L'été de tous les risques

Again we've flown a few American imports over to Oz, again to make something unexceptional. Shot mostly in the beautiful rugged and scenic Blue Mountains (a place I gotta see) the story is set in the week of 1983 leading up to Christmas, day by day. Adelaide'n I am, I remember that week well. Some nut, and it's pretty obvious who he is, is doing someone's dirty work, lighting fires, every Sunday in fact, ruining one enterprising architect/developer's (Skerrit) business, and grand plans for a new hotel, in the name of a big fee of compensation/insurance fraud by some big guns. On the whole, this film-thriller is messily structured, which I can see what could be confusing a lot of viewers. The story is quite good, and if given better insight, and a hell of a lot of better structure, we would of had a much better product. Skeritt is Skeritt, while Mason is very strong as an insurance investigator, from Llyods of London, a name I heard around the traps in my younger years. Pity the great Hughes, was killed off early in the film, while taking one too many swims in Manly, and she really likes to go far out, before lying flat across the water surface, and guess what happens from there. The psycho even confronts her momentarily, when she's sun baking prefore. Barrett as a bit of a shady fireman, is wasted. As in thrillers, especially like in The Bone Collector, we spent a little too much time with Barrett. It's a little trick in thrillers, called suspension of disbelief, making us think it's him, where it distracts us from the real killer, which this is done early in the film. But I'll never forget the scene with the little daughter of the big gun, Julian Kane, Skeritt's boss, wearing that big dolls hat, while eating up her ice cream, and the younger sleazy dude rocks up. Another unintentional funny scene in Aussie cinema. In my opinion it's the best scene of the film, yet the climax was explosive one could say. But like I said, the movie's a mess and doesn't spend too much time in one place. The thing I love about A Dangerous Summer though, as you feel the searing heat and sweat where tempers boil, much like Heatwave, and Summer fan that I am, this counts for something.

Additionally titled BURNING MAN and FLASH FIRE for its various releases, this Australian made film, shot in New South Wales is problematic for its producers from its outset due to several personality conflicts and extended shooting time that prematurely uses up its allocated budget, and although the storyline is at times nicely detailed, below standard post-production finishing and overmuch cutting jettisons the affair. Tom Skerritt plays as Howard Anderson, an American entrepreneur with a "passion for building" who is in process of erecting a tourist hotel in the Blue Mountains region, all the while unaware that his business partner, Julian Fane (Guy Doleman) has insured the incomplete structure for ten million dollars, far more than its actual worth, and plans its destruction as corollary to normal summer brush fires in order to collect a handsome sum through fraud. In line with this illicit scheme, Fane arranges for an arsonist to perform the incendiary deed, a young man who also happens to be the boyfriend of Anderson's daughter, and due to the future resort's being in the midst of a critical fire hazard sector (one of the many unexplained elements of the screenplay) Julian has every expectation that his dastardly design will come about without serious hindrance. As the local insurance firm victimized by the crime is majority owned by Fane, the policy's naturally skeptical underwriters, Lloyd's of London, deploy senior investigator George Engels (James Mason) to probe into the nature of the felony, made more sinister because of the death, possibly a homicide, of an insurance investigator (Wendy Hughes) who, in following clues was apparently coming close to the cause of the arson. The setting for the film is the week before Christmas, capstone of summer in the Antipodes, a dramatic background, but the links within the story are not smoothly compounded, resulting in the presentation of events that are rather difficult for a viewer to follow, a problem heightened by erratic editing, the mentioned heavy cutting, and poor sound and picture quality. Skerritt's semi-comatose and droning style is fatally invalidated by this dim sound processing but Mason is very effective, as ever, and enjoys the best dialogue with Hughes impressive as the too early written-out investigator; Doleman wins acting laurels with his performance as the malevolent Julian Fane.

American builder (Skerritt) living in Australia, building a luxury hotel in the Blue Mountains teams up with Lloyds of London insurance investigator (Mason) after his half-built hotel is razed in an apparent bushfire. The hotel's co-owner and financier (Doleman) has insured the partially-built hotel at an inflated value fuelling suspicions that the blaze may have been deliberately lit.

Typical of a lot of Australian thrillers made in the late seventies to late eighties, with a couple of international stars (Skerritt, Mason) parachuted in to give a local production some international clout. Mason is very good, as always, as the wily English gentleman whose nose for suspicion and eye for detail, belie his otherwise mild, elderly appearance. Skerritt is dependable and the supporting cast is home-grown talent of the era (notably Wendy Hughes who again loses her kit in the memorable surf scene).

Plodding and at times lacking momentum, the suspense does eventually build to a tense climax and despite all the plot holes, is quite an entertaining conclusion. Memorable for probably three scenes (the surf encounter, derailment and the aforementioned climax), the film benefits from Mason's presence in particular, elevating the picture to "average" status, where the otherwise lacklustre direction and pacing conspired to drag it down. Not a great arson film, but has its moments.

This flick is worse than awful! It took a good story plot and turned it into schizophrenic cinema. The photography is EXTREMELY amateurish . . . looks like a 5th graders home movie project filmed with malfunctioning 8mm kiddie cameras . . . the editing appears to have been done by somebody having psychotic flashbacks (while on drugs and booze), with scenes cut short, followed by other, unrelated scenes, then chopped segments of scenes pasted in . . . totally unnecessary and gratuitous nudity . . . missing scenes . . . daytime scenes inexplicably turning into night-time scenes, then suddenly back to daytime . . . obviously no continuity. Tom Skerritt, Wendy Hughes and James Mason's good acting skills are wasted, as are the talents of the "key" supporting cast - (forget the villain and the Anderson women - very amateurish acting). This movie is a good candidate for a remake, even with Skerritt and Hughes . . . just have it professionally done this time.

A DANGEROUS SUMMER is an Australian drama/thriller about an insurance investigator called in from America to explore the circumstances around a large building fire in the Outback, one of many which have recently been occuring in the area. I'm a big fan of conspiracy thrillers, particularly from this era, but A DANGEROUS SUMMER is undoubtedly a poor film from beginning to end. It's disjointed, incomprehensible at times, and seemingly goes on forever without the basic elements of concrete narrative and suspense. Skerritt is a reliable choice of hero, and well supported by familiar faces in the cast like Ian Gilmour and Ray Barrett, but this is so badly made as to be near unwatchable.