Love Has Many Faces

Some nice scenery of Mexico's beach playground Acapulco and some fine young specimens on the beach are the main attraction for Love Has Many Faces. As a movie it has some of the themes of Tennessee Williams's The Roman Spring Of Mrs. Stone if it were done by Jackie Susann.

Lana Turner gets top billing here as an aging heiress who actually married her beach boy toy Cliff Robertson. But one of the boy toy set washes up on the beach dead. His girl friend Stefanie Powers comes in from the States to find out the story. As Robertson and Turner are in a rut of some kind, Cliff makes a play for Powers. And while that's going on Hugh O'Brian who is about as far from the stern and morally upright Wyatt Earp sets his sights on Turner.

Best in the cast is another aging heiress Ruth Roman who lets nothing slip by her eyes without a comment. Definitely Marguerite Roberts the writer gave her the best lines.

I guess fun in the sun in Acapulco is reason enough for doing the film for the players. They've all done worse, but they've all done better.

My favorite quote: Hugh O'Brian, who plays an aging beach-boy gigolo, stands in front of a mirror in shorts patting his flat abs and saying "How long, oh Lord, how long..." Recommended for fans of lurid, tasteless, over-the-top Hollywood camp drama. The basic story involves wealthy middle-aged American women hanging out in their lavish Mexican beach houses, wearing flashy expensive clothes, and passing the time toying with the local gigolos - so why should they be miserable? All the stars are attractive, though no longer young. The story is played devastatingly straight, with many heavy emotional moments and Dramatic Revelations which will have you chuckling.

Lana Turner, you have to admit it can make even the campiest, trashiest, movie look good. I can watch almost anything with her in it. Her costumes are over the top but she looks great in them. Ruth Roman plays a boozy broad with great one liners. One line I remember is where gigolo Hugh O'Brien says "Haven't I seen you around?" , Ruth responds with "Could be, I've been there". Not much plot but who cares, the sets are gorgeous, the campy dialogue and the entrance of a very young Stephanie Powers make it all a good old roll in the mud. I enjoy trash like this, it is far superior to the vulgar trash they make now. If a bad movie like this is memorable so many years later then it succeeded on some level. Of course there are no stars like Lana Turner anymore. Watch it for her alone.

Nancy Wilson's opening-credits title song tells us that "love has many faces...and I mean to kiss every one!" Unfortunately, there are more hisses than kisses happening here, as an attractive cast lounges sleepily in the cartoonish paradise of Acapulco yet nobody seems to be having a good time. Lana Turner (tanned and coiffed to a fare-thee-well) plays a wealthy woman who used to run around with beach boys and gigolos until she married one (Cliff Robertson, looking dour); when an ex-paramour washes up dead on the beach, Lana isn't a suspect in his death but certainly acts like she is. Hugh O'Brian plays a virile, narcissistic stud wooing vacationer Ruth Roman, while Stefanie Powers turns up as another former lover of the deceased rivaling Turner for Robertson's affections. It might be too silly--and slurpy-slow--for words were it not for some amusingly catty digs and an unintentionally hilarious bit where Lana meets an angry bull head-on. The fashions and settings are ravishing, so there's really no need for all these people to be so bitter and petty. Money seems to flow between them like water, and everyone looks great in (and out) of their clothes. Alexander Singer directs the whole thing with one eye shut; alas, his film is half-asleep. ** from ****

This unintentionally hilarious 1965 sudser stars Lana Turner as Kit, a wealthy woman trying to hold onto her purchased husband Pete (Cliff Robertson) when one of her ex-beaus is found dead on the beach, a probable suicide. His girlfriend (Stefanie Powers) arrives to find out what went on, and she and Pete fall for one another, to the dismay of Kit, who spends a lot of time drinking, changing clothes and throwing parties. Watching the situation unfold and hoping to get in once Pete is out is a gigolo (Hugh O'Brian) who is currently romancing a tourist of a certain age (Ruth Roman) while his partner romances her friend (Virginia Grey).

At 45 or thereabouts, Lana Turner is deeply tanned, expensively wardrobed and beautiful, though a bit hard-looking. It's sad to remember her in films like "These Glamor Girls" and "Slightly Dangerous" where she was so fresh, energetic and lovely. It's more than age - it's drink, it's cigarettes, it's bad men and it's the Stompanato scandal.

The story starts out one way - the dead man on the beach and an investigation into his death, and then keeps changing, first to a volatile marriage, then to adultery and finally bullfighting, which is used as an allegory for what goes on between a man and a woman. Another fifteen more minutes of film, who knows where we would have ended up.

However many faces love has, this film doesn't move through them very quickly. It doesn't have the pizazz to be the campy film "Portrait in Black" is. As over the top as the story is, the acting isn't over the top enough. See it once for Lana's wardrobe, how unbelievably young Stefanie Powers is and Hugh O'Brian in swimming trunks, and then forget it. You'll be able to.