While 'Hot Summer Week' might be regarded in more feral-minded circles as being one of the more deliberately chaste examples of an exploitative 70s roughie, this refreshingly bizarre B-Movie mantra of the pinkly-pervasive, bikini-clad Big Sur-set juvenile jollies of two nit-witted nubiles is not without some prurient interest! These absurdly naïve, soft-headed, hard-bodied ninnies decide gigglingly to opportunistically pick up witheringly handsome, sleek-chested Vietnam-vet Will (Michael Ontkean), an outwardly wholesome, entirely edible, white-bread, medium-cut young blade, internally riven with debilitating PTSD, thereby frequently making the dashing, curly-haired GI prone to grisly outbursts of uncontrollable violence, and the profoundly frustrated, thrill-seeking teens, while initially titillated by the tall, taciturn hunk of burning neurosis, their frightfully muddled, 'ill-managed à trois' goes largely unfulfilled, as the girl's steely innocence, lack of experience, along with wonky Will's greatly distempered mind make for frustratingly unconsummated bedfellows, boisterously culminating in a rather awkward proto-slasher movie climax centring around the pseudo-psychedelisized, Manson-light, grab-ass machinations of an asinine hippie encounter group enigmatically led by the generously mutton-chopped, mop-topped twerp John (Ralph Waite) who fatally discovers that one of their THC-Hazed, flouncily-adorned troupe might shockingly be a murderously warped woman slayer!!! Egad!!!
While ultimately a trifle disappointing, due in no small part to its singular lack of illicit, sweaty-palmed content, 'Hot Summer Week' aka 'Girls on The Road' steadfastly maintains cinematic interest due to its fascinatingly schizoid, fish nor fowl nature, and the unusual narrative's noisome blend of earnest anti-war beatnik blather, and the screenplay's frequently hilarious dissertations of egregious hippie clap-trap being far from seamlessly melded with a vanilla exploration of nascent teenage desires bemusedly coalesces into a vainglorious cinematic misshape, and having Papa Walton as the stoner-boner, Scooby Doo-ing, mush-headed guru was the glisteringly burnished B-Movie glacé cherry atop this overtly saccharine midnight movie titbit! But I have always been a sperm believer in actively supporting the lower-budgeted, independently-minded Drive-In underdog and this spaced-out oddity is still one groovily retrograde head-trip, baby!
