Showgirls (1995)

Directed by Paul Verhoeven
Starring Elizabeth Berkley, Gina Gershon, Kyle Machlachan
NC-17
USA

"I'm erect. Why aren't you erect?"

Created by the zillionaire writing/directing team of Joe Eszterhas and Paul Verhoeven - who had recently struck box office gold with Basic Instinct - Showgirls was meant to be an epic Hollywood spectacle filled with flesh, flash and heart-rending melodrama. Budgeted at a comfortable 45 million dollars - including 2 million that went right into Eszterhas's pocket for his screenwriting fee - the movie does, indeed, deliver on that promise. But it's so much more, as well. Basically the most expensive sexploitation flick ever made, Showgirls straddles so many genres at once - drama, pitch-black comedy, musical, satire, morality tale, softcore, 70s' style rape and revenge - that it means something different to everyone that gazes into it. It's like a reflecting pool, only with bonus vagina.

The story revolves around one Nomi Malone (Saved by the Bell star Elizabeth Berkley, acting as hard as she possibly can) , a tightly-wound spazz prone to kicking inanimate objects and shoving people. Despite her obvious psychosis, she manages to charm everyone who she collides with, including an Elvis-y truck driver who she hitches with to Vegas and a showgirl-revue seamstress named Molly (Gina Ravera), who lets her move in with her in her tiny trailer on the edge of town.

You may ask yourself why someone with a job that probably pays $70,000 a year is living in a trailer, or why she would take a stray like Nomi in - who, incidentally, puked on her the moment they met - but that's the magic of Showgirls. Much like the city it takes place in, the normal laws of physics, gravity, and common sense mean nothing in Showgirls. It exists in its very own reality, a delightfully screwy world where everybody's naked all the time, where women speak of nothing except food and their own breasts, and where men live only to manipulate and humiliate topless dancers. I know, that sounds like an awful place, but really, it's awesome.

Nomi gets a job at a sleazeball strip club called Cheetahs. Eventually Cristal (Gina Gershon), the star of a topless show at the Riveria called Goddess, and her cad of a boyfriend Zack (Kyle MacLachlan) - the entertainment director of the Riveria - get wind of this dramatic new talent, and recruit her for their show. As Nomi's ambition knows no bounds, she kicks and claws her way from background dancer to star in no time flat, and goes head to head with Cristal in the dance-fight to end all dance-fights.

That, of course, is the short version. There's a ton of crazy bullshit that happens along the way. This is really a seeing-is-believing sort of film, so mere descriptions of the non-stop outrage and excess would not do it justice. I mean, this movie has naked girls and monkeys - in the same scene. It's fuckin' bananas.

In summation: A fizzing, career-killing bomb upon its release, over the years Showgirls has been embraced by snarky critics and irony-buffs as a delightfully campy disaster. In fact, it is difficult to find a review anywhere that doesn't, at some point, called Showgirls an aggressively bad film, even while praising its many charms. I do not agree with this assessment. Showgirls is not a bad film, Showgirls is a towering, swaggering epic of tits and screaming, a life-gulping orgy of psychotic behavior, pneumatic fucking, and weird, heavy metal death-fantasy dance sequences. It is a Hollywood cocaine seizure of the highest order. How could a movie possibly be bad when it does not have any boring parts? Showgirls is all id, all snapping jaws and iced-up nipples, and Berkley and Gershon are tremendous and legendary rivals. It is virtually impossible to figure out where their characters end and they begin, or vice-versa - their whole relationship, in the film and on the set, seems fueled by mutual loathing. Also, there are scenes in this film that you will never, ever get out of your head once you've seen them. Nomi's epileptic pool-fuck will probably flash through your head in your final moments. For all these reasons and so many more - Versace! - Showgirls should be lauded for what it really is - a demented masterpiece.


- Ken McIntyre

Stripped to Kill (1987)

Directed by Katt Shea
Starring Kay Lenz, Greg Evigan, Norman Fell
Rated R
USA

"You are the worst dancer I ever saw in my life. You're hired."

Katt Shea is a remarkable actress/director who works exclusively in the seamy world of horror, b-movies, and exploitation. She spent a good part of the 80's in a bikini, appearing in classic jiggle-fests like Hollywood Hot Tubs, RSVP, and Preppies, but she spent just as much time behind the camera. Her more well-known directorial efforts include the Drew Barrymore stalker flick Poison Ivy (1992), which spawned a still-churning series of sequels, and the unforgettable The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999), one of the 90's more audacious horror-flicks, but Stripped to Kill and it's equally bonkers sequel remain Shea's high-water mark. What was clearly intended to be just another bland erotic thriller turns into a festering cauldron of sleaze in Shea's capable hands, as drug strippers, stripper-cops, gender-bending weirdos, one-armed masturbators, and Greg Evigan in full creep mode all collide in an orgy of tits, blood, and bad fun.

Like many Roger Corman productions, Stripped to Kill boasts an impressive opening credits sequence. In this case, it's stripper footage over a crazy, tone-deaf metal tune called Deny the Night by one Larry Streicher. It sounds like Karaoke night at the local insane asylum. The perfect intro to the escapade that follows.

Mr Roper himself, the great Norman Fell, is Ray, the owner and operator of Rock Bottom, a low-rent LA stripclub with a very big problem - somebody's dousing his strippers with gasoline and setting them ablaze.  The actual deaths don't bother Ray that much - he's a pretty jaded cat - but hiring new dancers all the time is a major drag.

Luckily for Ray, the vice squad is on the case. Detective Heineman (Greg Evigan) and Detective Cody (Kay Lenz) are assigned to solve the stripper-murders, so naturally Cody  goes undercover as a stripper for a night. A tomboy by nature, she is not thrilled with the idea, but it does seem like a valid plan.

It's Cody's first time on stage, so Heineman and half the force, naturally, come to watch. She is not very good. But the crowd is full of ringers, so she wins amateur night - 300 bucks! By the way, amateur night at the strip club looks like the most fun ever.

The stripteases continue. There's a very suspicious character in the front-row wearing a dirty hooded sweatshirt and headphones, but nobody really notices. Weirdos are a dime-a-dozen in this joint. One stripper, Cinnamon (one-time actress Carlye Byron), falls off the stage halfway through her routine and lands in the weirdo's lap. So that was cool. Ray doesn't care for her pill-popping antics, though, so he fires her.

So, Cinnamon's out, and Ray needs a dancer. Cody's horrible, but she's available.

A humiliated Cinnamon takes off, but there's a stripper-killer on the loose, and she ends up on the chopping block. Not only does she get brutally murdered, but the killer straps her under a truck so that her bloodied body gets dragged down the street. Yikes!

Meanwhile, detective Heineman follows Cody home and says, "If I see any more tits I'm gonna throw up."
He's a very strange guy. Also meanwhile, Det. Cody's act improves greatly. In fact, Miss Lenz shows considerable skill in the dancing-naked arena.

However, it turns our that cody's supposed to be off the case - she finds out that she wasn't even supposed to be stripping. But now she's too embroiled in it to quit. Also, she has passionate semi-hate sex on the floor with Greg Evigan. It was bound to happen. Who can resist Greg Evigan in acid-wash?

Then Heineman does some sleuthing and figures out sweatshirt-dude can't possibly be the killer because, well, it turns out he doesn't have the proper equipment, so to speak, for a rapin' and killin' spree.

And so we get to the shocking - although sorta obvious - twist. And then things really get nuts with a nihilistic killing spree climax full of blood, screaming, fire, bullets, sexual ambiguity, and, of course, more tits-out dancing.

Aggressively bizarre and pervasively sleazy, Stripped to Kill is a mesmerizing mess that seems more like some late 60's grindhouse roughie than the glossy 80's late-night Skinemax fodder it was meant to be. Despite its lean and mean velocity, it's also one of the more even-handed stripper-centric flicks of the period. The Rock Bottom dancers all have realistic personalities with all the gripes, aspirations, and gallows humor you'd expect, given their occupation and the killer-on-the-loose scenario, and Shea never seems like she's judging the women for their choice of career. Fell is hilarious as the jaundiced, amoral boss, Evigan is full-tilt gonzo and playing very much against type, and Lenz looks surprisingly awesome naked. The only real gripe is the twist - anyone who's ever watched a psycho-killer since...well, since 1960's Psycho knows that anyone with gender issues is going to be the prime suspect, and Stripped to Kill gives away the game in the first five minutes. Still, even if you know where it's all going, this is one hell of a ride.

Although nothing about the original suggests a second chapter is necessary, Shea followed up with Stripped to Kill II, starring glamourpuss Maria Ford, in 1989. Both are highly recommended. Just keep a bar of soap handy.

- Ken McIntyre 

Bloodstained Bride (2005)

Directed By Aaron Burk
Starring Renne Madison Cole, Dane Moreton, Erica Ellis
Unrated
US

From the makers of rakish splatter comedy The Van comes this witty, tongue-in-cheek retro-slice n' dicer. Not to be confused with '72's The Blood Spattered Bride (although a double-feature of both films would serve as a great deterrent for nervous grooms-to-be), THIS crazy-ass-bitch-in-a-wedding-dress-goes-bananas-flick is about a hapless sandwich delivery guy named Tracy (Dane Moreton), whose life is slowly sinking into the muck. Besides the heartbreak of being stuck with a chick's name, his haughty, glammy girlfriend has just decided she's too good for him, and some weirdo ass-fucker at work is stealing his sandwiches, when he's not swallowing the boss's man-goo for a better route. It's a bad scene, Jack.

Meanwhile, toothy blonde Madeline (Renee Madison Cole) is starting a new life in Tracy's neighborhood after hacking her first hubby to death in bed on their wedding night. She's got sexual hang-ups that just won't quit, see. Spotting fresh meat in put-upon Tracy, she charms him in a series of awkward but playful dates, and the next thing ya know, sandwich boy is starry-eyed.

And that's when the trouble starts.

Madeline's possessive and jealous ways begin to infect their relationship like a creeping cancer, making life increasingly difficult for regular-guy Tracy and his drunken jack-ass friends. Worst of all, Maddy won't even blow the fucking guy. Reluctantly, even with a mile-high stack of evidence that points the other way (like the 'gift' of a natty hairpiece, for instance), Trace agrees to marry the crazy girl.

Meanwhile, just to hedge her bets, Madeline starts hacking his exes to pieces.

Blood and nerves co-mingle in this queasiest of all love stories until an explosive, stripper-filled, apocalyptic bachelor party where the bride, and everyone else, wears red.

Rare for the genre, Blood-Stained's biggest asset is a thoughtful script and strong performances. With the very glaring exception of Tri-Toader Brad Paulson, whose drunken lout character is a screechy, under-cooked mish-mash of Deputy Dawg and Bob Cat Goldthwait, all the actors do an admirable job of breathing real life into their roles, which is no small feat when you're playing a chick in a bloody wedding dress choking strippers to death with dildos. Despite a script that's rife with exploitive elements (bloody killings, lap dances, blow job demonstrations, and much, much consumption of booze wrapped in hilariously generic packaging), Blood-Stained Bride never really sinks into pure sleaze, coming off more like the kind of darkly comic slasher flicks popular in the 80's, like Return to Horror High, Chopping Mall, or Student Bodies. Fun stuff.

- Ken McIntyre

Stripteaser (1995)

Directed by Dan Golden
Starring Maria Ford, Rick Dean, Nikki Fritz
Rated R
USA

"Well, I don't know about anybody else, but I've certainly got a hard-on."

In real life, there's Jumbo's Clown Room, a self-consciously sleazy burlesque bar in Hollywood. In Roger Corman's corner-cutting, royalty-free B-movie universe, Jumbo's transmogrifies into Zippo's Clown Palace, an alt-world version of Jumbo's, frequented mostly by rejects from Revenge of the Nerds and staffed by bikers and scream queens. Incidentally, the doorway to Zippo's Clown Palace is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen, an inspired bit of trashy amusement park style hucksterism. The inside, on the other hand, might just be a spare conference room at the New Concorde offices.

At any rate, as our story begins, it's last call, and Zippos' star dancer Christina (Maria Ford) has just finished her slutty bride dance. A dyke-y Nikki Fritz, wearing one of those Skid Row nose-chains, is dancing listlessly on stage, and everyone's taking their final slugs of hooch, when Neil (Rick Dean, RIP) a loudmouth blind dude with a Mark Goodman perm job shows up and demands a drink.

He gets it, and then proceeds to jabber away incessantly. The barkeep tries to throw him out, but then he whips off his glasses, pull out a gun, and hold everyone hostage.

Meanwhile, a couple of crooked cops are making the rounds. They bust in a on dude named Arnie while he's trying to jerk off to some sweet 90's porn (Forrest Hump!) and do all his coke. And then they press him for info and head out. And they even steal his porn.

Back at the club, the crazy fucker makes the stuttering simp obsessed with Christina have sex with her or he'll shoot 'em both. The dude cries while Christina blows him. It's pretty awesome.
Then he tells a story about how he's been stalking her for months, even busting into her house while she's at work so that he can sniff her panties. Seems valid. He also kidnapped her ex-boyfriend, tied him to a cross, and crucified him.

So anyways, then the crooked cops show and, a seriously over-the-top free-for-all gun fight ensues. It's so abrupt and ultra-violent that it almost looks like a bunch of maniacs opened fire on the actors while they were filming their scenes. Still, even with the aggressively apocalyptic ending, we are left with a glimmer of hope: if you can survive a hail of gunfire, even bespectacled toadies with social phobias can score with hot blonde strippers. I mean, they might bleed to death before the ambulance arrives, but still.

Ably directed by short-change sexploitation expert Dan Golden, Stripteaser is an economical, stripped-down (no pun intended) psycho-thriller anchored by Rick Dean's gloriously unhinged performance as excitable schizo-stalker Neil. You literally have no idea what he's going to say or do from one minute to the next. It's an alarming and awe-inspiring bit of kamikaze acting. Of course, the title - changed from the original "Zippo's Clown Palace" to Stripteaser to cash in on the hype around Demi Moore's clunker Striptease, which was released shortly after - is a bit misleading.

Sure, stripping does happen - Ford joylessly gyrates through a couple numbers, top-heavy z-queen Nikki Fritz expertly works the pole, and big-eyed pixie Ann-Marie Holman is forced to dance fully nude for Neil's sick kicks - but it's not really about strippers or stripping, it's about a violent nutball and his kidnapping and murder spree.

Still, a very original and gripping piece of late-night scuzz. Recommended!

PS: Whatever happened to Ann-Marie Holman?

- Ken McIntyre