Hot Child In The City (1987) Leah Ayres (1)

Director: John Florea

Stars: Leah Ayres, Shari Shattuck and Geof Prysirr

Genre: Drama

MPAA Rating: Unrated

Running Time: 85Mins

Tagline: "When you live a life of decadence, there's always a price to pay. "

Synopsis:

{According to IMDB}

When Rachel went to visit her very successful sister in Hollywood, she expected her vacation to be exciting compared to her life in Kansas. She didn't expect her sister's murder.

Renting  and purchasing videocassettes during the 80’s and early 90’s was the norm, and due to the popularity the videocassette market had during that era, studios would release straight to video movies even more. At the time, people didn’t exactly care, or knew very much if the movie had been released in theaters or not. It wasn’t until they took the movie home that they saw what crap they had wasted money on. This movie Hot Child in the City is such example of crap that was released straight to video back then in the market.

 This 87 clunker, aside from having 80’s written all over it, is a bizarre film that I never knew what exactly it wanted to be. I never knew if it wanted to be either:  a drama, horror, thriller, romance or even a music video (there are scenes look like a bad 80’s music video)…I have no clue; it experimented with too many genres, and at the end it never made up its mind on what it wanted to be.  The movie is about a girl named Rachel, who comes down from Kansas to visit her sister living in Los Angeles.  Rachel’s sister invites her over for vacation, to enjoy the city and see her accomplished life as a record producer. Leah will eventually have to cut her vacation short; she never expected her sister to be murdered.

After finding her sister brutally murdered (inside a garbage container) she tries to get a help from the local police, who try their best to question the men who were with her sister that night in the club (where she was before the murder) Eventually the questioning and investigation leads nowhere, and Rachel  must take law into her own hands. From here I thought the movie was going to become an entertaining, cheesy, vengeance flick…that was not the case. It became a boring, terrible, unimaginative film that lead nowhere. We see Leah going around the city, pretending to be her sister, and hooking up with men. Leah actually ends up (spoiler alert) sleeping with the man who killed her sister. If that is supposed to be a twist, then they definitely had no idea what a twist means. To make matters worse, it ends with Rachel living life happily ever after, in a nice mansion, drinking some lemonade with the police officer who didn’t do much to help in the investigation.

The only reason I bought this movie was because it stared Leah Ayres (Bloodsport and The Burning) who I think is a decent actress, but wasn’t given enough roles, at least not enough good roles. I give her credit for giving her best with what she is being given. I have no complains with her acting, my complains are about the film itself. The only good thing about this movie is the music they play; which is all mostly Billy Idol, Lou Reed, Go West, Fun Boy Three, Andd Moore and Nick Gilder. The most recognizable song here is definitely Eyes without a Face from Billy Idol. The rest, unless you are a 80’s music fan, you might perhaps not know. Overall, my advice, don’t buy or watch this movie. It’s obscure and only available on VHS for a reason-because it sucks, that’s why.