Don Schain is probably best known for directing his wife and muse, Cheri Caffaro, in the infamous, low-budget Ginger exploitation trilogy (Ginger, The Abductors and Girls Are For Loving). Too Hot to Handle marks her final film before completely disappearing from the public eye. As for her director and one-time husband, Schain moved away from fronting grindhouse sleaze to establish himself as a prolific line producer for TV and mainstream features, eventually handling production for everything from the cult sorority classic H.O.T.S. to Disney’s smash-hit High School Musical franchise.
Co-written by Schain alongside Jan-Michael Sherman and Don Buday (who famously penned KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park), Too Hot to Handle casts Caffaro as Samantha Fox—a jet-setting, high-society assassin who arrives in the Philippines aboard her luxury yacht to systematically liquidate a syndicate of five notorious gangsters. Rather than standard gunplay, Samantha dispatches her targets in wildly creative and brutal ways, from suffocating a masked S&M enthusiast with a plastic bag to shoving a rival operative headfirst into a bubbling mud bath wired with live electrodes.
Hot on her trail is Manila police inspector Domingo De La Torres (Aharon Ipalé) and his quick-witted partner Sanchez (played by Filipino exploitation icon Vic Diaz). Of course, despite being on opposite sides of the law, Domingo falls hard for her—and chances are, viewers will too. Caffaro certainly isn’t your conventional Hollywood sex symbol, nor is she particularly adept at executing realistic martial arts or action choreography. Yet, she possesses an effortless, unexplainable charisma and screen presence that single-handedly carries the entire film through its most bizarre and campy detours.
You can watch this on Tubi.
