Blue Summer (1973)

How bad is the softcore “comedy” Blue Summer? The best joke in the movie—in fact, quite possibly the only joke in the movie—involves the two lead characters, both male, responding to the revelation of a pair of breasts by simultaneously popping the tops on their beer cans. Yep, it’s an ejaculation sight gag, and that’s as good as it gets, folks. (One could argue that a mid-movie vignette involving a larcenous hippie guy and his compliant gal pals approaches humor, but that scene degrades into tedious sexploitation.) So, should the self-preservation instinct fail you so greatly that you end up exposing your retinas to any of this film’s 79 grimy minutes, let it be known you were warned.  Written and directed by sleaze peddler Chuck Vincent—whose directional output includes both R- and X-rated fare—Blue Summer is one of many ’70s movies about dudes driving vans around the roads of America in order to get laid. When the movie begins, teenager Gene (Bo White) hops into his beat-up minibus, which he christens “The Meat Wagon,” then picks up his buddy Tracy (porn actor Davey Jones, billed as Darcey Hollingswoth) for a last hurrah before college. Soon after hitting the road, the dudes pick up two hitchhikers, who treat the lads to a romp in some woods just off the highway. That’s when Vincent goes to town, unleashing an interminably long sex scene with everything short of penetration. One is challenged to believe the actors didn’t get it on for real while Vincent was filming, but raunchy verisimilitude isn’t nearly enough to make Blue Summer interesting—unless the spectacle of average-looking people mimicking the libidinal acrobatics of porn stars gets your motor running. Most of Blue Summer’s running time comprises sexual encounters that Vincent presents at excruciating length, and because none of the actors evinces charisma, the whole enterprise becomes quite boring and clinical. (Let’s count how many times Jones squeezes breasts together so he can flail his tongue across them!) Toward the end of the movie, Vincent tries, pathetically, to introduce an element of pathos, but by that time, viewers have been bludgeoned into senselessness by the cavalcade of inept acting, grainy cinematography, and trite characterizations.

Blue Summer: LAME