"She stripped for a living, now she must strip to live." The tagline alone lets you know you're in for a potentially shitty late night cable treat. STRIP FOR ACTION delivers that and more. Featuring regular top poppers Maria Ford and Nikki Fritz STRIP FOR ACTION aka HOT TICKET follows the ladies through an ordeal after two hard edged thieves and their inside man massacre the patrons and talent of Club Capone.
Milquetoast Frank (Kevin Walker) has had enough. His bombshell stripper girlfriend, Kim (Maria Ford) has dumped him for the club's manager,Vic (Kevin Contreras) and he owes a lot of money to some unsavory individuals. He gets in touch with his cousin Halleck (Emile Levisetti) who takes the lead in ripping off Club Capone and its owner Stu (Bob McFarland), who is also headlining stripper Kim's uncle...creepy shit there...anyhow. Once the smoke clears Kim and Vic are taken hostage along with stripper Crystal (Nikki Fritz) as Halleck and the thieves try to enact their getaway plan.
Successfully evading detection after their
heist-this is the most isolated strip club in the country-the group take off for their Nevada hide out. Events lead to the Cessna crashing and the hostages find themselves scheming and stripping for their life. Keep your eyes peeled for a familiar face hiking in the wilds here. Kevin Williamson shows up trying to find someone to buy a script he's written...I suppose Lev Spiro wasn't as interested in SCREAM as he was in getting Maria and Nikki out of their tops. Double cross upon triple cross upon double cross finds our heroes and their villains fighting for life against each other and against nature.
STRIP FOR ACTION is nothing fantastic. Maria and Nikki show their talents but not too much. Maria strips in the beginning and then heads upstairs from the club with Vic for a hump. Nikki bounces her Bettys around some in the club and then a bit more in the wilderness but all in all STRIP FOR ACTION is pretty tame on the skin front. Levisetti is godawful and delivers his lines with a smile and no affect whatsoever. His acting is so terrible that no one else's horrible acting even stands out.
Their are continuity errors a plenty as Maria is bound and unbound while flouncing her mounds through the mountains. Their is also a point where a wide shot is required on the rapids and the footage used shows a different raft than the one the gang is riding. The editing is slipshod at best. The soundtrack budget must have been nil because there is an awkward moment where Halleck sings acapella while Nikki strips by the campfire.
Most folks should avoid this flick. It's worthwhile for Maria Ford or Nikki Fritz fans (and even then its kind of weak) but beyond that you have been warned.
LIVING DOLL is another flick produced by veteran schlockmeister Dick Randall (DON'T OPEN TIL CHRISTMAS, FOR YOUR HEIGHT ONLY, PIECES, THE GIRL IN ROOM 2A...he has some winners under his belt). Howard (Mark Jax) works in the hospital morgue by day and is a med student at night. Things don't seem to be going his way as he mopes through his day to day life. His boss is an asshole and his co-worker and friend Jess (Gary Martin) seems to keep him around as a sidekick. The only bright spot of his day is the beautiful young flower shop salesgirl, Christine (Katie Orgill). He even skips classes and study groups so he can stalk her and photograph her. This young man is smitten. Just kidding he's creepy as fuck. As sane as someone who struggles through medical school while working in a morgue and stalk a gorgeous bottle-blonde is, one can imagine how much this guy loses his shit when she turns up on the slab and he is supposed to prep the body for autopsy. He goes even further around the bend when he has to assist the pathologist.
It's a continuous downward spiral as he steals her corpse from the graveyard and takes her to "live" with him in his rat trap walk-up studio apartment. His landlady (Eartha Kitt) grows steadily more suspicious that Howard has a girl in his apartment because she hears talking and voices coming from his place. As Christine's corpse decays and putrifies further so does Howard's mind. Howard interacts with her in his madness and even follows through with her demand to murder her p.o.s. boyfriend Steve. All the while Howard sees Christine as she appeared in life and does not see her as she is until the absolutely insane conclusion.
The flick is fairly gruesome and gory though not nearly as much so as the NECROMANTIK series. The autopsy is off camera following the initial graphic incision and any explicit necrophilia is implied or off camera except for some grotesque scenes of kissing. Watching Howard's descent from introverted outcast to raving lunatic is truly disturbing.
Mark Jax is quite good as Howard and Gary Martin hams it up as Jess. Freddie Earlie is great as the crotchety, angry malcontent of a hospital morgue supervisor. South African bombshell Katie Orgill was one of The Sun's Page Three Girls and her role of Christine serves as her film debut. Sadly Katie does not go on to do any other films after LIVING DOLL.
The soundtrack is Kenny G atrocious at times and even has a honky tonk theme song sung by Gary Martin and it certainly does not help to improve the viewers listening experience. Co-directors George Dugdale and Peter Litten acquit themselves very well and unfortunately only directed one other feature together--SLAUGHTER HIGH starring Caroline Munro. Litten also directed HEAVEN'S A DRAG in 1994. Howard's hell is devilishly lit varying shades of blue, red and green which lends even more gravity to the growing madness. It makes his shithole rat trap apartment look like the nightmare it really has become.
Another solid Mondo Macabro release, genre fans should pick this weird ass flick up. The ending is
insane and I'm quite surprised it hasn't developed more of a following. Mondo Macabro's DVD release of LIVING DOLL is loaded. Features include:
About the Film
Trailer
Interview: Original Scriptwriter, Paul Hart-Wilden
Interview: Lead Actor, Mark Jax
Production Stills
On Set Stills
Press and Publicity
Documentary-The Making of A Horror Film
Featurette: David McGillivray's Diary
Short: Horrorshow
Mondo Macabro previews
