The second of two films Doris Wishman purchased for US Distribution while Holidaying in Greece, and then lost the dubbing scripts, meaning she had to basically make up the story and script based on Visuals alone. 'The Hot Month of August' is, in my opinion a marginally better offering than 'Passion Fever' but still falls significantly short of what I want in a Doris Wishman production.

The plot revolves around 2 men meeting on a cruise ship, Al, a gigalo who travels the length and breadth of Greece dating and sleeping with older women (as arranged by his father in law) meets Jason, a young impressionable 20 something, looking for a steady income and luck with the ladies.

The two part ways, but its revealed that a woman Jason ends up romatically entagled with, is ALSO in fact Al's Wife. When Al's father in law instructs him to leave Athens for work, with no return date in sight, Al and his wife concoct a plot to kill his father in law and pin it on Jason. However, things dont quite go to plan, and murder, sex, police investigation and crazy jazz music winds up as the soup of the day!

I will say up front, I can appreciate what the script is trying to do here. its a neo-noir style sexploitation flick that, if your into neo noir sexploitation, will probably more than scratch the itch. Im not though, and as such I found this one to be a bit plodding. We essentially spend a not insignificant amount of the runtime flicking between softcore scenes and extended plot drops…The joy of these kinds of films is the twists and turns…But the film almost has a compulsion to tell you EVERY DETAIL sometimes 10 minutes in advance of the twist even happening. Which I found particularly frustrating.

The pacing is consistent, but slow, there is a three act structure, but the middle sags outrageously, and the 1st and 3rd while…mostly harmless, are just dull. with a very brief shoot out posing probably the most interesting thing this film has to offer.

The characters are all a bit flat, they predominantly speak in quips or with a kind of tone that feels disingenuous. Its the wrong side of camp for me. It just feels messy and unfun.

The directions fine enough, passable even, and the cine is clear and crisp. But the shots are largely kind of uninteresting, ultra basic setups, no flair, no polish. a handful of establishing shots that look quite pretty is about as good as it gets (and when your in Greece, the fact that a handful of establishing shots is about as good as it gets is concerning!)

The performances range of watchable to poor, I dont feel they gave either the voice actors or the real in person actors enough material to help give them any kind of significant depth. and in the case of the ADR cast specifically, it feels less like a professional cast recording, and more like Doris had a whip round of her apartment complex for anyone who was free to belt out a line or two in between shift work.

The sound edit is a bit problematic too, with poorly mixed music to ADR work, dropouts occasionally and other technical issues. Its not the best.

I understand that this film has a bit of a cult appreciation within the ouvre of Doris Wishmans works…But it wasnt really for me. As I said at the top of this review, I can absolutely appreciate why people would like this, but its just not really my kind of flavour. Not her worst offering by a long shot…But in my opinion, just a kind of boring piece with occasional pops of interest, that I was clock watching to be over.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-hot-month-of-august/