John Frankenheimer steering through William Inge territory, doting over a family only slightly less dysfunctional than the happy-go-fascist clan from The Manchurian Candidate. Mother Angela Lansbury treads in openly incestuous neediness, father Karl Malden camps out in the basement with bourbon flasks and jigsaw puzzles, and restless teen Brandon de Wilde jots down other folks' conversations in his little notebook -- all their eyes on I-could-give-a-shit hustler Warren Beatty, the elder son who's been floating around, fueled by stud oiliness and older matrons' money. Nothing could wipe the grin of maternal pride off Lansbury's face, though de Wilde wises up to his bro's nihilism after Beatty's ladykillin' ways destroy the emotionally fragile swam (Eva Marie Saint) he was in love with. Where Frankenheimer's previous movie The Young Savages taxed the shock cut, this one is all languid dissolves (at its fanciest chopping the screen for a triple lap dissolve). When not busy pumping juice into a hoochie-coochie joint or a seaside jail, the director squeezes Inge's own obsessions (suffocating domesticity, pathetic mature women, gloved gay narcissism). Nowhere near as subversive as the weakest Sirk melodrama, the movie nevertheless infuses a sense of disgruntled gothic into such American staples as Christmas paraphernalia, backyard barbecues and, most notably, monstrous motherly love -- seeds of '60s upheavals fermenting beneath MGM's pastelly mantle. Adapted from James Leo Herlihy's novel. Cinematography by Lionel Lindon. Music by Alex North. With Barbara Baxley, Constance Ford, Evans Evans and Madame Spivy. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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