Sexism is in the news (congressional confirmation hearings for incoming administration cabinet pics, so no surprise there); sexism remains rampant in real life (moronic MAGA Congressmen mansplaining what sexism is and isn’t to women); and sexism is all too prevalent in American movies no matter what the era (said members of Congress apparently also don’t know it’s 2025, not 1955).
When it comes to movies, I’m referring to the astoundingly ludicrous, sexist crap that can result, and did result, from one male actor making his debut as a director decades ago. Accordingly, I submit that some men (SecDef nominee Hegseth) are not only in no way qualified for the roles they aim to fill, they are astoundingly inappropriate and a train wreck waiting to happen, especially when it comes to how men like Hegseth view, and subsequently treat, females.
I don’t know from under what prehistoric rock repugnant Republicans found the horrific Hegseth as their pic to lead DoD, but I unfortunately found the movie mistitled The Hot Spot, when it (and he) should be called The Hot Mess, late last year on Tubi while desperately searching for something to watch that wasn’t a slasher, sadistic, stupid, or scientific snoozer of a waste of time.
Hence, I got suffocating sexism. And what a waste of brain cells and celluloid it was (like this week’s Hegseth confirmation hearing). I didn’t actually watch the congressional confirmation hearing in real time for much the same sexism-averse reasons.
Because I tried three times to watch this movie to the end and never made it there. My mistake was in thinking that it would be worth seeing a younger Don Johnson star in a film with a youthful Jennifer Connelly (so green she hadn’t yet mastered her acting chops or maybe it was just the awful director manipulating an insipid role) and the wonderfully talented Virginia Madsen.
It was increasingly obvious the reason an oddball alcoholic like Dennis Hopper was allowed to direct a movie was because he was once an overrated white male movie star, predictably revered in Hollywood circles where misogyny abounds as prolifically as it does in the halls of contemptible Congress.
Cue the inevitable crap of a 1990 movie that treats women like it’s still the 1950s and plays with gratuitous sex scenes like a schoolboy salivating over his first nudie magazine. Kind of like this week’s Congressional confirmation hearing for Hegseth, who is also alleged to abuse alcohol.
Ironically, The Hot Spot is supposed to be set in 1950s smalltown Texas, and therein lies the rub. Hopper isn’t merely silly in his sexist directing, he is also incapable of remaining in the era his movie takes place while he subjugates women to the role of vacuous playthings for men. Kind of like this week’s Congressional confirmation hearing for Hegseth.
This movie was so sickeningly bad that I soon ignored the plodding plot and reverted to finding all the ways in which Hopper managed to turn the fifties into the late eighties, when the movie was made. All, apparently, to gratify his need to produce salacious sexist drivel. Kind of like many MAGA members of Congress during this week’s confirmation hearing for…Hegseth, as well as Hegseth himself.
The sexist drivel actually began with the description of the plot of The Hot Spot: After robbing a Texas bank, a used car salesman finds himself at the romantic mercies of two very different women who want his love.
Please. How is a character (Johnson) who engages in unsolicited, oddly aggressive and inappropriate sexual advances toward a teenager (Connelly) at the romantic mercy of anyone? And while the character Madsen portrays is somewhat predatory (in a predictably misogynist concept of what that means to men), there is nothing romantic about the interaction between her and the bank robber.
The only “romance” in this movie are the Silhouette romance novels shown on display at the 1950s drug store, despite Silhouette novels not having existed until 1980. Oops. I guess as long as Hopper wanted to have a man teasing a girl for reading fluff it was okay to ignore that glaring reality.
Another thing that definitely didn’t exist in the 1950s was the kind of bikini, cut waist-high to bare maximum hip and leg, inexplicably worn by Connelly. Yet another glaring error of era by Hopper—and evidently anyone else involved in making this drivel—while they sought to turn a young female actress into just another figment of their pathetic sexist fantasies. Did I mention it includes the surprise twist of lesbianism?
In addition to numerous strip club scenes with woman in thongs seemingly out of place in smalltown 1950s Texas, as well as gratuitous female nudity along with the occasional bare butt of Don Johnson (perhaps the only good thing about this movie), there were seatbelts and head rests in automobiles of the kind that didn’t exist until 1970; a Texas historical plaque on the bank building that definitely wasn’t there in the 1950s; and filtered cigarettes and lighters that more resembled the 1980s. Not to mention the aqua-hued plastic ice trays that weren’t invented until the 1960s.
I really must be more careful about selecting movies to watch, because we’re about to have a misogynist sexist president in the White House for a sequel when the first movie was widely panned and disgusting. Yet another male who is also vastly unqualified, delights in denigrating women, and clearly doesn’t know what century it is, much less what decade.
But because he was, you know, a white dude who once was a so-called (reality TV) star, he will end up directing the country in a very bad disaster movie with Hegseth at the DoD helm and scary clowns worthy of a Stephen King novel-based film serving in Congress. Sexist sycophants who will fall all over themselves and their non-existent ethics and dignity to genuflect for their “movie idol” while they attempt to drag us all into their Hopperesque idea of a 1950s fantasy because they’ve literally never grown up.