine the rules of gender and sexuality while taking over her uncle's acting school. I think.Poor Raquel Welch. She was never much of a thespian to begin with, but in this movie, she's saddled with page after page of inane dialogue that she attempts to recite with some kind of strange accent that's a mix between British and Central Park Society Woman. The result is truly embarrassing for the sex goddess. On top of that, she's forced to wear incredibly garish costumes that even Jean Paul Gauthier on LSD would never dream of designing.John Huston, as Uncle Buck Loner, the owner of a failing acting school that for no discernible reason appears to be set up on an old Western movie back lot, looks and sounds drunk throughout most of the film. Can't say I blame him. To go from directing "The Maltese Falcon" to playing a delusional, 50-gallon-hat-wearing cowboy would make anyone hit the bottle.Then there's Mae West. Oh, boy. She essentially reprises the oversexed, double-entendre-cracking character that made her famous in the 1930s. Only she's 77 in this movie, and it's just kinda pathetic. To make it worse, she actually tries to sing two songs, and during one tune, she looks like she's either chewing gum or attempting to slip her dentures back into place with her tongue. Her role as the lascivious talent agent Leticia Van Allen makes absolutely no sense in this movie - she barely interacts with the principle cast members, and her character contributes nothing to the plot. She's there for a while, then she's gone.When you can say that Rex Reed, Farrah Fawcett (looking so young and so gorgeous, by the way), and Roger Herren's naked butt deliver the three best performances in this movie, it should give you a good indication of just how terrible the whole thing is.Technically, the movie looks and sounds like it was put together by a group of elementary school students. The editing is sloppy, the dialogue looping (and there's a lot of it) is obvious and poorly executed, the camera work is sophomoric, and the music is excruciating (cover your ears when Mae starts belting).Some say "Myra Breckenridge" is an underrated classic. No way. It's just garbage disguised as an avante garde experiment.