Hot Summer in Barefoot County (1974) User Reviews

If You Have Low Expectations You Might Enjoy This

[InvasionofPALs · 4/10 · 27 April 2007]

'Nuff said. An undercover cop from the state capital is sent to a small county where moonshine running is rampant. He ends up getting run off the road by some local hicks who have no idea he's an undercover cop (so they just drive away as blissfully dopey as ever). He is soon being taken care of by a woman and her three daughters who all wear low-cut tops and short shorts (gotta luv the '70s). He falls in love with one of the girls but in the meantime he still has to find out who's making all the moonshine and driving it to all the local bars and restaurants. He also has to contend with a fat sheriff and his incompetent deputy who think he's the moonshiner 'cause he's new in town.

Life in small town America, 70s style. YEE HAAAAAAAAAAA.

Bad, but worth a watch if you're into trashy movies

[tagkeyon · 5/10 · 1 January 2010]

This movie is NOT good. But for a fan of late night crap flicks I guess it has some merit. It kind of takes me back to those days when people really believed that state investigators were sent down to some insignificant place to investigate crimes that aren't important. The sheriff was a hoot - "Gotta go do some sheriffin..." and the character of "Cluuy Joe" was mildly humorous. All the gals in the movie are not remarkable and in one scene of the leading female character we see a partial nude shot revealing untoned flabby hips. The stereotyping of backwoods folks in this movie is unapologetic to say the least. I gave it 5 stars.

Boring and Predictable

[Uriah43 · 3/10 · 21 October 2016]

This movie begins with a car chase between a female moonshine bootlegger named "Mary Ann" (Sherry Robinson) and a county sheriff named "Bull Tatum" (Charles Elledge). As luck would have it Mary Ann manages to easily outrun the sheriff and returns to her base of operations which is run by her mother "Stella Holcomb" (Tonia Bryan). From this point the movie shifts to the state capital where a special agent by the name of "Jeff Wilson" (Don Jones) is ordered by his boss to drive to Barefoot County to investigate everything that is going on down there. Unfortunately, as soon as he enters the county, he is driven off of the road by some obnoxious teenagers headed by a young man named "Culley Joe" (Jeff MacKay) who thinks he can do whatever he wants--especially with the local women. At any rate, having sustained an injury in the crash, Jeff's car is spotted by Stella, and he is subsequently taken to her home and cared for until he is back on his feet again. Upon regaining consciousness, he resumes his assignment and goes undercover by working for Mr. "Otis Perkins" (Ned Austin) who just happens to be the father of Culley Joe. Needless to say, having Jeff around does not make Culley Joe very happy and soon the two of them have problems with each other. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film was about as boring as anything I have ever seen. For starters, the plot was very thin and also rather predictable. Further, for a comedy the humor was noticeably lacking, the action was rather boring, and the music was sub-standard as well. As a matter of fact, other than the presence of a few attractive young ladies to brighten the scenery, there really wasn't anything worth watching. That said, I have rated this movie accordingly. Below average.

bargain-basement moonshine trash.

[EyeAskance · 21 January 2004]

Combination white-trash moonshiner romp/dramatic love story is pretty watchable considering it was probably produced on a pocket-change budget. Undercover cop is sent from the city to "Barefoot County" to investigate the illicit moonshine operation of a widow and her sexy daughters. Complications arise when the cop falls in love with one of the white lightnin' gals.

Sort of fun, really...but nobody's ever going to call it "good"...it has that grainy, poorly lit quality that reminds one of grade school educational filmreels.

3.5/10

Stay Away!

[cfc_can · 2/10 · 18 November 2000]

The film's title makes it sound like a porno but it's not even a sex comedy. Instead, Hot Summer in Barefoot County is about an official sent from a southern state to a small town to locate and arrest moonshiners. The moonshine though is coming from the farm of an old woman with three beautiful daughters. Almost anyone can guess what happens next but oddly, the film is very tame. It hardly even qualifies for a PG rating. What's more, the low budget is obvious in pretty much every shot and the acting is sooooo amateurish. This film was probably intended for the drive-in crowd but it's unlikely that it satisfied them, even in 1974.

A tame exploitation picture

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 8 September 2017]

HOT SUMMER IN BAREFOOT COUNTY is a great title for a very much nondescript 'moonshine' exploitation picture, a film that feels surprisingly tame given the genre and description. A city cop hunts for a redneck moonshine operation and chases women for most of the running time in unfunny scenes, but there's next to no nudity and few violent elements either. Troma's attempts to make this sound like a skin flick are close to false advertising. It's very boring, anyway, more romance-flavoured than anything, and feeling a little like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre without the horror.

Barefoot County

[BandSAboutMovies · 3/10 · 25 June 2023]

Will Zens made some wild movies. There was Capture That Capsule in 1961 that cashed in on the space race, then The Starfighters which is about F-16s and not space. He also made an earlier Nam movie, The Shores of Hell in 1966, but by the next year he'd be making less serious efforts - in a good way - like jukebox musical The Road to Nashville (which has Marty Robbins, Waylon Jennings, Portner Wagoner, Johnny Cash and more in its cast) and Hell On Wheels (which has John Ashley and Marty Robbins, as the singer also dabbled in NASCAR racing). The same year that Zens made this, he also made Trucker's Woman, which played double bills with this movie and has a subliminal pepperoni pizza image in it.

Written by W. Henry Smith and Joseph A. Alvarez (who wrote Redneck Miller, too), this has a federal agent named Jeff Wilson (Don Jones) come to Barefoot County to clean up all the moonshine before finding out that every woman in town is like an angel descended from some redneck heaven.

General Film Distributors carried this beyond its Carolinas roots to states like Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Tennessee. It was made by the Preacherman Corporation, which, as you can imagine, also made Preacherma and the sequel, Preacherman Meets Widderwoman.

Of the cast, probably you might know Sherry Robinson, as she was Lisa in The Gruesome Twosome, while Jeff McKay would be on shows like Tales of the Golden Monkey, Magnum P. I. and JAG. He and Jacquelyn Pyle also did the radio ads for Axe.

I've had the poster for this movie for years and you know, that artwork is about a million times better than the actual movie, which is really as it should be.

Also: When I get down, I sometimes think back to the cycle of Southern and rural culture taking over media, then the powers that be getting rid of them, then it happening all over again. Just witness the cycle of CBS canceling the Beverly Hillbillies universe, then the Dukes ten years later and today, so much of reality TV has stories set in non-urban places. Demographics are always the culprit for why it all goes away, but then everything has a cycle. A time to be born, a time to die, a time for movies about stock cars and moonshine, I pray it's not too late.

Bad movie - good vibes

[[e-mail] · 6/10 · 30 April 2012]

I have to admit that HTIBC is really a train wreck of a movie if you consider its low budget and shoddy cinematography. The fact that the movie doesn't take itself seriously makes up for these shortcomings. Don Jones' character is that of a state investigator who is sent down to a remote, hick inhabited county named "Barefoot". The county Sheriff evidentally has a problem containing the proliferation of local moonshing which is pretty much done out in the open and sold at the only establishment in town that you can buy anything. The incompetence of the sheriff and deputy in not being able to see the forest for the trees makes up the comic element of the film. After watching HSIBC one seems to sympathize with the main character's dilemma and long for the simplicity of the rural life he has enjoyed during the course of the investigation. An academy award winner it's not but its not a waste of time either.

Hot damn, mammagram!

[El-Stumpo · 16 February 2004]

Released by Troma from the `Preacherman Corporation", who were also responsible for the 1971 release Preacherman. Like its older cuzzin, Hot Summer... doles out fried white trash of the Southern variety, made for rubes by rubes without an ounce of so-fistication. Farmboy-turned-lawman from the Capital goes undercover in Hicksville to bust an undercover bootleggin' operation, run by a tough-talkin' mama and her halter-topped teensters. He falls.for the more homely of the three daughters and rediscovers his country roots, but runs into opposition from the local Three Stooges, and the yokel sheriffs out to make their own bust. Pained acting all round from the gals who all wear Levis cut off just below the navel (!), and the guys with guts hanging near their ankles. Yep, it shore is a pretty picture postcard from Pauline Hanson country, and about as funny as the one about the dog who limps into a Wild West saloon looking for the man who shot his paw...

Amiable fluff

[Woodyanders · 7/10 · 12 March 2019]

Jeff Wilson (a solid and engaging performance by Don Jones), who's a big city cop with country roots, goes undercover in a sleepy small podunk town to get the goods on a moonshine operation run by a feisty woman with three hot young daughters.

Director Will Zens offers a flavorsome evocation of the downhome backwoods setting complete with a neat array of colorful redneck characters, maintains a likeable lighthearted tone throughout, keeps the slight, but enjoyable story moving along at a fitful pace, and stages a few lively car chases with aplomb. Moreover, the presence of several hot hillbilly gals certainly doesn't hurt matters in the least. Charles Elledge contributes an amusing turn as the bumbling fat sheriff. W. Henry Smith's jaunty banjo score hits the sprightly spot. Pretty insubstantial stuff, but a pleasant enough diversion just the same.