Salome (1953)

SALOME  (1953)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: William Dieterle
    Rita Hayworth, Stewart Granger, Charles Laughton,
    Judith Anderson, Cedric Hardwick, Alan Badel,
    Basil Sydney, Maurice Schwartz, Arnold Moss
A sanctimonious biblical epic derived from what little is known about history's most famous striptease artist, the one whose reward for a look at her charms was a head on a plate. Charles Laughton plays the lecherous King Herod, and even he sometimes looks like he'd rather be somewhere else. The movie's really just a long, long lead-up to Rita's veil-dropping dance, which is every bit as discreet as you'd expect it to be, coming in a mainstream product out of 1950s Hollywood.