Just a quick little thread about an intriguing "rural noir" pumped out at MGM in 1957. It just played a few days ago on TCM...maybe some of you caught it at the time. It's worth a look...

HOT SUMMER NIGHT
Posted by Mike Kuhns on 7/10/2020, 8:13 pm

I grew up on movies of the 1950s and have always favored crime/noir films, but until just the other day, I'd never seen nor even heard of HOT SUMMER NIGHT (1957) from MGM. I can't believe I missed this one.

Okay, it may not be a classic, and Leslie Nielsen and Colleen Miller aren't names usually associated with film noir or crime dramas; but how can one NOT have seen a movie with a supporting cast that includes Edward Andrews, Paul Richards, Jay C. Flippen, Claude Akins, Robert Wilke, James Best, Malcolm Atterbury, Paul Wexler, Walter Coy, and Barbara Lang?

There's one twist in the middle of the movie that's very hard to see coming.

Re: HOT SUMMER NIGHT
Posted by Don Malcolm on 7/12/2020, 6:28 am, in reply to "HOT SUMMER NIGHT"

Good to see you, Mike. It's a pretty good little film, with (as you note) a great group of character actors who really sell the story's harder-edged return to MURDER, HE SAYS territory.

IMDB reviews have also registered their appreciation for HOT SUMMER NIGHT. Here's a sample:

"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."

"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."

"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."

That last one suggests a fun double bill that someone (insert whistling here...) could put together: HOT SUMMER NIGHT with THUNDER ROAD.