Noite Candente

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.

Late fifties Metro addition to the film noir genre, Ozarks-style, featuring Leslie Nielsen. A comedy, you say,--perish the thought! Nielsen was in his 'next-Glenn Ford' phase, and plays it straight down the line, no chaser, no jokes, and he's very good. This is an exceedingly well-crafted, offbeat little thriller about a big city reporter in over his head as he tracks down a legendary outlaw in an extremely backward, backwoods community. The sense of isolation is very well built up, as is the cluelessness of the man and his wife, who simply don't know what to do, or even how to talk to these people. Among the denizens of the backwoods are such choice Hollywood masters of the cretinous as Claude Akins and James Best. The po-faced Paul Richards plays an unhinged character; a nice piece of offbeat casting, this. Robert Wilkie manages to be both warm and frightening as the honcho bad guy. What makes the film work is its marvelous and all-pervading sense of not only the unknown but the unknowable, as we learn just how naive city folks can be when out of their element. It is literally a night movie, thus there is no question about it being film noir. Strangeness lurks everywhere on these back roads, where one might expect Robert Mitchum to turn up, or maybe Bonnie and Clyde, or maybe Jeff Dahmer. One never can tell. You think rural communities are idyllic? Think again. The biggest surprise and most charming performance in the film by far is by Edward Andrews, who normally plays smarmy, scheming or mean-spirited white collar types, often with a comic touch, totally absent here. In Hot Summer Night he is the local sheriff, and he is salvation itself. The movie just goes to show, for the umpteenth time, how far creative people can go with seemingly routine material; how it can be exciting and shocking and even, in its presentation, new. It also shows how fun it can be to see stereotypes played with, altered, turned upside down and inside out, both as to casting, locale and viewer expectation.

Tom Ellis and his murderous bank robbery crew have their hideout in rural Ozarks. Newspaper reporter Bill Partain (Leslie Nielsen) and his wife are on their honeymoon in a nearby cabin. He's in between jobs after a newspaper merger. When he gets a tip on the robbers, he decides to investigate but finds the locals less than welcoming.

It's interesting to see Leslie Nielsen as the young leading man. He has a stoic sincerity to his performance but he has trouble showing fear. That's the missing element which keeps the tension at a lower level. He doesn't feel like he's in danger despite the fact that his character is definitely in danger. All in all, this is an interesting little noir.

As this film, Hot Summer Night, was made in 1957, there are a lot of familiar faces in it who had success in television: Leslie Nielsen, Paul Richards, Edward Andrews, Claude Aikens, and Jay C. Flippen.

Most of the actors were quite prolific and enjoyed long careers as character actors. Nielsen's career spanned over sixty years, and he lived long enough to re-invent himself in comic roles and start a new career.

The story concerns honeymooners, the Partains (Nielsen and Colleen Miller), who are staying at a cabin near a small town. Bill Partain has been fired from his newspaper, and he gets wind of a big story that could win him his job back.

A well-known thief, Tom Ellis (Robert Wilke), has struck again, and a bank employee was killed. He's hiding out nearby. No one in the town wants to help Partain find Ellis or his wife Ruth, who lives separately from him, because it's a poor town and Ellis has helped many of them for a long time.

When Partain finally finds Ellis and interviews him, the actions of one of Ellis' psycho partners (Richards) make Partain a hostage.

This isn't a bad B movie. As a B movie made in black and white, it does have a TV feel to it. Richards handles a showy role well. Colleen Miller, who plays Nielsen's wife, had a difficult role; the wife was sort of a pain. The attractive Miller retired a year later when she married Ted Briskin, a wealthy man previous married to Betty Hutton.

Worth watching for the young Nielsen, and if you're my age, the actors will bring back memories for you.

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.