Hollywood's love affair with Cleopatra is as strong as the ones she had with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony - and just as doomed.
As for "Serpent of the Nile", maybe only lovers of bad movies could sit through it today, and for them there is much to enjoy. However it's fascinating to see a star like Raymond Burr before he became famous on television.
"Serpent of the Nile" starts with the death of Caesar, which allows Mark Antony (Raymond Burr) to follow his destiny to Egypt and Cleopatra. Fair-skinned Rhonda Fleming is a glamorous Cleopatra, although the makeup department didn't even bother to remove the cap off the bronzing cream in the pursuit of ethnic authenticity.
Along the way, Antony spares the life of Lucilius (William Lundigan), a Roman officer who becomes a friend. However, Lucilius has had history with Cleopatra and has the inside running although she does take up with Mark Antony. Eventually Antony loses his grip, giving himself over to pleasure.
After a falling out of buddies, Lucilius joins Antony's rival, Octavian, who arrives to stop the nonsense in Egypt. Finally, Antony falls on his sword while Cleopatra heads for the basket with the asp.
"Serpent" is flat looking and stagy. That's probably because much of the film looks as though it was shot in director William Castle's office where they just pushed the furniture aside and hung a curtain on the wall - the film uses a lot of curtains.
The film opens out in a few scenes, and does come to life in the big dance number. The movie doesn't seem to have taxed the research department too much except where they apparently discovered that the Ancient Egyptians were partial to scantly-clad dancing girls. In fact researchers on all Cleopatra pictures come to the same conclusion, although I can't remember ever seeing hieroglyphics that depicted things quite that way.
The dance sequence in "Serpent" seems to owe more to Las Vegas than Luxor and is a bit of an eye-opener, especially for a 1953 movie. Julie Newmar cut loose clad in gold paint and not much else - the rest of the movie has a hard time matching a performance like that.
The audacity of the whole thing is reason enough to give the film a viewing. Although it's not a send-up, in some ways it could give "Carry on Cleo" a run for its money.
