Stripped to Kill (1987)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 1987
	Director: Katt Shea (The Rage: Carrie 2, Poison Ivy)
	Actors: Kay Lenz, Greg Evigan, Norman Fell
	Country: USA
	Genre: Horror, Thriller
	Conditions of visioning: 30.05.2017, Cinemateca Capitólio Petrobras, FANTASPOA2017
Synopsis: When a stripper is killed, Detective Heineman (Evigan) convinces his partner Cody Sheenan (Lenz) to infiltrate the club in order to learn more from the girls.
Review: This is the first movie by Katt Shea who was present at the FANTASPOA film festival to introduce it (see picture at the end of the post). The legend goes that she had the idea when going for the first time to a strip-club after losing a bet (I love the name of the one in the movie: Rock Bottom) and being amazed by the artistic side of the performers. She did hire real strippers for the movie. She brought the idea to the pope of exploitation films: Roger Corman, depicted in the interesting 2011 Documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel. After a year of re-writing she managed to also direct it, only to be devastated (and crying a lot) to see the cuts Corman himself was doing during the editing process. To keep the movie under 85 minutes he proceeded to removing many transition scenes to the benefit of more nudity. It was in the original idea of Katt Shea to have performances punctuating the movie between investigations, but it is easy to tell when watching the movie that too many have been added and the whole story suffers from it. OK it was always supposed to be only a cheap exploitation movie as can be told from the limited story, acting and sets, but the characters are not that shallow and I can understand the movie now has a cult following. It is however difficult to enjoy especially in the poor copy I saw it with shrieking mono sound. But as one of the audience members astutely says during the Q&A that followed the projection, such independent movies from that period of time managed to depict a culture of the City and of the Night much better that big productions. Katt Shea said she also heard that from a friend working at that time on Disney's Production Pretty Woman in which the city nights are idealized. Note that Katt Shea started in Hollywood by working for Brian de Palma whose influence on her can be seen in the title of this movie (close to Dressed to Kill, one of JoRafCinema's favorites) and the idea for the ending borrowed from the same movie. I can't rate the movie too high because of the loopholes in the cinema version (getting topless to infiltrate a strip-club after a single murder!?) and the sharp cuts in the editing, but I would highly recommend it anyways to aficionados of exploitation movies from that period of which it is a must-see.
Rating: 4 /10