Sodom and Gomorrah (1962)

Very disappointing...

Very Cool!!!

Nice effects though.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Sodom and Gomorrah is directed by Robert Aldrich and co written by Hugo Butler and Giorgio Prosperi. It stars Stewart Granger, Stanley Baker, Pier Angeli, Rossana Podestà, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart and Scilla Gabel. Music is by Miklós Rózsa and cinematography by Silvano Ippoliti, Cyril J. Knowles and Mario Montuori. The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah.Regardless of the fact it leaves some of the Bible story behind, it simply is not a good film. It's a tired Biblical epic that finds Granger and Baker manfully trying to ignore how low they have got as they are surrounded by a bunch of no mark actors trying to make a sword and sandals piece work. It lacks dynamism, the Euro production barely masking what a elongated bore the story is. It looks nice at times, the great Ken Adam creating some eye pleasing sets and the location photography (Morocco/Italy) provides a suitable backdrop, but come the hokey and cheap looking finale you realise there's been too much talky intrigue and not enough pulse raising. 5/10

Robert Aldrich directed some classic films, like WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, but he also directed not so great classics, like the stunningly bad but entertaining LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE. SODOM AND GOMORRAH is neither a good nor entertainingly bad film. It's just plain bad. The production values, though sorta grand, are awful. Everything looks grubby. The actors are totally miscast. The characters are not memorable or even interesting at any level whatsoever. The acting is awful. The action scenes are overdone and do not seem to gel with the rest of the leaden drama. The movie is all around sloppy and it's filled with many technical goofs, like visible tire tracks in the desert. No one, and I mean no one's heart was into this project. And it shows on screen.The mesmerizing Anouk Aimée is totally miscast as the evil Queen. Playing a lesbian, she wasn't believable on any level, as a Queen or someone evil or as a lesbian. Stewart Granger was blah (certainly compared to his excellent turn as Apollodorus in CAESAR & CLEOPATRA). I suspect Aldrich hated either the character or Granger the actor because Lot came across as someone virtuous and yet totally stupid. Like some sort of Dudley Do Wrong.Aldrich's penchant for things crude and quasi-trashy are in evidence throughout the movie. He certainly loves showcasing evil lesbians in his films (LYLAH CLARE, KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE, etc) and changing the actual ruler of Sodom from a King to a Queen, in order to indulge in his fetish, pointed to me that the director wasn't interested in anything to do with facts or creating a compelling dramatic story. Because of this, this grand epic looks no grander than your average Sword & Sandal film. In fact, Peplums are more fun than this because they rarely take themselves as seriously as this misguided project. There are some moment of great unintentional cheese/camp here but the film is way too long and tedious to make it worthwhile. Skip it.

With the filming of Sodom and Gomorrah, Stewart Granger began a phase of his career on the European continent. Not that Sodom and Gomorrah is any great film, but it was certainly better than some of those spaghetti westerns he did in the Sixties to pay for his hedonistic life style. Something like the one they allegedly lived down Sodom way.Of course Sodom and Gomorrah doesn't stick to the biblical version of the tale, but then neither did those DeMille epics, Samson and Delilah and The Ten Commandments. Nor is homosexuality singled out as THE sin that got the Deity all upset that he wanted to destroy the place. Then again it isn't even in the Bible.Lot as portrayed by Stewart Granger doesn't take just his family there, he leads a whole tribe of Hebrew people there after he parts from Uncle Abraham. Pretty soon he gets all tangled up in Sodomite politics and gets a bit entangled himself with Pier Angeli who is a slave girl to Queen Anouk Aimee. Villain of the piece is Stanley Baker who always improves every film he was ever in. He's Anouk's brother and he's got the idea he ought to be running things. He's also got an eye for Lot's daughters.There's a very nicely staged battle sequence with the Hebrews defending the land granted them by Anouk. But the script is definitely out of the Cecil B. DeMille school of arcane Victorian writing.Still it's entertaining in many respects.

Having always been a sap for those hokey Bible epics, it's no surprise I found 'Sodom' quite entertaining. Loosely based on the Scriptures, the last days of the doomed cities are presented by a host of mediocre actors, pretty good special effects and a fine music score by Miklos Rozsa. (This would be the last Bible flic he would score). The subject matter might be considered racy for its time with hints of homosexuality, rather graphic torture and incest. Stewart Granger is a bit out of place in this one, but there's enough going on that you don't really notice. The buildup to the city's destruction and the final cataclysm are pretty well done and all in all, not a bad flic if you don't take it too seriously.