Back to the Grindhouse

Grindhouse movies: these things were cheap to make and, by the look of them, each was shot in two days, three max.  I suppose the folks who produced them realized the customer base was limited and there was no way to make any money on a high quality project because packed houses and return traffic were not in the cards.  So they made lots of these things, as in several a week, one week after another for several years, which means if I captured one of them a day, every day, I’d be at this for another decade.  Sounds like a plan.

Let’s start with Hot Nights On Campus (1966) because it stars Gigi Darlene.  Indeed it does.  For the first half of the movie - shot on day 1 of the production, no doubt - no one seems to have figured out what this craziness was meant to be.  Gigi’s character flits about and goes to a party where….

Darlene Bennett goes topless for a while as some bored gal who lets a couple of guys smooch her up.

Then Marlene Eck gets into the game with Darlene;

Gigi’s character is shocked, shocked I say over such goings on (expressed in voice-over by a woman with a Midwestern American accent - Gigi was German).  BTW, shocking scenes of lesbian contact (ha!) were a staple of these movies as directors and producers quickly learned what brought in their customers.

But by the halfway pointof Hot Nights, Gigi had yet to display a square centimeter of skin.  Then someone must have seen the rushes on the first day’s efforts and he made a few calls that probably sounded something like, “are you fucking guys batshit crazy?”  Day 2 of shooting would be different.

The result is a dramatic making up for lost time.  In four scenes,

she beds her professor (one of the perks of academic life)



and her boyfriend,



poses topless for a photographer



and despairs while lying naked over what her life had become.

Good choices, all of them. 

About the title, there is not one scene of any campus anywhere.  Lots of exterior shots of apartment buildings in NYC but nothing faintly resembling a dorm or lecture hall.  And most of it happens during the day, and the first half is not at all hot.  Batting average of .250, then; good for the majors only because it is Gigi and she hits a grand slam every time.    

One additional note: IMDb says this was uber-cutie Judy Adler’s last appearance on screen.  Her character is at the party where Darlene Bennett and Marlene Eck play around but her scenes get her down to her undies only.  This is nothing short of tragic because it means Judy left us not with a bang but with a whimper.