Serpent of the Nile (1953) DVD-R

Starring Rhonda Fleming, William Lundigan, Raymond Burr, Jean Byron, Michael Ansara
Directed by William Castle

Print: color
Runtime: 81 min.
Genre: Adventure

Filmed on sets left over from the Columbia superfeature Salome (and also using generous chunks of stock footage from that film), Serpent of the Nile is a quickie retelling of the Cleopatra-Mark Antony story. The Queen of Egypt is played by Rhonda Fleming, while Antony is essayed by Raymond Burr. Much of the crucial plot information is conveyed by dialogue (we never see Caesar's assassination, for example). As for the Cleopatra-Antony scenes, she is clearly the aggressor, while he comes off as a namby-pamby alcoholic who succumbs all too easily to Cleopatra's synthetic charms. Listed at the bottom of the cast is one "Julie Newmeyer" as a gold-painted exotic dancer: she later gained famed as Julie Newmar. Serpent of the Nile enjoyed a great deal of TV play in 1963, when the Elizabeth Taylor version of Cleopatra was all the rage.