Strip-Tease da Morte

I like this movie. It was my first movie that I ever appeared in. I am the guy playing guitar on a bench and get robbed , right before the body gets set on fire. We shot all of that ,that night. The fire scene as well,,,very cool to watch that unfold.Shot at or about 8pm in the park downtown L.A. and was a little bit cold. Greg was less than receptive on the set,,UNLIKE KAY who was very nice and sweet. I also struck up a chat with the script supervisor who was an actress (cant remember her name thou) and she was very nice and good looking. This movie is slow at times but still has depth and a Good plot line. Peace B

Roger Corman the king of the B movie usually has pretty interesting movies to watch and with this one it's not the greatest still it's a watch for it's story of a strip club being stalked by a killer as strippers are being murdered one by one! At the Rock Bottom dance club in L.A. one by one strippers are turning up dead and this has a detective named Cody(Kay Lenz from 1986's "House")to go undercover as a stripper to get inside the club and strip to help find the killer! On stage she meets some wild characters as these girls are strange they have family problems, drug problems still that doesn't take away from the fact that they look sexy dancing on the pole in their outfits and look good in their sexy colored bras! This film leads you down the dark and wild wicked mean streets of Los Angeles it also stars Greg Evigan(from "BJ and the Bear" and "My Two Dads" fame)as Cody's partner friend and one night stand. Overall this is an exciting suspense sexy thriller that twist with a surprise find when the killer is revealed!

My review was written in June 1987 after a screening at Cine 2 theater on Manhattan's 42nd St.

"Stripped to Kill" is a solid little thriller set in the world of topless dancing. Nearing the end of its regional theatrical run, pic is likely to do well in the home video market on the basis of its exploitation angles.

Kay Lenz stars as a policewoman in L. A. assigned by her partner Greg Evigan to go undercover, posing as a stripper to catch a serial killer of dancers at a local club. She gets a dancing job from club owner Norman Fell after winning an amateur sriptease contest there with help from an audience stacked with off-duty cops.

Scripters Katt Shea Ruben (former actress who also makes her helming debut here) and Andy Ruben play fair with the audience, offering legitimate clues and red herrings regarding the killers identity. Solution to the whodunit is ingenious; though very difficult to guess even by the alert viewer it is satisfying.

Lenz, firmly established as a sexy screen presence 15 years ago in her debut in Clint Eastwood's "Breezy". Is extremely effective here, faking several stripteases which substitute acting for professional dancing. Director Ruben stylizes the frequent strip sequences, using stylish pastel lighting effects and elaborate, acrobatic choreography by Ted Lin to create more traditional burlesque routines than the strictly sex approach. A cast of maily pro dancers perform well, ditto support roles by Evigan and Fell plus a funny turn by Diana Bellamy as a taciturn lady at police headquarters.

What happens when you hire a competent female writer/director to make a low-budget T&A horror-thriller with a strip club setting? You get compromise, and a kind of tug-of-war effect between exploitation and realism. While this one has a more-than-generous amount of T&A and violence, it should also be given credit for delivering a gritty, credible and often unflattering look inside a strip club and the women who populate it. The dancing is explored for all its worth and from all possible angles; exploitation, entertainment, eroticism, even as art. Some of the dancers view their occupation as being a way to express themselves through dance while others think of it as just a paycheck for another night's work. A few are lesbians, some have drug problems, most have criminal records and a few even seem like reasonably well-adjusted women who find stripping unpredictable and exciting.

The club itself is so atmospherically represented that you can almost smell the cigarette smoke in the hallways. The door of the girl's dressing room, the congregation place where the girls change, bitch about customers, reflect on their lives and pasts, etc., has "Women" scratched out and "Sluts" amusingly spray-painted over it. Much of the dialogue between them is laced with cynicism, no doubt based on a life's worth of problems, failures and disappointments. All of the girls are given just enough personality to be likable and what seems seedy at first eventually turns into a somewhat accommodating place for outcasts of all types once the heroine of this film gains employment as one of the dancers.

The heroine is question is a reserved tomboy policewoman played by Kay Lenz, who goes undercover at the club when a serial killer begins targeting the strippers. Sure, we've seen this exact same plot many times before (at least I have), but this movie takes it a step further. Not only is Lenz trying to crack the case but her character is learning and opening up in the process. This assignment allows her an outlet from the male dominated police force and the opportunity to explore her femininity and sexuality. She also discovers an odd kinship and inner working between the women and gets a little too involved on a personal level. It's an interesting role and Lenz (a sorely overlooked actress over the years) is great in it. And yeah, she does several nude scenes and looks great doing so, but it's a thoughtful, very good performance that doesn't rely on her couple of nude scenes to be memorable. Norman Fell also has a great supporting role as the no-nonsense club owner, who's every bit as dry and world-weary as his girls.

The biggest gripe I see about this film is that there are too many dance scenes and they're too long. This is no doubt just filling producer Corman's quotient of T&A for direct-to-video profit. Well fine, we get the naked girls and get the stripping. Plenty of each. What I don't see usually pointed out is that the dance scenes themselves are entertaining. They usually incorporate some interesting props (motorcycles, fire, a giant spider web...) or have a specific theme and with the lighting mixed in, it does come off as performance art at times. In addition, you can tell the women hired in these roles are actually either professionally trained dancers or actual strippers (or ex-strippers) because their stage performances incorporate flips, splits and a flexibility that requires dance training. The soundtrack is full of dated 80s-style rock, usually with a female vocalist, but it's tolerable. The biggest gripe I had with the film is that the slasher movie plot seems almost an unnecessary afterthought. I was far more interested in the everything else that was going on that I almost lost complete interest in who was actually killing the strippers.

Without question, Katt Shea Ruben is one of the most talented writer-directors Roger Corman employed in the 80s and 90s. She was one of the few with the ability to transcend the formulaic material and anemic budgets to create films that are distinctive, thoughtful, personal and interesting. And like many other notable cult/underground directors, she has never, and may never, receive much recognition or attention, and that's a true shame. I especially recommend her films DANCE OF THE DAMNED (1988; an intriguing and original vampire film which has sadly slipped into obscurity over the years) and STREETS (1990; a grim drama/thriller starring Christina Applegate). While STRIPPED TO KILL might not be as impressive as the aforementioned films, and a bit more weighted down and padded out, it's still a bright starting point for the director and well worth checking out.

Female police detective Cody Sheenan (Kay Lenz) goes undercover as a pole dancer to try and find out who has been killing the girls working at the Rock Bottom strip club (where all the profits are funnelled into elaborate stage props, smoke machines, neon signs and lava lamps).

With Stripped To Kill, director Katt Shea Ruben proves that women are just as capable of making voyeuristic exploitation as men, her debut film loaded with gratuitous female nudity solely designed to titillate the viewer. The majority of her film consists of expertly handled stripping scenes that benefit from glossy photography and stylish lighting, the girls showing off their toned and extremely flexible bodies in well choreographed dance routines.

While Cody is on stage proving that she has a rockin' bod to rival even the hottest stripper, her designer-stubbled partner Detective Heineman (Greg Evigan) is on the beat trying to track down suspect Mr. Pocket (Peter Scranton), a weirdo who has an obsession with the Rock Bottom performers.

Starting with the brutal immolation of one of the strippers and closing with a revelation that shouldn't come as much of a surprise (those who don't figure out the twist should be extra wary when chatting up women), Stripped to Kill is slick, consistently entertaining trash, unlikely to win any awards, but fun enough for the duration.

6.5/10, rounded down to 6 for the unnecessary romantic subplot between Sheenan and Heineman which is only there to pad out the runtime, and the fact that a couple of the girls qualify as butterfaces (nice legs, shame about the boat race, as The Monks used to sing).