Blu-ray Review – Love Letters

In the early 1980s, actress Jamie Lee Curtis found herself in a difficult career position. She broke through with 1978's "Halloween," and continued to collect work in horror, starring in "Prom Night," "Terror Train," "The Fog," and "Halloween II," becoming a "scream queen" to many, developing her screen presence in a typically permissive genre. For 1983's "Love Letters," Curtis elects to step away from maniacal pursuit, testing her dramatic chops with a dark tale of romantic obsession, written and directed by Amy Holden Jones, who was also dealing with reputation issues, having previously helmed "The Slumber Party Massacre." Curtis visibly works on her dramatic potential in the picture, doing well with Jones's writing, which imagines a crisis of the heart when a woman in need of magical love finds a partner who denies her everything except pleasures of the flesh. Stalker cinema eventually receives a workout in the third act, but "Love Letters" is a surprisingly effective take on desperation, with Curtis offering a welcomingly reserved take on a nervous breakdown. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com