Very well executed

Expected more

Absolutely Fantastic

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This film has a few good things going for it and a few bad things as well. First, Maria Ford (as "Christina Loren") was fantastic. Her acting was solid, her dance routines were top-notch and she was very sexy. The other dancers, Nikki Fritz (as "Sandra") and Ann-Marie Holman ("Kitten") weren't quite in the same league but at least they provided some entertainment value. Additionally, Rick Dean (as the psychopath "Neil") performed exceptionally well. At least at first. But eventually his constant diatribes got very annoying and towards the end I hoped he would turn the gun on himself. Anything to get him to shut up. I also didn't care for the character "Carey" (Lance August) or the two cops who just sat in the car taking up valuable time and film footage. They detracted from the film more than anything else. Especially Carey. Even so, this film wasn't too bad. But Maria Ford couldn't carry the entire movie by herself and Rick Dean had too much film time as it was. Perhaps if the writer (Duane Whitaker) had devoted more time and energy to a few other cast members (other than Lance August that is) this would have been much better. But he didn't and the film suffers accordingly. Still, for an extremely low-budget production and all of the aforementioned flaws I suppose it was okay and merits an average rating. But just barely.

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.

I was surprised by this movie. It's not bad at all. It's basically your standard "psycho-in-a-strip-joint" movie, but this time the psycho is pretty memorable. Oh, and the main stripper is Maria Ford, who is incredibly gorgeous.As movies set in strip joints go, this is nowhere near Exotica (obviously) but much better than Showgirls or Striptease.