I'm not big on ancient/Biblical films - there's really only about four good ones, especially from this period. This one is particularly horrid. Rita Hayworth stars as Salome, you know, that chick who calls for John the Baptist's head on a platter and did a sexy dance. I saw a decent silent version of this story earlier this year, but even then I noted that the premise was mighty thin for an entire feature film. For this one, they must have come up with the idea of casting Rita Hayworth as Salome (here pronounced as if it rhymed with "baloney"), and only afterward realized that they couldn't really have her be the villain of the story. So they concocted a whole alternate view of the Biblical character to make Hayworth, who is miscast in the first place (pretty sure Salome was supposed to be a fairly young woman, probably even a teen, but Hayworth was about 35 at the time), the heroine. Here, Salome is more of an innocent, a tool used by her evil mother (Judith Anderson) to rid the world of John the Baptist, who is talking a lot of crap about her. John (Alan Badel), by the way, is depicted as such an annoying, unlikable prick, basically a prude standing around complaining about other people's sex lives, that you almost can't feel sorry for his execution. Chales Laughton plays Salome's stepfather. His role is much like the one he had in Sign of the Cross, but he was getting old by this point and he doesn't seem to be having much fun here. The other major player is Stewart Granger, who plays a Roman military officer and Hayworth's love interest. He's utterly boring. There's almost nothing to recommend here besides some decent costumes and a decent Dance of the Seven Veils sequence, but the rest of it is enormously dull and self-important.

This Technicolor extravaganza built around "Gilda" Hayworth's big dance number as a watered down Salome is one dishonest and cowardly piece of commerce to behold. With its attractive stars, superb supporting stage and film actors as well as a highly respected director of epics (Wilhelm Dieterle) and a master cinematographer (Charles Lang) Salome stumbles along for the entire duration with two left feet.Taken from the familiar Biblical story of John the Baptist and later spiced up by Oscar Wilde the producer's (Rita being one) tweak it a little by downplaying Salome's culpability and having the rap to pinned on mom (Judith Anderson) allowing Salome a chance to get religion and Stew Granger as the film ends on a highly solemn and spiritual note with the camera tilting to the sky where the words "This was the beginning" are emblazoned. This after the stunning Miss Hayworth finishes her incestuous two step striptease grinding up a marble staircase in front of her step father, besotted Charley Laughton with Dame Judith smirking approval. The marketers must have thought 'something for the whole family'.Where do we begin? Dieterle who directed Laughton in Hunchback as well as the unique fantasy world of a Midsummer's Night Dream fails to engage or create anything of authenticity or sincerity from performers to the cold barren sets and women draped in fabric colors usually reserved for Christmas wrapping. The B&W mastery of Lang ( Ace in the Hole, The Magnificent Seven) is no where evident in garishly lit scenes dripping gold and bleeding red.Hayworth and Grainger are beautiful and brittle with Rita softening Salome; reducing what should be driving vengeance to limpid piety. Cedric Hardwicke isn't around long enough to chew scenery but Alan Badel as a tripped out JtB is. Laughton's Herod is the biggest travesty of all as he monstrously overacts, spending most of his time waving his arms or gripping Roman columns, his utterances unconvincingly peppered with pregnant pauses and hammy anxious expressions. He along with almost anyone else involved in this pitiful production one might well argue deserve the same fate as the Baptist. Salome is an out an out abomination.

Rita Hayworth was a glamorous star by her dancing shows in different movies that she hoped in her life to be a famous dancer but she did not create this dream in the reality but she replaced it upon movies especially the dancing scenes as (Gilda) in 1943 and the second bomb that crashed Japan in WWII 1945 called (Gilda) the eternal movie for Hayworth that made her golden name as glamorous actress and diamond dancer.In Salome she danced in different scenes by high spirit and wow sense especially in the end scene that she danced for the king due to her desire to kill (John Baptist) because she failed to take from him a kiss as a sexual desire that he was a holy person and prophet and it is not simple for him to fall in sexual desire with Salome.This last dance was a master scene for this film and the title of the whole movie.

Salome is yet another film about a peripheral biblical character. All we know about her is that when John the Baptist was in Herod Antipas's dungeon awaiting sentence, she danced for the king and John's head got served up as the main course at a banquet on a silver tray.From that stringy bit of knowledge that the Good Book gives us, Columbia Pictures constructed a plot for their number one sex symbol Rita Hayworth so she could do a strip tease for Charles Laughton. That in itself was enough to sell tickets no matter how ludicrous the story.And it's one of the more ludicrous Bible based stories ever brought to the screen. The story of course is that Herod Antipas had committed adultery with his brother's wife and Salome's mother and she later became his queen. Here she's played by Judith Anderson in her best Mrs. Danvers manner.The story opens with Salome returning from Rome where the Emperor Tiberius played by Cedric Hardwicke has sent her packing because she wants to marry a Roman. His action's left her bitter against the occupiers of her country and to make matters worse, she's accompanying the new Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate played by Basil Sydney and a stalwart centurion who is Stewart Granger.The fly in the ointment is this nasty preacher, John the Baptist who goes around saying awful stuff about Judith Anderson and Charles Laughton. He's played by Alan Badel who was introduced in this film. Badel was roughly contemporary with Hugh Griffith in British cinema and both had a pair of the wildest eyes this side of Jack Elam. Allowed them both to be cast as fanatic types. It serves Badel well as John the Baptist.What I love about this story is that everybody's got an agenda going here except Pilate and the Baptist. Salome wants to protect mom, Herodias wants the Baptist dead, Herod wants him to just go away and shut up, and our centurion is a stealth Baptist follower soon to be following that cousin of his from Nazareth.All that leads up to the events described in the Bible. Everybody goes through the motions here, they all know this film is a Thanksgiving special. Especially Charles Laughton who's done lascivious before on the screen, in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, in The Paradine Case, in The Strange Door. Laughton has lascivious down to a science and with Rita Hayworth as the lust object who could blame him.As for Rita she must have felt like Maureen O'Hara did, that other Hollywood redhead who got cast in all these exotic roles where her titian tresses were jarringly out of place.She must have wondered why she came back after this one.