Not much effort went into cranking out HOT CHILD IN THE CITY, an obvious attempt to tap the "underage" porn market so popular in the '70s. It's entertaining on a 100% mindless level.
With Roberta Findlay behind the camera (and still-controversial producer credit going to J. Angel Martine, debated whether that's her pseudonym as well), filmmaker John Christopher opted for minimal content, amounting to almost an all-sex opus. Sex scenes are shot MOS, with an endless (and tiresome) soundtrack of disco songs meant to mesmerize the viewer.
Marcia Minor and Rikki O'Neal, usually small-role porn actresses but given the star treatment here, are two teens heading for Girl Scout camp who decide to take the next bus to Manhattan instead, thinking they'll make a fortune there (somehow) on their month's vacation before Christmas. Film opens with Rikki in bed with her well-hung boyfriend Ron Hudd and it's a full 10 minutes before any dialog or plot is introduced.
Arrived at Times Square they're immediately picked up by a seedy-looking pimp, played by erstwhile director Carter Stevens, who was in a career transition moving from straight porn to helming bondage/s&m spectaculars. He has no trouble dominating the slow-on-the-draw pair of young femmes, getting them to service him before he gives them employment.
The job turns out to be whoring, and after peeping at a couple of rooms containing prostitution in progress (an excuse to pad the running time with old loops), the girls are sent on an assignment, shtuping Herschel Savage and Bobby Astyr.
They come back with an astounding $1000 earned from this session, and good ole Carter takes it, giving them just a Jackson each for walking around money, claiming he will keep their 50% share of the proceeds as safekeeping. Silly finish has the gals outsmarting him and heading home with a huge amount (estimated at $50,000) of the pimp's ill-gotten gains.
Both Rikki O'Neal and Marcia Minor have amazing racks, but are rather plain looking, evidently why they so rarely got the spotlight roles. I'm not sure if IMDb has their credits reversed, but the shorter of the two (credited as Rikki) truly looks underage here, in the baby fat manner of underage Traci Lords 5 years later.
DVD release bowdlerizes the plot in its back-of-box synopsis, claiming that they're breaking into the movie business rather than the actual prostitution of the real storyline. In the back-home scenes that bookend the film there is an odd sound playback defect, whereby the young gals' voices (as well as b.f. Hudd) are about an octave lower, playing at too slow a speed. At first I was thrown by the ultra-husky timbre, but the Manhattan scenes establish their normal speaking mode.
Other credits are minor, with John Holmes' old recycled porn loop looking grainy part of the time. He is serviced by three women, including a huge-breasted girl who is completely wasted here, but HOT CHILD is so hastily made that Stevens and the gals comment on him being with TWO girls, and the error is left in -per the usual "no retakes allowed" rule of zero-budget porn.
