HOT SPOT is what Virginia Madsen calls her loins, dear ones. Don Johnson does his best to keep them cooled them off but he has trouble keeping up with her, especially since Don has his eye on the luscious and very young Jennifer Connelly. Don plays a drifter who picks up a job at a used car lot in a small Texas town. He soon finds himself bedding the owner's absolutely insatiable wife. And he is soon working on the oh-so innocent Connelly. The lusty trio is ably supported by such veteran character actors as Jerry Hardin, Jack Nance and Barry Corbin, and this his hot-as-hell, steamy production was directed by none other than Dennis Hopper. A great film for adults. The ending is a classic. I wonder how much fun the notorious lothario Johnson had while filming this, since he spends a lot of screen time in the arms of Madsen and Connelly, both of whom are at the top of their form.

Drifter Harry Madox (Don Johnson) hustles an used car salesman job from owner George Harshaw in a small desert oasis Texas town. Gloria Harper (Jennifer Connelly) is the secretary and a damsel in distress paying the lascivious Frank Sutton (William Sadler). George's wife Dolly (Virginia Madsen) is the flirtatious femme fatale who starts an affair with Harry. He sets a fire as a distraction to rob the local bank. He ends up as a hero rescuing a guy from the infernal and Gloria falls for him. The police suspects him as a blind customer fingers him for the robbery but Dolly provides him with a false alibi.

Director Dennis Hopper is making a kind of old time pulpy sexy noir thriller. He doesn't really succeed. Johnson and Madsen have those sweaty broad performances. Connelly is absolutely alluring as the ingénue. The slow lethargic pace takes its toll. The atmospheric can only carry it so far.

Don Johnson is a brazen, taciturn, suntanned stud who rolls into town like Paul Newman in "The Long Hot Summer." Women melt when he appears, both the stimulus-hungry Virginia Madsen (wife of the town's rich but dim community leader) and virginal drop-dead gorgeous Jennifer Connolly (who labors behind a desk at the used car lot). To make a long story short -- and it is rather long -- Madsen throws herself on Johnson at once. A more languorous non-sexual affair develops between Johnson and Connolly. Johnson robs a bank and kills Connolly's blackmailer. Just as Johnson and Connolly are about to leave town with a bag full of legitimate cash, Madsen intervenes. She has filed a statement with her lawyer of every sin Johnson has committed, like the bank robbery, the justifiable homicide -- which statement to be released "in case something happens to me." She now owns Johnson, just as she owns her mansion and her pink Caddilac. The broken-hearted Connolly goes back behind her desk for what we can only assume will be the remainder of her life.

The movie reflects a very curious set of values at times. The unkempt blackmailer, Sadler, has his shack strung about with pics of nude women. Sadler and Johnson have a terrific fist fight there. Furniture is destroyed and so is the blackmailer's face. The fight ends with Johnson wrapping a couple of strings of dirty pictures around the half-conscious Sadler and muttering, "You like dirty pictures, huh?" And we're rooting for Johnson -- Yeah! Give it to him, the filthy pornographer! Well, the director, Dennis Hopper, means us to root for Johnson because nobody likes a cretin who collects porno. But take a closer look at Don Johnson's character. The guy we're rooting for has been adulturating somebody else's wife, has burned down an office building, endangered the life of an innocent man sleeping off a drunk, is 36 years old and putting moves on a girl who was 18 (half his age),is guilty of obstructing justice and public nudity, was an accessory after the fact to blackmailing, has outwitted a blind man, uttered foul words on screen, and probably lied to his Mom as a youth about why he was spending so much time in the bathroom. And that's all BEFORE the homicide. Some hero! That's why I was glad to see him hoodwinked by Virginia Madsen at the end. He winds up married to a murderous nymphomaniac who will betray him at every opportunity but will never let him go.

I don't know why Jennifer Connolly couldn't have come to me for help instead of that miscreant. Has there ever been a more sublime set of features? Her rubescent lower lip droops and exposes a couple of over-sized, dazzling white incisors that look specifically designed for gnawing ears of corn. Can she act? In front of the answer to that question lies a Master's thesis in aesthetics.

Don Johnson isn't bad. He doesn't seem to exude the kind of pheromones the part calls for but he goes with the flow, the way Kevin Costner does. Virginia Madsen CAN act. This is a sluttish figure she's playing and she comes at it swinging. Okay, it's excessive. But I'm guessing that both she and Hopper figured the stereotyped role might as well be played for amusement as much as drama. She was exactly right in a tiny role in Coppola's "The Rainmaker," as a recently deinstituionalized psychotic -- just the opposite sort of character. The villain is fine as the villain. I've seen him in other roles, always as a villain.

It's not clear exactly when the film is set. The late 50s, I'd imagine, judging from the mores, the cars, and the amenities. The town is Landers, Texas, but it might as well have been Glanders, Texas, because it is mentally inert, its only engine being that provided by the expression of the most libidinous drives -- sex, greed, power, corruption, and violence. We see only two ordinary citizens, a frail and elderly couple squatting on the floor, the husband reading to his wife (aloud) from the Bible. That's a nice touch, really. Hopper also must have had an inspired set designer and director of photography. Near an abandoned sawmill, out in the woods, in the middle of nowhere, there appears a sybaritic room full of candles, incense, billowing curtains, and booze. The location shooting is just fine. You can practically feel the heat. It's enough to give you restless legs syndrome.