The Hot Oven (1975) was released in The Golden Age of Pornography. It is not the first but certainly one of the earlier mainstream pornos that featured pizza delivery, although there are no dick-through-the-pizza shots to be found. According to the director, Carter Stevens, the pizza delivery plot was primarily based around the fact they had a pizzeria where the owners would let them shoot, so they took full advantage of it.
We open on cheerful, upbeat piano music and a title card, which I appreciate, and an accompanying cartoon, which elevates it even further:
We then intercut back and forth between our star, Eric Edwards, aka Brad, playing the piano, and the opening credits, where (for reasons that are unclear) all the performers have been identified with the surnames of “Smith” or “Jones”, rather than whatever their stage names are. Eventually we get a hands shot of Brad tickling the ivories, indicating that either they’re very good at matching the tracks, or he can actually play the piano in real life. We pan down further, revealing an unidentified brunette who is sucking his dick.
Either way, being able to play that effectively (or finger-sync that effectively) is impressive. Hats off to Brad.
This fellatio / piano / credits sequence goes on for some time, and eventually things end the way they normally do, and we get a round of applause for some reason, even though they’re not on stage, (although clearly they should be, what a couple of pros). The phone rings, and it’s Brad’s ex-girlfriend, Gwen. She’s immediately suspicious because he sounds weird because he’s still getting head? Except he just orgasmed? I guess the film is saying Brad is such a stud he can orgasm, stay hard, and keep right on going. That, or whoever cut this together had no idea what they were doing.
Brad: “Just sitting here, catching my breath, after running up the stairs.”
Gwen: “Brad, there aren’t any stairs in your apartment.”
They improvise a bit, but the long and short of it is that Gwen is married but she and Brad are having an affair, so she suggests they meet up at ‘the restaurant’. Brad orgasms a second time, agrees, hangs up, and the brunette is STILL sucking his dick. Wow. I’m starting to feel bad for her, she never catches a break.
We cut over to the restaurant – this being the infamous ‘Hot Oven’ – and the staff are fucking in the kitchen. Nice. I love a good health code violation. In the dining room, Brad and Gwen catch up. Brad’s a chemistry grad student and failed songwriter. He orders a double cheeseburger, which is weird choice for an Italian restaurant. Gwen lights up a cigarette. Ah, remember smoking indoors?
Anyway, Gwen’s husband is successful (he owns the restaurant they’re in, and is opening two more locations) but neglectful (hence the cheating on him).
Brad mentions he’s publishing a list of the old ‘dirty’ ballads he used to write for Gwen, and brings up a fond memory of the time they stayed up until four in the morning thinking of rhymes for the word ‘quick’. Yeah. That’s a hard one to rhyme.
Gwen: “Let’s see. There’s uh, dick. And lick. Stick. Prick.”
Brad: “Christ, you haven’t changed, have you?”
We cut back to the kitchen where the cooks have pulled the waitress Penny into their fucking:
Jamie: “Hey, let’s try the back door, huh?”
Penny: “Are you crazy, use something?”
Jamie: “Like what?”
Penny: “Vegetable oil, on the shelf behind me.”
We get a shot of Jamie groping around blindly and picking up a jar of Tabasco sauce by mistake:
He doesn’t notice, so he shakes Tabasco all over his wet dick, and then screams in agony. Which. Fair enough. That’s pretty funny.
Brad and Gwen leave the Hot Oven to head back to Brad’s place and get their fuck on. Nothing terribly interesting happens, but I’ll take the opportunity to continue my investigation that I began with 1972’s Deep Throat on when, exactly, pornographers learned how to shoot porn well. Now we’re in 1975, and…they’re still terrible.
After an opening shot that is mostly Brad’s ass, and a couple close-ups of extremely hairy genitals slapping, we get a reaction shot from Brad, instead of Gwen, more genitals slapping, a piledriver, and missionary. Finally we get a semi-acceptable doggy, even though Gwen is staring straight down at the bed, although they do throw the audience a bone and do a couple intercuts of Gwen licking her lips. Now, call me crazy, but I feel like your audience of predominantly heterosexual men would like the camera to focus on the beautiful naked woman instead of, say, a dude’s hairy ass, or a close-up of a dude’s face. Maybe you could even try to arrange the fucking so you see some titties once or twice? Just a little tip for you.
Afterwards, they cuddle while Gwen smokes a post-coital cigarette. They chat about how it would be nice to see each other more often, so Gwen suggests he come and be a delivery boy for the Hot Oven. Brad objects because the pay is crap, but Gwen says there are “fringe benefits”. Apparently they are on or around a college campus, and this would be a great way to meet coeds.
Brad: “I’ve been looking for a chance to try my…”
Gwen: “What did you say?”
Brad: “Never mind!”
Brad cackles gleefully and we cut to Brad at the Hot Oven manager’s office. Brad has offered to work at a lower pay than the other delivery boys, as long as he has first crack at deliveries for any college coeds. Glick, the manager, is incensed at this offer.
Glick: “No way! You’re practically asking the Hot Oven to pimp for you! You’re out of your mind.”
Brad: “I can see you need some persuading.”
Glick: “There’s nothing you could say that would persuade me.”
Brad: “I didn’t plan on saying anything.”
Ominous! Either Brad is going to fuck this guy, or he’s going to fuck this guy up, right? Instead, Brad goes to the door and pulls in a brunette (who I believe is the same piano fellatio girl from the first scene). Piano Fellatio gets down to business on Glick’s dick, while Brad politely excuses himself. Jesus. What is with this guy, that he just has girls at his beck and call every time he needs someone to blow a pizzeria manager?
So Glick gets blown and it doesn’t look like he’s enjoying it:
But things end the way they normally do, and Glick pops out of the office, still naked and dripping with spit and semen.
Glick: “You can start work tomorrow, Collins, on your terms. Know any more like her?”
Brad: “You can have her.”
Oh. So she’s a sex slave that he just trafficked, or he views women as disposable objects that he can shunt off to casual acquaintances without so much as a by-your-leave. Let’s see which theory plays out!
We cut over to Brad’s room and he’s setting up a camera inside his curtains. It’s a 1970s film camera (ergo enormous) so it’s very, very visible. He also hangs a large calendar prominently on the wall. Don’t worry: these will be important later. These will PAY OFF.
The next day Brad arrives at work and Gwen (who is filling in) directs him into the kitchen to check in with Jack, the main cook. Brad arrives in the kitchen and finds that everyone is fucking, which he takes in stride.
Jack suggests Brad grab some food and he’ll call him when the first to-go order comes in. Yeah, I would not suggest eating anything that was cooked in that kitchen unless you’re a fan of special sauce.
Later, the restaurant staff is all sitting around the table not working. Brad says he has a reputation to uphold, which sets up the main plotline:
Brad: “Tell you what. I’ll make a bet with each one of these jokers. $75 bucks. I’ll bet you that I can make it with at least one of the chicks I deliver to every night for a whole two weeks.”
The others are suspicious, but Brad says he’ll provide positive proof, so they all agree, and shake on it. For context, $75 in 1975 is worth about $419 in 2023, so this is a pretty decent bet, especially if you’re working for minimum wage at a pizza joint.
As if on cue, the phone rings with the first coed order. We see Brad deliver a pizza to Bunny (aka Susan Sloan) and make change, although we don’t hear any dialogue. We then cut back to the Hot Oven at the end of the day as the staff is stacking chairs, and Bunny shows up. She’s apparently Brad’s date for that evening. Jamie is suspicious.
Jamie: “How much is he paying you for this?”
Bunny: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Brad and Bunny head out, and the staff consult the receipt book and confirm that this is the same Bunny who ordered a pizza that Brad delivered earlier in the day. We cut over to Brad’s room and he subtly switches on his camera and the two of them get busy summiting Fuck Mountain. See, that’s his plan: he’s going to surreptitiously record his sexual encounters, then play back this illicit pornography to all his coworkers to prove (alongside the calendar on the wall that we all know would be impossible to fake) that he’s actually fucking these coeds.
Nowadays that’s the type of shit that would (hopefully) land you in a pound-the-ass state prison, but this was 1975 and nobody gave a fuck about nonconsensual sex tapes.
Brad and Bunny fuck and it’s about as poorly shot as the previous sex scene, so let’s skip past it. We get a brief montage of Brad delivering pizzas, mugging for the camera, and showing his coworkers the evidence.
Eventually he delivers a pizza to Sherry Cass, who takes it inside and is about to start eating when her boyfriend Tom, played by Ken Cass, bursts in.
Tom: “Wait a second there, you’re on a diet remember!”
Sherry: “It’s a small pie, I just want one piece!”
Tom: “I’m telling you, you’re on a diet, remember, and don’t forget it! You can’t have one piece!”
I want to beat this guy to death with a shovel. Tom says instead that he’s going to eat the entire pizza.
We cut back to The Hot Oven where the staff is sharing pizza and beers in the kitchen.
Brad: “Well, I just gave Glick my notice. The two weeks are up, I think each of you owes me $75.”
The staff is bitchy about this, because, as Jamie says, if they thought he would do it, they never would have made the bet in the first place. Yeah, dumbass, that’s how fucking betting works. Anyway, management agrees to withhold $75 from everyone’s paycheck and send it to Brad, which I’m fairly confident is illegal.
Jamie: “Brad, there’s one thing I want to know. How’d you do it?”
Brad: “Well, actually it was kind of simple. You see, I’m a chemistry student, and I have formulated the world’s first genuine aphrodisiac.”
Penny: “Aphro-what?”
Jack: “Aphrodisiac. You know, you eat it, it makes you horny, like Spanish Fly.”
Brad: “Right. So I just sprinkled a little bit on every pizza and sandwich I delivered. Flirted with the ladies a little bit, and it was easy. I also taped a little card on every pizza box. It says, ‘Hi there, my name is Brad Collins! I get off work at 2 a.m. Why don’t you stop by the Hot Oven and maybe we can have some fun?’ So the girls eat the spiked food, get a load of the card, a head full of ideas, it was simple. Out of the 12 to 15 girls I delivered to every night, the odds are it was going to work on at least one! Right? So I’ll just take my little bottle of aphrodisiac and be on my way.”
So…in addition to surreptitiously recording his sexual encounters and playing them for his coworkers, he first drugged all these girls with an illicit substance? That’s going to be a bit yikes from me.
Brad tries to find the bottle where he foolishly left it out on the shelf, but he can’t find it. It turns out, Jamie mistook it for the olive oil, and has been putting this potent Fuck Potion on the food all day! The staff is horrified, and run out into the dining area, where everything has devolved into a giant orgy:
Fun fact, the dude sitting on the far right and eating by himself is Carter Stevens, who directed this flick.
The staff joins in the orgy, and we cut over to the Casses, where Tom has just finished off the last of the pizza which we now know was dosed with Fuck Juice. It suddenly kicks in and he begins moving aggressively towards his girlfriend.
Sherry: Tom, what’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with – stop, please don’t, wait until we’re married, no you promised you’d wait, Tom please no!”
So, the final twenty-two minutes of this porno will be the entire restaurant and patrons of the Hot Oven engaging in a massive orgy, while Tom rapes his girlfriend. To really hammer home the juxtapositions, when we’re at the orgy, cheerful upbeat music is playing, and when we cut over to the rape, it instantly goes to dead silence, presumably so we can better hear Sherry begging Ken to stop. It’s deeply unpleasant.
We get shots of the cast eating pizza as they’re fucking, and then one horrifying shot of someone sucking a dick that has spaghetti wrapped around it, an image I wish I could shoot out of my head with a bolt gun, but if I have to see it, you’ll have to at least see a censored version.
After maybe ten minutes or so, the Ken / Sherry rape scene now has music, and she’s stopped begging for him to stop, so I guess we’re supposed to conclude she’s into it now? It’s a little hard to tell, because Sherry’s facial expression is like a woman desperately trying to masturbate to completion while simultaneously holding in a flood of diarrhea caused by food poisoning from bad food truck ceviche.
Anyway. That’s about it. Eventually things end the way they normally do and we end abruptly and everyone lived happily ever after or something.
So what did we learn? Well, porn has a consent problem, but we’ve known about that, the 1970s had a filming problem, and the Oral Sex Reciprocity Scale has, perhaps, actually improved over time? I normally don’t include the Scale in these types of reviews, so this won’t count for the official statistics, but this has to be seen to be believed:
- Fellatio: 23:47
- Cunnilingus: 0:00
That’s right. In this film’s 68-minute runtime, there’s almost TWENTY-FOUR minutes of women sucking dicks, and not a single male character goes down on a female for a single second in this movie. (If you want to get technical, there are 50 seconds of cunnilingus in it, but it’s woman-on-woman). It’s impressively bad.
Kissing: Yes