The late, great Rick Dean carried nearly the full weight of this film, imho. Other than he and Lance('C-C-C-C-Carey') August, the entire cast needed changing. Kinda-pretty Maria Ford's acting was as stilted and amateurish as ever - and She clearly needed cast against a stripper's pole about as much as Mr. T does. Now, I cherish all Women and especially pretty Ones in high heels and lingerie - perhaps even more than most guys - and I was let down to see Her as the lead. I mean, Ms Charlize Theron would have been WAY more fun to watch in a strip club than Ms Maria ever could be - AND they surely could have afforded Ms Charlize easier, back then - of course, in '95, She was only 20. But, nearly any Pinup from back then would have done this movie much better than our Ms Maria was able to.HOWEVER - I DID enjoy it, I'll NEVER forget it. If you can yawn past Ms Maria's halfhearted performances on both the pole and Her dialogue - as well as tolerate the hokey directing - it's actually a damn cool film.It's also got several chuckle-moments in it, too - i.e. Rick's clumsy entry into the club - that was worth a few rewinds, right there, hahaha!-Just focus on Rick's character (he's topping his game, here) and the strippers (other than Ms Maria, hehe) and you'll be fine.In a nutshell: This is a flawed-but-memorable film; a fun, dark, attention-holding watch.

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.

This movie has an interesting premise. A supposedly blind man (Rick Dean) enters a strip club. You wonder for what purpose. Clearly he can't see anything behind his shades. Perhaps, he's there for the drinks. Or maybe, he has an acute sense of smell. This is after all a fully nude strip club. Well, to make a long story short, the answer is OBSESSION. You can't blame Rick. Maria Ford, the lead dancer, is a 9/10. She's all-natural, but her best assets are her lovely face and legs. A beautiful woman is a wonder of nature. In a sea of a thousand faces, hers is the one that stands out. Your libido is aroused by her every move, you can't wait to put $100 in her garter. In one of Maria's dance numbers, she wears high-heel sneakers. You know, the kind Little Richard or Mitch Ryder rhapsodize about. Every beautiful stripper has more than one admirer, though. Lance August plays a stuttering customer, who apparently comes to this bar just to see Maria. Naturally the plot develops to the point where Lance and Maria become strange bar-fellows, who must cope with madman Rick, when he draws a gun on the bartender, patrons, and other dancers. This movie has something for all fans of exploitation films to savor. In addition to a gun crazed loonie, a sexy blond, and a shy geek, you also have two lesbian or bi-sexual strippers (one being tiny, and the other buff), the usual horny drunks, two cops who half-work, and a cozy venue for all to interact. Without going XXX, this is about as realistic a depiction of strip clubs as you'll find in any film. Forget about Showgirls (Elizabeth Berkley) and StripTease (Demi Moore). I wouldn't give those ladies a $1 tip.