The Night of the Iguana

Episcopal clergyman Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon (Burton) suffers a "nervous breakdown" after being ostracized by his congregation and defrocked for having an inappropriate relationship with a "very young Sunday school teacher." Two years later, Shannon, then a tour guide for the bottom-of-the-barrel Texas company Blake's Tours, is taking a group of Baptist schoolteachers by bus to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. The group's brittle leader is the stringent Miss Judith Fellowes, who has been entrusted as a chaperone by the parents of Charlotte Goodall, a man-crazy 16-year-old who tries to seduce Shannon. When Charlotte goes to Shannon's hotel room in the middle of the night, Shannon, mindful of past scandals, implores her to leave. Charlotte resists his feeble attempts to expel her, and the vigilant Miss Fellowes catches them together. Fellowes accuses Shannon of trying to seduce Charlotte and declares that she will ruin him. While approaching the group's hotel in the bus, Shannon suddenly veers off and recklessly drives the terrified passengers to a cheap Costa Verde hotel in Mismaloya, then removes the distributor cap from the engine. The hotel is normally run by an old friend named Fred, but he has died recently and the hotel is now run by his widow, the bawdy and flamboyant Maxine Faulk (Gardner). Shannon convinces Maxine to allow the tour group to stay at the hotel, believing that they will be unable to reach a phone or escape. He enlists Maxine to help him appease the ire of Miss Fellowes, to whom Shannon and Maxine privately attribute a lesbian obsession with her charge. Meanwhile, Charlotte has switched her seductive impulses to Hank, the bus driver, and Miss Fellowes declares she is no longer responsible for Charlotte's behavior though she follows through with her complaints to Blake's Tours regarding Shannon. Another new arrival at the hotel is Hannah Jelkes (Kerr), a beautiful and chaste middle-aged itinerant painter from Nantucket who is traveling with her 96-year-old poet grandfather, Nonno. They have run out of money, but Shannon convinces Maxine to let them have a room. Over a long night, Shannon battles his weaknesses for both flesh and alcohol. Charlotte continues to make trouble for him, aided by Hank, and Shannon is "at the end of his rope," similar to how an iguana is kept tied by Maxine's cabana boys. Shannon suffers a breakdown, threatening suicide, and the cabana boys truss him in a hammock, while Hannah ministers to him with poppy-seed tea and frank spiritual counsel. Recovering a degree of rationality and making a magnanimous gesture in a savage world, Shannon frees the iguana from its rope. Hannah's grandfather delivers the final version of the poem that he has been laboring to finish about having heart in a corrupt world and then dies. The characters try to resolve their confused lives. Perceiving the warmth between Shannon and Hannah, Maxine offers to walk away and let them have the hotel, on the condition that Shannon must stay to be valid. Hannah declares to Shannon that the arrangement would be impractical and not work, then leaves to make her own way in life. Shannon and Maxine accept their mutual attraction, and decide to run the hotel together.

Plot from The Night of the Iguana (film)CC BY-SA 4.0