Review: Where Love Has Gone DVD

STUDIO: Olive Films | DIRECTOR: Edward Dmytryk | STARS: Susan Hayward, Bette Davis, Mike Connors, Joey Heatherton, Jane Greer, DeForest Kelley
RELEASE DATE: 9/28/10 | PRICE: DVD $24.95
BONUSES: none
SPECS: NR | 111 min. | Drama | 2.35:1 widescreen | stereo

RATINGS (out of 5): Movie | Audio | Video | Overall

The “woman’s picture” was dying on the vine when Where Love Has Gone, an ultra-campy adaptation of a Harold Robbins’ novel, was released in theaters in 1964. The movie isn’t as blissfully campy as the two prime latter-day examples of that sub-genre — Valley of the Dolls and The Best of Everything. It does, however, contain a number of elements that exemplify the concept of camp when taken on their own, and, when blended together, the result is intoxicatingly silly and extremely watchable.

Scripted by John Michael Hayes (Rear Window, Peyton Place), the film was based on a novel that was rumored to be inspired (wink wink, nudge nudge) by the real-life shooting of Lana Turner’s lover, gangster Johnny Stompanato, by her daughter, Cheryl Crane. In the movie, the daughter is played by Joey Heatherton, her constantly overwrought (or indignant) mother is Susan Hayward and the family matriarch is Bette Davis (who seems to more than know what is expected of her).

Fans of 1960s TV will be amused by the presence of Mike Connors of Mannix fame as Hayward’s steadfast ex-husband (and the film’s narrator) and Star Trek’s “Bones” (DeForest Kelley) as Hayward’s lively and flirtatious art agent.

Olive Films released Where Love Has Gone along with two other tawdry mellers, Once Is Not Enough with Kirk Douglas and based on novel by Jacqueline Susann and the Carroll Baker starrer Harlow, also scripted by John Michael Hayes.

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