188. Mediterranean Salad (BOOM!)

This is a perfect meal for summer weather–because the most cooking that it calls for is the boiling of some eggs and potatoes (you could just buy those tiny canned potatoes).

This is also the perfect meal for me to talk about the a movie I just watched–1968’s BOOM! starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

And OMG yinz guys. It was a cinematic experience like no other.

The scenery is fantastic. It was filmed on Isola Piana, a small island with high limestone cliffs just off Capo Caccia, northwest Sardinia.

Sardinia is in the Mediterranean Sea; this is a Mediterranean Salad! Get it? OK, if you want to get super-specific it’s in the Tyrrhenian Sea, but whatevs.

I 100% believe that this movie was made solely as an excuse for Burton and Taylor to live on a glamorous yacht for the duration of filming. (I wonder if she had Chasen’s Chili shipped to Sardinia like she did when she was shooting Cleopatra in Rome?).

This movie has it all!

• a dwarf Nazi with a pack of guard dogs!
• Sitar players!
• a monkey inexplicably chained to an exterior wall!
• Noel Coward (!) as The Witch of Capri!
• Elizabeth Taylor throwing medical equipment off of a cliff!
• Little villas that look they came from Tatooine!

There’s said monkey and little huts.

The pink hut houses a pink, satin, circular bed. And an indoor pool. It’s like the fucking Poconos.

There’s also a huge mural featuring Godzilla attacking an Italian village.

I’m not joking.

Because, why the fuck not?

But Liz looks fabulous.

Absolutely gorgeous–although in her 30s and not quite as svelte as she once was. Which explains why she wears caftans (you know that I love a good caftan). She also sports a variety of  accessories that are just beyond.

I mean, please look at the gif above. Are those earrings? Or just shit dangling from that headband? Whatever, her eye makeup is STUNNING and I want to grow up and be her.

Can we take a moment to appreciate these sunglasses which I need RIGHT NOW?

And this Burka-lite look:

I think that this one predicts her White Diamonds years.

Here she is, a vision in white lace, in a little hut that appears out of nowhere (the editing in this movie is horrendous). It seems to be lined with bottles of liquor.

Doesn’t it look like a mini bar?

I swear, every time a glass is picked up during BOOM!, there had to have been actual booze in it. Liz’s character is supposed to be in poor health (there are a lot of coughing fits and panic attacks) but she stumbles around the set like she’s absolutely blotto.

I am sure that this wasn’t acting:

And Dick is just as bad. I think alcohol is the only way they could get through this shoot.

But no caftan or headpiece tops THIS:

Even Liz is saying “LOOK HOW BIG THIS THING IS ON MY HEAD.”

God love her, she liked it so much she wore it to a gala event in Venice:

But she took that dickey out and replaced it with more jewels. Because, LIZ.

Did I mention that Richard Burton wears a Samurai costume complete with katana for the majority of the film?

He also randomly punctuates himself by whispering the word “boom,” then the camera inevitably cuts to waves crashing on the rocks.

I guess that’s symbolic or something?

The script is…shit. And Tennessee Williams has no one to blame except for himself because he adapted the goddamn thing from his stage play The Milk Truck Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.  I guess that BOOM! is an improvement from that hot mess of a title.

Honestly, I don’t know if I can tell you what happened in this movie. Liz’s character is a wealthy widow who has outlived 5 husbands and wants to take on a lover before she dies…? She rattles of a lot of meandering monologues about lost romance and a young poet who died when he fell of a cliff or something. Said young poet is the one she truly loved and no one has ever compared…

Holy shit.

Between the booze, the husbands, the caftans, the massive jewelry and the tragic death of the only man she really loved (Film producer Mike Todd died when his plane–actually  named The Liz–crashed into a mountain)–Liz Taylor is totally playing herself!

OK, well, there’s not much more to say. Except BOOM!

Here’s the salad. Instead of canned tuna (which Mr. Sauce hates), we seared a beautiful piece of tuna.

This was delicious and I’m totally going to go make it again.

So prepare this salad, get yourself a bottle (or 2) of Italian wine, and sit back and enjoy one of the greatest cinematic train wrecks in the history of cinematic train wrecks.

Here’s the trailer to whet your appetite.