Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

MartinHafer "Where Love Has Gone" is a bad movie. The characters are pretty much one-dimensional, the acting is about as subtle as a baseball at upside your head and the script is salacious and sleazy...yet, this film is incredibly entertaining because it's so over-the-top! Subtle, this movie ain't!! The film begins with a killing that I am sure was modeled after the true-life killing of Lana Turner's husband by her daughter from a previous marriage. Though the details aren't 100% certain, it sure bears a lot of similarity to the start of this film. It was a HUGE and very sensational story back in the 50s--and now the tale is being brought to the screen--in a story that has many, many changes from the original true tale.The next portion of the film is a long flashback. Susan Hayward lives with her very rich and extremely controlling and manipulative mother (Bette Davis). She's very unhappy yet she doesn't leave...though she longs for change. When a guy comes into her life (Chuck Connors), Hayward is smitten. Why? Because when Davis tries to wrap him around her finger, he tells her to take her money and stuff it! However, he has no idea that this is what made Hayward love him.Shortly after they marry, Connors' self-esteem is in the toilet. Behind his back, she made sure he'd fail in business and would be forced to work for her company. As a result of this, Connors is disheartened and starts to hit the bottle. And, because he's no longer the virile man who stood up to Davis, Hayward has contempt for him and his weakness--and their marriage fizzles. Soon, he's drunk all the time and she's whoring about with one boy-toy after another. Not surprisingly, they divorce--and the rest is history. These jerks apparently created the poor girl killer (Joey Heatherton) and the rest of the film is about the family trying to pick up the pieces. Who is best to raise this teen killer--the highly unstable and oversexed mother, the ex-alcoholic or the evil controlling mother? How it all ends is,....well....incredible! The plot idea isn't terrible. The problem is that the writing NEVER approaches subtlety or grace-and the ending is just WAAAY over the top!! It's full of screaming, sleaze and, well, a few more doses of sleaze! It's also hilariously preachy. The PRETENDS to be a morality tale to teach parents not to neglect their poor kids, but it's a very, very thin sort of veil for a bucket of steaming..., um,...soap. But it's also very entertaining and you can't keep your eyes off it--like a funny train wreck (if there could be such a thing). And, a lot like "Peyton Place".By the way, if you care, DeForrest Kelley is also in the film in a supporting role. And, oddly, he comes off the best of any of them--playing the role like he's NOT a combination of constipated and intensely mad!

bkoganbing The team of Paramount Pictures, author Harold Robbins, and director Edward Dmytryk scored a big box office success with The Carpetbaggers in 1964 at the box office and so Paramount decided to keep the team going and adapted another of Robbins's novels for the big screen, Where Love Has Gone. Unlike The Carpetbaggers which employed a bunch of old Hollywood names for a story about an older era of Hollywood, this film was located in San Francisco. But the story is unmistakably modeled on the infamous Johnny Stompanato murder from 1958 where Lana Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane killed her mother's mobster boyfriend with a butcher knife. Although our protagonist here is a sculptress, no mistaking where Harold Robbins got his plot from. Sculptress Susan Hayward the daughter of wealthy San Francisco dowager Bette Davis has her live-in boyfriend killed in front of her by her daughter Joey Heatherton. The boyfriend of Hayward who was living with both of them was also doing both of them. He was on the books as Hayward's manager, but he was better at double entry housekeeping than double entry bookkeeping. The arrest is a scandal and the family gathers to protect Heatherton, a call goes out to Phoenix, Arizona where her father Michael Connors has been living for years out there making a success at his profession of architecture. Lawyer George MacReady wants to see a supportive family in the picture.It's a pretty sordid story and Where Love Has Gone has a long flashback detailing the marriage of Hayward and Connors and the constant meddling of Davis in their lives. He took to drink and she went back to her former hobby of promiscuity. The story sticks pretty close to the events as unfolded in the Stompanato homicide, but the ending that Harold Robbins has for his characters is all his own.The main attraction of Where Love Has Gone is the one and only teaming of screen divas Bette Davis and Susan Hayward. In fact way back when Hayward had a small bit in Davis's film The Sisters, but now they were both legends. And like David and that other legend Joan Crawford, she and Hayward didn't become bosom buddies and there were some flareups according to books about both actresses, but nothing on the line of the grand feuds that Davis had with such folks as Joan Crawford and Miriam Hopkins back in the day.As for Lana Turner she remained closemouthed about the book and movie of Where Love Has Gone, but you have to believe there were some hurt feelings there. Where Love Is Gone is trash, it doesn't pretend to be anything else. And the chance to see Hayward and Davis sharing a screen and spitting fire should not be missed.

Bolesroor When I was a kid in the 80's, every woman came to the beach equipped with three things: sunglasses, sun tan lotion, and a trashy paperback novel as big as my head. "Where Love Has Gone" reminds me of one of those novels: melodramatic, convoluted, and somewhat absurd.This is not to say it's a bad movie, but it's definitely a guilty pleasure, an acquired taste... The people most likely to watch this film today are fans of Bette Davis, fans of Susan Hayward, and Star Trek fans enjoying the appearance DeForest "Bones" Kelly before he was stationed on the Enterprise. I fit into all three categories and still I must admit I was less than impressed with the film, which tells the tale of a domineering society mother who creates and destroys her daughter's marriage for the "good of the family name." The acting is over-the-top, the dialogue is stilted, and the story is about as cheesy as they come. The movie's finale- a shocking courtroom confessional- bears little resemblance to anything that has ever happened here on Earth.But maybe that's the charm of this movie… maybe it wasn't made for the time capsule or for intense critical examination. Maybe it was only made to pass an afternoon in 1964, and maybe that's enough. Just like those paperbacks: It may not be the greatest novel ever written, but you have to admit it's great to be at the beach.GRADE: C-

marbleann I just woke up on a Saturday morning so imagine my glee when the first thing my peepers see is Susan Haywood and another red head going at with some type of knife. Bloody knife falls to ground and screams then ,scene ends Oh whoopee this has to be one of the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte types of movies only with Susan Haywood. Wrong Imagine my upset when the next scene Mike Conners receives a phone call explaining that his daughter has murdered someone. Oh no here we go again Another Lana Turner/Johny Stampanato/daughter Turner type of a movie, which is a Mildred Piece type story. There has been some many mother and daughter loves same man plots dating back to the 30's Imitation of Life, probably earlier then that. This movie is no different with the exception of the grandmother's involvement in the story. Grandma is the matriarch of a dynasty and she is use to having things her way. Bette Davis plays Susan Haywoods mother, a mother who ruled with a iron fists. But a lot of people object to her I liked her character because it was refreshing to see women running a big congealment. Bette Davis is the reason to watch this move. She looks stunning too. I would of loved to see a movie just about her character. They made her seem like the villain when when we find out what really happened the night of the movie. But she never was a mean and nasty mother who hated her daughter, she was very over indulgent. But not a villain.The last scene Haywood is in has to be seen to believe. Way over the top. The movie even the solution was very predictable. But the ending is a a laughable shocker.I have seen many more of this type of movie This one is just OK and it benefits from Davis'd performance and the schlocky. ending One other thing it took me a while to see that were switching back in time 16 years. The actors look exactly the same way now and then, if it was not for the newspaper headlines tracing WW 2 and the fact they have a 15 year old child I would not have known.