Chato�s efforts are for naught until Jose Luis learns he has inherited some property in Mexico City from a recently deceased aunt he hardly knew. Upon arriving at the big city, Jose Luis learns that his aunt�s legacy is a whorehouse that has fallen on hard times. Jose Luis gets rid of his inhibitions just in time to make the brothel a successful business. This doesn�t sit well with the conservative neighbors, Honorato and Jovita Ballesteros (Sergio Ramos and Maria Luisa Alcala), who try to shut down the house of ill repute across the street by taking Jose Luis to trial.

THE VERDICT: This is another example of the genre that ruled Mexican cinema in the 80�s along with action thrillers, the sex comedy. This is a trend that began in 1976 with Bellas de Noche, a melodrama that incorporated elements of traditional burlesque. The genre became a lifeline for the producers who had been cut off from the government funding that had kept the industry going since the 50�s because of changing policies.

"Hot Sex in the Little House of Pleasure" has several things going for it. In addition to one of my favorite titles ever, it has a cast that is almost a Who�s Who of the genre, a good premise, enough of a budget to adequately translate it to the screen and musical numbers by Chico Che y la Crisis, a combo that was one of the biggest sellers in Mexico during the 80�s.

The star of the movie also sold a lot of records around the same period. Polo Polo became known for a series of raunchy comedy albums in the mid-80�s that everyone got to hear either by owning the originals or listening to bootlegs, which was far more common. I was in junior high at the time and I still remember some of the routines.

Unfortunately, it doesn�t amount to much. For the first half hour it looks like it might be something special. The movie opens with Jose Luis on trial and the plot gets going when he tells his side of the story. This takes us to a long flashback where the situation is set up. In between fending off both Olivia Collins, who was too old to be playing a teenager but still looked good enough for the part, and Rossy Mendoza, who appeared in a broad range of movies that went from a Santo flick ("Santo cotra los Secuestradores") to a vampire comedy with Capulina ("Capulina contra los Vampiros""), Jose Luis explains to Chato that his mother abhorred sex to the point of refusing to sleep with his father, with the one exception that begat him.

However, Jose Luis is constantly beset by dreams in which both women appear in his bedroom and even the Devil (once again, Cesar Bono) tries to convince him of giving in to temptation, basically by telling him sex is "more fun than Disneyland!". Jose Luis admits he�s intrigued when Chato talks him into visiting some "friends" of his, who turn out to be some hookers. The evening ends disastrously and it�s only when Jose Luis meets the girls who used to work for his late aunt that he finds out what he�s been missing.

Up to this point "Hot Sex in the Little House of Pleasure" is good enough. The joke is that Jose Luis is torn between his upbringing and his urges so the lack of nudity goes along well with this set-up. The problem with the movie is that there�s no pay-off. As usual in this kind of film, the girls of the brothel can�t keep themselves away from Jose Luis, which only adds to his dilemma. I�m not giving anything away by saying that once Jose Luis loses his cherry he becomes insatiable and wears out all of the women who work for him.

The problem I have with "Hot Sex in the Little House of Pleasure" is that there�s very little sex, hot or otherwise, to speak of. It�s not like I watch movies just to get a glimpse of some female flesh, though I�ll admit I don�t terribly mind when that happens. It just bothers me that the screenwriter, Fernando Galiana, and the director, Jesus Fragoso (of "Mexican Ninja" fame), apparently forgot to lose their inhibitions when making this picture.

The only nude scenes in this movie occur when Jose Luis finally gets some play from his employees and since the whole point of the movie is to denounce hypocrisy these scenes should be a lot juicier than they are. I�m not saying they should be more explicit, there�s plenty of hardcore porn out there if I wanted to see that, what I�m trying to say is that it would have been nice to see some kind of celebration of sex.

The way this part of the movie unfolds seems to contradict everything that has gone before. Some of the encounters between Jose Luis and the girls are seen from the point of view of the neighbors, who are constantly spying on the house across the street using a telescope. At this point I couldn�t help but think that the way these brief scenes are shot it�s almost as if the director and to a certain degree the writer, have the same attitude towards sex as the characters they are lampooning.

As I was watching the movie again for the purpose of reviewing it I realized that�s exactly what had always bothered me about it. The filmmakers seem to consider sex as something dirty and sinful. I guess Catholic guilt got the better of them. This is particularly true of the scenes that show the whorehouse as a successful business, which include little that could be considered arousing and are mostly an excuse for Polo Polo to rehash some of the jokes from his records.

By and large, Mexicans tend to be more conservative than people from other parts of the world. At the time "Hot Sex..." was made it was highly unusual for this subject to be openly discussed in the media, and yet there were all kinds of erotic and pornographic material that could be purchased from street vendors. These smut peddlers openly displayed their wares in full sight along the busiest streets in the city and made no effort to cover up the frank nature of the magazines and videotapes they sold.

By the same token, while a number of actresses would refuse to do nude scenes, there were many others who were known for baring it all. In the case of "Hot Sex...", Olivia Collins and, to my knowledge, Alejandra Peniche, wouldn�t do nudity. With the other female members of the cast it�s a different story. I don�t keep a record of this kind of thing but I can remember watching Maria Cardinal in Las Movidas del Mofles, Rosario Escobar in Pancho el Sancho, Diana Ferreti in Un Macho en el Salon de Belleza and Yirah Aparicio in La Negra Tomasa with nothing on. Those are just the movies I�ve seen, I�m sure there must be many more examples in these ladies� filmographies.

In a nutshell, "Hot Sex in the Little House of Pleasure" is like an X-rated video where the performers turn off the lights before getting down to business. As a matter of fact, I can�t recall watching any Mexican movie that was truly erotic. Those I�ve seen, like Los Placeres Ocultos and Lucrecia, Cronica de un Secuestro have left me cold, in every sense of the word. Isela Vega, who you might remember from Sam Peckinpah�s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, appeared in a number of films in the 70�s that were billed as erotic and maybe if I could see them uncut I would change my tune. They�re shown on TV, minus the nudity, which sometimes amounts to more than 15 minutes of missing footage, so I don�t bother watching them.

As for the rest of the cast, most of them appear too briefly to stand out. Cesar Bono (from "The Fearless Vampire Hunters") and Sergio Ramos deliver good performances and are allowed enough screen time to do it, the other cast members are confined to a few lines of dialogue each. Some were experienced actors, like Gerardo Zepeda, a regular from a number of Santo movies who plays a pimp in this movie. Others would go on to bigger and better things, such as Oscar Fentanes who plays the unavoidable gay stereotype in "Hot Sex..., and would go on to write and direct his own projects, i.e.:El Lambiscon Verde, a Green Hornet parody.

If you want to get acquainted quickly with most of the actors and actresses who appeared in Mexican sex comedies in the 80�s it�s worth a look. Otherwise, you may want to try other examples of the genre. "Hot Sex in the Little House of Pleasure" is somewhat amusing but I think most of the humor would get lost in the translation, and other than a few good jokes there�s not a lot on display here.

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The image was taken from Yirah Aparicio�s official website. It�s definitely for adults only, and I think it�s the only one of its kind run by a Mexican actress.