good back-story, and good acting

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Frustrated and unhappy restless sweet young thing Myrtle Pennypacker (adorable blonde dish Shirley Boyd) goes off the deep end after she discovers that abusive husband George (writer/director Dale Berry) is cheating on her. Myrtle gets committed to an asylum, but escapes and tracks George down so she can kill the two-timing jerk. Berry relates the trashy story at a constant snappy pace and fills out the skimpy 69 minute running time with plenty of mild soft-core sex scenes and a decent smattering of tasty female nudity (the definite highlight occurs when a foxy brunette removes all her clothes to take an utterly gratuitous, but still much-appreciated bath). Moreover, we also get a fierce catfight, Myrtle doing a wild dance on top of a table at a seedy bar, and a neat bit by Larry Buchanan film regular Bill Thurman as a hulking would-be rapist who has a fist fight with George. The rough, scratchy black and white cinematography, ragged editing, and poorly dubbed in dialogue all greatly enhance the pervasive seaminess. The groovy swinging jazz score hits the soulful spot. The cool rocking bluesy theme song likewise smokes. Nice bummer ending, too. A pleasingly sleazy diversion.

HOT BLOODED WOMAN (1965) (BAD) (D: Dale Berry) Worthless and unwatchable. Black and white cheapie promises much sex, delivers nothing. Tame and uninvolving, apparently filmed silent with unconvincing sound added later. Not even fun in a sleaze way. 68 very dull minutes.

SPOILERS INCLUDEDIf titles like ‘Hip, Hot and 21', ‘Passion in the Sun', ‘The Hot Bed' and ‘Hot Thrills, Warm Chills' are anything to go by director Dale Berry appears to have viewed any titular association with ‘heat' as his lucky charm. Although more apt title for this black and white 1965 effort might have been ‘I married a psychopathic, go-go dancing nymphomaniac'.Myrtle (Shirley Boyd) a promiscuous housewife likes nothing better than to strut her stuff around the wrong side of the tracks flirting with thick-headed bozos. Their reaction is to tear her clothes off, but her long suffering husband George turns up just in time to save the day, rescuing his wife from their advances but getting badly beaten by these Hillbilly lotharios in the process.Thankfully a helpful psychiatrist is on hand to put the finger on Myrtle's problems (‘I'll never forget this girl, the pathetic, loveless, miserably sick Myrtle Pennypacker'). Using the power of hypnotism, the psychiatrist uncovers her traumatic past which includes a miserable childhood and teenage years where she was lusted after by everyone from ‘lecherous young blades to dirty old men'. Myrtle believed she'd found true happiness with George. However on their wedding night George went all limp and Myrtle reacts to his frigidity, perfectly reasonably, by attempting to murder him with a large knife and becoming an amateur go-go dancer in a local bar. The poor woman's mind was further unbalanced by phone calls from a topless woman who taunts her with tales of George's infidelity with Myrtle's sister and a local Spanish harlot. Myrtle even got involved in a catfight with a waitress, when the latter had the nerve to chat-up George with the immortal pick-up line ‘you have the cutest earlobes'. A girl can only stand for so much.The psychiatrist lends a sympathetic ear, but things go pear shaped when to everyone's horror Myrtle strips down to her underwear in his office and begins manically laughing. ‘There was no doubt in my mind, this girl needed treatment' huffs the psychiatrist. So Myrtle is carted off to an asylum, but proving to be nothing if not energetic soon makes her escape, bashing a female nurse, knocking over a man on crutches, and stealing a car. A worried George and a passing police detective pursue her across country to a scrapheap, where a tragic shootout ends with Myrtle being gunned down and the world being made a safer place for frigid men, as well as those on crutches.Berry's films must be the most threadbare, primitive skin flicks ever to ever have seen the light of a projection bulb, and Hot Blooded Woman offers more than its fair share of supporting evidence. Characteristically, repetitious and mismatched music dominate the soundtrack on account of Berry's brief attempts at dubbing in dialogue proving less-than-successful (actors ‘talk' even when their mouths are closed) and the cast seem to be comprised of trashy and bewigged off-duty strippers, one of who's attempts at removing her clothes are momentarily interrupted by a choking fit brought on by chain smoking her way though her role. Berry also has a peculiar insistence for prolonging just about every other scene, best and most absurdly exemplified by a seven minute sequence in which we follow a secondary character around drinking, smoking, dressing, undressing, sleeping and bathing, before eventually discovering her virtually insignificant role in the movie!While Hot Blooded Woman isn't quite as outrageous as Berry's Passion in the Sun/The Girl and the Geek (about a plump stripper on the run from an escaped carnival freak) this isn't for want of trying. Guilty pleasure highlights include-an asylum inmate who believes a rolled up blanket is her baby, a bar band able to belt out the film's title song despite lacking a singer and our heroine being led kicking and screaming in a straight jacket to the nut house.First and foremost an exploitation film, it's not entirely surprisingly then that Hot Blooded Woman is more preoccupied with shots of women in their underwear than convincing as a serious case study in martial woe, but only in a Dale Berry film could the lead actress be at one point upstaged by a poodle.

Sometimes film is messy. Sometimes suspense and drama are messy. However, there are some who believe that a film can be suspenseful and dramatic solely on the virtue of it being messy and confusing. "Hot Blooded Woman" is one such film, and, although it's certainly messy and confusing, has nothing but that and its score to its credit."Hot Blooded Woman" has a rather meager plot, at best. It appears to be a simple "wife gets revenge on cheating/unappreciative husband" story, yet it hints at so much more. Unfortunately, those hints are never developed or realized, and it all comes off as terribly disjointed. The audience is supposed to feel sorry for main character Myrtle, when her demeanor and actions vary wildly from scene to scene (e.g. one minute she is being raped, only to begin willingly making out with her rapist). In the same manner, her husband George is made out to be the bad guy, but, even though it clearly shows him "cheating on Myrtle", before they were married, during the marriage he seems totally loyal to her and concerned with her well-being afterward and the most competent person in the whole movie.The producers and editors certainly did nothing to rectify that situation. There are no smooth transitions between scenes; every single one is forced, noticeably cutting off many scenes. It seems like a lot is missing, but at the same time because of the lack of plot none of it seems terribly important or worthwhile. What scenes are shown unabridged are so pointless that the lack of a solid plot is further aggravated. Watch as Myrtle dances for five minutes straight, or Myrtle's husband Greg fights for ten minutes with a man she was randomly making out with (after he tried to rape her), only for the other man to run off with no reason or rhyme. What gives these scenes even more of a serene, dream-like quality is the score, which is surprisingly good, and, given that there is little dialogue, holds up well amongst all its repetitions throughout the picture. It's still far from a timeless movie score, but the jazz/big band tunes are certainly the most enjoyable aspect of the film. Watching these scenes are a strange experience indeed, as the film becomes less and less of a film to the point that it seems more like someone's extended takes of drunken escapades on home-movies."Hot Blooded Woman" is a movie that's very difficult to make any sense of. Though that might be expected of some of its audience because of its genre (exploitation), even those viewers will be disappointed and confused because there isn't even any nudity or real violence in the picture.