In the 70's, you would see a lot of skin in drama and thrillers. Then there's the sex factor that goes along with it. In "The Stepmother", there is plenty of that. Alejandro Rey("The Flying Nun") plays Frank, a successful building contractor who catches his client with his wife while he was on a business trip. He kills him, then buries his body at a beach. Unbeknownst to him, there's a fighting couple that comes up later. After getting rid of the evidence, the police comes up and tells that there are two bodies at the beach. Frank knows that he killed his client, but the other body is female. That makes him more uneasy. If that is bad, it gets worse when he accidentally kills his partner in the business. That makes him more unstable. For this one, business and pleasure, don't mix. It has a great cast. But the ending was a letdown. It's worth the watch in certain ways. Only on a certain occasion. 2 out of 5 stars

Awesome. I did a double take when I first saw him in this quirky little independent ditty from the early 70s. Just out of curiosity I looked at when he started work on MASH, and it was the same year. That explains his appearance, as I don't believe he would do this after international stardom, but I don't know if all the research in the world wide web could fully explain the movie. It's really a movie in two parts: the first half(ish) is story of a husband with a temper and jealous streak and throughout the second half the title of the movie is explored a little more and fleshed out (pun intended). Typical incoherent, excuse for a young filmmaker to get his name out by throwing in gratuitous walking-out-of-bed or to-and-from- the-bathroom-shot drive-in cinema with a director that never graduated from the genre in his short (directorial) career. There are moments of interesting story or character development, and the title song was amazingly nominated for an Oscar, but overall this is only worth watching for someone with an interest in films from the 1970s.

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.

Stressed-out middle-aged Mexican-American self-made millionaire architect Frank Delgado (a solid performance by Alejandro Rey) ain't having a good time of it. First off, he murders the lover of his hot young second wife Margo (lovely brunette Katherine Justice) and buries the body at a nearby beach. The police initially think another guy who killed his girlfriend on that same beach on the same night might have committed the dastardly deed, but no-nonsense Inspector Darnezi (a properly crusty portrayal by John Anderson) is certain that Frank is the real culprit. Things go from bad to worse when Frank accidentally kills his own laid-back best friend and business partner Dick Hill (an engaging turn by Larry Linville of TV's "M.A.S.H." fame). To add further abject insult to already awful injury, Margo seduces Frank's teenage son Steve (handsome Rudy Herrera Jr.) and Hill's widow Sonja (nicely essayed by Marlene Schmidt, who also co-wrote the script) makes advances on Frank. Director/co-writer Hikmet Avedis whips up one doozy of a deliciously convoluted and ridiculous plot and further spices things up with a decent amount of tasty female nudity. Popping up in cool supporting roles are familiar character actor Duncan McLeod (sleazy lawyer Porter Hall in "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls") as a hard-nosed police chief, John D. Garfield as hipster smut movie director Goof, and luscious 70's drive-in exploitation cinema goddess Claudia Jennings as stoner hippie porno starlet Rita (Claudia naturally does one of her customary yummy full-frontal nude scenes). Jack Beckett's snazzy cinematography goes overboard on the dewy soft-focus, strenuous slow motion, and, especially, plenty of gloriously tacky freeze frames. The groovy Oscar-nominated theme song "Strange Are the Ways of Love" is a complete sappy hoot. An entertainingly loopy potboiler.