Even if one accepts as a
thesis that ’70s movies about moonshiners rarely charted new intellectual
terrain, Hot Summer in Barefoot County
is extraordinarily stupid—so much so that it seems as if the filmmakers forgot
their own plot about 20 minutes into the picture. Despite being presented with
the incompetent acting, sludgy imagery, and twitchy editing of the worst
low-budget junk, the opening of the picture presents an adequate B-movie
premise: Moonshiners have gotten the best of local authorities in rural
Barefoot County, so a Southern-bred government agent is sent there to work
undercover. Yet as soon as the agent arrives, he gets into a car accident and
is recovered and nursed to health by a backwoods matriarch and her three sexy
daughters. The agent recuperates quickly but then spends all of his time
romancing one of the daughters, periodically calling back to the office to
claim that he’s making progress even though he barely ever does any
investigating. In fact, just about his only crime-fighting activity involves
saving his favorite gal from an attempted rape after a bunch of hopped-up
rednecks watch her and her sisters skinny-dipping. Yes, this is the sort of
picture in which women are largely portrayed as oblivious sex objects, and in
one scene the daughters annoy their mama by trying to paint the family’s
moonshine still pink as a means of alleviating their boredom. Alas, nothing can
alleviate viewers’ boredom while enduring Hot
Summer in Barefoot County, which is basically coherent but so plotless that
following the story is like trying to grab vapors. Besides the eye candy of
shapely women in barely-there costumes, the only quasi-noteworthy element of Hot Summer in Barefoot County is the
presence in the cast of actor Jeff MacKay, who later enjoyed a long
small-screen career with recurring roles in Black
Sheep Squadron; Magnum, P.I.; and
JAG.
Hot Summer in Barefoot County: LAME
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