Summer Girl

This is kind of an interesting TV movie. It was made a little after the "golden age" of American made-for-TV movies, the 1970's when TV movies were still made for a general American prime-time audience, but before the later "Lifetime" era when these kind of movies were aimed exclusively at bored housewives and generally became pretty worthless. This movie does indeed resemble the later theatrical film "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle", but I actually liked it a lot better.

Long-time TV actor Barry Bostwick and Kim Darby, star of of the one the most famous 70's TV horror movies of all time "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark", are a well-off married couple spending the summer at a beach house with their two children (the boy, David Faustino, would later play "Bud Bundy" on the TV series "Married with Children"). Darby's character is pregnant so they hire a teenage babysitter to help out at the beach house and take care of the children. Although she looks rather plain at the interview, the babysitter turns out to be Dianne Franklin, who men of a certain age will definitely remember for her sexy appearances in "The Last American Virgin" and "Amityville 2: the Possession", although she also had more wholesome, comedic roles in movies like "Terrorvision" and "Better Off Dead", and she had played the lead in the made-for-TV slasher movie "Deadly Lessons". Anyway, Franklin's sexy sitter "Cindy" models a number of butt-hugging swimsuits and extreme 80's short-shorts. The drunken next door neighbor, an elderly-looking Murray Hamilton (the mayor in "Jaws"), remarks on her "hot little body", and even the Bostwick character's mother who comes to visit mentions her "cute little bottom". It's not too surprisingly therefore that she is able to seduce a young, hunky Bostwick away from his comparatively frumpy wife. But in typical melodramatic TV movie fashion she also wins away the loyalty of the children and plots to take the wife's place in the family. Oh yeah, and she also casually murders a couple people.

This movie was made a good ten years before "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle", but after the similar early 80's TV movie "The Babysitter" with William Shatner, Patty Duke, and Stephanie Zimbalist. It's probably the best of the three though thanks to very solid performances by Darby and Franklin. None of these films are particularly believable and they're all pretty cheesy, but this one especially is a lot of fun.

I remember the movie from my high school days. We all wished we could have a babysitter like that. Now that I recall it more, that movie really was a precursor to "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle". Got the seducing sitter, two kids and the mischief/revenge factor. They even both take place by the beach. Note that Diane Franklin (the sitter) is the famous "MCI girl".

This must be one of the top evil babysitter movies. The summer at the beach-house takes a wicked turn when the saucy young seductress comes between the husband and wife. She's killed before and she has nothing against doing it again. She sure looks hot as hell in a bathing suit though.

Seems like there was a barrage of films during the early 80s about teenage boys getting cozy with their schoolteacher. For some reason people think this is funny or even sexy, I suppose because of the idiotic double standards in American society. Since folks are generally grossed out by men leering at teenage girls, Hollywood found a way to work around this by having stories be written as a married man developing a romantic interest in his children's babysitter. It's disturbing nonetheless because it's still an adult taking advantage of a child. This movie is so formulaic that you can see every event coming before it even happens. Typical suburban couple (Barry Bostwick and Kim Darby) are on vacation and not having fun. They no longer possess the spark in their marriage, leading them to have this sappy conversation about how they used to stay up all night listening to music and talking, but now he has to get up early for work the next day, and they don't go on weekend trips like they used to. By no means am I trying to downplay their issues, but that is not the worst thing to happen in a relationship. Life can get monotonous when you're both working full-time with kids, or even if one of you is working. Just have to think of ways to reclaim that excitement and adventure. But instead of trying to get the spark back, he starts paying increasingly more attention to the babysitter, Cinni (Diane Franklin).

It was made to seem like just because she walks around in skimpy outfits, and has a flirtatious personality, that she tempted him to have an affair, because his wife wasn't giving him what he needed anymore, sexually or emotionally, and that's bologna to me because one, she was mean to their kids, so they shouldn't have been so free to leave her with them unsupervised (plus she had her boyfriend come over to their beach house, so they should've started searching for another babysitter because of her inappropriate behavior), and two, she was still a child compared to him. The media portrays men like they're captive to their own physical urges, the second they see an hourglass figure in a bathing suit or miniskirt that's what they're going to pursue because they can't help it, on and on it goes. It's just stereotyping. This film just doesn't have a solid story because it's silly. It has the vibe of a Lifetime movie, what with the characters getting themselves into crazy situations that were preventable. So weird and stupid that I didn't even watch to the end. Not my idea of entertaining.

A couple (Barry Bostwick & Kim Darby) and their two kids enjoy a summer at a beach house, but the girl they hired as a nanny (Diane Franklin) is sultrier than expected and, worse, has diabolical intentions.

"Summer Girl" (1983) is a television movie cut from the same cloth as "The Babysitter" (1980), both of which influenced future films like "Poison Ivy" (1992). It's actually better than "The Babysitter" because Diane Franklin is (surprisingly) superior to Stephanie Zimbalist in what is basically the same role, not to mention it's hard to beat the beach house locations.

These kinds of flicks emphasize how a blossoming young woman has power and more so depending on her beauty and the ability to use it to her advantage. This 'power' can lead to calamity if the girl is mentally ill or a she-devil (which often go hand-in-hand).

The film runs 1 hour, 35 minutes, and was shot in Hawaii.

GRADE: B.