Sleepy Crime Movies For Warm Summer Nights

We’re in it now… summer! The middle of summer, the dregs of summer. What’s the best part of summer? For me, it’s the warm nights! I don’t mean nights-so-hot-you-sleep-on-your-fire-escape. I mean those warm, hazy summer nights where you want to fall asleep and stay up at the same time. Nights where you fall asleep on your porch swing, watching the fireflies dance in the meadow beyond.

Here are some dreamy, sleepy, warm semi-thrillers and almost-noirs to match… or conjure nights like that. They are movies you put on, watch for a few minutes, and then drift off… movies you can pause and keep watching the next night, and the next… not too breakneck, not too dark… just right. Strange lullabies, dark nightlights.

Rear Window (1954)

One of the first shots of Rear Window reveals the red in Jimmy Stewart’s mercury wall thermometer stretching past 90 ℉. Not only is he stuck in a wheelchair in his apartment for weeks, but he’s stuck there during the hottest days of the year. His neighbors are sleeping out on the fire escape and murdering their wives, and he’s spying on them all. People do crazy things in hot temperatures. But besides that… it’s a perfect movie to watch in the summer, even when it’s not boiling. The last time I saw it was last June, at an open-air movie theater in Athens, Greece, late at night. Perfect… just perfect. 

Out of the Past (1947)

Jacques Tourneur directed this classic noir about a small town gas station owner who turns out to be a PI from the city, hiding out and concealing his past. Robert Mitchem again, and he’s so great.

Stand By Me (1986)

Grab some pez and bring your friends. We’re going to go find a dead body in the woods.

To Catch a Thief (1965)

To Catch a Thief is an extremely randy Hitchcock movie (I would say the randiest), in which former jewel thief Cary Grant is enjoying his retirement on the French Riviera, until he is suspected to be up to his old tricks when some wealthy tourists’ valuables go missing. But vacationer Grace Kelly is more interested in stealing his heart (despite their horrifying age difference), planning her capture of him just as methodically as she plans to help clear his name.

Harper (1966)

I can personally vouch for Harper, William Goldman’s Ross Macdonald adaptation, as a movie to gently fall asleep to.

The Hot Rock (1972)

I always, always enjoy The Hot Rock, a clever caper written by my favorite screenwriter William Goldman, based on the novel by Donald E. Westlake (in his Dortmunder series). It stars Robert Redford and is about a group of thieves who try to steal a diamond from a museum… but things don’t go according to plan, so they wind up having to steal it four times. An IDEAL summertime movie.