(1987)
Overall: MEH
The debut from actor-turned-director Katt Shea took the catchy title of Stripped to Kill and is a slasher police procedural with a tendency to throw nude dance numbers in between most scenes. One cannot complain that it fails to deliver the T&A in this regard, but besides the novelty of being directed and co-written by a woman, the film is rudimentary within its over-saturated sub-genre. Shea has gone on record as saying that the inspiration came from her first visit to a strip club, where she was impressed by the artistry of the performers in spite of her preconceived misgivings of such an exploitative profession. Though its adherence to B-movie sleaze is still front and center, the film does have a more feminist friendly agenda. It treats its characters and their line of work with a level of empathy, showcasing it as a means to an end where women are easy prey for more than just dollar bill-throwing misogyny. This makes the victims something besides annoying stereotypes who the audience cannot wait to be picked off. That said, there are sleazeball characters on both sides of the law and the movie is still a ways removed from propping up sexually liberating progressive enlightenment, but it at least takes a stab at such a thing, even with its Crying Game plot twist in tow.
(1989)
Overall: WOOF
In typical Roger Corman fashion, the notorious "lets save a buck wherever we can" producer approached filmmaker Katt Shea after she finished shooting Dance of the Damned, telling her to use the strip club set for a few more days in order to make another film together. Thus Stripped to Kill 2: Live Girls, (a sequel to 1987's Stripped to Kill in name only), was birthed. By Shea's own admittance, she had no script and no idea what she was doing when she hired some women to dance around naked with one of them kissing people with a razor in her mouth while wearing a cloak and mask. Such nonsense footage was interspersed with Maria Ford waking up covered in blood multiple times and something about a killer on the loose, but good luck trying to stay engaged enough to follow whatever is going on. Considering that Shea and her collaborator Andy Ruben cobbled together the slasher story after the fact, it is no wonder that the film came out indecipherable. One can marvel at the fact that an eighty-two minute feature was finished at all, and forgiving viewers may dig the surreal, (and frequent), interpretative naked dancing nightmare sequences or whatever they are, but this is otherwise hogwash that is worth skipping.
(1989)
Overall: GOOD
Allegedly, producer Roger Corman was to blame for having filmmaker Katt Shea utilize yet another stripper in her story for Dance of the Damned, which was the third straight horror movie in a row from the director to feature ladies taking their clothes off on stage. With the exploitation rules in place from her boss then, Shea and husband collaborator Andy Ruben were thankfully able to concoct something left of center from the plethora of other undead movies that were churned out in the decade, many of which in 1989 alone. Here, Canadian scream queen Starr Andreeff runs into mulleted vamp Cyril O'Reilly, who becomes enamored with her inner turmoil, drops a load of cash in her lap, and the two continue to have a soul-searching evening together. This is all that happens in the film, but a lot of ground is covered between two people who have suffered the hardships of life and non-life, venting to each other while ultimately being able to connect passionately as well as by showing each other certain things that they have been missing in their existences. Despite its B-movie sheen and penchant for melodrama, it steers clear of being merely some blood-spewing romantic schlock, benefited by Andreeff and O'Reilly's solid performances and Shea's sensitive skills from behind the lens. As the title would suggest, the story seems to dance around its characters conflicting emotions and impulses towards each other, which makes for an end result that does not nail the dismount, but there are still enough refreshing surprises here to recommend it.
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