The Screengrab : a summer place

Summerfest '08: "Summer Lovers"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

If beers, rock bands and sausages are all allowed to have summerfests, we here at the Screengrab see no reason why movie blogs shouldn't get to share in the fun. Our Summerfest series will take a look, every Wednesday for fifteen weeks from May until September, at movies with the word 'summer' in the title and some connection, however tenuous, to everybody's favorite bikini party season. These movies are by no means essential; most of them aren't even any good. But they will help you kill a few hours when you're recovering form a margarita hangover. This week, much as we did last week with A Summer Place, we'll be taking a look at a movie that became a huge hit on the strength of a super-cheesy, inescapable theme song and America not wanting to admit it was seeing the movie because it wanted to see sme pretty young things getting it on.

Ladies and gentlemen, we present: 1982's Summer Lovers.

THE ACTION: Peter Gallagher, in the days before he was a leather-skinned, hyper-tanned self-parody, plays a Greco-American schmucko who convinces his hot girlfriend to visit the Greek Isles with him for summer vacation. His girlfriend is played by a pre-crazy, but unfortunately not pre-bad-actress, Daryl Hannah, who nails the part of the role where she is required to look hot, but not the part of the role where she is required to play an artsy intellectual photographer. Eventually she gets on Gallagher's nerves, and he starts carrying on with a juicy little archaeologist, played with world-class ennui by the doomed Valerie Quennessen, who you may remember from...well, nothing else ever, really. Daryl stomps off to confront this French tart, and guess what happens? No, really, guess. The answer will shock and amaze you.

THE PLAYERS: Writer/director Randal Kleiser -- yes, folks, this is another auteur-theory bikini movie -- certainly had a strange career. Coming up from TV with The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, he made a huge splash with his first two major films -- Grease and The Blue Lagoon. Both of them made a kerjillion dollars and seemed to prove that Kleiser could do no wrong, and so he went ahead and made Summer Lovers to establish that he could do very wrong indeed. After that, he fell into directing a bunch of kid-flicks, and then apparently met his match in being asked to make a movie that starred both Amanda Bynes and Jamie-Lynn Sigler, after which he fell off the face of the Earth. Gallagher and Hannah both went on to have extremely successful careers, but Valerie Quennessen, who is so admirably naked through most of this movie, became co-founder of the 1980s Obscurity Club with Klinton Spilsbury.

SUMMER FUN: The ubiquity of "Hard To Say I'm Sorry (Get Away)" by Chicago, among a bunch of other hits by the Pointer Sisters, Prince, and Michael Sembello, mde this the inescapable soundtrack of 1982, but as someone who lived through it the first time, I'd call listening to that song less "summer fun" than "summer torture that the authors of the Geneva Conventions were too short-sighted to anticipate". Even worse, while the three main characters develop a menage a trois with one another, at no point in the movie are we treated to a scene of Daryl Hannah and Valerie Quennessen making out! This is as unconscionable as making a movie with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly and not letting either of them dance. Also, there is way too little lounging around the beach naked, and way too much sitting around talking about people's feelings. The proper ratio of these activities in a movie like this is 100:0.

HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: Unfortunately, Peter Gallagher is meant to be portraying a sensitive intellectual and modern male, so there is little room in his weltanschaung for the universal signifier of the big fat party animal. He does spend a lot of time shirtless, which is meant to be a sop to the ladies in hopes that they don't notice what an unbelievably sexist movie this is, what with the two girls servicing his needs all the time and whenever one of them feels a little taken advantage of she gets a lecture on how to not, like, get hung up on the jealousy thing, babe. He also charms Valerie Quennessen by comparing her lovemaking technique to that of a horse.

BIKINI PARTY TIME: If nothing else, Summer Lovers rates very, very high on the Bikini Party Time scale. Shedding all the inhibitions he was forced to observe due to The Blue Lagoon' s underage stars, Kleiser pulls out all the stops here, cramming the movie with as much bikini action as he can possibly conjure up. Even the plot rolls into action with the common observation of tourists who have never actually been to Europe before: look at how uninhibited they all are! They're not, like, all hung up on sex! Therefore, let's screw around as much as is humanly possible. It's pretty stupid, but as '80s softcore goes, you could do a lot worse. Young people would be well advised to watch this movie and realize how desperately bad things were for the rest of us in the 1980s and contemplate how truly far we've come. Everybody needs a little time away...

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 17-23, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:05:00 GMT

Here we are on the verge of a three-day weekend – the perfect opportunity to catch up with the week in Screengrabbin’. Take that laptop out to the beach and dig in to one of our finest weeks ever in film-related snarkery:

All the Cannes news you can eat, including review roundups for Steven Soderbergh’s Che and Clint Eastwood's Changeling.

Speaking of Eastwood, Spike Lee has some words for him.

Something you may not know about Prince Caspian: It’s Some Goofy-Ass Shit.

Those guys in the raincoats in the back row of the theater? That’s us taking in The Sweet 16 Jailbait Movies.

Flashbacks to summers past: Yesterday’s Hits looks at Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Summerfest ’08 launches with A Summer Place, and Summer of ’78 kicks off with Thank God It’s Friday.

Our Unwatchable journey through the IMDb Bottom 100 continues with the Aussie werewolves of Howling III, the strangely middle-aged juvenile delinquent of I Accuse My Parents, and the horny bikini babes of Horrors of Spider Island.

Grumpy Old Actresses square off in a 90-year feud.

Which giant ape movie is truly the King of Kong?

That sound you hear isn’t fingernails on a chalkboard – it’s OST: There Will Be Blood.

What’s Three More Terminator Movies between friends?

Whatever happened to Better Off Dead auteur Savage Steve Holland?

And finally, forget Uwe Boll – the worst filmmaker of our time is Albert Pyun.

Summerfest '08: "A Summer Place"

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Summer is one of my favorite times to see a movie. Growing up in Arizona in the shadows of a shopping mall, going to the multiplex on a hot summer day when I didn't have school and wanted to kill a few dozen brain cells out of the blinding sun and wilting heat was one of my absolute favorite things to do. Let the cool kids go show off by the swimming pool: for me it was the air-conditioned comfort and the fulfilling fantasies of the silver screen. This summer, in between checking out what's new in the world of blockbusters and indie flicks of today, I'll be bringing you a mini-review of 15 'summer' movies of the past, judged by criteria I made up the other day over a couple of watermelon margaritas. They won't always be good movies, but they'll always bring you a certain summery je ne sais quoi.

Let's start with one of the most famous summer flicks of all time: 1959's A Summer Place.

THE ACTION: Rich toff Richard Egan totes his snobby, moralistic wife (Constance Ford) and pouty, vine-ripe teenage daughter to a New England resort. The owner of the resort is grungy failed capitalist Arthur Kennedy and his lovely lady Dorothy McGuire, who run the joint alongside their dimwitted but hunky son, Troy Donahue. Twenty years prior, Egan had a little thang-thang going with McGuire, and as everyone goes about their summer business, the two rekindle their hot and heavy relationship, as their hormone-crazed children follow suit. This being the 1950s and all, Ford completely flips out, a shameful divorce takes place, a pregnancy scare ensues, and everyone looks at each other very meaningfully while wearing not particularly revealing swimwear. You got all that?

THE PLAYERS: Writer/director Delmer Daves brought to the big screen this adaptation of the biggest '50s potboiler novel this side of Peyton Place, but the real stars here are Donahue and Dee, the resplendent teen idols of the era. Their hot bods and perfect features cast a glare off the screen that you can feel on your brow, and their bad acting raises a stink that overpowers the smell of sea breezes and stale popcorn. Anyone who thinks that vapid, over-exploited, undertalented teen sensations are a recent phenomenon needs look no further than the clunky performances of Troy and Sandra, who became huge stars with the movie's success. (Daves hitched his wagon pretty thoroughly to Troy Donahue's star after this, which is probably why you've never heard of him before.)

SUMMER FUN: If your idea of a good time is hanging around a shabby beach resort and sipping cocktails, this is a real good-time party movie. But it's sadly lacking in any real watusi-and-Bacardi throwdowns, and the ugly shadow of rock and roll never rears itself across the door of the B&B. (Instead, you get Max Steiner's memorable score, which, when recorded by Percy Faith and his orchestra, became a monster hit, and one of the most inescapable tunes of its day.) The adults' idea of fun is sitting around sipping cocktails and making catty comments, along with some fun class resentment over who can afford the better well drinks, and there isn't much surfing to be had around here, so the kids have to follow their parents' lead and fill the long empty summer days with lots and lots of '50s-style fucking. Repressively delicious!

HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: There's not a lot of room for the universal signifier of summer fun here. The movie is set on the east coast, so it leans more towards clamdiggers and outfits that look like they weren't quite formal enough for the tennis court. (Oddly enough, though, the resort where the movie takes place -- designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, no less -- is not in New England, but in Carmel, California. Would it have killed them to throw in one surfboarding sequence, I ask you?)

BIKINI PARTY TIME: Ho yeah! Let those who doubt the awesome power of sublimated sexuality behold rock-ribbed, blank-faced Troy Donahue, lounging around in his tight shorts, vainly attempting to figure out what everyone else in the movie is trying to say. Behold also Sandra Dee, America's favorite symbol of purity, being despoiled before our very eyes, decked out in barely modest beach couture as she frowns out the famous line "Have you been bad, Johnny? Have you been bad with other girls?" Has he ever! A Summer Place is a little too crammed with soap-opera histrionics and Freudian middle-class guilt to be a real good-time summer party movie, but as a prime example of potboiler sex romps and the movie that launched a million shameful teenage boners, it's well worth a look.