Death At Love House

First of all--it was directed by E.W. Swackhamer (1927-1994). He also directed, among other things, episodes of "Tenspeed and Brownshoe", "Bewitched", and the miniseries ONCE AN EAGLE which starred Sam Elliott, Amy Irving, Glenn Ford, Ralph Bellamy, James Shigeta, John Saxon---and a host of other people both well-known and not-so-well-known.
I go into this because in the Product Listing Amazon in their usual lax way list the director as "unknown." On the contrary, he was a recognized name in television and a respected one.

Now for the movie: It's about a the tragic death of a famous movie "Goddess" named Lorna Love (played by Marianna Hill, whose real last name is Schwarzkopf and she is, in fact, Stormin' Norman's cousin).
Anyway, Donna and Joel Gregory (Kate Jackson, Robert Wagner) are researching her life (Lorna Love's---not Marianna Hill's)interviewing those who had known her in her hey-day. (Which gives a swell opportunity for cameos by such famous personalities as Joan Blondell, Dorothy Lamour, and John Carradine).
And veteran actress Sylvia Sidney puts in a very effective turn as the "housekeeper", Clara Josephs.

Donna and Joel move into Ms Love's old mansion (for the atmosphere---it's actually silent film star Harold Lloyd's old mansion "Greenacres Estate" which you can look up on Harold's MySpace page--all dead celebrities have MySpace pages). The original mansion still stands at 1740 Green Acres Drive in Beverly Hills but much of the grounds of the estate were subdivided and sold off as individual lots.

Back to our hero and heroine--as their research progresses strange things begin to happen---one begins to think that the house may be haunted by the ghost of Lorna Love. (Or is there some other possible explanation?) And Donna (Kate Jackson) soon realizes that her marriage (and maybe her life) are in serious jeopardy.

Good acting all around by the cast. Good script by Jim (James) Barnett and a very effective score by Laurence Rosenthal (THE BOURNE IDENTITY---Richard Chamberlain version---CLASH OF THE TITANS---Harry Hamlin version---SATAN'S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS---Roy Thinnes version---METEOR---Sean Connery and Natalie Wood---and many other movie and television scores.

To sum up: It's worth the investment to get a decent DVD.

› Go to Amazon.com to see the review  4.0 out of 5 stars