A Dangerous Summer

Yet again not quite bad enough to make it enjoyable. In fact this one is just boring. It's reasonably well made, even though the script is bad, the effects are OK and the acting average. (Apart from James Mason who is always great, but in this one underused)

I suppose it is hard to write anything about this film because it didn't evoke any reaction in me what so ever.

Dull, dull, dull, dull, dull.

A man is builing a hotel with a partner. He finds out the hotel is over-insured. Things just get worse. This film has a huge mumber of scenes. They must have been put together in someones' sleep. It jumps around from place to place. It does not stay focused on anything for very long. The ending starts on christmas morning with a hotel fire. It then cuts to a night scene of that fire and then cuts back to day time. The DVD sound track is horrible. It takes a fair plot and turns into the worst film I have scene in a long time.

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.

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.

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.