Hot dog... la película

I saw this movie when I was 22. And I just saw the movie again at 52. I have seen it a few times in the past 30 years, and at 52 I think the movie is a great as it was when I was a kid just out of college. I am a skier and snowboarder, and I watch and love the Warren Miller films (may he rest in peace). I also watch and love "Hot Dog... The Movie" because it has great scenery, awesome skiing (though I don't understand the ski ballet bit, no wonder it never made it into the Olympics), epic partying, and the most awesome T&A. Yes, us 50 year olds still love the T&A. I have a Warren Miller film collection, and "Hot Dog... The Movie" sits right there alongside the them as a favorite ski theme movie that I plan to pass down to my children. Along with the Warren Miller films, of course.

Previous entries have trashed this movie, as though it aspired to compete at Cannes and fell woefully short. Lighten-up. This movie was clearly made as a low-budget retread of the time honored "underdog overcomes arrogant favorite" and "boy-meets-girl, boy loses girl, boy wins back girl" themes played out on skis. Think Caddyshack with snow. Is it cheesy? You bet. Is it sophomoric? Certainly. Is it more fun than any other non-Warren Miller ski movie? No doubt. If you want a fun, sometimes silly, mindless ski movie, well, go no further. If you want a "highbrow" skiing movie, well, good luck, no one's made one yet. If you want painful, self important preposterousness try watching Aspen Extreme. Now there's a ski movie with delusions of grandeur. At any rate, Hot Dog never takes itself seriously, and if it suffers for it's gratuitous nudity and simple-minded plot, well, it isn't the first, and won't be the last. But it certainly never pretends to be anything other than what it is - campy low-budget fun with some good non-choreographed ski scenes. Disclaimer: If you don't ski, don't love skiing, or never lived in a ski-town for a season, some of this movie's "charm" may be lost on you.

First rate T&A flick. Bizarre party scenes, seemingly endless amounts of nudity and a guitar serenade so mind-numbingly awful, it leaves you screaming for more! Shannon Tweed looks superb in this, as do all the other featured babes. See how many times you rewind the scene in which our ski hero, commenting on his smarmy German idol, mutters "He's the BEST!" Horrible, yet curiously endearing. You be the judge. 9/10 on the mondo movie scale.

First came "Birth of a Nation," "Intolerance" & "The Battleship Potemkin," and stars like Fairbanks Sr., Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Greta Garbo & Chaplin.

Next came sound and with it "Gone With the Wind," "Citizen Kane," & "Ben Hur." Garbo wanted to be alone, but Gable, Tracy, Cooper, Bogart, Wayne & Hepburn didn't.

Cinema was evolving. An art form was created.

Then came "Hot Dog ... The Movie."

David Naughton wasn't Paul Muni, John Garfield or Claude Rains, but he was like-ably talented.

And incredible babes Tracy Smith, Shannon Tweed and Crystal Smith weren't in the Myrna Loy / Claudette Colbert / Jean Arthur ranks - but then these gorgeous girls d a lot more, and show a lot more than Myrna, Claudette or Jean ever dreamed.

It's good vs. evil plot pitting the hero vs. the bad guy is classic - and, in it's own incredible T&A B movie fest, so is "Hot Dog...The Movie."

I liked the movie from the 80s on. It's true that many of the activities portrayed are not appropriate today. Of course a lot of people hate this movie, but they generally hate this genre of movie, anyway, right?! I was especially moved by the sex scene with Harkin (Patrick Houser) and Sunny (Tracy N. Smith), the guitar serenade (written by folkie John Stewart), the hot tub scene with Shannon Tweed, and the gondola scene. It's very rare for such sex scenes to move me in other like movies of that period: I think that director Peter Markle handled the sex scenes very tastefully.... The skiing scenes were also really well done, also, but one often may see that the stunt skiers are different from the actors (duh!).

It's true, also, that some of the plot contains dumb male humor. However: I remember the names of the actors that I liked in the key romantic and sex scenes, and some others, so the movie did move me....