The Stepmother

1972 "She forced her husband's son to commit the ultimate sin!"
4.1| 1h34m| R| en| More Info
Released: 26 October 1972 Released
Producted By: Crown International Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Returning home from a business trip, an architect assumes that a client is having an affair with his wife and murders the man. His feelings of guilt and attempts to conceal the crime lead to more complications and death.

Genre

Drama

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Director

Howard Avedis

Production Companies

Crown International Pictures

The Stepmother Videos and Images

The Stepmother Audience Reviews

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.
Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.
Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.
Isbel A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
Brian T. Whitlock (GOWBTW) 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
Uriah43 Upon returning home from a business trip "Frank Delgado" (Alejandro Rey) finds another car in his driveway and happens to see his wife, "Margo Delgado" (Catherine Justice) in their bedroom with another man. As the man comes out into the front yard Frank kills him in a fit of rage. Immediately afterward he comes to his senses and decides to quickly bury him in a field on the outskirts of town. Unfortunately, as luck would have it the body is soon discovered anyway and Frank is considered as a possible suspect. In the meantime though, Frank cannot manage to forgive his wife because of her supposed infidelity and so refrains from making love to her from then on. What he doesn't know is that the man he killed had forced himself on her and since Margo is unaware that Frank knows anything about this incident it has left her feeling confused and sexually frustrated. Now, rather than reveal any more of the film I will just say that this was an adequate movie for the most part. The acting was okay but the story seemed to lag here and there. Likewise, I also thought the ending was a bit too abrupt. All things considered then, I rate the movie as slightly below average.
Chris Haskell 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.
jfgibson73 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.