“A steamy psycho-sci fi thriller about madness and mind control”
The blurb on Summer of Secrets VHS case truly deserves some sort of award. After all, almost every word in that statement is wrong.
It is a little more difficult to explain exactly what Summer of Secrets is about — although that is largely because the real story only emerges gradually, and it is not until the film is nearly over that we learn some of the most important things.
Instead, despite a few moments of violence and action, it is a slow, almost sleepy tale, which takes its time as it explores its odd little world.
A young couple cruising in their sailboat lands on an isolated beach. The man once spent a lot of time here, and he thinks that the cottage there will be a good place to spend a few hours.
However, they do not realize that they are being watched the whole time.
Up on the top of a hill overlooking the bay, in a huge building that is not quite a private residence or a mad scientist’s lab, a world-famous scientist lives surrounded by all his memories. He is carrying out some sort of experiment which is killing off lots of his test animals, but seems far more interested in staging and shooting little movies about his memories.
His assistant, Bob, does what he is asked most of the time and yet their relationship is not as simple as that of boss and servant. Bob has his own secrets — and perhaps his own agenda.
Bob sees the strangers arrive and goes down to the beach to watch them. However, the couple see him.
And, when they follow him back to the house on the hill, Bob captures the girl and locks her up in his secret basement room…
What little I’ve said about the plot of this film is, of course, completely misleading. This is what happens, and yet the real story, which we learn only slowly, is not at all what we would expect. This isn’t exactly what you’d call a mad scientist film, nor is it really a horror film. And, despite the presence of its director, Jim Sharman, nor is it anything like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. One might even get the impression, about halfway through, that the scientist’s experiments really do not matter, but then everything gets turned on its head.
It’s a strange sort of film: a beautiful, thoughtful one which explores loss and the trap of living in one’s memories, a film which dwells on the moment despite the constant presence of the memories of the past. It does eventually get to the scientist’s experiments and its science fictional content, but it takes its time getting there as it is far more interested in its plot. Summer of Secrets does not offer us cheap thrills but remains focused on it characters and their relations with each other.
And that is so rare in our day and age.
Summer of Secrets is not for everyone. Nor does it much resemble any other film you’ve ever seen, Ozploitation or not.
But it is charming and intelligent, with a solid cast and a script that is clever and stays strong, even if it seems to meander around at times.
And, rather than a horrible shock, it ends with a sad and poignant moment, whose sadness we would never have understood at the beginning of the film…
rivets on the poster 