TV REVIEWS : Racer Kills Mom and Two Wives in ‘Poisoned by Love’

“Poisoned by Love: The Kern County Murders” (at 9 tonight on CBS, Channels 2 and 8) may hold some appeal for women who distrust men, but others will find this true tale of a husband who dispatched two wives and, finally, his own mother an altogether poky and routine murder story.

Harry Hamlin plays Bakersfield dirt car racer Steve Catlin, a good ol’ bounder and five-time loser as a husband. It seems women fall madly for this guy and then either divorce him or die on him.

The first three ex-wives gather every Saturday in a beauty parlor and trade marital war stories. They don’t know how lucky they are to be alive. When wives four and five (the fetching Faith Ford and the striking Daphne Ashbrook) succumb from homemade ice cream prepared and served by hubby Catlin, one of the earlier wives (a third attractive blond played by the skeptical Helen Shaver) embarks on a mission to nail his hide.

Although the creators enjoyed the license to juice this story up, neither director Larry Peerce nor writers Caliope Brattlestreet and Stephen Glantz squeeze much suspense out of it. The raisin country atmosphere around Fresno and Bakersfield is more dreary than interesting, and the ice cream killer’s motive, a bizarre twist that seems lifted out of Freud 101, arrives much too late in the movie to help matters.

Eileen Brennan has the thankless role of the deadly Lothario’s fatuous mother, and Ed Lauter is wasted as one of the victim’s fathers.

More gripping than the movie is the update on the end credit crawl. In case you turn your head and miss it, it reports that the murderer sits today on Death Row in San Quentin, where he hired a hit man to kill the wife who helped bring him to justice. But the hired gun turned state’s evidence instead.