A Cold Wind in August is a 1961 low-budget drama exploitation film directed by Alexander Singer and adapted from the eponymous novel by Burton Wohl.

[2] The film stars Lola Albright as a mentally unbalanced burlesque-show stripper in her 30s who becomes involved in a torrid romance with a 17-year-old boy played by Scott Marlowe.

Iris, a woman with a background as a burlesque-show stripper, is visited at her New York City apartment by her estranged husband.

In the meantime, Iris meets Vito Perugino, the 17-year-old son of the superintendent of the apartment building, and experiences an instant and powerful physical attraction to him.

Vito leaves, on his way to a date with the new object of his romantic attention, a girl his own age, and Iris is left alone sobbing.

Frank for its time in its depiction of the sexual relationship between Vito and Iris, A Cold Wind in August was produced and marketed as a low-budget exploitation film.

[5] Robert Osborne has called it one of the best of all films exploring the theme of a May–December romance,[6] echoing Lloyd Shearer's contemporary opinion that it was "probably the best treatment of a youth's affair with an older woman Hollywood has ever produced.