User reviews

This is your ordinary mid-70s low-grade action-adventure with a female heroine, but it has two distinguishing features: the lead, Cheri Caffaro , is very sexy in an aggressive sort of way, and the director eroticizes the violence (Caffaro is virtually turned on by pain and death). That is quite a daring thing for a movie to do, and the people here deserve some credit for even attempting it. And the climax of the film is surprisingly suspenseful. Now, if only they had picked a more talented leading man and a better editor..... (**)

An exploitation shot in the Philippines that doesn't take the usual Roger Corman device of sending American girls over to be strangers in a strange land... instead, low-budget director Don Schain's wife and multi-collaborator Cheri Caffaro plays an assassin who's already right at home...

As is the police investigator investigating her... that she quickly falls in love with... bringing together two great-looking people with genuine chemistry, almost seeming like a mainstream kind of windswept romance...

The problem's not the chemistry or relationship... but the long bouts of pillow-talk dialogue that gets in the way of the addictive plot-line of Caffaro's resilient killer Samantha Fox murdering a list of really rich and awful people in torturous and awful ways, including a near-lesbian seduction with electrodes taped to an old madame's face, and a blue liquid that freezes a fat guy in his bubbling sauna...

Basically, TOO HOT TO HANDLE is an entertaining body-count murder spree (including THOMAS CROWNE style multi-screen) where Caffaro plays the part like a cool special agent as opposed to a social climbing killer... and by the literally explosive end, it's obvious a sequel was intended... which would have pitted her completely against lawman lover Aharon Ipalé, deleting the steamy tryst, which would have made this pretty good camp-thriller even better.