Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970)

It's not awful but is unbelievably downbeat. What attracted director Otto Preminger to such dour material is a mystery. Liza Minnelli plays the eponymous heroine, a girl whose face has been scarred by a psychotic boyfriend. She teams up with paraplegic Robert Moore and epileptic Ken Howard and sets up house. The trio face various bigots, eccentrics and the occasional sympathetic stranger. It's virtually plot less and very unevenly acted. Minnelli & Howard are fine, but Moore, in the showiest role, is extremely hammy. James Coco appears briefly and Kay Thompson steals a few scenes as the trio's wacky landlady. Much of it is filmed at night (badly) and a lot of action is obscured due to bad lighting. Preminger really stumbles here (and not in the outrageous SKIDOO way). The film is bookended by Pete Seeger performing a folk song in what looks like the woods of the Northwest (though the film is clearly set on north shore of Massachussetts).

Junie Moon is a great movie - way before it's time as was Valley of the Dolls which is a classic. Maybe Capboy watched Junie Moon too Late into the night and missed the whole point!!!! Junie Moon will always be one my favorite movie of all time!

This flick, based on Marjorie Kelloggs' obscure novel, is a dated yet poignant character study of three misfits who rent a house and live together: a young woman whose face has been disfigured by a psychotic date, a crippled homosexual, and a boy-next-door looking epileptic. Coming at the end of the 60s, this flick is full of various stylistic flourishes that were considered avant-garde then but look anacronistic and pretentious(as well as strange)now. Otto Preminger had a solid reputation, but this film shows that his skills were on decline. The film jumps back and forth from the present lives of the three, first in the hospital where they all are being treated and then in their run-down communal house, to bizarre flashbacks to their pasts(the flashback of the paraplegic when he remembers his upbringing by a gay fashion photographer is near camp). The epileptic's memories of being placed in an institution by his parents are truly weird: he is the age he is in the movie, and everyone else is in BLACK AND WHITE! A good ten years before MTV, these technical shenanigans just looked weird(and still do now). These weird flashbacks and other freaky devices distract from what should be a simple story about three people with limited emotional resources relying on each other and trying to survive with dignity in an uncaring world. Which is not to say that that doesn't come through in part, but it would have been more effective without the arty flashbacks. Liza Minnelli's stint as a dramatic actress was probably squashed by this film--after JUNIE MOON, what else is there? Supposedly, this one isn't available on video. This one might have a shot at being some kind of cult film, at least among Liza Fans, or connoisseurs of sixties cinema, or something.

I've heard about this movie for years, and now that I've finally seen it, I'm not sure what I think about it. The movie starts with a disturbing sequence in which Junie Moon (Liza Minelli)throws herself at an obviously disturbed man, who *spoiler alert* knocks her down and pours battery acid on her face. She ends up in the hospital and makes friends with a homosexual man who is mysteriously crippled(Robert Moore) and a man with epilepsy(Ken Howard). The story is rather silly, and Howard's portrayal of an epileptic is not totally realistic (and I should know, I have epilepsy). His seizures seem real, but he would not likely recover so quickly. I'm not sure the point of the whole thing, but I'm glad I've finally seen it.