Review of By Love Possessed

" . . . to the meaning of young love: Drain-O," boosts the narrator of the trailer for BY LOVE POSSESSED, in the clearest indication that this misclassified "melodrama" was originally released in 1961 as a screwball comedy. There was a time when someone could have called Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney or Errol Flynn and Olivia De Havilland "two of the screen's finest young stars," but NO ONE ever said such a thing about Susan Kohner and George Hamilton with a straight face! Furthermore, during this slap-stick BY LOVE POSSESSED flick, Ms. Kohner finds Mr. Hamilton's character so insipid and lacking in sex appeal that she does herself in by drinking a can of Drain-O off-screen. The rest of the cast simply observe at such a usually sad occurrence that Susan's role was as a Detweiler, and "Detweilers always off themselves." So after Susan's tragic-comical disappearance, they simply go about their business for the rest of this farce without missing a beat. The fact that Ms. Detweiler was the richest gal in town, and that she willed her fortune to her kindly guardian lawyer (who's been embezzling steadily from every trust that he controls) can only work as a plot device in the Darkest Recesses of Black Humor. As Mr. Hamilton plays a rich kid debating with HIS lawyer dad whether he nailed "the Three Elements of Rape" with his "let's play 'Veronica says'" one-night stand chick, BY LOVE POSSESSED morphs into something perhaps better titled BY EVIL POSSESSED.