"Hot Summer Week" is one of the worst, but definitely also the most pathetic exploitation movie of the early 70s. Why pathetic? Because it features all the right ingredients to serve up a delicious and raunchy drive-in dish, but for some reason doesn't use them correctly, and the whole thing ends up being dull, dumb and dire! Listing these ingredients sure makes the film sound terrific: two underage but lewd girls on a summer trip to the beach and picking up random hitchhikers, a traumatized and violent Vietnam veteran wandering about, a deranged hippie beach-cult and continuous news bulletins about a murderous maniac at large. Sounds like unhinged, but it's actually pure shenanigans! The girls are wannabe cool chicks, but remain sad and prudish wallflowers throughout the entire story. Michael Ontkean (Sheriff Truman from "Twin Peaks") depicts the only Vietnam vet I've ever seen who has flashbacks about the conversations in his superior's office rather than from within the jungle-battlefield, the cult is laughably cliched (sitting around in a circle, hugging and telling "I love you" to each other) and the "maniac" doesn't kill any victims on-screen until very late in the plot, when you already stopped caring. Literally everyone in the film attempts to sleep with everyone, but nobody ever pulls it off! Ontkean's "flashbacks" are too long, too numerous and shown in the most amateurish way imaginable, with shady and blurry camera footage and words endlessly being repeated.
Review of Girls on the Road
