ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Exploitation-film historian A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey. In addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, voice-over artist, and sometime actor and stand-up comedian, he’s a regular guest co-host on the streaming Drive-In Asylum Double Feature and panelist on the Deep Images podcast and has made multiple appearances on Making Tarantino: The Podcast. He also contributes to the Drive-In Asylum fanzine, the B & S About Movies Podcast, and the Horror and Sons website. He currently programs a monthly film series, A.C. Nicholas’s Hidden Gems, at the Babylon Kino in Columbia, South Carolina.

“You got peanut butter on my chocolate! You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” Those of us of a certain age remember those famous lines from the TV commercials for Reese’s candy back in the 1970s. Chocolate and peanut butter, a mash-up made in heaven. There’ve been many movie mash-ups over the years, everything from horror comedies like Shaun of the Dead, westerns with horror elements, like Bone Tomahawk, and romance noirs, like the seriously underrated Thief of Hearts. But the craziest mash-up I’ve ever seen is the Canadian film The Heatwave Lasted Four Days.

Let’s get the plot out of the way before discussing this bizarre melding of two disparate genres. Cliff Reynolds, played by Canadian legend Gordon Pinsent (The Rowdyman, The Shipping News, and Away from Her), is a news cameraman working for CFCF-TV in Montreal. He’s a sleazy lothario given to wearing garish shirts with too many buttons unbuttoned and medallions. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on his wardrobe choices. We all looked like that back in the 70s. Anyway, one day he’s at the beach getting some footage for a story about the heatwave. But more importantly, he uses the assignment to chat up some cute girls in bikinis. Jerry Cuozzo, a local drug dealer with ties to organized crime, played by yet another Canadian legend, Lawrence Dane (Rituals, Scanners, and Happy Birthday to Me), has just escaped from prison. (He apparently climbed over the wall while awaiting trial. Don’t ask.) He’s spending some time at the beach with his main gal, Barbara, the delectable Alexandra Stewart (The Bride Wore Black, The Uncanny, Emanuelle 3, Phobia, and Bolero). And while we’re playing spot-the-Canuck, beloved Al Waxman (King of Kensington, Cagney and Lacey, Death Weekend, The Class of 1984, and Spasms) shows up as Cliff’s boss. Of course he does.

Here we have the fugitive lounging at the beach while his face is plastered all over TV. Why? Don’t ask. Jerry realizes that Cliff has filmed him in the background, so he and Barbara tell Cliff that they’re having an affair and implore him not to use the footage. Cliff says that he won’t. He goes home to his wife and daughter. There we learn, in short order, that it’s his little girl’s birthday, his wife is fed up with his carousing, and they’re in financial trouble. (The film’s short running time means we get some speedy exposition at the expense of giving the wife a name.) As you can probably guess, Cliff figures out that the guy on the beach was Jerry. Now you can ask: Will he try to use this information to solve his money problems and get in over his head? Will the mob try to rub out Jerry? Will there be a deal to move heroin across the border to the Lower 48, eh? Will there be a few twists? And will Cliff try to bed one of the beach babes? Of course you know the answers to those questions.

OK, that’s the basis of a tidy little film with some vintage footage of Montreal and a nice economy of direction from Douglas Jackson, a stalwart of Canadian TV and a 1970 Oscar nominee for Best Live-Action Short. But you’re thinking that my plot synopsis gives no hint of the mash-up. Well, wait no longer. Here’s the solution to the mystery: The Heatwave Lasted Four Days is a neo-noir and educational film. As Scooby-Doo would say, “Huh???”

This film was a weird experiment of the National Film Board of Canada to teach English as a second language to Francophones in Quebec and to do so in an entertaining, commercial way. There were several films in this “Filmglish” series. So if you think about it, it’s a mash-up within a mash-up. Apparently, no one in the film was to speak with a French accent. Indeed, the only French spoken is in a short scene in a Montreal restaurant. The end credits even list a script language adviser. Incroyable! 

The film had a distribution history that was equally weird. In addition to being shown in Canadian classrooms, it was reportedly the first Canadian TV film purchased by a U.S. network, where it was shown twice on ABC’s Wide World of Entertainment. That was the network’s short-lived late-night offering designed to compete with NBC’s The Tonight Show and The CBS Late Movie. Afterward, the film disappeared for decades. But surprisingly, it popped up this past summer in a special edition Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome in conjunction with Canadian International Pictures, a company dedicated to preserving everything from “arthouse to Canuxploitation.” And what an edition it is, with three versions of the film: the 66-minute broadcast version, an extended 72-minute cut, and the classroom Filmglish version in four parts with added recaps and interstitials that run a total of 80 minutes. You also get audio commentary from the great TV-movie historian Amanda Reyes, along with a short comparing the three versions, two shorts and another TV film from director Douglas Jackson, a press gallery, and a poster. That’s a luxurious presentation for a film that until yesterday, I didn’t know existed. Tres incroyable!

If you want to be the geekiest film geek in your circle of film-geek friends, you could dress like they did in Montreal circa 1975, or you could just check out The Heatwave Lasted Four Days. While not a masterpiece, it’s an amazing curio. Here’s hoping for the release of more Canuck telefilms from our friends at Vinegar Syndrome.