I say "sort of" because- sanitized though they were - at least ABC Afterschool Specials vaguely resembled reality; White Hot is ludicrously and unrealistically over-the-top from start to finish.
1970's sensitive teen actor Robbie Benson (who also directed this hearty slab of b-grade cheese) stars as a yuppie businessman who through his occasional recreational cocaine use stumbles into becoming a coke dealer and crack addict. Try as I did, I couldn't get past the stumbling block of imagining a thin, wispy Benson as a coke dealer...I mean, physically Benson is so slight he is the archetypal weakling who gets sand kicked in his face at the beach, thus the idea of him in reality getting immediately beat up by all of his dope customers and robbed of his product was one that continuously ran through my head.
The bad casting (and bad acting) doesn't end with Benson, though. Tawny Kitaen is here in her drop-dead gorgeous prime as Benson's promiscuous coke addict girlfriend and while Benson opted to overact his role Kitaen chose to underact hers...in the sense that she can't act. Danny Aiello plays a mob boss in a role he doubtless went on to both regret and forget.
The hammy thespian efforts do manage to tie in nicely with the absurd plot and script. One of those anti-drug message movies where after one toot of blow and one hit of freebase any given character immediately becomes a full-blown junkie immediately selling either all their possessions or (in the case of the women) their bodies for one more hit. The performances and story both converge in a dizzyingly ridiculous climax that is as jaw-dropping as it is laugh-inducing.
Why a 10 star review? Well, it's 10 out of 10 on the cheesily bad movie scale. White Hot has all the pretentions of being a dramatic movie with a strong anti-drug message. It is that very sincerity of purpose combined with the utterly silly end result that defines a movie as cheesy, and by that count White Hot has it all in spades.
The only downside is that far as I can tell this movie never got a dvd release so if one wants a copy for their collection you'll have to track down a 30 year old VHS copy or perhaps see if it was thrown up on youtube for free (I'd opt for free, truth be told...although as a bad movie enthusiast I regret my purchase of said 30 year old VHS copy in no way whatsoever).
