Hot Blooded

Angel was one of a handful of absolutely gorgeous '80s adult starlets forever taken to task by smut cinema scribes for sleepwalking through her sex scenes, along with the likes of Raven and the succulent Stacey Donovan. Drawing the distinction between our girl and the latter two, whose bedside manner I would describe as reserved rather than reticent yet always perfectly poised, Angel possessed a tremulous deer caught in the headlights quality. Barely legal upon entering the industry and possibly not entirely of her own accord, she had been kept by a domineering sugar daddy type since the tender age of 15 as Jerry Butler recalled. Another reproach leveled against Angel was lack of acting ability, attributable to her being literally scared stiff most of the time. Cecil Howard worked a small miracle with her on his intense STAR ANGEL as the unwitting catalyst in washed up rock star manager Butler's downfall.

So a director's patience and a friendly atmosphere on set worked wonders in getting the most out of Angel. Who better then than San Diego's discreet dirty movie mogul Stu Segall a/k/a "Godfrey Daniels" to put the insecure starlet through her pornographic paces ? A big shot TV producer later in life, he kept an extremely low profile with regards to future plans and treated the vulnerable exposed talent with the utmost respect. Ploughing through the decade using an array of aliases such as "Buzz Richards" and "P.C. O'Kake", Segall supplied adult aficionados with some of the '70s choicest fluff maintaining a lightness of tone devoid of moralizing, still more prevalent at this stage than you might think in the wake of Woodstock.

A huge seller in its day yet the recipient of little respect, HOT BLOODED was a throwback to the kind of unabashed froth that had helped establish its director's reputation among fans if not necessarily the unwarranted snooty carnal critics ruling the roost. This was obviously a happy shoot for Angel as well who lets her hair down and has joyful guilt-free sex in that idealized girl next door fashion that has in retrospect become her defining trait. She's perfectly plausible as bratty high school student Melissa getting into scrapes with her short-fused single mom Linda (Kay Parker) whose buttons she knows how to push all too well. It may not be the kind of acting that gets awards, not even industry ones, but she seems genuinely pleased to be here, marking a huge improvement over earlier endeavors.

Summer holidays are upon us and Melissa's desperate to get out from under her strict Mater's supervision, using mom's befuddled boyfriend Chris (Bob Bolla) so she'll be sent off to free spirit uncle Phil (Herschel Savage). The seasoned Parker and Bolla get the ball rolling sexually and DoP Jack Remy goes a bit overboard with the mood lighting in an attempt to obscure lines and wrinkles in a youth-obsessed society. With Angel cheerfully beating off in the next room, incidentally employing an identical personal massager as she did on Remy's L'AMOUR (which cast her as Parker's romantic rival, leading to an inter-textually shocking lesbian liaison), the gauziness is quickly abandoned in favor of a sunny punched up color scheme.

Helping the girl cram for her anatomy exam, a course her mother belatedly realizes she doesn't even take, Bolla's caught with his pants around his ankles, feebly protesting that "she seduced me" which rightfully gets him kicked out of the house and Melissa packed and shipped off to uncle Phil's. Soon she's having her best friends over, the redoubtable double act of fan favorites Karen Summer and Cara Lott who have been carrying on a secret girl's affair behind Angel's back in one of the most invigorating Sapphic scenes ever. This hardly opposes them to the opposite sex however, proved by their ganging up on uncle as they serve him breakfast in bed. Such behavior convinces Phil to offer the girls a job for the Summer, working in one of his string of adult bookstores. Plot takes a backseat from here on in as the girls' sympathetic approach to the shop's jittery customers rakes huge profits, veterans Harry Reems and Colleen Brennan reviving the fire of just married romance through the miracle of adult video but only Angel offers hands on service with big mouth shy guy Ron Jeremy.

Internet adult cinema guru Roger T. Pipe recalled in his review that HOT BLOODED was the one tape that would always get rented out at his parents' video store, even though the uncharacteristically discreet display only featured a close-up of its lovely star. The face that launched a thousand ships ? No one ever claimed otherwise but the real news is that she has never been more appealing or rarely seemed like more of a proper person than she does here, mischievous and occasionally even insufferable (her stand-off with Parker's way more effective than a similar set-up in L'AMOUR) without forsaking audience empathy. Her unaffected charm catapults this flick to top spot in a career that spans some two dozen titles and ran the danger of turning into a running joke as she racked up an unprecedented amount of "introducing" credits, rival production companies stumbling all over each other in an effort to convince the carnal consumer that they got to her first. Hindsight provided something of a backlash with longtime fans dismissing her as but one of a legion of ice princesses that littered '80s adult and among the video era's first manufactured stars. Actually going back to watching her work would be all too simple but might ultimately reveal the truth that she was one of the decade's most radiant beauties as screens were radically shrinking from cinema to cathode ray and that she turned out to be a happy carnal camper after all once she overcame her fears of failure and filmed fornication.