Strip Club Slasher 2010 Review.

Strip Club Slasher 2010

Directed by: Jason Stephenson

Starring: Sarah French, Rachel Grubb, Elske McCain

Review by Luisjo González

I’ve told you guys & gals before that I’m twice divorced. My older brother met the love of his life 20 however many years ago and they’re still married today. My younger sibling likewise is living with his mrs, leading a settled existence. All my cousins (I have 22) are in the same boat too. Me, Luisjo González, I’m a f**king nightmare. I bounce around from girl to girl, engaged to be married on nine occasions and EVERY SINGLE TIME, I say this IS the one. Within a year, I’m bored of her and already dating someone new. You must understand, this is not how I want to be, it’s just my DNA. I was born like this and I hate it, but you can’t change what you are.

Anyway, I mention this, because Strip Club Slasher caused a riff between wife number 2 and I. I was in Vegas for our first anniversary in 2011 and we went for a meal at a restaurant on the strip. My ex, bless her cotton socks, could argue with someone if she was alone in a padded cell and so she fell out with the waitresses (it’s likely because I was flirting, but I don’t recall). It all got heated in a major way and we were forced to leave (without paying 😜). Anyway, outside, in a closed shop window, I saw the cover of Strip Club Slasher. The next day, my wife swore she would not go to that segment of Vegas again, but I had other ideas. I WANTED Strip Club Slasher! It wasn’t even listed on the IMDB yet, so I rented a car and drove, you guessed it, straight back to that restaurant and went to buy myself SCS. Now you’re beginning to understand why I’m a two time divorcee.

After the murder of a stripper, the cops close a local bar, whilst they investigate, because they think that the motivation could be the topless women. The remaining girls decide to spend the weekend together to reflect on the loss of their friend and try to keep safe. A maniacal masked assassin however is in hot pursuit.

So I told you motherf**kers in my review of Dance With Death that I was going to cover all the strip & slash movies and I’m a man of my word baby! If you pick up a film called Strip Club Slasher and there’s a busty blonde on the cover, your mind (or my mind) automatically envisions a bunch of voluptuous beauties being stalked by a masked maniac. What we ended up with is a group of average looking, vulgar tongued trolls getting sliced whenever they step outside for whatever reason. In my review of Pool Party Massacre, I criticised the level of the vomit inducing dramatics. The guys and lassies in SCS aren’t much better, but the differentiator here is, you can see these peeps are really trying their hardest. That certainly makes it slightly more bearable. There’s a moment late on, where the fat sherif (an eighties slasher trademark and he’s played by Joel D Wynkoop from all three Truth or Dares) gives a speech about the murder of his stripper sister. The credibility of the ‘performance’ is minimal, but the effort, the passion and the feeling portrayed is top class. Thumbs up for giving it your all!

Screenwriter Joe Knetter (who also plays the killer) had obviously seen his share of eighties slashers. The visual tributes are numerous and incredibly enjoyable. The final girl, played by Sarah Jensen, really includes all the classic heroine cliches, which was nice to see. In this feature however, instead of coming across as moral and brave, her attempts to be the most righteous, make her seem like a whiny bitch. I couldn’t make out whether it was poor scripting or bad acting that gave me that impression, but I didn’t particularity like Sarah, the girl left to face the assassin. I didn’t hate her though and I wanted her to survive, so she was doing something right. Just like in Dance with Death, the only babe with a fantastic rack gets killed first, which was eminently disappointing. Check out Eske McCain to see a huge and beautiful pair of bad boys. Director Jason Stephenson had the good sense to leave the best looking female to be the one that fights the antagonist in the final scene, which I won’t ruin. I can tell you that the ending is really quite ingenious and simply unbelievably cool. I don’t remember if I’ve seen a masked killer flick that terminates that way in my 30+ años of watching this sub-genre. It was a really grim and credible idea that deserves respect. Ten out of ten for the creativity. The gang here chose to do drugs, which I thought was a more realistic idea than just getting drunk. Growing up in London, drugs were key to everybody’s youth and it’s bizarre that it’s rarely seen in the stalk and slash category. The script uses acid in a really clever way. An intended victim believes it’s just the LSD that is making him see a hulking killer carrying a body. They smoke ganja and take trips, but I was screaming at the screen, where’s the cocaine? This ain’t no party 😂 I am sure that my readers consider me like the guy from Wolf of Wall Street by the things I have said over the past decade.

In my review of Pool Party Massacre, I called the film cheap. SCS has about 15% of that budget, so you know the level of what to expect. The filmmaking ability here is really amateur. I am not just talking about the acting, but the photography and direction too. I’m pretty sure that they used a handheld camera and there’s a number of shots of someone opening a door and we see the door, not the character in conversation outside, which was obviously apprentice level. The sound is really bad too and you can tell there’s no boom mic. It’s literally just the audio they picked up from the camera whilst filming. On the plus side, the videography or disc-ography is steady and not shaky throughout. Most of the killings are off screen and the effects amount to little more than fake blood, but the mask is pretty cool and the assassin stalks in typical slow-mo Michael Myers style. Interestingly enough, the bogeyman gets a blow job off of the first victim before he kills her. I’ve never seen that before and I thought it was pretty slick. Maniacal killers get on too, you know 😂! The cops found the victim with his seamen in her mouth, but they didn’t think to do a DNA test to learn his identity??? Why aren’t cops in my area that dumb?

SCS just about works in a cheap jack way. I didn’t hate the characters, a few fun slaughters, there’s some giggles to be had and it manages to reference old skool slashers without bragging about it continually. It’s certainly not fine art, but I could do nothing but smile at it. One day I would love to see a slasher movie in a strip club where the girls truly are beautiful and endowed with huge boobs. Maybe I have to make it myself in the future. Until then, this will have to do. When I was younger, I dated a Polish girl that worked in a strip club. Check the picture to the left. I got to meet some of the other dancers and they all had bras in the plus sizes. Watching slasher movies where the chicas removing their tops have nothing to show literally removes the point in going to such a place? I mean, why? I guess it all depends on taste. Different people are attracted to different things. The net result is that this was one of those cinematics that I knew I shouldn’t have liked, I cringed a few times, but I totally didn’t hate myself for watching it. Check it out. It’s surprisingly entertaining and fun.

Slasher Trappings:

Killer Guise: √√√

Gore 

Final Girl √√

RATING:

Dance with Death 1992 Review

Bailando Con La Muerte 1992

aka Dance With Death

Directed by: Charles Philip Moore

Starring: Jill Pierce, Maxwell Caulfield, Barbara Alyn Woods

Review by Luisjo González

I’m not going to repeat the same stories I’ve told you all before about watching Halloween when I was six-year’s-old and then becoming a slasher addict. However I can tell you an amusing story that relates to this picture. I was obviously hunting through my video rental emporiums for more slasher trash and I came across the cover of Stripped to Kill way back when. The back blurb seemed pretty slasher, but the problem was, my madre wouldn’t let me rent it because of the suggested nudity on the package description. Eventually, I was able to go to Stoke Newington high street with an older kid from my street, and I was able to pay a homeless guy to rent the forbidden movie for me.

Obviously I love the ladies and the eight-year old me was enamoured with what I saw during that runtime. It’s sad to think that we grew up so quick in crime ridden London and sometimes I regret not having a childhood. What does information about Stripped to Kill have to do with Dance with Death you rightly ask? Well, this motion picture is a jazzed-up remake of STK, they even use the same dialogue and it’s from the same author. DWD was one of a number of dance/strip related slasher movies that were released following the success of the 1987 Roger Corman thriller, Stripped To Kill. Some others include: Slash Dance, Deadly Dancer, Last Dance, Strip Club Slasher and The Rain Killer. Whist we’re on that subject, it must be stated that STK was not an authentic movie and was itself a rip off of Lucio Fulci’s Murder-rock from 1984.

A number of killings at a local strip joint give a reporter the chance to go undercover and begin an investigation. Kelly gets a job as a stripper and begins to question the resident dancers. As she gets closer to the truth, more and more people end up dead and she looks to be next on the killer’s list…

I understand that certain people may believe that a slasher movie in a strip bar is going to have zero class and be extremely exploitive. Whilst I admit the setup is tacky, the characterisations are not. The females in the cast are all written as strong women and the heroine is a fiery reporter with a forceful will. This is a slasher movie of course, with a masked killer and all the trimmings, but at times, it’s possible to forget you’re watching a horror film. A couple of the dancers have issues that are covered, we have the journalist backstory due to the final girl’s employment and finally the owner of the club, which is called Bottoms up, is having regular issues with his employees. There are a few slaughters, but they’re not spaced close together, which makes you wonder what tone the production team was aiming for. We go from a strip scene, to a brutal murder, then attempts at humour, something of a romance between the leads and it’s all thrown at us in about five minutes. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel? Was I meant to be scared? In a comic mood? Or involved in the liaison?

The key element of the story of course is the mystery of who’s killing everybody. There’s a number of suspects, but I worked it out by the dialogue. It took me a while and I admit it’s not an easy one to solve, but listen to what they say closely. What’s interesting is that Bottoms Up the bar is always full, but the car park outside is consistently empty. Do they walk home at 2am? Rather them than me, I tell you. I’ve never been to a strip bar in reality, because I am not interested in looking if I can’t touch. Being a handsome guy gives me that luxury (wink wink – joke, I’m handsome but not arrogant!!)). Anyway, If I were to venture to Bottoms Up by chance, I’d demand my money back. The only girl with a decent rack, the stunning Lola (hottie Jill Pierce), is the first killed and the rest of the laydees are flatter than a pancake on my ironing board. If these guy customers are paying to watch these strumpets, they must be desperate. Go to a disco and get yourself a girl you can take home with you after.

One of the striptastic boogie queens is reported to have a drug problem and we see her laughing and then falling in to the crowd. She gets sacked for being a junkie and then if that’s not bad enough, she gets killed (brutal murder btw). It’d be nice if the screenwriters did some research when writing the dire-logue for a movie that’s going to be shown in cinemas. The only drug that makes you laugh is marijuana and it’s not so bad that you’d burst into hysterics on stage whilst working. Cocaine, crack, heroin, PCP are not giggling drugs and she wasn’t on LSD, because no one mentioned hallucinations. Whilst we talking about the script, I bust out laughing when the cop was telling some criminal sales guy that he was interrogating to go away. He said, in Spanish ‘vamos amigo’ and walks off?? Vamos means we go, not go away. What he meant to say was, vete or vaya (go away or you go). I wonder how much these authors got paid for this crapola??? Why use Español and get it wrong. My head was in my hands. 😂

I always disliked Prom Night’s balaclava, because I thought it was lazy from Peter Simpson to go for something so basic. The assassin here also sports a similar black mask, but I thought it worked much better in DWD. I guess it could be because of his height/build. Drew Snyder from Terror Eyes plays the editor, but thankfully they had more sense than casting him as a womaniser as he was in the 1981 slasher classic. I mentioned in my original review, how unrealistic that looked having the balding Snyder as a lady killer. Maxwell Caulfield is the detective and whilst he’s not a horrible actor, the way his career fell apart is a real shame. To go from a huge film like Grease 2 to Dance with Death is really disappointing. He stayed busy, but for a handsome guy, it was a big fall from the top. None of the performances featured stink the place out and all in all it’s an enjoyable runtime.

A slasher movie that allows me to see topless women is always going to be my favourite kind, so expect me to review of the rest of this type before the end of 2022. I had fun with Dance with Death. One or two brutal murders, an interesting plot, a good mystery and the chance to see topless women. If that ticks your boxes, check it out. One last question I’ll answer for the ladies… Is this a motion picture for slasherettes? I still say, yes. They won’t enjoy the female nudity (unless they’re gay), but as I said, the puzzle is good and it’s not tedious. Perhaps the biggest plus of all is the beautiful and breathtakingly stunning Jill Pierce plays the first victim, Lola. I first saw her in Darkroom, but it seems she had a boob job, because since then, she’s gone from a 32A (it looked about that) to a 34DD. That’s some enlargement in three years. She’s up there with Traci Lords, Natti Natasha, Abbie Shapiro, Christine Hendricks and Ariel Winter in the gorgeous stakes. Married and madly in love, I still 1000% would🤣. I wish my Mum moved to USA instead of England all those años ago. I guarantee that if I was working close to that set when they were shooting Dance With Death, I would’ve asked out and dated Jill Pierce. Maybe I’d have another kid with her by now haha. Peace

Killer Guise:√√

Gore:√

Final Girl:√√√

RATING: