Word: venom
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...this city of losers it is not surprising that Philadelphians usually have little venom left for the disappointments that are really killing them. Frank Rizzo--the supercop of 28 years who once challenged the Black Panthers to a shootout is now the mayor, owning a two-year-old mandate to clean up the streets. An enthusiastic Democrat-for-Nixon, Rizzo has been in trouble for the last two months since a secret police force was discovered investigating his enemies in Philadelphia politics. The Philadelphia Daily News asked him to submit to a lie detector test--a source of evidence...
Unfailingly attired in his uniform, General St. Pé (Eli Wallach) faces advancing middle age as if it were a court-martial. He is chained to a vixenish wife (Anne Jackson) who spews venom at him and pretends to be a dying invalid. In his high-romantic imagination, he is in thrall to the memories of a young girl (Diana Van Der Vlis) he waltzed with 17 years ago. St. Pé's dream girl appears, only to run off with his callow aide, and the general is left alone in the dusk...
BAKER LIBRARY: Venom (rated...
Howls of pain and madness echo through these pages: Heracles tearing at the poisoned shirt on his back as a dead monster's venom scalds his veins; Ajax on the plains of Troy-big, dumb Ajax, crazed by the goddess Athene-slashing bulls' throats and breaking the backs of sheep dogs under the delusion that he is slaying his enemies...
...confidently assume: seductive lover, charismatic leader, gallant warrior. In Pacino's conception, Richard's ultimate triumph is not to become King but to put on the whole world. His ultimate tragedy is that he cannot deceive himself. But with what energy - with what charm, with what venom - does Pacino stretch Richard toward his illusions, like a Pirandello character trying to obliterate the obdurate line between actuality and fantasy...