They actually try to do their best out of a bad script. The problem is that everyone is miscast, without a single exception, or perhaps with Jean Byron as Charmian for the only exception. The actress playing Arsinoë could also be an exception, but no one still knows who that actress was, but the part is perhaps the only interesting one in the film. None of the others, without exception, is convincing. Rhonda Fleming is not bad, but her script is impossible. John Lundigan as Lucilius is laughable as a head to foot yankee. The less said about Raymond Burr as Antony, the better, while he at least makes an effort to be convincing as a drunk. There have been a lot of miserable screenings of this great romance of the antiquities, they have all failed, but this must be (at least one of) the worst. Even the music is a disaster. Sorry, no one ever seems to get this story right, while Shakespeare got close enough, but no one will ever understand Cleopatra the woman, if Elizabeth Taylor though after all was the best one. "Did anyone ever conquer a woman?" Lucilius asks in the beginning, he never gets an answer, but the Cleopatra case seems to forever confirm the answer as no.
Review of Serpent of the Nile
