Una calda notte d'estate

Unusual. Despite pacing problems and pockets of clumsy dialogue, it has some good insights into the criminal mind as well as the minds of those who feel the need to mythologize outlaws that literally get away with murder. It's bolstered by a wise, unsentimental performance from Jay C. Flippen as a hard-nosed con rolling the dice one last time, and Paul Richards' strange turn as a neurotic, scarily unpredictable gunman. (He is involved in a bizarre, never-saw-it-coming act of violence about half way in that really gets your attention - to put it mildly.) Leslie Nielsen is fine as the out of work newspaperman desperate for a good story, but Colleen Miller is barely adequate as his new bride. You never buy that she would marry someone without a job, nor can you accept his decision to stir things up with the locals on their honeymoon so soon, especially in her presence. She comes across as mystifyingly accepting of the situation, and at times seems to be in some kind of a trance-like state.

But its strengths outweigh its flaws. The script is gutty and resourceful and the director, David Friedkin, creates a sense of real isolation, a feeling that this small, dingy town isn't so much a whole different planet as much as it is a kind of black hole. If you ever get caught in it, you can be sure you'll have a devil of a time getting out. Good suspense and an exciting finish. Always fun to uncover curious little efforts like this. Definite cult possibilities.

Reporter Partain (30 year old Leslie Nielsen) goes looking for trouble... and Ruth Childers in a little hick town. James Best (Sheriff, from Dukes of Hazzard County) picks a fight. Ed Andrews is the local deputy who knows things, and may or may not be helpful. I recognized Andrews from Glass Bottom Boat. Andrews was always the wise uncle, or the general, supporting the lead. Ruth Childress knows where Tom Ellis is, but she doesn't want to get involved... more than she already is. Partain finally meets the people he's looking for, and starts asking questions. Then things go from bad to worse when they hold Partain and demand a ransom. a fair amount of suspense while we wait to see if they can save him before he's knocked off by the kidnappers. Claude Akins has a meaty role as one of the bad guys. Up to now, Nielsen had mostly tv roles.. then he started getting larger film roles in the mid 1950s. Directed by David Friedkin. did a lot of writing for tv series... I Spy, Hitchcock Presents. this one is very okay. nothing too grand.

A newlywed ex-reporter sees a big story in a desperado gang holed up near his honeymoon site. Trouble is the townsfolk like the bank-robbers a lot more than they do the city outsider. But the persistent newsman smells the kind of story that might get him re-employed.

I guess I'm in a minority, but I found the results here pretty ordinary. Glossy MGM simply did not have a feel for B-movies, not even with RKO's former noir impresario Dore Scary at the helm. The movie's real potential is in a first-rate supporting cast that should have been allowed to ooze menace. Trouble is director Friedkin films events flatly and from an impersonal distance. Thus we're denied Paul Richards' (Elly) special brand of unnerving facial tics; at the same time, Wilke (Ellis) is robbed of his usual brand of thuggish menace. I realize Ellis has got to have enough nice-nice to merit the town's respect, still that undercuts the distinctive presence the movie needs. On the other hand, Flippen's fine as the levelheaded Oren, the sort of avuncular role he did so well in the previous year's The Killing. Nielsen's okay in the starring role, but the lightweight Miller has way too much malt shop for a crime drama, and is a poor match for the sturdy Nielsen.

Get set, however, for the film's one distinguishing feature, a startling development halfway through. Too bad the direction didn't reach this level of imagination.

On a more historical note, it's probably worth pointing out that many areas of the US idolized 1930's bank-robbing desperadoes like Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde. Needless to say, foreclosure banks were not exactly popular among depression-era folks. In fact, Floyd was reputed to have destroyed mortgage paperwork among the banks he robbed. So that part of the movie is interesting and based on what's now little known fact.

All in all, the crime drama's not a bad movie just a cheaply produced programmer that should have been more effective than it is.

By 1957, the dark fire of the noir cycle had all but died down, yet amid the embers were a few live coals. Plunder Road was one; another is Hot Summer Night. It stars the young Leslie Nielsen, then being groomed as a tough romantic lead, as an out-of-work newspaper man from Kansas City on his honeymoon in the Ozarks who can't pass up a lead on a brutal bank robbery.

Trouble is, in the possum-run of a town he's staying in, the head of the gang (Robert Wilke) has become a local hero; nobody wants to whisper a word, both out of pride and fear of reprisal. When Nielsen finally gets taken to the rural hideout, long-simmering violence among the thieves erupts, and he finds himself held for ransom by the trigger-happy new leader (Paul Richards). Meanwhile the poor bride (Colleen Miller) doesn't know where her husband has disappeared to, and finds herself running into the same obstinate wall of silence....

Produced by MGM (which head of production Dore Schary had nudged toward noir), Hot Summer Night boasts a clean, straightforward script, a score by André Previn, and a roster of well-cast players even in small parts, among them Marianne Stewart, Claude Akins, and the always excellent Jay C. Flippen. It's a modest but workmanlike picture that holds up well close to half a century after its release.

Note: Another commentator called this movie `Ma and Pa Kettle meet Cornell Woolrich.' While the point is appreciated, the immortal Kettles made their debut in the Claudette Colbert/Fred MacMurray vehicle The Egg and I of 1947, which was set in the Pacific Northwest, not, as is often assumed, in the Ozarks or Appalachia.

It seems to me that most people missed the important parts of the movie. They seem too distracted by an early Leslie Nielsen and their desire to recount the entire plot.

They couldn't have missed the repressed sexuality that pervades the movie. It is emphasized by the repeated mentions of the heat, so like that in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (althought the movie came later, the Broadway play did not). The town attracts heat the deputy explains. All kinds of heat. The wife in her tight white slip on a brass bed begging for some attention which she does not get. It's a dime store Elizabeth Taylor. Just as Leslie Nielsen is the cheaper Paul Newman.

There is also the Robin Hood story, the repetition of the name Tom Ellis, who does good for everyone in this rural town is another theme that while it doesn't set the movie apart does disinguish it from a run of the mill bank robber story. A town down at the edges with only Tom Ellis to be proud of. It shows both the risk and the banality of crime.

It almost reminded me of "Touch of Evil" the pervading sense of danger and dread for a woman dressed in virginal white who is only there to be with her husband.

There is also the cliche of the whole town protecting one person, denying knowledge that the inquirer knows that they have. I was amazed frankly that this is not considered a film noir. I suppose there isn't a bad woman leading a man astray but there seems to be almost everything else. We never see a bank robbery but we do see murder. And there is plenty of suspense.

An undersung gem!