The Hot Spot

The whole neo-noir ‘90s thing is almost as inexplicable as the depression-era film fixation of the ‘70s; there was just something in the water. But it wound up producing some really interesting left-of-center titles like Bound, The Last Seduction and After Dark, My Sweet. Ironically, the film with the best pedigree of the bunch, The Hot Spot (1990), didn’t even burn a hole in the upholstery. Directed by Dennis Hopper and starring Don Johnson, this almost Lynchian bit of small-town debauchery deserves more recognition than just being the movie where Jennifer Connelly appears topless.

Rolling into town in his vintage Studebaker, Harry Madox (Johnson) is an opportunist who stumbles onto an easy bank robbery job. But after burying the loot, he’s blackmailed by his boss’s wife, Dolly, (Virginia Madsen) to continue their sexual escapades. Harry stays out of jail, but his real interests lie in starting a new life with the virginal Gloria (Connelly), if he can only manage to get her out of her own blackmail situation.

The Hot Spot embraces the whole “lust in the dust” approach of classic authors like James M. Cain, whose The Postman Always Rings Twice served as a choice inspiration for the novel by Charles Williams.  Virginia Madsen makes for a convincingly seductive femme fatale and Don Johnson, fresh off his final season of Miami Vice, pulls off a terrific John Garfield impression. In fact, the whole damn cast is on point, doing their damnedest not to make the smoky dialogue from seeming like a Naked Gun-style spoof.

And for the most part Hopper’s film succeeds. The sex is hot. The situations are tense. It’s just not a terribly smart film overall, dropping too many red herrings and losing track of who’s doing what to whom and why. By the time Madox realizes he’s boxed himself into a corner, the audience realizes it didn’t take all that much to put him there.  The best film noir always makes its characters’ doom feel clever and inevitable. Still, that final lip-biting scene brilliantly encapsulates the moral ambiguity and cruel cynicism that makes the genre so timeless. It’s an ending The Hot Spot might not fully earn…but it sure as hell sells it.

Released in a spiffy new 4K + Blu-ray limited edition from Radiance Films, the restoration comes from the original camera negative, layered in cool blues and radiant shades of Texas reds…encoded in Dolby Vision and cinematographer approved. Extras include an archival interview with Hopper, footage of John Lee Hooker’s contribution to the legendary score, more interviews with Madsen and co-star William Sadler, video essays on Hopper and author Charles Williams, plus liner notes and reversible artwork.

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