Product Details

• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Vid-America
• VHS Release Date: October 13, 1988
• Run Time: 71 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: 6300255395
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #221,531 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Does what a film should. You'll want to read the book., January 25, 2004

By 

"pegmarsh" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Summer Heat [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The year is 1937, and twenty-one-year-old Roxie, an isolated and lonely farm wife, will succumb to the charms of a drifter. The choices she makes that summer will change everything.

This film is based on the breathtaking little novel "Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail" by Louise Shivers. While the film has none of the brilliance of the book, the beauty of Ms. Shiver's prose does creep into the script every now and then. The farm scenes with the old house, barns and animals are so real you can practically smell the place, and the mysterious qualities of Roxie's upbringing add a surrealness. Singer, appropriately stiff in her roll, is complimented well by the perfection of the wonderful Clu Gulager, who plays her father and the equally wonderful, and rather slim, Kathy Bates as her stepmother. Anthony Edwards seems plucked right out of the novel's pages.

One of the best touches in the film is the narrator, done by the beautiful Dorothy McGuire. Her rich comforting voice, which quotes directly from the novel, draws you instantly into Roxie's world and will make you want to run out and buy the book, now in its third printing.

Make sure you listen to the last song that plays during the credits. No one but Kim Carnes could do justice to the song "The Heart Must Have a Home." The raspiness of her voice successfully marries the two clear themes of this story, adultery and devastation.