Hot Summer Night

Another of the movies that's coming up soon on TCM which I DVRed the last time it was on is Hot Summer Night. It's on TCM again tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM, so once again I sat down to watch it so I could do a post here.

A couple of guys led by Tom Ellis (Robert Wilke) rob a bank somewhere in the Ozarks and retreat to a hideout in the hills around the town of Chatsburg, AR. Also in the Ozarks is an outsider, William Partain (Leslie Nielsen). He's on a honeymoon with his wife Irene (Colleen Miller), although the marriage isn't starting quite so smoothly. William is a journalist who wrote for a paper up in Kansas City. But thanks to consolidation, some papers merged and William's was one of the jobs no longer needed. William doesn't know how he's going to support his wife.

That is, until he reads the local newspaper. He sees a story about Ellis's gang, and knows that if he can only find Ellis and get his story, he'll be able to sell it to the big-city papers for big bucks. Of course, it's a daft idea, because what criminal in his right mind wants to let outsiders in? But Williams heads off to Chatsburg, wife in tow.

There, he finds out that there's a woman who might be able to help him find Ellis, a woman named Ruth Childers (Marianne Stewart). He asks about at the local hotel, but nobody wants to tell him, even though they obviously know. Indeed, William presses his luck and gets in a fight for it. But eventually one of the men, Kermit (James Best) knows where Ellis is, and is willing to take him there.

Ellis is hiding out with nasty gunman Elly Horn (Paul Richards), and older and more philosophical Oren (Jay C. Flippen). Oren is just hoping to be able to retire in peace now that he's pushing 60 and knows he's probably lucky still to be alive considering his career. Ellis does start talking, but Elly doesn't like it, and eventually decides he's going to be in command, which involves taking Partain hostage and other shocking actions.

Irene is left back at the hotel; realizing that something's gone badly wrong, she makes the idiotic decision that she's going to look for her husband herself. She's way too naïve to be doing it, but off she goes anyway, getting some reluctant assistance from the law in the form of deputy Follett (Edward Andrews) and an unnamed truck driver delivering the rural edition of the Kansas City newspaper (Claude Akins).

Hot Summer Night is the sort of material that, had it been made 20 years earlier, would have made for an interesting programmer or B movie. But it was released in early 1957, and by MGM, which was never the right studio for a movie like this. As a result, the material feels subpar and always a bit off. It's always interesting to see Nielsen in one of his dramatic roles. He does about as well as you can expect considering the script, but I think the best part is played by Flippen. Still, anybody who is instersted in Leslie Nielsen will find this an intriguing movie since once Nielsen appeared in Airplane!, that overshadowed all his earlier work.

Hot Summer Night does not seem to have gotten a DVD release, so you're going to have to catch the TCM showing.