The Night of the Iguana

The Night of the Iguana follows Lawrence Shannon, an Episcopal priest who has lost his position after a scandal and now earns a living in Mexico as a tour guide. Leading a busload of middle-aged American women along the coast, he finds himself pursued by Charlotte Goodall, a teenage member of the group, while her chaperone Judith Fellowes watches over the girl with a suspicion that turns openly hostile. The tensions among the travellers and Shannon's own troubled past drive the story toward a hotel run by an old acquaintance of his.

John Huston directed the film, the eleventh of the twenty-two features he made in chronological order, arriving between The Misfits and The Bible: In the Beginning... Tennessee Williams wrote the screenplay with Huston and Anthony Veiller, adapting Williams's own play. Richard Burton plays Shannon, with Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon, Skip Ward and Grayson Hall in supporting roles.

Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Seven Arts Productions on a budget of about three million dollars, the film returned roughly twelve million dollars worldwide, a strong multiple of its cost. On IMDb it holds 7.5 from around fourteen thousand votes, and on TMDB 7.2 from substantially fewer votes, while a critics' rating of 7.6 from sixteen reviews places it slightly above both audience scores.