Summer Girl (1983)

Fresh and Exciting

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Though it has its twists and turns, this is the standard "bad nanny/babysitter" film and is fairly predictable. David Faustino prior to "Married with Children" was a fairly good actor; it's too bad he didn't continue in film instead of television. He and I are about the same age and I didn't ever do television and only met him the one time, but TV truly takes a toll on young people.

If the premise of a middle-aged couple hiring a seductive babysitter sounds familiar, it already was for fans of SUMMER GIRL when the popular HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE came out years later.Teenage Diane Franklin stars as Cinny, who, during an interview with pregnant mother Kim Darby, looks plain and unassuming. She's hired for the job... and when Darby's Mary Shelburne and her husband Gavin, played by Barry Bostwick, pick her up – something's happened. Cinny is gorgeous with, as described by a several characters, "a hot little body." This provides a dilemma for Mary, who realizes her husband, and even the kids, prefer the babysitter's presence to her own.Diane Franklin nails the character arc, morphing from a flirtatious tease to a lethal vixen, but that's skipping ahead. Although the chemistry heating up between Boswick and Franklin is essential, the best moments occur tenuously between jealous mother and mischievous babysitter before the inevitable turning point, neither revealing their cards just yet.And eventually, when Cinnie has no other choice but to play her desperate hand, the suspense works fine despite the limitations of a TV movie.For More Reviews: www.cultfilmfreaks.com

This is kind of an interesting TV movie. It was made a little after the "golden age" of American made-for-TV movies, the 1970's when TV movies were still made for a general American prime-time audience, but before the later "Lifetime" era when these kind of movies were aimed exclusively at bored housewives and generally became pretty worthless. This movie does indeed resemble the later theatrical film "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle", but I actually liked it a lot better.Long-time TV actor Barry Bostwick and Kim Darby, star of of the one the most famous 70's TV horror movies of all time "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark", are a well-off married couple spending the summer at a beach house with their two children (the boy, David Faustino, would later play "Bud Bundy" on the TV series "Married with Children"). Darby's character is pregnant so they hire a teenage babysitter to help out at the beach house and take care of the children. Although she looks rather plain at the interview, the babysitter turns out to be Dianne Franklin, who men of a certain age will definitely remember for her sexy appearances in "The Last American Virgin" and "Amityville 2: the Possession", although she also had more wholesome, comedic roles in movies like "Terrorvision" and "Better Off Dead", and she had played the lead in the made-for-TV slasher movie "Deadly Lessons". Anyway, Franklin's sexy sitter "Cindy" models a number of butt-hugging swimsuits and extreme 80's short-shorts. The drunken next door neighbor, an elderly-looking Murray Hamilton (the mayor in "Jaws"), remarks on her "hot little body", and even the Bostwick character's mother who comes to visit mentions her "cute little bottom". It's not too surprisingly therefore that she is able to seduce a young, hunky Bostwick away from his comparatively frumpy wife. But in typical melodramatic TV movie fashion she also wins away the loyalty of the children and plots to take the wife's place in the family. Oh yeah, and she also casually murders a couple people.This movie was made a good ten years before "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle", but after the similar early 80's TV movie "The Babysitter" with William Shatner, Patty Duke, and Stephanie Zimbalist. It's probably the best of the three though thanks to very solid performances by Darby and Franklin. None of these films are particularly believable and they're all pretty cheesy, but this one especially is a lot of fun.

I remember the movie from my high school days. We all wished we could have a babysitter like that. Now that I recall it more, that movie really was a precursor to "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle". Got the seducing sitter, two kids and the mischief/revenge factor. They even both take place by the beach. Note that Diane Franklin (the sitter) is the famous "MCI girl".