Summer Heat (1987)

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This romantic crime drama takes place on an North Carolina tobacco farm during the Great Depression, where a young farmer and his beautiful wife reside and struggle to make a living. Roxy, the heroine, lives a life of isolation and monotony, constantly doing housework and caring for their toddler daughter. She and her husband Aaron can make a living, but are just going through the motions and there doesn't seem to be much love in their marriage. Her husband doesn't seem that interested in her. When a good-looking farm hand named Jack arrives to help her husband with the work in exchange for room and board, it's a disaster waiting to happen. Of course they have a passionate affair and after a while, Aaron suspects what's happening. Most of what happens is predictable and more importantly, it happens very slowly. I give credit to the film, it looks great. The sets, props, and costumes really take us back and the atmosphere is superbly caught. Yet by being so beautifully photographed, it inevitably glamorizes the grueling life of the times. There are a lot of scenes of farm work and while it's no doubt accurate, it slows down the story. The film seems much longer than its 80 minute running time. More importantly, the story itself is mere soap opera. Every plot twist is "been there, done that." Most of the acting is adequate. Anthony Edwards as the husband and Bruce Abbot as the lover are OK. There are some fine actors in secondary roles(Kathy Bates, Clu Gulager), but they're stuck in two-dimensional roles. It's up to Lori Singer in the lead role to carry the film. Yet while she's beautiful, she isn't memorable otherwise. Ironically, her performance sets the tone for the entire movie. For all its visual appeal, there is just no interest in any of the characters.

This particular piece of cinematic trash was filmed on location in Tarboro, North Carolina. While the farm wife was out boinking the field hand in the tobacco barn, she left a pot of mustard greens with a streak of lean on the stove... and a little girl wandering around the farm house without adult supervision!The baby pulls the pot of boiling greens over on herself and has to be rushed to the Quigless Clinic down by the bridge on Main Street. While at the hospital with the scalded child, the woman realizes how much she actually loves her husband and child and feels overcome with remorse over wanting to kill him - but the point is - the baby was still scarred for life because she was derelict in her wifely duties - one of the men ends up dead, too -- with the moral of the story being, once the die had been cast by her lapse in morality and duty to her station as wife and mother - there had to be repercussions.It is the standard Passion Play where the fall from Grace is due to a woman's lustful nature... a fall that must bring dire consequences on the woman.

-Possible spoilers ahead-I really tried hard to like this movie, really I did. Especially considering Bruce Abbott is in just about every single scene. I also tried hard to find some sort of base or "plot" to it. Trust me, there isn't one. It's basically a movie about small town folk, doing small town things. Mister Abbott plays Jack Ruffin, a psychotic hired farmhand with a lust for Lori Singer. There are a few sex scenes, that would probably appeal to the majority of Bruce Abbott's fans. But other than that, I couldn't be paid to watch this disaster of a movie over again. I wish I could say Abbott did a fabulous acting job, and that his over the top performance was worthy of an uncredited Oscar, but it wasn't. It's hard for me to even comprehend why Bruce Abbott claims this to be his all time favorite role. Maybe he enjoyed the twisted ending, that evolved beating Roxy's husband to death with a shovel a little too much, maybe he just has bad taste. Heads or tails be warned, Summer Heat is an eighty minute example on what not to do when making a film.