This is a mess of a movie! One of several expensive bombs Rex Harrison made after My Fair Lady, The Honey Pot is an incoherent mess. This dud was produced, uncredited, by flamboyant Charles K. Feldman and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.I'm not sure what happened to the screenplay which Mankiewicz [All About Eve] adapted from a play by Frederick Knott [Dial M for Murder]. Rex Harrison is an eccentric millionaire in Venice who pretends he is dying inviting three former lovers so he can choose which one he wants to inherit his fortune. It's all I could decipher from the plot; the least I ask of a movie is that it makes sense. This one does not. Mackiewicz's last movie had been an incoherent overproduced expensive dud, Cleopatra, so his career wasn't exactly at its peak, and afterwards he turned to making documentaries; the Martin Luther King feature, King: A Filmed Record.. Montgomery to Memphis in 1970.
It's a shame given the caliber of the cast assembled. Besides Cliff Robertson, all give good performances in a bad movie. Rex Harrison is debonair and it's great fun watching him dance around like a ballerina. Susan Hayward is a hoot playing a spitfire character named Mrs. Lone Star Crockett Sheridan. Feldman's protege Capucine is by turns icy and droll playing a broke Princess. Edie Adams gives a bouncy, sly performance as a movie star; she looks like a synthesis of Stella Stevens and Jayne Mansfield, albeit a worn out one. According to IMDb, Anne Bancroft was originally cast in the part before, perhaps sensing disaster, dropping out.
Maggie Smith, as always, is superb. Giving a playful performance, she alone is worth watching this shit for.
The Honey Pot was cut before release in the U.S. by about 30 minutes so I'm not sure if that's why the movie is such an unmitigated disaster or not.
You can stream The Honey Pot courtesy of Hulu here.
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