Film Review: STRIP CLUB MASSACRE (2017)

STRIP CLUB MASSACRE * USA 2017 Dir: Bob Clark. 101 mins

You don’t expect much from a film called STRIP CLUB MASSACRE, but you would rightly anticipate more entertainment than is found in the feature debut of co-writer / director Bob Clark (not to be confused with the talented, late director of BLACK CHRISTMAS).
Miserably failing to live up to the back-to-basics exploitation pleasures promised by its title, this vastly overlong flick is a cinematic turd of the most obnoxious kind. Down-on-her-luck heroine Alicia Watson loses her job and discovers her boyfriend’s infidelity on the same day, so agrees to a non-stripping job at the club owned by her friend’s decidedly odious other half. Soon enough, the need for the mighty dollar encourages her to ditch the clothes, and her new vocation earns her a place on the hit list of a trio of rampaging, psychopathic fellow strippers. Evidently influenced by (among others) the recent I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE remake trilogy, this offers frequent bouts of girl-on-guy ultra-violence, including a fashionable penis-lopping and a male anal rape with a crowbar, but the make-up FX are lame and the direction worse. It strains embarrassingly to be flippant and funny (“Let’s find out if this one is a squirter!”) in between sexual assaults on both genders, but somehow manages the dual achievement of being both offensive and boring. Cast as the gang’s ringleader, Erin Brown – who deserves better – reaches a new career low.

Review by Steven West