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CRAZY LOVE Send This Review to a Friend
This oddball documentary by Dan Klores immortalizes the sick relationship between a woman and the jilted lover who has someone throw lye in her face resulting in her being blind. He serves a prison term, and then the lovers get together again and marry. All of this is under the vigilant eyes of tabloid journalism. When he strays and threatens yet other woman, there is more publicity as his wife defends him. “Crazy Love” finds the couple still married as they age, but the devotion consists of the wife being quite a nagger and him seeming to enjoy it.
The saga of Burt and Linda Pugach is a strange one indeed—some would say a patently sick one. Klores has captured it with film clips and interviews, and given the report a voyeuristic tone with a touch of humor in the way the film peers at these publicity seekers and walking wounded, her physically, he psychologically. In fact, her psychological ability to embrace the man who maimed her is certainly fodder for inspection.
In short, this is one weird twosome. Klores does a good job capturing the craziness of the situation, and the soundtrack evokes the periods covered—the lye incident dates to 1959. There is pathos in the story, but in a nutty way, it has a somewhat happy ending. However you feel about it, Klores lays out the tale in a manner that grabs our attention and makes us voyeurs peering into a bizarre example of what passes for love. A Magnolia Pictures release.
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