Those of you (And myself included) that enjoy sleazy and low budget exploitation films will find it difficult to ignore this little gem. How can you not be interested in a film about strippers, murders, and a well known actress cast in the lead that also strips? Admit it, you can't! Story is about Detective Cody Sheenan (Kay Lenz) who along with her obnoxious partner Heineman (Greg Evigan) accidentally come across a stripper being burned to death but the murderer gets away. The dead stripper works at the Rock Bottom strip joint and Heineman gets an idea of convincing Cody to go undercover there and find out what she can. Cody can't dance and is not sure about her fellow cops looking at her topless but she decides to do it. Heineman makes sure that she wins amateur night that enables her to get hired by the club owner Ray (Norman Fell) who gives her an opportunity despite her terrible dancing.
*****SPOILER ALERT*****
Cody gets to know each of the girls and the dead stripper turns out to be the lover of Roxanne (Pia Kamakahi) who is also a dancer there. After time passes Cody starts to perfect her dance routines and actually becomes pretty good. Unfortunately her superiors tell her to stop but she doesn't want to because it seems to have liberated her and also she feels that she is getting closer to finding the murderer.
This film is directed by Katt Shea Ruben who is competent at making entertaining low budget efforts but one of the flaws in this film is the amount of dancing that takes place. Every stripper in this film has her routine shown and it's not cut down in length at all. Each of the dances goes on and on for countless minutes. This film was co-produced by Roger Corman and it never ceases to amaze me how Corman can get a popular actress in his projects and get them to take their clothes off. To this day people are still talking about Angie Dickinson's nude scenes in "Big Bad Mama". Kay Lenz gets topless here in a few scenes and she's absolutely beautiful to look at but she's also a very good actress even in low budget junk like this and she's pretty good here. One thing that I did not buy was the forced romantic angle of the film between her and Evigan. He comes across as a big sleaze bag and he actually lies to Lenz about her assignment to go undercover and get topless which turned out to be for his own benefit. She was never assigned and she got topless for nothing! Some partner! I don't want to knit pick too much on a film like this because it's too easy so I'll just mention again that Lenz looks great and does a good job and Fell is fun as the grouchy club owner. This film also has an ending that you won't see coming so there is enough going on here for me to recommend it.
