Saturday Night At The Movies — Muy Caliente!

Saturday Night At The Movies

Muy caliente! Movies that make you sweat

By Dennis Hartley

London’s burning: The Day the Earth Caught Fire

With the mercury soaring into the triple digits in many parts of the country this week, I thought it would be fun to cobble together a list of really “hot” movies. Hot-as in sweaty, steamy, dripping, sticky, sudoriferous cinema (get your mind out of the gutter). If you’re like me (and isn’t everyone?) there’s nothing more satisfying than gathering up an armload of DVDs (along with a 12-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper) and just happily pissing away the hot days ensconced in my dark, cozy media room (actually, there is no “media room” per se in my studio apartment-but I can always dream, can’t I?). So here (alphabetically) are my Top 10 “summer perspiration films”…“The SPF 10”, if you will.

Body Heat– A bucket of ice cubes in the bath is just not enough to cool down this steamy noir. Writer-director Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 homage to Double Indemnity blows the mercury right out the top of the thermometer. Kathleen Turner is the sultry femme fatale who plays William Hurt’s hapless pushover like a Stradivarius (“You aren’t too smart. I like that in a man.”) The combination of the Florida heat with Turner and Hurt’s sexual chemistry will light your socks on fire. Outstanding support from Richard Crenna, Ted Danson, J.A. Preston and an up-and-coming character actor named Mickey Rourke.

Dog Day Afternoon-As far as oppressively humid hostage dramas go, this 1975 “true crime” classic from director Sidney Lumet easily out-sops the competition. The air conditioning may be off, but Al Pacino is definitely “on” in his absolutely brilliant portrayal of John Wojtowicz (“Sonny Wortzik” in the film), whose botched attempt to rob a Brooklyn bank turned into a dangerous hostage crisis and a twisted media circus (the desperate Wojtowicz was trying to finance his lover’s sex-change operation). Even though he had already done the first two Godfather films, this was the performance that put Pacino on the map. John Cazale is both scary and heartbreaking in his role as Sonny’s dim-witted “muscle”. Keep an eye out for Chris Sarandon’s memorable cameo. Frank Pierson’s whip-smart screenplay was based on articles by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore.

Cool Hand Luke-Paul Newman shines (and sweats buckets) in his iconic role as the title character of this 1967 film, a ne’er do well from a southern burg who ends up on a chain gang. He’s busted for cutting the heads off of parking meters while on a drunken spree, but by the end of this sly allegory, astute viewers will glean that his real crime is: Being a Non-conformist. Stuart Rosenberg’s directs; sharp script by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson (there he is again!) Highlights include Strother Martin’s “failure to communicate” speech, Harry Dean Stanton singing “The Midnight Special”, the (ahem) car wash scene and George Kennedy’s Best Supporting Actor turn. Also with Ralph Waite, Dennis Hopper, Wayne Rogers, Anthony Zerbe (Dog Boy!), and Joy Harmon as the (er, seriously-is it hot in here?) car wash girl. Oh…did I mention the car wash scene?

The Day the Earth Caught Fire– Written and directed by Val Guest (Quatermass Xperiment), this cerebral mix of conspiracy a-go-go and sci-fi drama from the Cold War era is a sort of precursor to the X-Files. Nuclear testing by the U.S. and Soviets triggers a mysterious and alarming shift in the Earth’s climate. As London’s weather turns more weirdly tropical by the hour, a Daily Express reporter (Peter Stenning) begins to suspect that the British government is not being 100% forthcoming on the possible fate of the world. Along the way, Stenning enjoys some steamy scenes with his love interest (sexy Janet Munro). The film is more noteworthy for its smart, snappy patter than its run-of-the-mill f/x, but still makes for a compelling story. Co-starring the great Leo McKern!

Do The Right Thing-Director Spike Lee wastes no time turning up the heat in this provocative allegorical dramedy about race relations in America, filtered through a day in the life of Brooklyn’s multi-ethnic Bed-Stuy neighborhood. From the opening credits, which literally explode onto the screen with a muy caliente Rosie Perez busting some serious moves to the strains of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”, to the jaw-dropping climax, this is one of those rare films that manages to engage mind, body and soul all at once. One of the few films on the subject that is not afraid to admit to and confront the fact that bigotry comes in all colors. I think it remains his finest work to date. The cast includes Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Danny Aiello, John Turturro and Giancarlo Esposito.

In the Heat of the Night – “They call me MISTER Tibbs!” In this classic (which won 1967’s Best Picture Oscar) Sidney Poitier plays a cosmopolitan police detective from Philly who gets waylaid in a torpid Mississippi backwater, where he is reluctantly recruited into helping the bigoted sheriff (Rod Steiger) solve a local murder. Poitier absolutely nails his role; you feel Virgil Tibb’s pain as he tries to maintain his professional cool amidst a brace of surly rednecks, who throw up roadblocks at every turn. While Steiger is outstanding here as well, I always found it ironic that he was the one who won “Best Actor in a leading role”, when in reality Poitier was the star (it seems Hollywood didn’t get the film’s message). Sterling Silliphant’s brilliant screenplay (another Oscar) works as a crime thriller and a “fish out of water” story. Director Norman Jewison was nominated, but didn’t score a win. Future director Hal Ashby won for Best Editing. Quincy Jones composed the soundtrack, and Ray Charles sings the sultry theme.

The Night of the Iguana-I couldn’t assemble a list like this without at least one film fueled by the perennially hot and bothered Tennessee Williams. Director John Huston and co-writer Anthony Veiller adapted this sordid, blackly comic soaper from Williams’ twisty stage play about a defrocked, self-loathing minister (Richard Burton) who has expatriated himself to Mexico, where he has become a part-time tour guide and a full-time alcoholic. One day he really goes off the deep end, and shanghais a busload of Baptist college teachers to an isolated, rundown hotel run by an “old friend” (Ava Gardner). Throw in a sexually precocious teenager (Sue Lyon, recycling her Lolita persona) and an itinerant female grifter with a deceptively prim and proper exterior (Deborah Kerr), and stir. Most of the Williams archetypes are present and accounted for: dipsomaniacs, nymphets, repressed lesbians and neurotics of every stripe. The bloodletting is mostly verbal, but mortally wounding all the same. Burton and Kerr are fantastic, as always. I think this is my favorite Ava Gardner performance; she’s earthy, sexy, heartbreaking, intimidating, and endearingly girlish-all at once (“I wanna COKE!”).

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? -“Yowsa, yowsa, yowsa!” This richly decadent allegory about the human condition has to be one of the grimmest and most cynical films ever made (and one of the sweatiest). The late great director Sydney Pollack assembled a crack ensemble for this depiction of a Depression-era dance marathon from Hell: Jane Fonda, Gig Young (who snagged a Best Supporting Actor Oscar), Susannah York, Bruce Dern and Red Buttons are all outstanding; Pollack even coaxed the famously wooden Michael Sarrazin (the Hayden Christensen of his day) into displaying some real emotion. James Poe and Robert E. Thompson adapted the screenplay from Horace McCoy’s novel.

The Wages of Fear -The primeval jungles of South America have served as a backdrop for a plethora of sweat-streaked tales (Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre: The Wrath of God come to mind), but this 1953 existential adventure film from director Henri-Georges Clouzot sits atop that list. Four societal outcasts, who for one reason or another find themselves figuratively and literally at the “end of the road”, hire themselves out for an apparently suicidal job transporting two truckloads of touchy nitro over several hundred miles of bumpy jungle terrain for delivery to a distant oilfield. It does take a little time for the “action” to really get going; once it does, you won’t let out your breath until the final frame. Yves Montand leads the fine international cast. Clouzot co-scripted with Jerome Geronimi, adapting from the original Georges Anaud novel. The 1977 William Friedkin remake Sorcerer has its detractors, but I recommend a peek.

The Year of Living Dangerously– An irresistible mix of tense political thriller and sizzling love story, set in an exotic locale. Director Peter Weir transports us back to a very dangerous year in Indonesia (1965), when the government of President Sukarno was cracking at the seams. Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver portray an Australian radio journalist and a British attaché, respectively, who get caught up in the brewing conflict (and each other). Linda Hunt steals the show (and snagged a Best Supporting Actress Oscar) in an astounding gender-bending turn as local photographer “Billy Kwan”. Kwan is a fascinatingly complex character who vacillates between playing the matchmaker and the puppeteer, for his own enigmatic reasons. Weir’s sense of place and atmosphere is beautifully realized, ably assisted by DP Russell Boyd’s Oscar-winning cinematography.


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