O zestos minas Avgoustos

I foolishly assumed HOT MONTH OF AUGUST would be crap, as Doris Wishman took a Greek movie and dubbed & heavily re-edited/re-shot it for the U.S. market. But what emerges is an entertaining if routine suspense film, with excellent acting (that survives the dubbing) and okay plot twists.

This is an object lesson I've taken to heart and which should be strictly observed by IMDb contributors: you have to actually watch a movie before intelligently commenting upon it. The shortcuts of "oh, it was made by Michael Bay or Uwe Boll" (fill in the name of anyone you hate) or believing the advance hype or hearsay from shows spawned by Siskel & Ebert are useless and potentially misleading.

Even Bergman had his bad days, and inside of every hack is a fine, dream movie waiting to get out. (For me the status of hack is based on batting average - the directors I despise are generally batting well under .100, with maybe a couple of decent movies amidst their dross.)

This story begins in familiar fashion, our young hero has failed in the big city and is returning home to his family to try and make his way in familiar surroundings. On the boat voyage he meets a gigolo named Makris at the bar who tells him how to pick up women. When Makris strikes out with a handsome woman Alexis, she takes up with Jason instead and they have a brief ship-board romance.

Back home Jason's dad wants him to get an office job and is pulling strings for him, but the boy is ambivalent about his future. He takes off with a young girl Hope who his parents match with him (for marriage that is), and they have a brief affair.

Plot thickens when it turns out that Makris and Alexis are plotting to kill her husband and make Jason the fall guy. Makris is in fact a private eye hired by hubby to spy on Alexis, but they're one step ahead of the old guy.

I liked the way events escalated and various plot elements were sorted out in the later reels: during the botched murder attempt hubby gets wise in time and shoots both Makris and his wife. Instead of explaining the fairly complicated matter to the police, hubby fabricates a story which makes Jason the logical suspect, and without much evidence the cops lock him up.

A more perceptive d.a. is suspicious of the old coot and eventually comes up with both motive (expected inheritance) and opportunity to get the goods on hubby. Even Hope gets into the act, defying local convention by coming forward with a true (but disbelieved by the authorities) alibi for Jason, that she slept with him at the time the shootings took place.

Acting is fine throughout, especially by Petros Fyssoun as Makris, an indelible portrait of a charming rogue. It is interesting to note that he later starred in other sexy movies like MAKE ME A WOMAN (issued dubbed in America as THE SISTERS), so it wasn't a terrible stretch for Doris Wishman to adopt this movie and make it sexier. She added approximately 10 minutes of nude scenes, fairly well matched to the original action. It wasn't a case of trashing the imported movie, the way Woody Allen famously did with his first film, a Japanese action movie which became WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY? with the Woodman adding a sexy Playboy centerfold China Lee to spice that one up a bit.

In an early scene set on a beach, Marie Liljedahl in a bikini has a speaking role and would have been only 15 or 16 at the time, but as in her later hit INGA appears full-grown. Credits list an "Ann Liljendahl" who has no other info in IMDb, so I suspect this was the original screen credit for Marie as "Ann".

The Hot Month of August (1966)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Jason and Alexis strike up a relationship but what they don't realize is that Alexis' husband has hired a private eye to follow her. When the husband learns of her affair he kills his wife but Jason is accused of the crime.

This here was a Greek film that was purchased by American sexploitation director Doris Wishman who then added narration, dubbing and edited the picture around some. I haven't seen the original Greek version to know how good or bad it is but this Jerry Warren wannabe job from Wishman really isn't one of her best moments.

As it stands, it's pretty hard to rate or judge films like this but there's no question that it's pretty boring all around. What really hurts the film is the fact that there's obviously a lot of "plot" going on but the dubbing pretty much takes all of that away and we're given really corny dialogue and the film just doesn't go anywhere. Even worse is the fact that it's hard to really judge the performances or anything else because of the lousy dubbing.

The reason Wishman would buy this film is because it does feature some spicy sex scenes as well as some nudity. Still, this isn't enough of a reason to sit through the film and especially since Wishman has her own work that is much better or at least much more her style.