L'été de tous les risques

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.