Hot Chili

While a series of raunchy teen comedies called Lemon Popsicle enjoyed popularity in Israel, in Hollywood its producers, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, tried in vain to bring its success and style to the American audience. After the meagre box-office earnings of the literal remake, The Last American Virgin, they tried their luck with lighter and shallower contributions to the genre, namely Hot Resort and Hot Chili. Both movies had the same premise about a group of youths who go through a series of racy situations during their summer jobs at a resort; only the locations differ and, furthermore, the films blatantly copy the most popular scenes from Lemon Popsicle, or rather The Last American Virgin. Hot Chili combines within itself the style of eighties teen comedies and raunchy German farces of the seventies, but instead of a boarding house in the Alps, here we have a luxury resort in Mexico. The narrative is thus composed of episodic scenes mixing superficial slapstick, spectacular nudity and raunchy jokes. Thanks to a well-cast ensemble of characters and the humorous situations in which they find themselves, the film works superbly as what it was intended to be – a shallow, raunchy comedy that revolves entirely around lascivious situations and the premise that everyone, regardless of the mask they where in public, has a sex life, or at least tries to have one. Incidentally, Hot Chili belongs to a strange subcategory of Cannon movies whose dubious narratives are rectified with a voiceover that was obviously added later (see America 3000, Sinbad of the Seven Seas and River of Death). (03.09.2015)