Tijuana After Midnite

It's not often I feel The Urge to fast forward a movie, but this film created that urge. I saw it on the strength of "Robot Monster", which is one of my all time favourite guilty pleasure films. But this film, I think it only went for about 70 minutes, felt like hours. The most unerotic strippers ever - unattractive, moved like pack horses, and the music they stripped too, just what is these guys idea of erotic music, it sounded like it was from a Jerry Lewis movie, and they were stripping to it!?! (I like Jerry Lewis by the way). And these two comedians that link the strippers, the jokes must have been old when they performed them, but they went at every lame joke at 100 miles an hour, dragging every joke out, telegraphing every punch line, making me squirm and beg for mercy. And to top it off, I think the camera only moved twice, with just as many edits. A film that truley is...THE PITS. Do not watch this film expecting a so bad it's funny laugh, you'll simply want to kill yourself, I'm still trying to kick the Prozac.

Everyone who has rated this film so far has given it a "1", the lowest possible rating. Compared to BARRY LYNDON, KUNDUN, GRAND ILLUSION, and the like, I'm sure it deserves a "1"...or less! However, is there anyone who WAS NOT expecting a one-take, crudely shot on a 15' X 20' set in a day or two series of strippers and cornball sex-based comic routines? Unlike DREAM FOLLIES (which is better known because of the Lenny Bruce connection), this film takes place entirely in one set that pretends to be a small club. We see a stage from which the strippers appear and do their routines--generally doing one routine, retreating back to the stage and curtain, and then coming out and doing an encore where they strip down to pasties and thin panties. A guitarist is seen on the side of the set (two guitarists in one shot, although I don't hear a second guitar in the music played during the strip sequences, and no other musician--the piano or sax or trumpet players, for instance--is seen) here and there, and he seems to be accidentally in the frame. His initials are seen on his amp in one scene, but obscured in another. Perhaps some L.A. music historian can tell us who he is. His solos on the soundtrack are excellent, but from my perspective I'm not sure he is playing with his fingers what I'm hearing on the soundtrack, which has me wondering why he was included in the film shoot? Perhaps he was playing a rhythm to which the dancer danced on the set, but it was not recorded and the "strip-jazz" music on the soundtrack was added later? The "plot" here involves two men--played by Snuffy Smith and Harry Keaton/Keatan (star of many classics of LA exploitation such as GUN GIRLS, THE VIOLENT YEARS, GIRL GANG, etc.)--who have no money, but decide to go to a strip club and eat and drink and run up a big bill, then get in an argument, go into the alley and fight over it, and split without paying the bill. There is also a compere who runs the club, someone who alternately sounds like he is badly doing a French AND a Spanish accent. This "plot" is the glue between the dance sequences, and I'd estimate that the body of the film is about 65% comedy and 35% dance. About 45 minutes into the film, when the initial "Plot" is concluded and I saw a cue mark in the corner of the frame making me think the film was over, it goes on for one more reel with about 8 minutes of silent pantomime comedy featuring Smith and Keaton separately with strippers at the table where their earlier scenes were shot, and then one final strip routine with a girl who is something of a contortionist. While these final scenes are entertaining, they ruin any pace the earlier 7/8 of the film had and give the final product an even more artless feel. It must be said that Rita Ravell is an attractive and sexy lady and one can see why she was successful at burlesque. My personal favorite, though, is the lady who slaps herself throughout her dance and roughly juggles her breasts by slapping them. If I were in the inebriated sleazy audience that saw this film originally, I would have hooted and hollered during her sequence. There's nothing particularly special about this film and few of director Phil Tucker's unique touches (photographer/editor W. Merle Connell, a name well-known to fans of z-grade LA exploitation, may well have "made" this film without much involvement from Tucker). Still, it's a window into a world that has been long-gone for over 40 years now, and as such it has value as a document of a unique piece of Americana--the burlesque show, both strippers and comics. It's an entertaining example of what it is, and I found it a pleasant way to waste 55 minutes on a boring evening--and I am completely sober and NOT under the influence of anything stronger than diet soda. If you've never seen a Phil Tucker film before, start with Dance Hall Racket and then Broadway Jungle, but this film achieves what it set out to do, so I cannot give it a rating of "1". By the standards of this seedy cheapjack genre, it's actually slightly above average.