Confessions of a Lap Dancer

Not since seeing "The Story of O" with Corinne Cleary at the theater with my then husband when it came out, have I encountered a film that treated erotic material with such sensitivity and focus on quality production.

I am frankly quite bored with erotic films with spare dialog and stupid background music. I disagree with Uriah43, another reviewer, who found the music off-putting. He obviously is a fan of a different kind of erotic film. To each his own, but I found the artistry of this one very appealing.

Let's face it, no one expects a masterpiece in this genre, but if you enjoy a thoughtfully constructed film that will also appeal to your wife, this is a good bet.

"Erica" (Blake Pickett) temporarily loses custody of her daughter because of her vocation as a stripper at a nightclub. Unlike the other strippers, she also prostitutes herself with some of the customers. Although she doesn't like what she does she becomes addicted to it and this only serves to make her situation even worse. Especially considering that her boyfriend "Ron" (Doug Jeffery) has no idea of her activities outside of the strip club. Anyway, this is a film that has a great deal of nudity and scenes involving sex. And while the ladies were all very sexy, I thought that the music failed to take advantage of the situation as it was too slow and monotonous throughout most of the film. Now, I could understand some slow music here and there. But the excessive use of it essentially ruined the mood and much of the movie. Likewise, having the lead actress practically crying during some of the sex scenes didn't help either. In essence, what should have been erotic turned out to be depressing. On the plus side, Amy Lindsay (as "Jo"), Nikki Nova (as "Pamela") along with the aforementioned Blake Pickett added some great scenery. Overall then, this film had the necessary ingredients to be an excellent movie but the chemistry just wasn't there. Slightly below average.

It is worth knowing that this picture exists in two versions and they are night and day different. Having seen the unrated version on cable, I was very disappointed by the R-rated version widely available on video. Okay, it is not The Godfather. In fact, it's a notch below Dancing at the Blue Iguana. It is basically in the same genre as 100 other Skinemax flix, but distinctly superior in that the approach aims for realistic drama and characters. For once, the sex is not simply exploitation, but part of the everyday reality of the character's lives. They are in the sex business, and Blake Pickett sizzles in her sex scenes, and she and the other strippers look great on and off stage. Herein lies the weakness of the R-rated version. It cuts away almost prudishly whenever clothes start coming off, thereby cutting away from a fundamental fact of the character's lives: that they exhibit themselves and then have to deal with the negative perceptions this initiates. Blake Pickett's best scenes effectively convey her sense of self-loathing at the state of her life while stripping or hooking and most of this is gone from the R-rated version. What remains is a slightly shrieky melodrama in which it is hard to understand why the central character is so self-destructive and hate-filled. In the unrated version this becomes clear and dramatically effective. The R-rated version fails to be either.

I thought this was an excellent DTV film; Blake Pickett shows

her exotic dancing ability well and is a pretty good actress as

well. The sex scenes are also very good with her showing an

enthusiasm for sex act simulation. In fact, a film such as this

tends to blur the distinction between soft and hard core (The

Life of Gigolo is another along these lines). The plot involving her trying to get custody of her daughter is

realistic and handled well albeit with a happy Hollywood ending. Blake was also good in Alien Files, another top notch soft