I don't know how this happened but we have a stripper movie that is pretty lame. Even more odd is the fact that the director of the original also directed this bargain basement sequel. Perhaps Katt Shea felt that she needed to expand her horizons and make an artier film but it falls flat and left me limp. The original was good, she should have left it at that.

Maria Ford stars as Shady, a nice yet confused looking stripper who has trippy nightmares about her stripper friends that usually end with one of them being killed via throat-slitting courtesy of a razor blade in Shady's mouth. Things get worse for Shady when it turns out that her clothes challenged friends are really ending up dead. A dopey looking cop-with-a-limp (Eb Lottimer) is quickly assigned to the case and he does the ethical thing and gets involved with Shady. No one seems too concerned with this nor does anyone seem very concerned with the fact that the once full dressing room is getting emptier. Regardless, things resolve themselves by the end in an outcome that you could see a mile away.

It is a drag when a promising director blows it as bad as Katt Shea did with this film. I saw Carrie 2 and didn't think it was bad and I enjoyed the first Stripped To Kill. I am not sure why the sequel is so weak but as I said earlier, it seems as though Shea was trying to be "edgier" but all we ended up with was a bunch of nightmare stripteases that looked like deleted scenes from Cafe Flesh. The cast for the most part did a decent job but Maria Ford (before she was bitter against the B-movie industry) is terrible in her portrayal of Shady and I really didn't give a rat's ass about her character other than that I wanted her to stop whining. She did provide us with the films most memorable scene in which she makes out with the cop in the alley set where their passionate smooching smudges her lipstick all over both of their faces and then it miraculously begins to rain. It was an odd moment indeed but it is strange things like this that keep a lot of movies out of the trash bin. Maria also provides us with the best dance number when she plays a topless lion to Karen Mayo-Chandler's tamer. Even still, the stripping numbers were nowhere near as good as the original and were even missing the audience much of the time.

I ended up giving this film one star only because it is not humanly possible for me to say that a movie with attractive girls getting naked belongs in the trash. This is a B-movie trying too hard to be something else. If Shea wanted to do the arty stuff, she should have directed some music videos rather than trying to incorporate them into her film. Even though this was made in the 80's, that is still no excuse. (Josh Pasnak, 9/5/05)

Directed By: Katt Shea.
Written By: Katt Shea.

Starring: Maria Ford, Eb Lottimer, Karen Mayo-Chandler.