This movie was one in a series of crappy films that used to play on cable when I was a kid and you'd watch them from beginning to end, no matter how bad, just because they had an R rating. Maybe you'd see some nudity! Maybe something shocking! More often as not you were bored to tears.
This is a pretty dull movie in general; the plot is, basically, a bunch of terrible actresses with a bad script walk around Hollywood a lot and say things to each other and someone filmed it. OK, to be fair there's a story, but it's mind-numbingly unimportant--something about women trying to get jobs and make their way through the '70's, and have sex. Fair enough. There are only a few things that made this one rise to the top of the swill for me and made it memorable.
First, the blonde "Goldie Hawn" rip-off actress who played "Honey" (Oh brother). I know most people would hate her but I love camp and she's as camp as can be. She's got a noxiously "cute" voice and look and I laugh every time she comes on screen just because she's there. I like it when people with funny voices scream and curse or make a play to be taken seriously, and this actress does her share. She works the dumb bimbo thing well and, like Goldie before her, clearly is in on the joke.
Second, everyone in this would-be "T and A" film (there are exactly four t's and more male a's than female, not that anyone would care one way or another, it's all so UN-sexy...who was this made for anyway?) has such a loony, "after school special" attitude it furthers the camp value. No one gets burned for being optimistic in this flick--a street bum is just a nice guy who wants to be your friend, your boss in a strip joint really wants to further your career because you're a great gal. Hah? It's so deliriously unrealistic that people living in L.A. would treat each other nicely like this that it goes from being badly produced to almost clever. It's like "The Care Bears Visit A Crack House."
Third and foremost--Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira. I didn't know who she was when I saw this as a kid, but I knew there was really only one reason to watch it--for the "Katya" strip routine about 20 minutes in. I keep the tape around to this day for this scene alone. Ms. Peterson is absolutely wonderful performing a fun burlesque routine. She rolls her eyes, strikes some classic va-va-voom poses and bounces around to the thumpy music without ever losing her dignity. It's not sexy at all (to me) but a wonderful bit of business all the same--there's something so fun about burlesque that isn't possible to replicate in today's world, I think, and Cassandra exemplifies it--the woman in complete control and teasing and flirting her way through a number that is more about dance, imagination and beauty in motion than raw sex like you see in rap music videos and the like.
And then to hear her talking later! Even though at the time she was clearly not an actress, she portrays the "seasoned veteran" well. She speaks to her protégé as if becoming a stripper in a lurid club is a high ambition and lots of fun--not unlike Elvira's ambition in "Mistress Of The Dark" to become a Vegas showgirl. The silly innocence of this sub-plot is fun and compelling and inspired me a lot. It has a very similar tone to the "sex-for-pay is good clean fun" movie "The Happy Hooker" which came out around the same time. Makes you wonder what they were smoking at the time.
You can easily turn it off after Elvira's protégé does her number, the movie doesn't get any better after that and soon becomes interminable.
