Sadly Over-hyped

From my favorite movies..

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

THE STEPMOTHER is another tawdry skin flick put out by Crown International Pictures and directed by Hikmet Avedis. The plot is murky and complicated and opens with a murder before leading to a situation which has no kind of suspense or impact whatsoever. A bunch of characters gather at a house but not much really happens throughout. The title is something of a misnomer and refers to a sub-plot that doesn't go very far. If you're looking for exploitation values there's not much in the way of them either, with this coming across as both tame and dull.

Upon returning home from a business trip "Frank Delgado" (Alejandro Rey) finds another car in his driveway and happens to see his wife, "Margo Delgado" (Catherine Justice) in their bedroom with another man. As the man comes out into the front yard Frank kills him in a fit of rage. Immediately afterward he comes to his senses and decides to quickly bury him in a field on the outskirts of town. Unfortunately, as luck would have it the body is soon discovered anyway and Frank is considered as a possible suspect. In the meantime though, Frank cannot manage to forgive his wife because of her supposed infidelity and so refrains from making love to her from then on. What he doesn't know is that the man he killed had forced himself on her and since Margo is unaware that Frank knows anything about this incident it has left her feeling confused and sexually frustrated. Now, rather than reveal any more of the film I will just say that this was an adequate movie for the most part. The acting was okay but the story seemed to lag here and there. Likewise, I also thought the ending was a bit too abrupt. All things considered then, I rate the movie as slightly below average.

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.

It isn't so much that The Stepmother is a weird story--it could be the plot of any made-for-cable late night erotic thriller. But the way the story unfolds feels unusual, and that--along with some hammy acting--is probably why this movie has been largely forgotten.The main character looks like a younger Al Pacino after two months with no sleep. The movie gets right to the action before we even know who any of these people are. The characters explain everything eventually, but for a while, we don't really know their backgrounds or their relationships to each other. Not that it's complicated, but you expect to know something about Frank before he strangles the guy messing around with his wife.Even the ending is handled strangely. Moments before the credits roll, things happen that seem to set up another half hour of drama, but then the conclusion hammers down, and we are deprived of the conflict that the story seemed to be building towards.I found The Stepmother on an 8-movie collection called "Drive-In Cult Classics" for only $7 at Best Buy. This was the first of the eight I watched, and it was exactly what I was looking for: low budget, goofy, obscure 70's trash. I didn't think it was all that good, but as a fan of bad movies, I enjoyed it.