Tropical Heat

This shoddy excuse for erotica-thriller is probably exactly what you'd expect from Jagmohan 'Jag' Mundhra. Although I became an instant fan after 'The Other woman', his previous and later efforts failed to live up to par.

The story goes to India and revolves around a murder mystery surrounding the Raja's death and her widowed british wife. The insurance investigator, as usual, gets more than what he bargained for and gets entangled in the web of sex and deceit.

Lee Anne Beaman's scenes of importance are poor and almost irritating at times. The english woman and investigator's sex scenes are even worse, (one of the tired scenes portrays the couple making love on the edge of a waterfall among the rocks! what the hell?)

The only saving grace of the movie is the dark and raw beauty of Asha Siewkumar, who of course is not noted for her acting abilities. She isn't extraordinarily pretty, but very very sexy.

Tropical Heat (unrated version reviewed here) was all right. I've seen better. Rick Rossovich, who played Steve Martin's foil in Roxanne, plays a P.I. who is given what seems to be a straightforward case: Go to India and see if a British woman's papers are legit, allowing her to claim her husband's wealth after he was stomped by an elephant(!). Everything seems fine until a relative of the dead man shows up and pleads to Rossovich that he was murdered. Not only that, Rossovich also has a torrid affair with the widow, played by a delicious Maryam D'Abo. And so, the search for the truth comes up when it turns out that other associates of the Maharajah are dead as well.

Tropical Heat was filmed in India, and it's probably a great showcase for this country. The acting is O.K., although it seems that some of the actors had their voices dubbed. Yes, this is a MFV erotic thriller, and the scenes here with D'Abo and Rossovich are hot stuff. Asha Siewkumar, playing the Maharajah's relative, is a knockout, she's the Kira Reed of India. LeeAnn Beaman is cute, but her "scene" with Rossovich is tepid, and she hasn't got a great body nor great acting skills for this genre. I'd see it again if it comes up, it's pretty clever.

After her maharajah husband is stomped to death by an elephant, Beverly (Maryam D'Abo) goes to Los Angeles to file a $5 million life insurance claim. The insurance adjusters are suspicious (though Beverly should be suspicious of the insurance company given that it appears to do business out of a hotel conference room) and hire P.I. Gravis (Rick Rossovich) to follow Beverly back to India and investigate. Naturally, Beverly and Gravis fall in lust with each other, and naturally, things aren't what they appear. The daughter of the maharajah's elephant trainer (busty Asha Siewkumar) arouses Gravis' suspicions, among other things, but can they uncover the truth before they both end up dead?

It's not every erotic thriller that has a death by elephant at its core, so for that reason alone "Tropical Heat" sets itself apart from other movies in its genre. The India setting is another aspect that makes this direct-to-video thriller unique. But apart from the killer elephant and exotic locale, there's not much in "Tropical Heat" that hasn't been seen before, and that includes D'Abo nude. The movie is further hindered by dialog that sounds as if it was lifted from a Hindi-to-English phrase book and production values reminiscent of a 1980s porn video (albeit one of the higher quality porn videos). D'Abo is a mediocre actress but she's Meryl Streep in comparison to the rest of the cast, whose acting ranges from almost passable (Rossovich, Siewkumar) to second-grader-in-a-school-play (Govind Rao as the coroner; Brian Tracy as head of the insurance company). A call out to Lee Anne Beaman, as a sexy insurance adjuster, whose performance suggests she learned her craft doing ads for singles hotlines on late night TV.

When it comes to the erotic part of this genre exercise, "Tropical Heat" mostly delivers, though director Jag Mundhra has made sexier—and certainly better—movies. Much of the softcore action looks like it would be better appreciated as a series of still photos, which might have been enough for 1993 but isn't likely to satisfy audiences in the Internet age. If you must see any of the leads—D'Abo, Rossovich, Beaman, Siewkumar—nude, "Tropical Heat" is the movie for you. Otherwise, these tropics are only lukewarm.

a typical Jag Mundhra film, with a decent amount of nudity sprinkled throughout. let's face it, this guy isn't a cinematic visionary. and u know what to expect in a film like this. as far as erotic thrillers go, this was good, with the added bonus of being set mostly in India (for that exotic touch). nice to see Asha Siewkumar in the buff, too.

Nice sets highlight this tremendously bad film about an insurance investigator in india. Bad actingly, somewhat unattractive leads the worst plot this side of an italian horror film. The cinematography, music and sex scenes also all suck tremendously. Skip it!