THE V.I.P.S (1963)
½*/**** Image C+ Sound B
starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Elsa Martinelli, Margaret Rutheford
screenplay by Terence Rattigan
directed by Anthony Asquith

THE SANDPIPER (1965)
½*/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C-
starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Eva Marie Saint, Morgan Mason
screenplay by Dalton Trumbo and Michael Wilson
directed by Vincente Minnelli

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)
****/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal, Sandy Dennis
screenplay by Ernest Lehman, based on the play by Edward Albee
directed by Mike Nichols

THE COMEDIANS (1967)
*½/**** Image B Sound B- Extras C-
starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov
screenplay by Graham Greene, based on his novel
directed by Peter Glenville

by Walter Chaw Also called International Hotel, The V.I.P.s–the first chronologically-released vehicle for Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor following the initiation of their legendary infidelities on the set of Cleopatra–is unwatchable dreck of the Old Hollywood variety. When people say "They don't make 'em like they used to," it's a good corrective to start listing off dusty artifacts like this one. As it was something of a financial windfall at the time (though not enough of one to offset the impending disaster of Cleopatra), one assumes that audiences flocked to theatres to sniff the musky odour of Burton/Taylor's forbidden l'amour that had dominated the world's lascivious imagination as production on an epic failure (or failed epic) dragged on for months and years. For me, the curiosity about The V.I.P.s, currently available in Warner's freshly-minted box set of Burton/Taylor pictures made during the height of their notoriety, has a lot more to do with Richard Burton, who was, to my mind, his generation's Russell Crowe. Like Crowe, Burton is thick with virility and gravitas and the ability, by himself, to carry a picture on his broad shoulders; I wonder if his seduction by a relic of Old Hollywood glamour hasn't tainted his legacy irrevocably. My voyeuristic impulse ultimately isn't so different from that of contemporary viewers, in fact, though I do offer the slight caveat that I'm in it to see how touching a match to Burton's already-boundless explosiveness would infect, for good or for ill, what are essentially vanity pieces for a couple drunk on the cult of themselves.