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The Hot Spot is best known to lecherous film buffs for Jennifer Connelly's topless scene, but this sultry southern noir deserves more than prurient interest. It's arguably Dennis Hopper's best directorial effort (OK, so that's not saying much), and Charles Williams's source novel
Hell Hath No Fury finds Hopper in a comfortable B-movie milieu, riffing on
Double Indemnity with an overripe tale of sex, greed, and blackmail in an unnamed Texan town. Fresh from the final season of
Miami Vice, Don Johnson stars as a shifty drifter, conning his way into a salesman job on a used-car lot, where the boss's insatiable wife (Virginia Madsen) offers him sexual favors and a lovely secretary's (Connelly) innocence is threatened by a percolatin! g scandal. Nobody's
really innocent, of course, and Hopper spices this languid web of secrets with enough trashy misbehavior to qualify
The Hot Spot as a bona fide guilty pleasure.
--Jeff ShannonNo Description Available.
Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: PG13
Release Date: 2-SEP-2003
Media Type: DVDIf you're a lifetime member of the Jennifer Connelly fan club, you'll be in the passionate minority of people (100% male) who won't care that this 1991 comedy is wallowing in its own oily puddle of lameness. The gorgeous Ms. Connelly is conspicuously put on display in this typically lightweight fluff from writer-producer John Hughes. Frank Whaley does his best to liven up the male-fantasy plot about a semi-nerdy teen who gets a night-watchman job in a variety store, only to find himself locked in overnight with the local knockout (Connelly), who's as rich as she is beautiful. She's also really unhappy with her home lif! e and her bully boyfriend (Dermot Mulroney), so it's Frank's b! ig oppor tunity to make his move as a sympathetic Romeo. Shallow and contrived, the movie does have its standard moments of John Hughes delicacy, and a cameo by the late John Candy scores bonus points for comedy. Still, it's clear that the movie exists primarily to satisfy adolescent lust--and with Connelly as the object of desire, this otherwise tiresome comedy is a triumph of wish-fulfillment casting.
--Jeff Shannon 
