Film: It’s a Scorcher at the Quad With ‘Beach Reads’

Aug. 7-15; quadcinema.com

We all love a juicy, lusty, pulpy summer book — just maybe not when our sunglasses are steaming over. Take respite from the heat and eye strain with “Beach Reads: From Sand to Screen,” nine days of guilty pleasures spun from popular midcentury potboilers, starting Aug. 7 at the Quad in Manhattan.

Grace Metalious’s scandalous “Peyton Place,” about a quaint New England town racked by secrets — Murder! Incest! Moral hypocrisy! — and starring Lana Turner and Hope Lange, fittingly kicks things off. Peter Benchley is represented with “The Deep,” featuring Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset as Bermuda lovebirds who dive into sunken artifacts and trouble; Arthur Hailey with his disaster thriller “Airport,” which finds Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin and George Kennedy averting a blizzard and a bomb threat; and Jacqueline Susann with her campy showbiz cautionary tale, “Valley of the Dolls,” with Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins and Sharon Tate as actresses mired in addiction, self-esteem and man problems.

The lineup also includes adaptations of Benchley’s “The Island,” Hailey’s “Hotel” and Susann’s “The Love Machine” as well as Harold Robbins’s “The Lonely Lady,” Alistair MacLean’s “Ice Station Zebra” and Sidney Sheldon’s “The Other Side of Midnight.” KATHRYN SHATTUCK