Just seven years before, the team of Eund Lowe and Victor MacLaglen scored on the silent hit "What Price Glory?" as the antagonistic buddies Flagg and Quirt. That film co- starred them with Dolores Del Rio, the Mexican beauty who became the biggest Latina star of the golden age of cinema. For "Hot Pepper", they got Del Rio's rival, the genuine Mexican Spitfire herself. Lupe Velez, who made no bones about her detestment of the much softer Dolores.
This shows what happens with Quirt and Flagg when they return to civilian life as Lowe struggles to make ends meet while McLaglen ends up a bootlegger who also owns a string of nightclubs. Velez pops into the picture as a stow away on MacLaglen's booze boat, and ending up as a prop in the one-upmanship between the two men. The hot-tempered Velez has the temper trap a starving tiger and can't help but loose her temper as the situation is as far as from way as Alaska is from Mexico. But don't let her diminutive size fool you; At just 5', she's more than able to slug her way out of any macho man's arms, even the foot taller leading men. Just watch get pick up a huge table with missing legs, only falling backwards because of the lack of weight balance.
Several minor musical sequences choreographed by Sammy Lee (Fox studios answer to Busby Berkley) and one song sung by Velez) as well as a hysterical fight segment straight out of the Keystone Cops are among the highlights of this pre-code comedy where in one sequence, Velez seems to be stripping out of her clothes in order to keep Maclaglen from throwing her out. This is one of the most obvious reasons that the code would come in the following year although it seems rather tame now.
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