Jamie Lee Curtis has daddy issues in the understated Roger Corman production LOVE LETTERS, on Blu-ray from Scorpion Releasing.

Radio station producer Anna (Curtis) lives a rather quiet and lonely life, escaping into classical music when not looking after her terminally ill mother (ST. ELSEWHERE's Bonnie Bartlett) and distant father (Matt Clark, JEREMIAH JOHNSON). When her mother dies, Anna discovers among her belongings a series of love letters from another man dated some time after her birth. As her father wavers between self-improvement and alcoholism, her best friend Wendy (Amy Madigan, FIELD OF DREAMS) makes the same mistakes repeatedly in her love life, and the drug dealer and hooker (SPLASH's Jeff Doucette and ANNA's Sally Kirkland) who live in the shack behind her house disturb her sleep with violent arguments, Anna starts to yearn for the love she gleans from the letters, and thinks she has found something like it when she meets Oliver (James Keach, THE LONG RIDERS), a middle-aged, married photographer who wants no strings attached. As she delves deeper into her mother's secret love life, she also wants to know more about Oliver's wife (Shelby Leverington, DEATH BY INVITATION) and young children, but making the nature of their infidelity all too reel for both of them does not have the effect for which she had hoped.

An atypically somber and serious Roger Corman drama, presumably a concession to Amy Holden Jones after delivering the exploitation goods with SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE and being excoriated as a female directing a slasher film, LOVE LETTERS is more than just an early film where Curtis takes off her top. It is a character-driven romance that is both dark and hopeful as Anna seeks escape in her mother's secret memories, conflating her own current issues with her grieving father with his own admitted distances during her mother's life, wanting to believe that Oliver's infidelity is proof of his love for her but pushing him away as he realizes what he has to lose. "Sometimes it's right to do the wrong thing," she comes to believe as she imagines the misery of her mother and lover staying apart for the sake of her marriage as that of her own. The film could easily have gone for a FATAL ATTRACTION type ending (one assumes towards the beginning that there might be one with the male as the aggressor) but goes for a more mature and reflective resolution faithful to its characterizations of people who do not really know what they want (Oliver seems like less of a sleazebag and more pathetic because we believe that he believes he loves both his wife and his mistress). The supporting cast is impressive for a low-budget Corman production with appearances by Rance Howard – father of Ron and Clint – DEADWOOD's Larry Cedear, FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF's Lyman Ward, and a larger supporting turn by HAROLD AND MAUDE's Bud Cort as one of Anna's colleagues.