I always get what I want

By this point, we’re less than an hour into a film that still has 73 minutes left to run, so the very idea that Harry is going to just pocket the cash and skip merrily on his way is clearly off the cards. You’d also have to be new to the genre not to have twigged by now that we’re deep into neo-noir territory, particularly given the manner in which all of the above unfolds on screen. Opening on semi-abstract shots of shimmering sand dunes that point to both the meteorological temperature in which events will unfold and the emotional and sexual heat that will envelop the two central characters, it aligns us from the start with a protagonist who, whilst not particularly likeable, is nonetheless intriguing from the off. Emotionally hollow, arrogant, amoral, and dismissive of authority, he arrives in the town with no obvious purpose and not a whisper of a backstory – it’s almost as if he was born in the surrounding desert as a grown man and just drove to the nearest peopled location to investigate the opportunities it may offer. This becomes evident not just in his quickly made decision to rob the bank but also in the two sexual liaisons he has with Dolly, to which he commits physically but not emotionally, being not remotely interested in the affair that Dolly now believes is under way and fully intends to keep on the boil. It’s this relationship that really earns the film its noir credentials, from the suggestiveness of their early interactions to the hold that the self-confidently determined Dolly is able to exert on the increasingly reluctant Harry. I should say here that if you are somehow completely new to noir, now might be a good time to skip to the end of this review, as this is a genre in which some character arcs have a degree of inevitability, and any discussion of them would by regarded by noir novices as a major spoiler. For those who know their noir, there’s a pall hanging over Harry almost from the moment that we first meet him. one that further darkens once he gives in to Gloria’s advances, then turns tornado-cloud black when she reveals that George has already suffered two heart attacks and needs an operation, and that it wouldn’t take much to trigger another, possibly fatal cardiac event. By this point, Harry’s slowly developing romance with Gloria appears to be revealing a gentler, more caring side of a man who had previously seemed devoid of emotion, offering a glimmer of light to the dark world that he has chosen to inhabit, one that Dolly looks set to firmly extinguish.

From this point on it seems inevitable that Harry is going to end up trapped like a fly in Dolly’s web, and that her confident assertion that “I always get what I want” was no idle boast. It’s because of this that we end up siding with Harry, despite the fact that he’s not the most likeable of individuals and to some degree asks for much of the trouble that he lands in. He seems to have a low opinion of just about everyone he meets, plainly visible in his “can’t be arsed” attitude to a job that he has only just landed and his refusal to engage with anyone on more than a superficial level, and then only when he wants something from them. When it comes to women, his only real interest is initially how quickly he can bed them, which is doubtless why he forcefully kisses the startled Gloria the first time they are alone together, and why he does likewise with Dolly when he first visits her at her house. The difference between these encounters is that he later apologises to Gloria for this uninvited behaviour, whereas with Dolly the kiss is the culmination of some not-so-subtle encouragement for him to do so on her part. Having led him on, however, the controlling Dolly then breaks away claiming concern over what her spying neighbour might think and presumably say to George. She then heads upstairs to bed, pausing halfway to look suggestively down at Harry and tell him, in a manner that screams innuendo, that he’s a “bad, bad boy.” It’s thus no surprise that he returns there that very evening to effectively finish what he/she has started.

As is made clear in the special features, The Hot Spot had a lengthy gestation period. It began as an acclaimed 1953 novel with the theoretically plot-spoiling title of Hell Hath No Fury by Charles Williams, who developed it into a screenplay with Robert Mitchum in mind to play the lead. This version never saw the light of day, and in the 1980s was revived as The Hot Spot with director Mike Figgis at the helm. At the behest of the producers, who weren’t fans of the Williams screenplay, Figgis substantially rewrote the film and was all set to go with Sam Shepard, Uma Thurman and Anne Archer in the lead roles when a disagreement between Shepard at the producers led to him leaving the project and it quickly fell apart, only to later be revived with Dennis Hopper in the director’s chair. An enthusiast for noir, Hopper went back to Williams’ original screenplay and novel and rewrote the film again with the aim of being true to the spirit of both. 

This all came at an interesting time for Hopper, who after many years as a supporting player, scored a game-changing hit with his low-budget directorial debut, Easy Rider, only to then confound audiences, and much of the critical establishment, with his deeply indulgent but fascinating follow-up feature, The Last Movie. By then, Hopper’s cocaine and alcohol fuelled volatility was making it difficult for him to find gainful employment, at least on home turf, and in 1983 he entered a drug rehabilitation program, after which he effectively reinvented himself both as an actor and as a director. His terrifying performance as Frank Booth in David Lynch’s 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet put him firmly back on the map, and the same year he garnered an Oscar nomination for his role as alcoholic basketball coach Wilbur “Shooter” Flatch in director David Anspaugh’s Hoosiers, which I seem to remember was released in the UK as Best Shot. Two years later he won further acclaim for his direction of the 1988 Colors, in which Robert Duvall and Sean Penn played police patrolmen embroiled in the very real problem of Los Angeles gang violence. He followed this with the erotic action thriller Catchfire, in which he starred alongside Jodie Foster, Dean Stockwell, Vincent Price, John Turturro and Fred Ward (seriously, how is that for a cast?), but after the film was taken out of his hands by the producers and re-edited without his involvement, he had his directorial credit changed to Alan Smithee, the go-to pseudonym employed by directors who wish to distance themselves a project they have lost control of.