Salome's Last Dance (1988) on Netflix
Guy Fawkes Night, 1892. Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, his lover, come to a brothel where Alfred Taylor stages a private performance of Wilde's banned play Salome.
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- Netflix2.7/5
- IMDb6.4/102,249 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes43%
Trailer
Plot summary
Alfred Taylor has prepared a surprise for Oscar Wilde: a private staging of Wilde's play Salome at the London house he keeps, where the playwright arrives with Lord Alfred Douglas, his lover, on Guy Fawkes Night in 1892. The Lord Chamberlain's office has just banned the play from public performance in England. In the staging the players are the brothel's prostitutes and their clients, and everyone present except Wilde takes two parts, one in the house and one in the play. King Herod begs his stepdaughter Salome to dance for him and offers her anything she wants, which irritates her mother, Herodias. Salome ignores him and sets out to seduce John the Baptist, Herod's prisoner, who denounces her and Herod.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Salome's Last Dance (1988)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Imogen Millais-Scott, cast as Salome and Rose, went blind three weeks before filming after contracting glandular fever, but director Ken Russell insisted on still using her in the role.
- Salome's dance of the seven veils is not performed by Imogen Millais-Scott: a male of similar build dances the role and at one point flashes male genitals, and a body double had been suggested because she was too weak.
- Ken Russell claimed he made the film on a bet that he could not make a movie for under $1 million; it ended up being made for $1.3 million, with filming completed in three and a half weeks.
- Ken Russell said the brothel staging was a conceit he invented: Oscar Wilde's Salome was never produced in London during his lifetime, though Sarah Bernhardt was in rehearsals for it before it was banned.
