Hot Connections Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.0

Hot Connections Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov April 1, 2018

James Young's "Hot Connections" (1973) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of independent distributors Pop Cinema. The supplemental features on the disc include vintage trailers as well as vintage erotic footage featuring adult star Uschi Digard. The release also arrives with a six-page illustrated booklet featuring Robin Bougie's essay "The Exploitation of Liberation: Delving Into Female Chauvinists and Hot Connection". In English, not subtitled. Region-Free.

The boss

James Young’s Hot Connections is grouped with Jay Jackson’s Female Chauvinists in this double-feature release produced by Pop Cinema, which is the second entry in the boutique label’s newly-launched ‘Racy Reels From the Something Weird Vault’ series.

What you get with this film is old-fashioned low-budget entertainment of the type that used to fill the tiny space between classic adult productions and quirky drive-in comedies. The demise of the drive-in theaters and the arrival of VHS, however, quickly made films like Hot Connections obsolete because the adult industry essentially lured the people that found them attractive. So films like Hot Connections were part of a transitional process which by the mid-‘80s was successfully completed.

The plot is simple but not tedious. A middle-aged hot-blooded character named Arnold Thaxton (Christopher Geoffries) is the top man in a telecommunications company that appears to have hired an army of attractive girls that love to flirt and hate to work. And Thaxton not only does not mind, but he encourages them to be as bold as they can. However, the ‘boldest’ one, Angie (adult star Rene Bond), ‘accidentally’ becomes pregnant and when she tells Thaxton he decides that it is time to replace her with an even better girl. Oddly enough, this time the girls in the company decide to fight back and promptly team up with other victims that have been canned by the playboy. The ‘resistance’ becomes legit when the girls join a feminist group that has regular meetings in the home of Thaxton’s assistant, George (Jay Scott), whose wife is fully invested in the fight for justice that her ‘sisters’ have initiated. Meanwhile, as the campaign to bring down Thaxton intensifies, the assistant concludes that this may be the right time for him repolish his game and perhaps and perhaps even replace his horny boss.

At some point Hot Connections was apparently rated X, but it is difficult to believe that the person that signed off on the official rating certificate actually bothered to watch the film in its entirety because there isn’t any explicit sexual footage in it. Indeed, a few of the girls from the company quickly take their close off and there is one particular sequence in which two of the outspoken feminists are seen making love, but this isn’t the type of explicit adult material that usually earned the dreaded X.

The adventures of the horny boss and his inevitable downfall are also used to channel a healthy dose of sarcasm, but it is not of the biting kind that sometimes can leave a very unpleasant bitter taste and make it awfully difficult for any humor to flourish around it. The film is just flat-out silly at times, and because it does not pretend to be something bigger than it was meant to be, it actually becomes rather charming in a way that some of Joe Sarno’s low-budget erotic comedies are.

The overall quality of the visuals is predictably uneven. Some of the camera angles are pretty awkward and there are even some close-ups that simply do not look good. However, the supposedly edgy lovemaking sequences are typically done with a very good awareness of what is or isn’t appropriate to see so that the film does not cross over into adult territory.

Hot Connections Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, James Young's Hot Connections arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Pop Cinema.

Similar to Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death and Invasion of the Love Drones, Hot Connections has been transferred in high-definition from the best elements that Pop Cinema was able to access without any extensive cleanup and restoration work. As I have mentioned previously though, I do not have a problem with this at all, so long as these films retain native organic qualities and are presented uncut. So, I actually like the technical presentation of Hot Connections because excluding the light surface damage that pops up here and there the film actually has a fairly consistent pleasing organic vintage appearance. Of course, there are various minor density fluctuations and stability issues that remain, but the crucial thing to remember is that it does not have the type of digital edge that so many 'carefully restored' films end up acquiring after someone in a lab spends a great deal of time 'improving' it. In other words, you should expect a rather rough, but otherwise free of contemporary anomalies presentation that is in fact a pretty substantial upgrade in quality over previous home video releases of the film. My score is 3.25/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-Free Blu-ray release. Therefore, you will be able to play it on your player regardless of your geographical location).

Hot Connections Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English Dolby Digital 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are not provided for the main feature.

The lossy audio track actually has pretty decent depth, though some unevenness and during one specific sequence light background buzz remain. To be honest, however, the nature of the original production is such that I can pretty much guarantee that there is native unevenness on the original audio mix as well. This being said, the dialog is always very clear and easy to follow.

Hot Connections Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailers - four trailers.
  
  1. Cries of Ecstasy, Blows of Death
  2. Invasion of the Love Drones.
  3. Female Chauvinists
  4. Hot Connections

• Uschi Digard Loop -a very nice loop with erotic footage featuring adult star Uschi Digard. (11 min, 1080p).

• Booklet - six-page illustrated booklet featuring Robin Bougie's essay "The Exploitation of Liberation: Delving Into Female Chauvinists and Hot Connection".

Hot Connections Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There is a whole range of 'transitional films' that emerged during the '70s that I find very interesting. These were the type of low-budget genre films that for a short period of time basically resisted the adult industry's inevitable takeover of the market that the drive-in theaters had supported. Many of these films are wonderful time capsules that reveal plenty about the evolution of different social and cultural trends in America. (Interestingly enough, during the '70s and early '80s a number of directors that were part of the adult industry also produced very unique hybrid projects that in some ways are equally valuable time capsules. The Kinsey Institute has cataloged them and done some pretty interesting research on the best). James Young's Hot Connections is one of these 'transitional films' that has a typical for the era sense of humor and a bit of an attitude that I personally find attractive. If you appreciate what these types of films have to offer, consider picking up this release from Pop Cinema, which also has Jay Jackson's even quirkier gem Female Chauvinists. RECOMMENDED.