Hot T-Shirts

1980
Directed by Chuck Vincent
Written by Chuck Vincent and Bill Slobodian

Hot T-Shirts may have soaked into the world in 1980, but it is pure 1970’s. The soundtrack is all disco, all the time. We got disco clubs, disco songs, and montages with disco themes. You cannot escape the disco. The plot of the film, as much as there is on, is that a guy runs wet t-shirt contests to drum up business in his failing bar. Sure, there are minor subplots involving the city vs. a local college and censorship problems, but most of them dissolve away as the film gets to the main plot, girls in wet t-shirts.

Hot T-Shirts seems custom made for the drive-in circuit, coming out a few years before the VCR revolution swept across America and moved the location where millions of Americans viewed softcore films. Part of a pack of former drive in films that aren’t available on DVD (that I know of) that I acquired in trade, but as it is the only one not sealed deep away in a box at the moment, it will be the first one up.

The cast is largely people who did little acting work and went on to do no more acting. The only one I found who went on to other things was Corinne Wahl, who played a character I don’t remember (probably one of the wet t-shirt contestants.) She was a Penthouse Pet and later went on to be a Penthouse Pet again and the Penthouse Pet of the Year and got all the honors and benefits that go with that. There is also some interesting information about the director, Chuck Vincent. Chuck Vincent was a writer/director/producer/editor, which many low-budget filmmakers are out of necessity. His production company Platinum Pictures churned out a lot of hardcore films through the 70s and early 80s including on called Sex Crimes 2084 which must be awesome. His softcore fare aside from Hot T-Shirts included Summer Camp, Hollywood Hot Tubs, and Warrior Queen. He died of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 51.

The soundtrack is a bunch of disco songs mostly performed by the same artist. There is more disco in Hot T-Shirts than in Disco Stu’s garage. I don’t know what that comparison means, except to say there is a lot of disco. The opening song declares “My body is wet!” which is probably as close as we are going to get to a Hot T-Shirts Theme Song.

Joe (Ray Holland) – Owner of a bar that is failing…until he gets the idea to exploit women! Then all his money problems are solved and his girl decides to marry him. The lesson is: Exploit Women! Charlie (Glenn Mure) – Charlie runs a junk place with his dad, so the college girls all hate him because he’s a business owner and not a trust fund baby majoring in goofing off. He manages to get the head cheerleader Charlotte due to the fact that he needed some sort of story arc. June (Stephanie Lawlor) – Girlfriend of Joe, and professor at the local college. She won’t marry Joe, because. She also coaches the cheerleading squad. I don’t know what college department she teaches in. Charlotte (Laura Osment) – Head cheerleader at the college. She ends up with Charlie at the end of the film after his aggressive pursuit campaign of being sleazy. Leads her girls to wet T-shirt victory. Violet (Pauline Rose) – One of Joe’s employees who cannot keep her legs together even if you stapled them. Pops (Nathan Tamarin) – The bartender at Joe’s who is awesome, too bad Nathan Tamarin never did anything else except be awesome in Hot T-Shirts. That should be on his tombstone, but his tombstone probably has some garbage about being a loving husband and father and other boring junk on it. Spice it up, people!