calvinnme ...when films of 1960-1965 had one foot in the demure production code era and one foot in the budding sexual revolution.After the credits open with some horrid MOR song over idyllic shots of San Francisco, we cut to the action. Joey Heatherton stabs Rick Lazich in the presence of her mother (Susan Hayward), who had him as her latest boyfriend. Heatherton's dad (Mike Conners) flies in for appearance's sake, since he's there at the sufferance of Grandma (Bette Davis in another of her juicy later career roles) who controls everything.We get a flashback to how Conners and Hayward married and divorced. Although, this is a flashback to some alternate-universe 1944 in which the US is still at war but everybody wears 1960s fashions and hairstyles. Conners is a war hero; Hayward a sculptress; Davis interferes in their marriage and gets all of the bankers in Frisco to make it so that Conners can only go back to her family business rather than start his own architecture firm. Hayward sleeps around (presumably) with her models while Conners drinks himself into a divorce.Back in the present day, the killing is deemed a justifiable homicide, but Heatherton is kept in juvie while the courts can figure out who, if anybody should get custody of her. George Macready plays Davis' lawyer; Jane Greer comes from out of the past to play a social worker; and DeForrest Kelly plays Hayward's art dealer (Jim, I'm a doctor, not an art critic!).Davis overacts and delivers pointed bons mots; Hayward wears big hair and recites some terribly overripe lines; Conners gets to be wooden; and Heatherton cries "Daddy!" all the time; you almost expect her to break out into the "I've Written a Letter to Daddy" song that appears at the beginning of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? And then there's an ending that makes no sense.If you're looking for a serious movie, I'd rate it a 3/10. But if you're looking for the sort of turgid, over-the-top potboiler where you yell back at the screen and laugh at the absurdity of it all, I'd give it an 8/10. It's not quite as "so bad it's good" as Valley of the Dolls or Torch Song, but it's an eminently entertaining disaster nonetheless. I split the difference to give it a 6/10.Just one more thing. Bette Davis is only nine years older than Susan Hayward, but very credibly looks like her mother. Part of that was that Bette Davis, dish that she was when she was young, aged very poorly for whatever reason. The other part is makeup. In contrast, Susan Hayward aged very well, as short as her life was, and she looks nowhere near 47 here, which was her actual age.

wendellfountain Since this is 2011, one can tell the quality of the film has deteriorated significantly; however, the terrific cast made it worth watching. After writing, starring, directing, and producing a low budget movie (Grazia) myself, I have a true appreciation of the challenge. One can easily see why this is an American movie classic, because Susan Hayward, Bette Davis, Mike Connors, and even Joey Heatherton made the movie an unforgettable work of art. For me, Susan Hayward has always been one of my favorite actresses. Mike Connors, later to be Mannix on TV, is a fine actor in his own right. The fact that the film was based on actual incidents lends credibility.

lazarillo This movie is regarded today as an unintentional camp classic. Having seen Edward Dymitryk's black comedy "Bluebeard", I think the director might have been in on the joke, but I'm not so sure anybody else was. As others have said, this is loosely based on the real-life Hollywood scandal where Lana Turner's teenage daughter Cheryl Crane stabbed Turner's gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato to death in a domestic violence incident. Somehow this movie manages to make the real incident even sleazier by positing an actual sexual relationship between the daughter and the gangster. Susan Hayward gives a very earnest (and, thus, unintentionally campy) performance as the Lana Wood character. She's made a scupltress here rather than an actress, which is hilarious because, while a vapid bimbo can be an actress, it usually takes some depth to be a sculptor. But even more hilarious her manager (Dr. McCoy--I mean DeForrest Kelley) claims that her "talent" is based on her behaving like an "alley-cat". Well, the real Lana Turner could reportedly alley-cat with the best of them, but it never seemed to do much for her acting.Speaking of alley-cats though, Joey Heatherton is severely miscast as the daughter. Even if she could act, Heatherton was 20 then and looked even older. (They should have cast Tuesday Weld, but a good performance would have stuck out like a sore thumb here). Heatherton was a minor sex symbol of the era, who could fill out a mean sweater and reputedly slept her way through the entire Rat Pack. I did find her kinda sexy, but I also kinda wanted to strangle her (OK, not just kinda) because she has a horrible screechy, petulant voice that make nails on a chalkboard seem sonorous (she's slightly better in "Bluebeard" where she at least busts out her bust after aurally torturing the poor viewers for the entire movie). And speaking of torture, Betty Davis gives a performance as Hayward's domineering mother that somehow manages to seem both incredibly hammy and lethargically phoned-in.The male actors really don't have a chance against three generations of scenery-chewing harpies, but they try. DeForrest Kelley gets to earnestly deliver some real unintentional howlers (between this and "Night of the Lepus" maybe he should have stuck to the small screen). Mike Connor's plays the nice-guy father/ex-husband--a character who was conspicuously absent in the real-life Turner tragedy. This is not as enjoyable as "Bluebeard" (Heatherton and her sweaters really don't make up for a whole bevy of naked Europe-babes), but if you like unitentional camp look no further.

Putzberger The above phrase is how DeForrest Kelley (yep,"Bones") describes Susan Hayward's character in this film. You'll notice he doesn't use the term "beauty" or "enchantress." Those of us who have always been mystified by Susan Hayward's stardom will find no answers here, where she (over)plays a nymphomaniac sculptor whose daughter sticks a carving knife into her scumbag boyfriend. Since it's obviously based on the Lana Turner imbroglio of the late 50's, the filmmakers must have thought it appropriate to cast one lousy actress as another (but at least Lana was pretty). As a movie, it's awful. As a time capsule, it's priceless -- your jaw will drop so far you'll be inhaling dustbunnies when you get a load of the pre-Freudian view of female sexuality implied by this film.Exhibit 1: Susan's butch, blowzy nymphomaniac has intertwined drives to create and to procreate. Nothing too strange there ("eros" means to create, after all). But the film judges her harshly, punishing the woman for her free spirit much the way that Flaubert did Emma Bovary a century earlier (but at least Flaubert was a great artist). Don't tempt fate, girls -- leave the Pandora's box of female sexuality and female creativity alone! We're lucky Robbins, Dmytryk & co didn't get around to taking potshots at great, independent female artists like Isadora Duncan or Frida Kahlo, but then again, maybe their concept of "art" was limited to the Hollywood dreck that Lana Turner churned out. So we can thank our stars.Exhibit 2: Valerie, as played by Susan Hayward, was messed up by her domineering mother, portrayed by Bette Davis. This third-rate psychology was trite by the early 60s, a staple of horror films (see "Psycho"). Then again, maybe the subtext of the film is that Valerie represents a gay man . . . which might also explain casting Susan Hayward in the role.Exhibit 3 (most damning): Valerie's daughter Danielle, or "Danny" (there's a weird streak of androgyny running through this flick), played by Joey Heatherton, is fifteen years old, and no one . . . repeat, no one, not even her father . . . is horrified or even shocked to learn that she is no longer a virgin. The words "sexual abuse" and "statutory rape" are never used, not even by the psychologist who is treating the little murderess. Instead, dear old "Daddy," as played by Mike Connors, knits those massive eyebrows together (did he wash his face with Rogaine?) and wonders when she might have "made love." This kind of 19th-century attitude toward adolescent sexuality was dated by the time Nabokov wrote "Lolita," let alone the 1960s (even a sleazebag like Dean Martin didn't lay hands on Joey Heatherton, she was so young back then).So "Where Love Has Gone" is a movie more to be puzzled over and analyzed than enjoyed. Cultural Studies professors, get to work.