Don Johnson ("Nash Bridges"), Virginia Madsen (The Haunting) and Jennifer Connelly (Dark City) heat up the screen in this torrid erotic thriller from the acclaimed director of Easy Rider. Exploding in a series of suspenseful twists and passionate encounters, this "ingenious" (Los Angeles Daily News) film will keep you guessing until its final, shocking climax! Harry Madox (Johnson) is a handsome drifter who is not above larceny to make ends meet. After staging a daring daylight robbery at a local bank, he receives an alibi from an unexpected ally: Dolly Harshaw (Madsen), a sexy and mysterious local woman who has her own plans for him. But when Harry falls for another beautiful woman (Connelly), he incurs Dolly's wrath and finds himself caught in a maze of jealousy, betrayal and murder from which escape is impossible and danger is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

The Hot Spot is best known to lecherous film buffs for Jennifer Connelly's topless scene, but this sultry southern noir deserves more than prurient interest. It's arguably Dennis Hopper's best directorial effort (OK, so that's not saying much), and Charles Williams's source novel Hell Hath No Fury finds Hopper in a comfortable B-movie milieu, riffing on Double Indemnity with an overripe tale of sex, greed, and blackmail in an unnamed Texan town. Fresh from the final season of Miami Vice, Don Johnson stars as a shifty drifter, conning his way into a salesman job on a used-car lot, where the boss's insatiable wife (Virginia Madsen) offers him sexual favors and a lovely secretary's (Connelly) innocence is threatened by a percolating scandal. Nobody's really innocent, of course, and Hopper spices this languid web of secrets with enough trashy misbehavior to qualify The Hot Spot as a bona fide guilty pleasure. --Jeff Shannon