The Long, Hot Summer [HD]

Southern Fried Masterpiece
Well now, what do we have here? It is nothing less than one of the best and sexiest southern fried dramas from the 1950's. This adaptation of several works of William Faulkner is a tour de force for everyone involved. How lucky are we to have two great films on southern family life starring Paul Newman come out in 1958? This film is a fine companion piece to "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof", a bit more upbeat than "Cat" but still full of sound and fury.

As Ben Quick, Paul Newman ignites the screen and fairly burns down half of Mississippi in the process with his incredible magnetism. He brings to Quick all he as to bear as an actor and creates one of his early memorable performances. Just watch him as bare chested he hugs his pillow on the hot veranda while watching Joanne Woodward through a screen door sitting up in her bed trying to ignore him, or his walk across the Varner yard early on in the film, his interactions with Orson Wells or Tony Franciosa. He is every inch the...

This video is as "hot" as its name
Adapted from some William Faulkner stories, this 1958 film certainly lives up to its name. It is "hot". The setting is a small town in the Deep South and the characters familiar, but under the skillful direction of Martin Rich, they spring to life as complex, flawed and very human individuals. Paul Newman, in his prime then, is cast as Ben Quick, a young drifter who is taken under the wing of the town's patriarch, Will Varner, played by Orson Wells. Newman romances Varner's schoolteacher daughter, Clara, played by Joanne Woodward, and competes with Varner's son Jody, played by Anthony Franciosa, for the old man's respect and affection. Lee Remick is cast as Jody's pretty wife and Angela Lansbury plays Varner's lady friend. What a cast!

Both Paul Newman and Orson Wells exude the essence of macho in the finest southern tradition. I can almost smell all that testosterone right off the video screen. There's nothing politically correct about this story, as the strength of the...

Infinitely superior to the Don Johnson remake.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The TV-movie version of "The Long, Hot Summer" suffers from miscasting (Judith Ivey was passable, but just, and I can't decide if Don Johnson's attempt to fill Paul Newman's shoes represents touching bravery or misguided arrogance), dreadful accents, and jarring anachronisms.

This film, the 1958 original, leaves it in the dust. Newman and Woodward generate palpable heat, and Orson Welles--clammy, jowly, bullfrog-voiced, crudely vigorous--is unforgettable as a classically bullying, overbearing Southern patriarch. In contrast to the pallid TV remake, it features a top cast whose work transcends the sometimes creaky melodrama of the plot. Nearly every white Southern archetype is brought to life: the brutish, domineering, castrating patriarch; the arch, charming, coyly seductive belle with hot pants; the aging good-time girl, simultaneously randy and prim, with her eye on the prize of a rich widower; the hotheaded but weak son and heir, goaded...

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