Some like it W.A.R.M. Some like it H.O.T. Some like it just R.I.G.H.T. Some (and I mean a lot) like it D.U.M.B. (the b is silent)! You don’t need a P.H.D. to know that in the 1970s the market place was flooded with collegiate comedies thanks to the John Landis’ pillar crushing opus Animal House, but you might need a Masters in Alchemy (it’s a gold standard in education) to understand why everyone kept getting the formulas W.R.O.N.G. Some of you might say it’s all Greek to you, but it’s not that H.A.R.D. Get a bunch of young up-and-coming (meaning cheap) actors willing to do whatever you want on screen for not a lot of money, have them do pranks and hijinks against an angry dean of school and bleach-dyed jerks for ninety-four percent of the movie, and throw in a few parties (with chips and beer of course). What comes off screen should be a rip roaring time (as well as a few bikini tops and bottoms, depending on the era of rating). However, the hardest part about the 1979 drive-in thinker-stinker H.O.T.S. (aside from the audience) is how it demonstrates that, much like a college itself, higher education outlandish comedy extravaganzas are not for everyone’s taste, and watching the film, it may be a good time for the filmmakers to take a gap year to earn a couple of bucks and get their feet wet (and not their swim trunks) with the R.E.A.L. world!
H.O.T.S. (also sometimes peek-a-booed as T & A Academy) must be recognized as one of the first female-led sex comedies (this film ran in very slow motion so others could walk it in all its 33mm glory). With the market flooded with such garbage like King F&*^%$ F.R.A.T. and Can I Do It… Till I Need Glasses (which features the first on-screen appearance by a young Robin Williams), it was throwing the spaghetti at the wall to outdo the previous film, and this film certainly wastes no time in making sure you know what you are in for from take one (or two). Like most films in the seventies, when the studio heads were too busy staring at distant headlights on the 505, when Animal House dragged in over one hundred and fifty million on a mere three million budget (talk about a Caesar salad with greens), it was amazing how focused the bosses became and searched all over for the next toga party set on a college campus. Lucky for producers W. Terry Davis and Don Schain, they were able to find not one, but three Playboy playmates with Susan Kiger (January ‘77), Sandy Johnson (June ’74), and Pamela Bryant (April ‘78) to star in their rough-riding ode to the idea of hitting the books hard at college. They were even luckier to land a former TV star who was searching for new ways to expand his career (as well as pocketbook) by having a special guest spot in a young adult version of The Partridge Family’s ginger-headed wonder, Danny Bonaduce (whose unbuttoned shirt makes me think that I love you, so what am I so afraid of)! Although a success on the drive-in and forty-second street-like venues, H.O.T.S. did very little to make anyone change their majors to film school (although it might have made a few people change their majors to psychology to understand why they kept making such scholarly material). However, upon viewing the flashy flicker-sicker, it might be surprising how many gags were possibly reused in later films of its kind, including the likes of a panty raid (here a jock-strap raid for some reason), a stolen mascot, and a hidden camera to record people, all similar themes used in male dominated academia hijinks films like Revenge of the Nerds, Porky’s, Spring Break, and Jocks, thus proving woman will always come first, even if the guy have no clue what he’s doing!
At Fairenville University, when the PI sorority president publicly shames one of their freshman pledges, Honey, she joins forces with three other ridiculed pledges, and they form their own sorority named H.O.T.S. (named after their initials), vowing to steal all of the men associated with the woman of PI (square root of bitchiness). What follows is a storyline of pranks so fast and random, including a kissing booth worth its weight in lip gloss (and sores), a stolen bear who gets drunk off the H.O.T.S. secret attic moonshine station, and a hot air balloon food fight that would make Pluto want to puke. The girls succeed (duh), even finding a way to raise the roof on the evil dean of students (caught with his pants down), before eventually erasing the PI sorority from the history books, making sure everyone (including the audience) understands what it means to F.U.
Unsnapping at a see-through ninety-eight minutes, and directed by Gerald Seth Sindell (whose only other credits include Teenager and the TV movie Harpy), a running gag throughout the movie is guessing what H.O.T.S. stands for, with guesses ranging from ‘Hands Off Those Suckers’ to ‘Help Out the Seals’, allowing great screen time for the true star of the film, a lovable seal mascot! Like a freshman nerd losing their virginity, it is rare to find this in the open, but if you dig through the old card catalog and order through interlibrary loan, you might be able to get your hands (off) on the Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD from the early 2000s. So, the next time you are in the M.O.O.D. for some higher education shenanigans, make sure you give this little Valkyrie a try, because to have the H.O.T.S for these women, you’ve got to have pretty big B.A.L.L.S!
