Hot Dog... The Movie is significant to me for two reasons. First because it's the movie that started my odd compulsion to watch any comedy based around skiing or snowboarding and second because it marked the first, of many, times I'd see Shannon Tweed naked. Thankfully, even today, I can still tell you that it's also an amusing little slice of 80s T&A goodness that offers up enough raunchy humour, naked skin and (oh so sweet) skiing footage to keep you entertained for its entire 96 minutes.

After witnessing a credits sequence with lots of mountain skiing stunts while a badly dated song blares on the soundtrack ("Nothing feels quite like the top of the hill...") we're introduced to seemingly naïve Harkin (Patrick Houser) who is headed to the peaks of Squaw Valley to compete in the annual freestyle competition. Along the way he picks up plucky hitchhiker Sunny (Tracy Smith) and they're quickly attracted to each other despite her sarcastic attempts to thwart him from getting into her pants. Soon they're at a hotel where the clerk answers the desk bell fully naked (!) and, after a night where nothing happens, Sunny decides to come along with him to Squaw.

After arriving at the resort they find a place to stay and Harkin is befriended by washed up former star skier Dan O'Callahan (David Naughton) and his rag-tag crew that includes such clichés as the horny loser, the stereotyped Asian and token female member. He's drawn into a rivalry with Austrian champion Rudi (John Patrick Reger, sporting a ridiculous fake accent) and, in between scenes of them all competing (that are decent save the kind of gay "ski ballet"), there's your usual batch of hijinks that includes a rowdy wet t-shirt contest, a roughshod ball hockey type game that offers up scraps and slapstick, an outrageous party where the aforementioned Tweed goes all hot tub on us and a goofy finale containing the "Chinese Downhill" where skiers don costumes and sport weapons in a sort of Mad Max race to the finish. There's also the expected romantic love triangle between Houser, the rich skiing seductress Tweed and Smith that's pretty tame and only benefits us because Smith, who is certainly cute, takes off her clothes.

With veteran Naughton (An American Werewolf in London) anchoring the cast, sort of like Tim Matheson did in Up the Creek, his co-stars are given plenty of opportunity to steal a few scenes here and there. Houser is your standard hero but has an affable charm and Smith (Bachelor Party) is nice to look at with Sunny's brash side managing to be endearing. As the non-"Ladies Man" Squirrel, Frank Koppala gets a handful of chuckles as he stumbles around a party to Duran Duran's "Hungry Like a Wolf" trying to get laid and has an encounter on a gondola. Appearing in only her second movie (the first being the underrated killer rat flick, Of Unknown Origin), Playboy Playmate Tweed does what Tweed does best - namely getting naked and simulating sex. Reger hams it up as our baddie and that accent must be heard to be believed. James Saito gets the most quotable line here with "What the f*ck is a Chinese Downhill?"

As sports comedies go Hot Dog... The Movie makes for a fun evening if you shut your brain off. It has all the elements in place that most 80s flicks like this had and in the hands of director Peter Markle and writer Mike Marvin it's probably better than it deserves to be. Markle would go on to make my second favourite hockey movie Youngblood (of course, Slap Shot is number one) while Marvin would direct the pretty kick-ass "vehicular revenge" flick The Wraith as well as the similarly titled (and sadly not on DVD) Hamburger: The Motion Picture. (Chris Hartley, 10/15/13)

Directed By: Peter Markle.
Written By: Mike Marvin.

Starring: David Naughton, Patrick Houser, Tracy Smith, John Patrick Reger.