Boom!

Boom! centres on Flora Goforth, a wealthy widow who has outlived several husbands and now waits to die on the Mediterranean island she owns. She fills her days dictating her memoirs to her young secretary, Miss Black, while managing her household and keeping visitors away. Into this closed world comes Chris Flanders, a poet who has a reputation for appearing wherever a rich woman is near death. Warned about him, Flora nonetheless lets him stay, and the two confront their very different attitudes toward the life she has left.

The film is an adaptation of Tennessee Williams's play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, directed by Joseph Losey and released in 1968. It followed Accident (1967) in his filmography and preceded The Go-Between (1971). Elizabeth Taylor plays Flora, Richard Burton plays Chris, and the cast includes Noël Coward, Joanna Shimkus, Michael Dunn and Romolo Valli. It was a large production, budgeted at around ten million dollars.

Reception was modest. On IMDb the film holds a rating of 5.5 from roughly two thousand votes, and on TMDB it averages 5.9 from a much smaller number of votes. A critics' rating of 4.3 from fifteen reviews is lower than either audience figure, suggesting reviewers were less receptive than viewers.