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Pretty Good

Memorable, crazy movie

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A hot-headed architect thinks his wife is cheating on him, which leads him to murder. Another, even worse guy gets the blame but the police still have suspicions. Meanwhile, the stress of all this palaver drives his wife to seduce his son.This drive-in flick was made by exploitation specialists Crown International in the period when they were producing their most consistently interesting work. While this isn't amongst their best as such, it's still effective enough and gets by quite a bit off the back of its early 70's charms. It has to be said that it indeed does take a long while before the title of the movie attains any relevance whatsoever but that's just one of the factors that gives this one its goofy appeal I reckon. So long as you don't go into this one with unrealistic expectations, then I think a pretty good time can be had. Its simple-minded melodrama kept me entertained in any case. On a final note, and what has to be the one thing that will always make this one at least a footnote in cinema history is the quite unbelievable fact that the crooning song with Latin beat that plays over the credits entitled 'Strange Are the Ways of Love' was actually nominated for an Academy Award! There is no way on Earth I ever expected anything from Crown International got anywhere near Oscar territory. The early 70's truly were strange days indeed

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.

This is not a professionally made film. The acting, the direction, the story, the script, the lighting — everything is just a mess.There is an underlying condemnation of the use of drugs (which seem to initiate much of the trouble in this odd story) but I suspect you would need to be on something to get much out of this incoherent jumble of sound and images.It is hard to think that The Stepmother was ever released and shown in mainstream cinemas and quite astounding that it got an Oscar nomination; it seems little more than random that the theme song is quite sweet.At least aspiring film-makers can watch it and feel they could do a much better job.

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.