Movies I Love, Part VIII: The Hot Spot

Posted: July 12th, 2008 | Filed under: Cinema, Culture, Music, Ruminations | No Comments »

Sultry Dolly Harshaw (Virginia Madsen) shows up at her hubby’s used car lot while he’s off on a hunting trip. Always bored and looking for some action, she’s driven her vintage pink 60’s Caddy convertible with those enormous tail fins through the streets of the small dusty Texas town to check out the new salesman, new guy in town Harry Maddox (Don Johnson).

He’s down to his Marlon Brando undershirt while helping cohort Lon Gulik (Charles Martin Smith) wash one of the cars.

“You must be the new salesman,” she flirts. Gazes lock in. Sparks fly.

On a ruse, she implores him to help her move some boxes to a building downtown. Sitting in the car after they’re done, she explains the lay of the land.

Dolly: “There’s only two things to do in this town . . . you gotta TV?”

Harry: “Nope.”

Dolly: “Well then, you’re down to one . . . Lotsa luck.”

“The Hot Spot,” directed by the ever wacked Dennis Hopper, is far from great cinema. But, oh my, is it fun. And, yes, it does smolder. So much that I’m advised it’s been banned from being rented in California during brush fire season.

Full of sexual innuendo, this is B movie noir at its finest. Everybody’s got something they need to hide. One character robs the bank. And commits murder. In the name of lust of course. Another is a major philanderer with an agenda. Another is embezzling money from an employer. Another taking it in a blackmail scam.

So, yeah, Maddox has something stewing with the boss’s wife. What else is he to do when he shows up at her (and his boss’s) house in the middle of the day and she’s parading about in stockings and a negligee. But he really has eyes for the comely young bookkeeper at the car lot.

That would be fetching Gloria Harper (Jennifer Connelly). Her character is 18 years old. Connelly was twenty when the film was released in 1990. She’s not quite as innocent as she looks.

Alright, the acting is stilted. But my sense is that the actors know that and are simply playing the film as the potboiler it intends to be. The plot is within the well worn parameters of such B movie fare. And the dialog is full of double entendres. Innuendo reigns.

For those reasons I love the flick. And that the characters actually take off their clothes when doing the dirty deed. (Unlike the movies of the new millennium in which characters, for some odd reason, seem to always make love as fully clothed as possible.) There are breasts. And butts — male and female. And nude swimming. And sex in the back seat and sand piles along with the regular way in the regular spot.

But here is what is truly spectacular about the movie: the soundtrack. Perhaps the greatest in all of filmdom. Essentially it is John Lee Hooker moanin’ and groanin’ — literally and figuratively — over his smoking guitar and Miles Davis trumpet licks. You heard right. John Lee Hooker and Miles Davis. Together. Throw in some slide licks from the eminent Roy Rogers (Rogers the guitar slinger, not Rogers, the hubby of Dale Evans.). So the film is worth it if only for the music. My guess is some of you that rent the flick will be tracking down that CD or downloading it as the final credits roll.

“The Hot Spot.” Rent it. Watch it with your sweetie. You’ll smile. You’ll sweat. You’ll be glad you did.

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