HOT TAMALE
Year: 2006
USA DVD: Monarch Video
UK DVD: Icon Home Entertainment
Cast: Randy Spelling, Diora Baird, Carmen Electra, Jason Priestley, Mike Starr, Matt Cedeno, James Best, Beth Grant, Sean Blakemore
Director: Michael Damian
Country: USA
USA: 102 mins
UK: 98 mins
USA Rated: R for violence, language, sexuality and drug content
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language, violence, sex and drug references
USA DVD Release Date: 29 August 2006
UK DVD Release Date: 28 July 2008
Synopsis
Randy Spelling, Jason Priestley and Carmen Electra star in the wacky crime thriller HOT TAMALE.
The film was winner of Best Picture at the Boston International Film Festival and Best Comedy at the Atlanta Dixie Film Festival and is a wild caper with jewel thieves, hit men, sexy femme fatales and lots of laughs along the way.
A small sleepy town in Wyoming is just no place for a young man with dreams of playing the timbale drums in a salsa band. Seizing his destiny, Harlan (Randy Spelling) packs up his car, bids the Midwest adios, and heads west to the Mecca of showbiz wannabes everywhere: Los Angeles.
Stopping along the way at a roadside cafe, Harlan encounters the mysterious Jude (Jason Priestley) who is on the run from two vicious thugs. Jude hides a small bag in Harlan's car, which Harlan doesn't discover until he arrives in L.A. where he plans on staying with his Puerto Rican buddy Caesar.
After his first night in L.A., Harlan awakes to find Caesar gone, but in his place is Caesar's friend, the lovely Tuesday Blackwell (Diora Baird).
Caesar has arranged an audition for Harlan with the local salsa band featuring salsa legend Johnny Polanco. The band rehearses in the middle of a rough Latino neighbourhood where a nice boy from Wyoming like Harlan is a 'fish-out-of-water.' But Harlan surprises everyone - he really can play timbales and the band takes him on.
Meanwhile, the two ruthless thugs chasing Jude have discovered that Harlan's got the missing bag. And so has Jude's former partner in crime, the femme fatale Riley (Carmen Electra). The thugs kidnap Tuesday and leave word that if Harlan wants to see her alive, he had better come up with what they're looking for - a fortune's worth of diamonds last seen in Jude's bag. But there are no diamonds in the bag.
Enlisting the help of his newfound friends from the salsa band and their connections to L.A.'s Latino underworld, Harlan throws himself into a wild rescue mission that has him running one step ahead of the cops and headlong into the grip of a pair of ferocious killers.
DVD EXTRAS
Audio: Dolby Digital 2.0 & 5.1
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen