A good exploitation film delivers exciting action scenes, interesting locations, and some nice nudity. I think Roger Corman once said something like this, though not exactly in these words. The 1977 film, “Too Hot to Handle,” offers all three. It is filmed in Manila, Philippines and looks very nice on the new Shout Factory dvd entitled, “Roger Corman’s Cult Classics Lethal Ladies Collection.” The set also includes a film I am looking forward to watching, “Firecracker,” and “TNT Jackson.”
In “Too Hot to Handle,” Cheri Cafaro, star of the “Ginger” films of the early 70’s, plays Samantha Fox, an organized and efficient assassin. She is dispatched to Manila to dispose of three people who are bad, bad, bad. The extent of their badness is not described at length in the film, however, it is enough to know that they are bad enough to warrant the talents of Samantha Fox to exterminate them. It does help that we know that the people she is hired to hit are bad people who, it turns out, also had something to do with the death of her father. Knowing that she is single-handedly dispatching of these evil folks makes Samantha even more likable than she is already. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Cheri Cafaro plays her character as an intelligent, strong, and cunning female. I am very glad that Samantha Fox was not played as a dimwit dumb blonde who needs the help of a strong man. Samantha is completely independent.
The Manila chief of police, Domingo de la Torres (Aharon Ipale), gets involved in the investigation after the first of Samantha’s hits, McKenzie Portman (John Van Dreelen) is found dead after he invites her to his home to engage in a little bit of bondage fun. Chief de la Torres is quickly able to determine the Portman’s assassin was female. His reasoning does make sense, even though it might seem unlikely to do so. I liked that the character of Chief de la Torres is played as an intelligent investigator. Both Samantha Fox and Chief de la Torres use each other for sex along the way, however, it is clearly a mutual relationship. Samantha is a strong woman and would not allow him to mistreat her.
Samantha’s second hit, Justin Stockwell (Jordan Rosengarten),one of the biggest douchebag assholes the screen has ever seen, is disposed of in a particularly interesting and cunning fashion. One of the highlights of this film, which may easily be overlooked, is the great makeup job on Cheri Cafaro in this scene. I liked that the third of Samantha’s hits is a woman, meaning the film avoids a simplistic male vs. female storyline.
The music in the film is comprised of a great, groovy score, however, the song heard during the film’s main sex scene is pretty bad. The song is called, “Lady Samantha.” It will make you cringe. As I mentioned, though, the score throughout most of the film is great, especially during the last five minutes of the film. Great stuff it is!
“Too Hot to Handle” feels like an R-rated episode of “Hawaii Five-O”—the old version, of course. That is a very good thing. Scenes take their time to play out and the progression of scenes is well structured and well paced. Of course, it is not award winning material, but it does quite well what it intends to do---entertain. Cheri Cafaro is naked a lot, bad guys and a gal get whacked, lots of cool shots of Manila are shown, and asses get kicked. Put on your oven mitts because Cheri Cafaro is definitely too hot to handle!
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