The story of how the movie came to be made is in some ways more interesting than the movie itself. Katt Shea had acted in movies for Roger Corman but had never directed a movie. She came up with the idea as a result of a bet she lost with her husband Andy Ruben. The penalty for losing the bet was that she had to visit a strip club. He thought that was the worst penalty you could impose on a woman. She visited the strip club, and she absolutely loved it. She was totally captivated by what she saw as a fascinating form of female artistic expression and she was blown away by the effort and imagination the girls put into devising their acts. She decided that she absolutely had to direct a movie about strippers.
More than that, she wanted to make a movie with real strippers playing the roles of the strippers. Which is what she persuaded Roger Corman to allow her to do. Apart from the lead actress Kay Lenz and one other all of the girls are real strippers. And although a choreographer was brought in to teach the girls how to hit their marks so that their routines would be filmable all of the strip-tease routines seen in the movies were the girls’ own routines.
Shea also wanted her movie to make the point that strippers are not trash, they are in fact artists.
Shea sold Roger Corman on the idea and Shea and her husband came up with a script, and Corman gave the go-ahead.
Somebody is murdering strippers. Undercover cop Detective Cody Sheenan (Kay Lenz) discovers the first body while on another case so she has some personal interest right from the start. She is persuaded to go undercover as a stripper. She tries out in an amateur night contest at the Rock Bottom Club. The guy who runs the club, Ray (Norman Fell), tells her she is the worst dancer he has ever seen but when she assures him that she is reliable he hires her.
Cody starts out with the usual prejudices against strippers but she discovers that she likes the girls, she is impressed by the work they put into their routines and she is fascinated by their world. She also discovers that she actually enjoys stripping.
There’s an obvious suspect, a creepy guy known to the girls as Mr Pocket, and her partner Detective Heineman (Greg Evigan) is convinced that he’s the killer. Cody has a strong feeling that Mr Pocket is weird but harmless.
Of course the killer ends up going after Cody and that leads to a not totally satisfying conclusion.
While the movie is indeed an erotic thriller Shea saw it more as a movie about the world of strippers and it is more successful on that level than as an actual erotic thriller. The plot isn’t all that fantastic and it relies on a gimmick that has been used before and used better and always comes across as a gimmick.
There are however plenty of things to like about both the screenplay and the movie. The strippers are interesting colourful characters. Ray is not the sleazebag you might expect. He’s a pretty nice guy. The awkward relationship between Cody and Heineman is handled extremely well. There’s an attraction between them that they have never got around to consummating but it’s obvious that eventually they will. He’s disturbed by the fact that Cody enjoys stripping but he isn’t a clichéd character. He might be disturbed but he doesn’t turn against Cody.
Kay Lenz and Greg Evigan are excellent and they have the right chemist.
There’s some real subtlety to the characterisation of Cody. She’s obviously a bit uncomfortable about sex and stripping is for her a way of becoming more at ease with her sexuality, and more confident about it.
The strip-tease routines are very tame (the movie was from the beginning intended for the straight-to-video market and Corman clearly did not want the movie to be shelved in the porno section of video stores). There are countless topless scenes but breasts are all you ever get to see. These routines would have been considered tame in a burlesque theatre in the 1940s. But the routines compensate for this by being energetic and imaginative and filmed with a certain amount of flair.
Despite her inexperience and the low budget Shea pulls off some reasonably effective visual set-pieces. The murders are not all that graphic but they’re cleverly staged and manage to be unsettling without relying on gore.
As a movie aimed at giving the viewer a glimpse into the actual world of strippers rather than the popular conception of that world it works very very well. And it succeeds in making us really care about these girls.
Overall Stripped To Kill is quite interesting and it’s recommended.
The Scorpion Releasing DVD looks good and includes lots of extras including a director’s commentary track.
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