Warm Texas Rain

Tuna's comments in white:

Warm Texas Rain is a soft-core noir thriller that started in high gear in a Mexican border town bar, as a group of Marines are celebrating the promotion of Rush (Steven Bauer) to sergeant. The bar is full of atmosphere, strippers, and seedy characters. After a table dance from a lovely anonymous stripper, Annette Michelle Chavez, obviously a friend, dances topless for them. Then a slender, clean cut looking redhead (Frankie Thorn, Bad Lieutenant, Stigmata) and a squeaky clean Tom Cruise boyish grin looking kid walk in. Some hard-cases decide to rape the girl, and Bauer comes to her aid. He ends up killing the bad guy, and is convicted of manslaughter. Cut to him working in a car wash, after serving his two year sentence. Who should drive through, but the redhead. She is grateful as hell, and well-married.

NUDITY REPORT

softcore sex film

see the main commentary

Bauer is given a job as bodyguard to her husband, who is in trouble with some rather unpleasant people who claim he owes them money. The husband doesn't treat Thorn very well, and Bauer ends up in a heavy affair with her. The bad guys have the evil twin of Bauer as their muscle, So, the ending was becoming obvious. Bauer and his counterpart would have to have a final showdown, Bauer and Thorn would plot to kill her husband, and they would live happily ever after. None of that happened. The film started in high gear, and kept me engaged the entire time.

As for the nudity, I have a weakness for natural redheads, and Frankie proves herself a natural redhead several times over. We see all three Bs from her in an undressing scene, a nude swim scene, and two sex scenes. As previously mentioned, there was a lengthy dance by an anonymous stripper in a G-string, and a topless dance from Annette Michelle Chavez. IMDB voters rate it low, and I am at a loss to explain why. Sure, there are better noir thrillers, but none of them are soft-core films, with tons of well-lit nudity, and well edited sex scenes. The acting was more than adequate, and the photography was very nice, with focus and light and all the other niceties that make a film easy to watch.

DVD info from Amazon.

full screen
no meaningful features

Scoop's comments in yellow:

I picked this up because Tuna was enthusiastic about it, and I agree with him. Those IMDb voters - what the hell do they want? It is a very entertaining erotic thriller, with a wildly complicated plot. It has more double crosses than an Orthodox Church, but they were all fun, and it wasn't at all hard to follow. I hate it when they have plot exposition involving off-stage characters whom you have never seen ("and then Rodriguez told Ramirez that Gomez was sleeping with Lopez's wife"), but this film didn't work like that. All of the crosses and double-crosses involved different alliances of the characters we were familiar with. It did suffer from a bit too much excessive tidiness in "economy of plot", in the sense that every character they introduced turned out to be critical in some way to the stings, but I didn't mind that. It was all done in good humor, it wasn't morbidly violent, and the final twists were very cathartic and audience-friendly.

Steven Bauer did a nice job in the lead. (He's a better actor than I thought) Frankie Thorn was gorgeous as the Femme Fatale. There was plenty of frontal nudity from Thorn, a stunningly beautiful and elegant redheaded woman.

The eroticism was handled beautifully, building gradually ala Body Heat. First he saw her dressing. Then he happened to see her skinny dipping. Then he consoled her after she was beaten by her husband, while they were outside in the "warm Texas rain". Then they just had to have each other, so segued into an energetic, passionate sex scene.

I join Tuna in a very enthusiastic thumb up for this - one of the best of the genre, and a successful attempt to blend erotic entertainment with a real movie. I would have enjoyed it even without the sex and nudity, but I also liked the way they handled the sex and nudity!

The Critics Vote

no major reviews online

The People Vote ...

With their votes ... IMDB summary: IMDB readers say 4.0 of 10

IMDb guideline: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence, about like three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, about like two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, about like two stars from the critics. Films under five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film, equivalent to about one and a half stars from the critics or less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My own guideline: A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre. B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre. F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, I give this an enthusiastic thumb up, and a soft-core max grade of C+. (Scoop: agree)