Stripteaser (1995)

Simply A Masterpiece

Great Film overall

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The late, great Rick Dean carried nearly the full weight of this film, imho. Other than he and Lance('C-C-C-C-Carey') August, the entire cast needed changing. Kinda-pretty Maria Ford's acting was as stilted and amateurish as ever - and She clearly needed cast against a stripper's pole about as much as Mr. T does. Now, I cherish all Women and especially pretty Ones in high heels and lingerie - perhaps even more than most guys - and I was let down to see Her as the lead. I mean, Ms Charlize Theron would have been WAY more fun to watch in a strip club than Ms Maria ever could be - AND they surely could have afforded Ms Charlize easier, back then - of course, in '95, She was only 20. But, nearly any Pinup from back then would have done this movie much better than our Ms Maria was able to.HOWEVER - I DID enjoy it, I'll NEVER forget it. If you can yawn past Ms Maria's halfhearted performances on both the pole and Her dialogue - as well as tolerate the hokey directing - it's actually a damn cool film.It's also got several chuckle-moments in it, too - i.e. Rick's clumsy entry into the club - that was worth a few rewinds, right there, hahaha!-Just focus on Rick's character (he's topping his game, here) and the strippers (other than Ms Maria, hehe) and you'll be fine.In a nutshell: This is a flawed-but-memorable film; a fun, dark, attention-holding watch.

Admit it. Stripteaser doesn't sound like the name of a good movie, does it? When I tell you it's set almost entirely in a strip club called Zipper's Clown Palace and has a cast that includes a guy who looks like a retarded Ed Begley Jr. with a bowl haircut and a pseudo-Asian Janeane Garofalo, it doesn't exactly raise your expectations, does it? And that it does have women getting naked, but one of them has an immobile set of fake knockers and another has nipples so orange it looks like she's breast feeding Oompa Loompas, that really clinches it, right? This film just has to suck.Wrong.Powered along by an outstanding performance, some deceptively well written scenes and direction that regularly surprises you, Stripteaser is much better than you would ever hope or expect. In all honesty, I picked it up at my video store expecting it to be some piece of crap I could have fun ripping apart. And when it started with a pretty but too thin young woman taking off her clothes in front of a bunch of actors who might as well have had "Career Extra" tattooed on their foreheads, I thought my expectation was confirmed.But then a guy walks into Zipper's Clown Palace, a blind guy who looks and talks like a cross between Howard Stern and Gary Busey. I was ready to write him and the whole movie off as another example of what happens when you give a camera a very small amount of money to filmmakers who have ambition but no talent. But after a few minutes of watching the Stern-Busey crossbreed, I had to acknowledge something. I was becoming more and more interested in what he was saying and how he was saying it. There was a cleverness to his dialog and while his performance chewed a little scenery, there was something genuine and magnetic about it. And then I noticed the direction, while ordinary for the most part, would every so often do something a little smarter and more skillful than I would have anticipated.By the time the Stern-Busey crossbreed pulled a gun and took everybody else in the strip club hostage, this film had me hooked. When it introduced a degenerate coke fiend of a cop and his portly partner into the mix, it reeled me in. As the crossbreed strutted across the strip club catwalk, manipulating his hostages in a game to which only he knew the rules, Stripteaser dragged me into the boat, clubbed me on the head and gutted me for supper.Now, I'll grant that there is plenty of shlock to this production and there's a very significant problem with the plot. This story should logically come to an end about a half-hour sooner than it does and only keeps going because the script arbitrarily pushes the pause button on a subplot. The screenplay probably needed to go through another couple of drafts and some of the roles could have been played by better actors. But none of that interfered with my enjoyment of this movie.Rick Dean is superb as the Stern-Busey crossbreed. He's so good here, I would now rent another film solely because he's in it. George Tovar and Patric Zimmerman as the two cops are also excellent in their matter-of-fact portrayal as the bottom rung of the urban police ladder. Writer Duane Whitaker and Director Dan Golden have also made me interested in any of their other work.Films like this are the reason I keep going, to find little gems like this and hopefully let other people know they're worth their time and money. There are so many appallingly bad movies out there that no one should ever see. Stripteaser is one of the films you should watch instead.

Cunning and lethal blind maniac vagrant Neil (a wired, intense, bravura performance by the late, great Rick Dean in one of his patented insane villain parts) terrorizes a handful of folks in a strip club at gunpoint. Neil cruelly uses everyone's individual weaknesses against them. The main target of Neil's twisted obsession is lovely stripper Christina Martin (well played by the stunningly gorgeous Maria Ford). Director Dan Golden, working from a clever and compact script by Duane Whitaker, wrings plenty of gut-wrenching tension from the simple, yet gripping premise and certainly doesn't skimp on the tasty bare distaff skin. Dean and Ford both turn in stand-out work in their juicy lead roles; they receive excellent support from Lance August as stuttering shy guy Carey, George Tovar as corrupt cop Roland, Nikki Fritz as mannish, domineering lesbian Sandra, the adorable Ann-Marie Holman as Sandra's mousy, passive lover Kitten, and R.A. Mihailoff (Leatherface in "Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III") as tough bartender Little. Both Timothy Wynn's funky score and Andrea Rosotto's slick cinematography are up to par. Popping up in nice cameos are John Lazar (Z-Man in "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls") as a bar patron and Linnea Quigley as a waitress. The DVD boasts a few nifty extras: several trailers, a funny outtake reel, and a lively, informative and highly entertaining commentary by Rick Dean and Dan Golden. Good, nasty fun.

This movie has an interesting premise. A supposedly blind man (Rick Dean) enters a strip club. You wonder for what purpose. Clearly he can't see anything behind his shades. Perhaps, he's there for the drinks. Or maybe, he has an acute sense of smell. This is after all a fully nude strip club. Well, to make a long story short, the answer is OBSESSION. You can't blame Rick. Maria Ford, the lead dancer, is a 9/10. She's all-natural, but her best assets are her lovely face and legs. A beautiful woman is a wonder of nature. In a sea of a thousand faces, hers is the one that stands out. Your libido is aroused by her every move, you can't wait to put $100 in her garter. In one of Maria's dance numbers, she wears high-heel sneakers. You know, the kind Little Richard or Mitch Ryder rhapsodize about. Every beautiful stripper has more than one admirer, though. Lance August plays a stuttering customer, who apparently comes to this bar just to see Maria. Naturally the plot develops to the point where Lance and Maria become strange bar-fellows, who must cope with madman Rick, when he draws a gun on the bartender, patrons, and other dancers. This movie has something for all fans of exploitation films to savor. In addition to a gun crazed loonie, a sexy blond, and a shy geek, you also have two lesbian or bi-sexual strippers (one being tiny, and the other buff), the usual horny drunks, two cops who half-work, and a cozy venue for all to interact. Without going XXX, this is about as realistic a depiction of strip clubs as you'll find in any film. Forget about Showgirls (Elizabeth Berkley) and StripTease (Demi Moore). I wouldn't give those ladies a $1 tip.