The Hot Box (1972)

Director: Joe Viola

Starring: The bare-chested Carmen Argenziano, Andrea Cagan, Margaret Markov, Rickey Richardson & Laurie Rose

More Info: IMDB

Tagline: Their guns are hot and their bodies are hard!

Plot: Four nurses and their boyfriends come ashore on a lovely beach somewhere in Central (or South) America where they are captured. The men are killed and the women are imprisoned to be used to train guerrilla soldiers in the ways of doctoring. The leader of the revolution tries to instill their plight against tyranny. The girls escape only to find themselves helping their captors.

My Rating: 3/10

Would I watch it again? Fuck NO

#26 on Dusk to Dawn Drive-In Trash-o-Rama Show Vol. 1 (part of the TRAILER TRASH PROJECT)

Talk about over-promising and under-delivering. It's called THE HOT BOX, aka HELL CATS. It sounds like a women in prison film but it's not (OK, they're imprisoned (just the four of them) for a few minutes). It sounds like a sleazy exploitation film. Hell, look at the goddamned poster! It SCREAMS all of the above but it's little more than a whimper of what is promised.


You get a shit ton of naked women, kills and explosions. No problem so far, right? Whatever. It's boring as hell and it barely held my interest. I'm not going to knock nudity (unless, of course, it's something like that all-nude episode of ROSANNE) but for fuck's sake, at least have something interesting or fun to tie it all together. Twenty minutes in I wanted it to end.


This is a dull and by-the-numbers political drama with boobs and explosions. What I found of interest (besides the gratuitous nudity) was that it was written by Jonathan Demme (future director of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991)) and the big action scenes at the climax of the film were later used in another Corman-produced film, HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD (1976). It was one of the few re-used bits of other films that I couldn't place until now. I feel so complete. Geez.


Lame, lame, lame. Avoid. At a runtime of 85 minutes it's 140 minutes too long. Ugh! Just watch the trailer 30 times instead and fill in the blanks. Whatever you create in your mind will be better than this letdown.