Shades of Love: Lilac Dream (1987) Online

The story is pure romance novel stuff, of course: woman recently jilted runs away to be alone in a remote place (in this case, on a small island) to lick her wounds. There is a terrible storm, howling wind, rain, etc., and the following morning she finds a wounded man washed up on the shore in front of her rented house. With help, she gets him into her house and nurses him back to health, and when he awakens, he doesn't remember anything about himself. The only clue to his identity is the message engraved on his watch: "To Matt, with love". Love blossoms, of course.

The writing is uneven and the story leaps over some potentially dramatic scenes in favour of the romantic ones, which left me a little unsatisfied. Their relationship seemed to race along without any real foundation except physical attraction - there was never a common interest or taste identified, so the relationship didn't seem as solidly believable as some in the SoL series. Some of the dialogue is awfully stilted and corny. The acting is uneven in places and is certainly not among Dack Rambo's best work, but I think much of that is due to the unevenness of the script. He is handsome, and Susan Almgren is pretty, with far too much blonde hair. The wardrobe lady needs to be smacked for putting Dack in a blue shirt with black somethings on, that looked like a pajama shirt.

The sex scene is short and mostly glossed-over, disappointingly.

This will have to be a partial review since I couldn't finish watching the movie. I suffered (terribly) through the first half hour or so before giving up. I purchased this movie solely to see Dack Rambo; although, I had my reservations since I really loathe romance stories. Jilted woman meets handsome man who she finds washed up on shore and nurses him back to health. The handsome man has no memory of who he is except for a watch proclaiming his name to be Matt. Matt, has terrible taste in clothing, selecting a purple coloured shirt with black marks all over it. He and the woman eat ice cream as they walk through town and speculate on who he might be while horrible "love music" plays quite loudly in the background. At this point, I couldn't take anymore and stopped the movie. Note: this has more to do with story line and movie type as opposed to the acting. I still love Dack and own a lot of his other stuff, but I just couldn't get through this one. Sorry.

So I finally watched a Shades of Love title. Unfortunately I'm more than 10 years too late. I've watched modern movies with special effects, better acting, etc. so to go back and watch an 80's movie with 80's style etc. was a little hard for me. However, I still watched because I used to be a super duper romance novel addict. Dack Rambo (the man from nowhere) was handsome and the heroine was pretty looking. Their acting was also okay, but I felt as though Dack wasn't "manly" enough. I guess he seemed like a little child in the movie - maybe because of the amnesia? I don't know. I'm used to having macho men as the hero - one of those tough man and the woman doesn't like him but in the end they fall in love blah blah. As for the story, I guess its alright too. But I was sorta barfing a bit at the scenes. Yeah, I guess they were a little corny and when she said "make love to me" I guess I'd rather read those lines in the book. I can't imagine anyone actually saying that! I was also irritated at Dack Rambo because he didn't really seem to want to know about who he was, etc. If that was me, I wouldn't be dilly dallying riding on horses etc.! And yeah, I can't see how they could have fallen in love so fast. Almost like a rebound thing for the heroine definitely so it was pretty bad of Dack Rambo. But they do end up together so its all good, right? Anyway, you REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY have to love romance novels to be able to watch this one.