La macchina dell'amore

Even though this film was nothing special as such, I am drawn to comment on at least one factor that ruled in its favour - that of the lead female performer in the film, Dyan Cannon. In spite of the film's ridiculous storyline and what she goes through here, hers was the best acting job in the film, making the unbelievable seem more plausible. Her raucous scene with the gay photographer David Hemmings has to be seen to be believed. Good work, Dyan.

600 characters is alittle much for cheese like this. This just popped on YT and Im happy to report I had fun watching. Sets, costumes, casting are all above tv movie calibur but the inside tv exec struggle is laughably lame. Dion Warwick sings a time setting imitation Hal David tune that puts one right in the groove.

Glossy, well intentioned trash can be fun. Theres a bit of homophobia here that is remembered as part of the time, if not unforgivable. Sexually agressive women too. Its very Jackie Susanne and feels like Beyond The Valley of the Dolls without being aware of the joke. I prefer lame melodrama to lame MCU.

I just got this gem off of ebay and was quite disappointed .. for three factors ..

1. No nude John Phillip Law .. I've seen stills from the movie which detail his beautiful naked ass, in bed with two women, but these scenes are absent from the movie 2. The supposed "several steamy" sex scenes .. tame by today's standards, but again, I didn't see anything either than sheets moving around and some nipples .. where did they hide it all? This movie was marketed as being the steamiest movie since Midnight Cowboy and there are no naked people running around .. :-( .. is there another version to this movie that's maybe NC 17? Does Europe have the advantage of the better uncut version than we paranoid Puritan North Americans? WHERE IS THE NAKED JOHN PHILLIP LAW? .. like Danger Diabolik, people overestimate his nakedness in a movie .. he might have been jaybird, you don't get to see it .. :-( :-( :-( 3. Plot .. okay, stretching here .. but John's acting wasn't that bad .. given the script and his deplorably bad supporting cast .. he was cute all the way thru it .. better than his portrayal of a bird man in Barbarella .. just stand there and breathe John, you've just found your acting worth .. now show us that magnificent chest of yours .. hmm hmmm ..

Dyan Cannon can't act her way out of a brown paper bag .. worse .. !!!she looks like she's been dolled up on Halcion in every scene she's in .. the only character worth rooting for was the amazon whore who was slapped around by Law's character .. she seemed to have a lot of depth .. for her 2 minute scene .. I felt sorry for her ..

The scenery and set design was typically bad 70's porn movie castoffs ... and what's with the dinner suit that the network exec keeps wearing? Is he expecting it to get better than this? 'fraid not!

Shecky Green in ill fitting mismatched clothing made me sick to my stomach.. when he moved I thought the room was spinning ..

Overall, I'd give this movie /5 out of ten .. just cuz it was soooo bad, you just had to follow it to the miserable conclusion to see how it ends..

Thank god no director worth his spit would dredge up slop like this and try to find a modern audience for it ..

**SPOILERS** Unintentionally funny 1970's type "Adult Drama" that has funny man Shecky Green, Christie Lane, being so hilarious in a dramatic part where his serious acting comes across funnier then any comedy bit he ever did in Vegas or Atlantic City.

Local Six PM TV newscaster Robin Stone, John Philip Law, has caught the eye of not only CIB network boss Greg Austin ,Robert Ryan, but also his pretty and possessive young wife Judith, Dyan Cannon. Knocking the ladies that he encounters off their feet Robin is the kind of guy who works real fast then quickly checks out without leaving any rings.

Greg putting his newscast on prime time has Robin quickly rises to the top of the CIB network forcing out his former boss, and now partner, top network honcho Danton Miller, Jackie Cooper, and leaving him a man with a job but without any work. Consolidating his power Robin starts to have an affair with Greg's wife Judith that goes on until Greg ends up with a massive stroke, because of the stress of running CIB not the affair which he knew nothing about. With Judith now running CIB and at the same time shearing a bed with Robin as well he on top of the media and entertainment world as a TV personality. What Judith doesn't realize is that her lover now plans to take the CIB network over as president.

Robin would have gotten away with his actions that drove his first lover in the movie Amanda, Jodi Wexler,to down a bottle of sleeping pills and then never waking up again if Robin used his head instead of his emotions he could have avoided the terrible things that later happened to him in the second half of the movie. Like all the Robin Stone type he could never get enough, and never be satisfied, with what he already has and that turns out to be his downfall in the movie "The Love Machine". Breaking careers and hearts on his way to the top Robin starts to get too big for his own good. It's later that Robins boss, the now recovered Greg Austin, has a clause in his contract that can put the Robin Stone steamroller to an end: a morals clause.

Robin for the first time in the movie showed his human side when he got the news that Amanda killed herself on the TV news. Hurt and depressed he roams the streets of NYC at night trying to find himself and the humanity that he lost in his no holds bar climb to the top of the TV news and entertainment heap only to get himself involved with a hooker, Melonie Waller. After changing his mind about doing business with the hooker in her hotel room Robin is humiliated and insulted by her calling him a fa**ot. This sets Robin off to where he beats the living cr**p out of her leaving the hooker for dead as he took off in the dead of night.

Afraid of what this would do to his career, if it's found out by the police and the public, Robin runs to Jerry Nelson, David Hemmings, Amanda's make-up artist who discovered her and made Amanda a star. It's this new found friendship with Jerry that leads to Robin's demise at the end of the film with a battle royal between Jerry and Robin and Jerry's boyfriend Alfie, Clinton Gresn. The three all chase Judith all over and around an empty mansion, with Jerry getting his head cracked open, to retrieve a "Slave Bracelet" that Jerry made out to Robin but in the end gave to Alfie. It was Judith who accidentally found the bracelet thinking that both Jerry and Robin were male lovers.

It turned out that Robin's attempt to get help from Jerry, after the hooker incident, lead to him being suspected of having an affair with Jerry by an outraged Judith, who earlier caught Robin naked in a shower with two young women! Now Judith knows that the carousing and womanizing and, in her mind, bi-sexual Robin can't be trusted. Hurt and vindictive for him tow-timing her Judth wan't to destroy him and his career in show, or the TV news, business.

Funny in a sleazy sort of way the movie "The Love Machine" was released with a lot of fanfare and publicity back in 1971 but flopped in the box office because it wasn't all that effective in the sleaze department, that it was advertised to be. At the same time the movie was so riotous and funny without even trying that it was hyped up for the wrong reasons for getting the public interested in seeing it. It should have been advertised by it's makers as an adult comedy.

The network TV news business as a sleazy cesspool, with John Phillip Law as the titular news-anchor who sleeps his way to the top. Nice idea to have Dionne Warwicke do the song vocals for this movie-adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's bestseller (a la "Valley Of The Dolls")...though it's really too bad this sudser doesn't have Patty Duke's Neely O'Hara to spike the story. "The Love Machine" is unrelievedly dull. Even the final brawl (with an Academy Award as a fight prop!) can't save it. Dyan Cannon seems embalmed in her heavy pancake make-up and cumbersome fall (although her tiny, suntanned figure is a beauty to behold), Law is a handsome block of wood, while David Hemmings is embarrassing in gay-mode as a flamboyant photographer. And where is Robin Stone walking to at the end? Is he trekking out to the waterfront to pick up some sailors? After Cannon has deflated his masculinity, it would be a safe bet. In that case, "Love Machine--The Final Episode" might have been a more interesting flick. Certainly better than this yawn-inducing snooze-opera. *1/2 from ****