Fantastic!

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

...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.

You just better have a good elevator man! Or in the case of this film, it is a woman, the mother of all evil mothers, Bette Davis. Seemingly sweet and loving to everybody around her (including her former son-in-law), Mrs. Hayden is power hungry, strong-willed, domineering, bossy, and utterly charming. Daughter Susan Hayward has resented the lack of love she has gotten from her mother, having been treated like a prize calf at the county fair, made to look good in order for the family to keep their social standing. This old Nob Hill family in San Francisco has not had one scandal in their lives-until one night when Hayward's teenaged daughter Joey Heatherton goes berserk and stabs Hayward's lover to death. Hayward's ex-husband Mike Connors comes back as Heatherton is tried as a juvenile, and all of the family's skeletons are released.Sound like an E True Hollywood Story? It should, 'cause novelist Harold Robbins based this upon the Lana Turner/Johnny Stompanato affair where Lana's daughter Cheryl allegedly killed him in self-defense to protect mama. Hayward's Valarie is not a high-powered movie star here-she's a talented sculptress, and one of her knives was used as the weapon in the murder. (Turner was only angry about this for a few years as she went to appear on a Harold Robbins based TV series, "The Survivors", which ironically didn't...) When you've got dynamic actresses like top-billed Hayward and featured Davis appearing together, sparks are going to fly, the melodrama is going to spill over the cauldron top, and there are going to be some genuinely amusing unintentional camp moments. This is a "Dynasty" type soap opera where the matriarch arranges a marriage between her heir and the army hero, controls their every move (even giving him a do-nothing Vice President job at her company and a portrait of herself to line the foyer of the house she bought for them), and smiles sweetly at all times. The two ladies are dynamic together, although the fact that every single major character in this remains exactly the same for the seemingly 18 years that it takes place. Hayward's sudden weakening at the end seems out of character and throws the whole film off balance.The real acting comes from Mike Conners as the husband so de-masculinized that he turns to drink. He is the moral conscience of the family, fortunate not to be related to this brood by blood. The least comes from Joey Heatherton as the daughter, so unconvincing in her delivery in the pivotal dramatic scenes that she seems like she's too much in awe of the legends around her to create an interesting character. Jane Greer offers some sympathetic moments as the head of the juvenile detention center, an ironic choice in casting considering hers and Hayward's one time reign as two of the great femme fatals of film noir, both appearing in "They Won't Believe Me".As long as you look at this as total cinematic soap opera trash, you can really enjoy this for what it is, maybe not horrid to be a fun bad movie, but certainly a delightful chance to be nosy inside another family's fictional horrors.

Paramount Pictures assigned star Producer Joseph E Levine to bring the torrid best seller roman a clef of the Lana Turner Johnny Stompanato murder to the screen. Levine cast surefire box office queen Susan Hayward to play "Lana, and to play the other strong female role, the one and only Ms. Bette Davis. There was a long time interest to see these two great stars in a film. Directed by Edward Dymtryk the film is a powerhouse with great acting by Susan Hayward and Bette Davis. I wish they had cast another actor other than Mike Connors in the role of Hayward's lover and Ann Margret rather than Joey Heatheron. Ms. Hayward got top billing over Ms. Davis--the first time in her great career Bette Davis was billed under another great female star!-- and wore great stylish outfits by Edith Head. It is now well known that Bette Davis and Susan Hayward did not get along at all during filming. Susan Hayward was afraid of Bette's well known use of tricks and since Susan Hayward had both cast approval and script approval and top billing, had Bette Davis boxed in. No changes were allowed. In fairness, the script did need more juice and a tougher script would have benefited the talents of Susan Hayward nd Bette Davis. Bette Davis carped about Susan Hayward until her death, and Susan Hayward joined Joan Crawford, Miriam Hopkins on Bette's "hate list". (Soon to be joined by Faye Dunaway and Lillian Gish. Where Love Has Gone with top notch Paramount production values is an old fashioned film and is best seen to see two great movie stars Susan Hayward and Bette Davis!

I don't think my comment is worth ten lines but I'll try, the little I have to say I want to say it because this is one of those really bad movies I like. The kind of bad movie with little treasures buried in it. Bette Davis and Susan Hayward as mother and daughter and let's stop right there for a moment. Two actresses who never took the easy way out. That, in itself, makes the movie a collector's item and, I guess it is. Then, based on a Harold Robbins best seller based on the Lana Turner, Johnny Stompanato's affair, remember? Lana's daughter stabbed Johnny Stompanato, her mother's lover and, it seems, her lover too That should be enough to make a classic melodrama. Unfortunately, a classic, this one, it ain't'. But a must for movie nuts, like me.