It begins with the discovery of a body washed up on a beach -- a classic start to a mystery story -- but there proves to be little interest in the fate of that particular body. Murder? Accident? Suicide? The movie never delivers a satisfying answer because the body on the beach turns out to be simply a flashy introduction to the story of a troubled marriage among the idle rich. Even this aspect of the story isn't well handled because the movie doesn't seem to realize that Cliff Robertson is or at least should be the main character. He's the ex-beach boy who's now married to the wealthy Lana Turner but whose sense of decency causes him to feel guilty about living in her world of privilege. Perhaps not surprisingly, he finds himself drawn to the youthful innocence of Stefanie Powers, the girlfriend of the body-on-the-beach who's come to Acapulco to investigate the situation.
However, though Robertson is the character in the compelling position, the character who undergoes the greatest degree of growth and change, the movie understandably keeps turning its attention to Lana Turner. After all, she's the top-billed star and it's with her name that the movie hopes to attract its core audience of Sunday-matinée women. Turner certainly looks good, all things considered, and she's dressed and jeweled with all the requisite glamour, but her character never comes to life and the attempt to give her depth and sympathy through the revelation of a "shocking secret" from her past simply doesn't work. The revelation seems too pat, too contrived, and the fact that it's delivered through a monologue Turner implausibly shares with her maid doesn't help matters.
Interest starts to ebb away in the second half and an effort to re- charge the movie with a bullfight sequence seems more silly than exciting. Still, there's enough of a "glow" to this old-fashioned star vehicle to qualify it as one of those "guilty pleasures" whose charms can't adequately be explained to the uninitiated.
Cliff Robertson does what he can with the material but seems glum and uncomfortable and one never really accepts that he loves Lana Turner. For her part, Turner strikes the right poses but fails to become anything more than a look-don't-touch pin-up. Acting honors actually go to Hugh O'Brien who's usually seen in nothing more than a variety of crotch-bulging swimsuits and whose hairy, sun-bronzed torso seems the very distillation of raw male sexuality. (Robertson has only two bare- chest scenes, one of them quite minor, and while he still has an attractive physique, his beefcake appeal is put on better display in the 1959 "Gidget.") Ruth Roman adds some peripheral interest to the proceedings and one wishes more had been done with the character of reluctant gigolo, Ron Husmann.
