Had the director credit read Ed Wood and not, as it does, William Dieterle, I would have thought it one of Wood's worst efforts. How anyone involved would want to include this debacle on their CV is beyond me. In its favour we do get some film buffs treasures; Basil Sydney, looking as though he wandered onto the wrong soundstage while shooting Hamlet and wondering why he is suddenly in the wrong costume; Cedric Hardwicke, slightly aloof and apart, as if he is being filmed against the blue background that wasn't available at the time; a pair of gorgeous hams in Charles Laughton and Judith Anderson, chewing not only the scenery on their own set but also that on adjacent sound stages, and, of course, Stewart Granger, supercilious as ever, barely managing to conceal his built-in arrogance. This leaves Rita, alone, isolated, getting no help whatsoever from the rest of the cast, still managing to shine and glow in a meaningless cause.

Epic films based upon the Bible were popular in the 1950s, but sometimes they were only very loosely so based. "Salome" is a case in point. The "damsel" whose seductive dance before King Herod led to the execution of John the Baptist is not actually named in the New Testament, but tradition has identified her with Princess Salome, the daughter of Queen Herodias and the niece and stepdaughter of Herod. She has traditionally been painted as the ultimate Bad Girl, a wanton teenage temptress whose thoughtless cruelty led to John's death.

Well, in this film Salome is no longer a teenager but a mature beauty in her mid-thirties. (Rita Hayworth would have been 35 in 1953). More importantly, she is no longer a Bad Girl. (The studio, apparently, did not want Rita to play a villainess). To begin with, she is proud and independent-minded, but gradually softens under the influence of John's teaching and eventually converts to Christianity. (A "Salome" is numbered among Christ's followers in Mark's Gospel, but this is generally believed to have been a different person). Yes, she still gets to perform her sexy "Dance of the Seven Veils", but her motives for doing so are the precise opposite of those attributed to her in the Scriptures. In this version she is dancing in the hope that she can thereby influence the King to spare John's life.

As the film opens, Salome is living in Rome, where she has lived for most of her life. She has fallen in love with Marcellus, nephew of the Emperor Tiberius, but he forbids their marriage, not wanting a member of his family to marry a "barbarian", and exiles her back to Galilee. Once there she finds herself in a complicated political situation, made more complex by the teachings of the Baptist who condemns Herod's rule and his adulterous marriage to his brother's wife. Herodias is furious, and demands that her husband condemn the Baptist to death for treason, but he is reluctant to do so, believing that he will be cursed if he does; his reluctance makes their already unhappy marriage even more strained. In the meantime, Salome has found a new boyfriend, the handsome Roman soldier Claudius, who shares her interest in John's teaching.

Some later Biblical epics were an odd mixture of godliness and sexiness, combining an improving Christian moral with plenty of bare flesh on display. An example is "Esther and the King" in which Queen Vashti (who in the Bible is banished for refusing her husband's command to "show the people and the princes her beauty") gets into hot water for quite the opposite offence, that of showing them more of her beauty than she should by stripping down to her panties in the Royal Palace. In 1953, however, the Production Code was more rigidly enforced, so "Salome" is, on the surface at least, more godly than sexy. Hayworth's dance is really a Dance of the Six Veils, as she never removes the seventh and therefore remains fairly modestly clad to the end.

Below that surface, however, there is a lot going on. Hayworth, as lovely in her thirties as she had been a decade earlier, was gifted enough, both as an actress and as a dancer, to convey a great deal of erotic allure even when fully clothed, and although the censors could come down hard on any explicit displays of nudity, this sort of subtle sexuality was much more difficult for them to control. "Salome" is far from being Rita's greatest film (that was probably "Gilda"),but that dance is one of her greatest moments. (She later claimed it was "the most demanding of her entire career" as the director William Dieterle demanded endless retakes).

Among the other actors, the best contribution comes from Charles Laughton as the slimily lecherous Herod. Laughton had a tendency to overact, but in a role like this overacting is not necessarily a bad thing. Easily the worst comes from Alan Badel, playing John the Baptist not so much as a prophet as a swivel-eyed religious maniac, the first- century Galilean equivalent of a Hyde Park soapbox preacher. Judith Anderson is good as Herodias, but Stewart Granger is a bit wooden as Claudius, possibly because his character does not have much to do except stand around to provide a love-interest for the leading lady.

"Salome" will never, in my opinion at least, rank alongside the grand epics like "Ben-Hur" or "Spartacus"; there is too much of the smell of cheesy Hollywood sanctimoniousness about it. It does, however, have its virtues, and is certainly better than the likes of "Esther and the King", "The Silver Chalice" or "Sodom and Gomorrah", all of which do not just smell of sanctimoniousness but positively reek of it. It makes enjoyable, if undemanding, watching on a Sunday afternoon. 6/10

Some goofs. Claudius and Pontius Pilate refer to their military service in Britain, but Britain was not a Roman province during the reign of Tiberius. And whatever persuaded the scriptwriter that Gila monsters (natives of Mexico and the American South-West) are to be found in Israel?

Salome is yet another film about a peripheral biblical character. All we know about her is that when John the Baptist was in Herod Antipas's dungeon awaiting sentence, she danced for the king and John's head got served up as the main course at a banquet on a silver tray.

From that stringy bit of knowledge that the Good Book gives us, Columbia Pictures constructed a plot for their number one sex symbol Rita Hayworth so she could do a strip tease for Charles Laughton. That in itself was enough to sell tickets no matter how ludicrous the story.

And it's one of the more ludicrous Bible based stories ever brought to the screen. The story of course is that Herod Antipas had committed adultery with his brother's wife and Salome's mother and she later became his queen. Here she's played by Judith Anderson in her best Mrs. Danvers manner.

The story opens with Salome returning from Rome where the Emperor Tiberius played by Cedric Hardwicke has sent her packing because she wants to marry a Roman. His action's left her bitter against the occupiers of her country and to make matters worse, she's accompanying the new Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate played by Basil Sydney and a stalwart centurion who is Stewart Granger.

The fly in the ointment is this nasty preacher, John the Baptist who goes around saying awful stuff about Judith Anderson and Charles Laughton. He's played by Alan Badel who was introduced in this film. Badel was roughly contemporary with Hugh Griffith in British cinema and both had a pair of the wildest eyes this side of Jack Elam. Allowed them both to be cast as fanatic types. It serves Badel well as John the Baptist.

What I love about this story is that everybody's got an agenda going here except Pilate and the Baptist. Salome wants to protect mom, Herodias wants the Baptist dead, Herod wants him to just go away and shut up, and our centurion is a stealth Baptist follower soon to be following that cousin of his from Nazareth.

All that leads up to the events described in the Bible. Everybody goes through the motions here, they all know this film is a Thanksgiving special. Especially Charles Laughton who's done lascivious before on the screen, in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, in The Paradine Case, in The Strange Door. Laughton has lascivious down to a science and with Rita Hayworth as the lust object who could blame him.

As for Rita she must have felt like Maureen O'Hara did, that other Hollywood redhead who got cast in all these exotic roles where her titian tresses were jarringly out of place.

She must have wondered why she came back after this one.