The Stepmother (1972)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Expected more

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Architect Frank Delgado returns to his home in Mexico. His wealthy client Alan Richmond forces himself on his wife Margo. Frank runs into Alan on his driveway. Suspecting them having an affair, Frank kills Alan and buries his body. He escapes without being seen by a fighting couple. The police investigates Alan's strangulation death but also the young Mexican woman. Dick Hill arrives with company to talk his business partner Frank into going to a beach house which belongs to Alan.This movie starts off well with a murder. However the tension that is build up by the opening is lost as the movie struggles through a slow boring slough. This is possibly the worst looking movie I've ever seen that is nominated for an Oscar. Alejandro Rey is a pretty awful actor. The movie has a few good actors and Larry Linville could have been an interesting lead. The staging is very static and the bad direction drains away all of the tension.

When you think of Oscar-nominated movies, chances are you don't think of movies from exploitation studio Crown International, but "The Stepmother" did indeed get an Oscar nomination for best song. Listening to the song, I have no idea why anyone would think it was award-worthy, but the lame song is an insignificant problem compared to the other problems found in the movie. Despite what the title might promise, the stepmother takes kind of a backseat role in the events of the movie. Indeed, her stepson isn't mentioned until a third of the movie is over, and does not actually appear until half the movie is over! (And the stepmother/stepson hookup does start until the last twenty minutes!) While there is some nudity and sex here and there, it's insignificant and not very erotic, so forget about getting some cheap thrills. Most of the movie is devoted to the husband of the stepmother character, and what we see of his life is for the most part a big bore. The movie comes to a standstill in almost all of his scenes, so when the situation is resolved at the end it comes as abrupt and forced, as if the filmmakers didn't care about building the story and characters and just ended things when they realized they had a running time of ninety or so minutes. Not Crown International's finest hour.

At first I thought IMDb's reference to an Academy Award nomination for The Stepmother must be a mistake. But it's true, and the funny thing is that Strange Are the Ways of Love really IS the best thing about the film. Alejandro Rey is dreadful as Mexican architect Frank Delgado, a deeply pious Catholic who kills his friend Alan after he discovers him pawing wife Margo (Katherine Justice). Worse, Frank is paranoid about the intentions of his business partner Dick (Larry Linville) and ends up shoving him off the roof. Whenever the police interview Frank he almost screams guilt, figuratively speaking, but the dumb cops take an awful long time to solve what should really be a very simple case. There's a groovy score that must have already sounded five years out of date in 1972, John D. Garfield as a skin flick producer named Goof, and a couple of full frontal scenes that don't advance the narrative.

Stressed-out middle-aged Mexican-American self-made millionaire architect Frank Delgado (a solid performance by Alejandro Rey) ain't having a good time of it. First off, he murders the lover of his hot young second wife Margo (lovely brunette Katherine Justice) and buries the body at a nearby beach. The police initially think another guy who killed his girlfriend on that same beach on the same night might have committed the dastardly deed, but no-nonsense Inspector Darnezi (a properly crusty portrayal by John Anderson) is certain that Frank is the real culprit. Things go from bad to worse when Frank accidentally kills his own laid-back best friend and business partner Dick Hill (an engaging turn by Larry Linville of TV's "M.A.S.H." fame). To add further abject insult to already awful injury, Margo seduces Frank's teenage son Steve (handsome Rudy Herrera Jr.) and Hill's widow Sonja (nicely essayed by Marlene Schmidt, who also co-wrote the script) makes advances on Frank. Director/co-writer Hikmet Avedis whips up one doozy of a deliciously convoluted and ridiculous plot and further spices things up with a decent amount of tasty female nudity. Popping up in cool supporting roles are familiar character actor Duncan McLeod (sleazy lawyer Porter Hall in "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls") as a hard-nosed police chief, John D. Garfield as hipster smut movie director Goof, and luscious 70's drive-in exploitation cinema goddess Claudia Jennings as stoner hippie porno starlet Rita (Claudia naturally does one of her customary yummy full-frontal nude scenes). Jack Beckett's snazzy cinematography goes overboard on the dewy soft-focus, strenuous slow motion, and, especially, plenty of gloriously tacky freeze frames. The groovy Oscar-nominated theme song "Strange Are the Ways of Love" is a complete sappy hoot. An entertainingly loopy potboiler.