Hot Summer

"Come on, are we a collective or are we just a gang?" Now, there's a line of dialogue that has no American counterpart in any of the Annette Funicello/Frankie Avalon beach blanket B-movies. Called the East German Grease, Joachim Hasler's 1968 Hot Summer is a Love Collective Style musical in which a group of 11 hot-blooded German adolescent males court a group of 10 hot-blooded German adolescent females on a summer vacation at a farm on the Baltic Sea (in fact, one of the dance numbers actually features the girls dressed as haystacks). You don't have to be Albert Einstein to find the dramatic tension here: when a love triangle between Brit (Regine Albrecht) and the two male leads threatens social(ist) harmony, the behind-the-Iron-Curtain happy campers have no other party line choice but to ostracize the individualist Brit as a lesson (though all turns out well in the end). Like the American teen summer flicks, Hot Summer also sports plenty of boys vs. girls pranks, kids romping on the beach in swimsuits, nicely choreographed musical numbers (some of which are quite hummable, especially the title track) and endearingly innocent lyrics ("who kisses you when you need kisses/who opens the door for you misses"). The difference, of course, is that Annette Funicello never wore a haystack. A fun romp, this is recommended. (R. Pitman)