July 7th, 2008
8. The Hot Spot
In The Hot Spot, Dennis Hopper's sultry adaptation of Charles Williams' Hell Hath No Fury, the heat is literal as well as metaphorical, as rugged drifter Don Johnson saunters into a small town, secures a go-nowhere job selling used cars, plots a bank robbery, and becomes involved with two very different women: rapacious, venal femme fatale Virginia Madsen and wholesome accountant Jennifer Connelly. A real-life heat wave during filming gave the film's long, hot summer a sizzling verisimilitude and provided a convenient excuse for the cast to strip down to their bare essentials, though thankfully, Charles Martin Smith kept his clothes on.
9. Barton Fink (1991)
For any serious artist, being creatively blocked is hell, and the Coen brothers' Barton Fink—allegedly written while they were themselves blocked trying to finish Miller's Crossing—gives it the capital H. The Hotel Earle, where the titular playwright (played by John Turturro) is sequestered while working on a wrestling picture, is Hollywood as Dante's Inferno, with a pathetically sagging strip of wallpaper perfectly demonstrating the run-down environment and the crippling heat. Once insurance salesman/serial killer John Goodman shows up, things get even hotter, and in the movie's apocalyptic final scenes, Goodman gasps feebly, mopping the sweat from his huge face and chit-chatting about the heat as if it's elevator small talk, while the hotel burns around him and the fresh bodies he's made.
10. Inherit The Wind (1960)
"Has it been duly noted by historians," asked H.L. Mencken in his memorable obituary, "that William Jennings Bryan's last secular act on this globe of sin was to catch flies?" There was a lot of fly-catching going on at the Scopes trial over which Bryan presided a week before his death: Tennessee in late July isn't a very comfortable place to be even now, and it was far less so in the days before air conditioning. Inherit The Wind, the famed dramatization of the trial, makes the heat a palpable thing: As Fredric March and Spencer Tracy debate theology and intellectual freedom on the stand, the crowd of onlookers fan themselves with advertising placards and swill down Coca-Cola. The heat even finds its way into the court proceedings, as Tracy asks permission to conduct his inquiries in his shirtsleeves—a scene which turns to a nicely turned set of veiled barbs between him and his opposition.
11. It Came From Outer Space (1953)
One of the earliest movies to play with the "body snatcher" science-fiction concept, It Came From Outer Space follows a small desert community as it reacts to a stealth alien invasion. Director Jack Arnold and screenwriter Harry Essex (working from a story by Ray Bradbury) make good use of the desert heat, implying that the blistering sun may be causing hallucinations, or at the least making everyone's odd behavior explicable. It Came From Outer Space also features one of the best lines in movie history, regarding the effects of heat: "Did you know that more people are murdered at 92 degrees Fahrenheit than any other temperature? I read an article once. Lower temperatures, people are easy-going, over 92 and it's too hot to move, but just 92, people get irritable."
12. Falling Down (1993)
A lot of things cause Michael Douglas to lose his shit in Joel Schumacher's Falling Down, but his car's air conditioning breaking during a miserable heat wave in Los Angeles is the final straw. (Of course, SoCal rush-hour traffic isn't an ideal place to be stuck in a heat wave, either.) It's clear that Douglas' character, William "D-Fens" Foster, isn't a fan of the heat: The initial point of his vigilante walking tour of the city is to give his daughter a snow globe, and none-too-good things happen to the neo-Nazi who smashes it. After rampaging across town, Douglas finally does get a chance to cool off, after getting plugged by a cop and falling into the ocean. Heat used as a metaphor for simmering rage is nothing new, but few films execute sweaty psychosis as well.
13. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
The clusterfuck of Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon—based on true events—builds as the temperature rises. To fund his boyfriend's sex-change operation, Al Pacino holds up a bank, but the police trap him and partner John Cazale inside before they can escape. The heat must be getting to the whole city, because soon crowds gather outside to cheer the hostage-takers while the sticky situation slowly unravels. The blazing sun must be having some effect on the onlookers, at least: Why else would they respond so favorably to Pacino's yelling "Attica! Attica! Put your fucking guns down!"
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