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.
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.