A Cold Wind in August [1961] [DVD]Lola Albright (actor) Scott Marlowe (actor)
Format: all-region dvd (worldwide) Runtime:1h20m Quality: Digital, w/s, b/w.
Losing herself in alcohol and New York City, sexy stripper Lola Albright (as Iris Hartford) gets hotter than hot after her air conditioner "craps out" in the middle of summer. When seventeen-year-old Scott Marlowe (as Vito Perugino), the superintendence's handsome Italian son, is sent to fix her busted switch, Ms. Albright seduces him with liquor and lipstick. The couple enjoy their "older woman, younger man" romance, but Albright keeps her "dirty" profession on the back burner. Mr. Marlowe thinks she's a model or actress. All goes well until Albright accepts a stripping job from one of her ex-husbands. Cued in by a streetwise pal, Marlowe goes to see his lover swivel her bikini-clad hips for a mob of horny old men...~imdb
"The story's pretty much a one-note plot, well conveyed by Albright and acceptably so by Marlowe in a difficult role. Old time TV fans, no doubt, will recognize Peter Gunn regulars Albright and Herschel Bernardi
from that PI series. Not so obvious is Skip Young, the pudgy wise-cracker from the iconic Ozzie and Harriet series. (I kept expecting David and Ricky to turn up any moment.) Casting the white-bread Young here as a tenement kid amounts to real going against type. Nonetheless, the limited-budget production does a good job of portraying the confining nature of tenement neighborhoods. It almost looks like the stick-ball kids are in prison. Anyway, the movie amounts to a Lola Albright showcase, along with a now obscure Scott Marlowe. Taken as human-interest, the movie survives pretty well. Of course, the initial novelty seems tame by today's far looser standards, but those scenes are still pretty steamy, while the performances should still hold interest." |