Bulges, Bitches and Bad Wigs

Strip clubs generally don’t do it for me—I find it difficult to objectify someone I’m interacting with—but movies about male strippers are another story. Besides eliminating that pesky direct interaction, movies about male strippers are, with a few notable exceptions, enjoyably ridiculous.

When women strip in movies, they’re often presented as victims or sluts (again, there are notable exceptions). But if a man takes his clothes off for an audience of women—and they’re always women in mainstream movies — he gets a wink and a nudge. Dude, you must be up to your tits in pussy, amiright?

Christopher Atkins shows off his talent.

Rick, an exotic dancer by night and junior college student by day, has easy access to pussy in 1983’s A NIGHT IN HEAVEN. He’s got a girlfriend, sexy redhead Slick (Sandra Beall, whose acting style is best described as Kristen Stewart with wired jaws), but she’s cool with him bedding other women, like the dimwitted blonde neighbor in his trailer park, where he lives with his mother. But when his professor, Faye, whose class he’s failing, shows up at one of his performances—at a club called Heaven, of course—Rick makes it his mission to give her a (hard pounding) F.

Rick is played by early ’80s heartthrob Christopher Atkins, who was sort of like ’70s heartthrob Shaun Cassidy, only with a third of the talent and a 100% more likely to take his clothes off. Being naked with Brooke Shields (and her body double) in The Blue Lagoon put Atkins on the map. He kept his clothes on for musical comedy The Pirate Movie in 1982, though he did sport a skimpy diaper during the song “Pumpin’ Blowin’”(there might be a god, after all…). That Atkins was cast as a stripper was inevitable, though his stripper costume is surprisingly modest, a pair of silver lamé shorts rather than the high-waisted thongs—dad thongs?—of his fellow dancers. Viewers need not give up hope: Atkins goes full Monty later in the movie, when he finally beds his professor, Faye.

Faye is played by Lesley Ann Warren, who is kind of like an insecure Susan Sarandon. Though Heaven is Atkins’ vehicle, and there is potential to develop Rick’s story into one about the struggles of working-class America, this movie primarily belongs to Warren because sometimes it’s best to just accept that you’re dealing with a Playgirl fantasy and nothing more. Faye is all high collars and hand wringing, married to a NASA engineer (Robert Logan), who rides a recumbent bike and who sulks when she doesn’t take a day off from her job at the college so they can mess around (the selfish bitch!). Faye’s dragged to a strip club by her visiting sister, Patsy (a feisty Deborah Rush), and because college boys in silver lamé shorts trump recumbent bikes, her libido is suddenly kicked into high gear. Faye’s timing is off, though. Her husband loses his job and his sex drive just when Faye wants to put some lovin’ on him. Suddenly Rick’s flirtations become harder to ignore, but is he really smitten or is she just another notch in his belt?

A Night in Heaven bombed in theaters, though its soundtrack, featuring Bryan Adams’ hit “Heaven” (Adams’ connection might be problematic now), gained some traction in pop culture. Unsurprisingly, the movie has a gay cult following. Enjoyably dumb and we get to see Christopher Atkins’ cock? How could we resist?

Even dumber is JUST CAN’T GET ENOUGH, a 2002 made-for-Here! TV movie about the rise of Chippendales in the early 1980s and its co-founder Somen Banerjee’s hiring of a hit man to kill choreographer Nick De Noia. The movie is quick to disabuse anyone of the notion that they are about to see a serious account with a title card that reads: What you are about to see pretty much happened. Although most of the names have been changed for legal reasons, we did use a few names of real people who, as a result of their untimely deaths (details to follow), can no longer sue.

But if you’re expecting to see a satirical take on a true crime story, à la To Die For or Bernie, guess again. Just Can’t Get Enough was written and directed by Dave Payne, and Dave Payne, whose credits include Alien Terminator, is no Gus Van Sant or Richard Linklater. What you get is the equivalent of Showgirls with the production values of Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of ‘Dif’rent Strokes’, made slightly less awesome by the fact that Just Can’t Get Enough is self-aware. There is a lot of intentional, if poorly executed, comedy in Just Can’t Get Enough, like when a dancer lands in jail after whipping off his thong (the movie’s one shot of peen) and dry humping a female vice cop, but I also suspect the makers of this movie were hoping to hide this movie’s shittiness under the comedy label. Nice try, but no.

Hilarious.

I’ll give the movie this: the actors cast as Chippendales men do have some pretty hot bodies, especially Jonathan Aube as Chad, the club’s “innocent” host, who I found much more appealing than Christopher Atkins’ in A Night in Heaven. Whatever lustful feelings their bodies inspire is immediately undone by some horrendous wigs, however. A pre-Six Feet Under J.P. Pitoc, as the club’s cokehead emcee Clayton, appears to be wearing Lorraine Bracco’s hair from Goodfellas. At least Aube’s fake mustache isn’t too obvious.

Who wore it best?

A bit more disturbing than the wigs is the racism. Almost every character in this movie is an airhead, but you can subtract 20 extra I.Q. points if that character is a person of color. Banerjee wasn’t an easy guy to love, and he clearly made some questionable decisions, but this movie portrays him as a fucking moron. That actor Shelley Malil was evidently directed to really Apu the fuck out of the role doesn’t help matters. Worse is the Mexican hit man hired to off De Noia. It could be argued that his stupidity is attributable to his heroin addiction, not his nationality, but that’s a weak argument, considering the actor playing him, Alejandro Patiño, plays him like a white actor doing brown face. There is one lone black dancer in this movie’s Chippendales crew, but he’s nothing more than an extra. Considering how other people of color are treated in this movie, I’d say that actor dodged a bullet.

Grrrl!

Most of the acting in the movie ranges from barely passable to offensive, but Peter Nevargic as Nick De Noia deserves a special shout out, not for being especially skilled but for best embodying the campiness that the filmmakers claim they’re going for. Wearing over-sized aviator glasses and a Members Only jacket, Nevargic minces into every scene, teeth bared, ready to bite into every line. And when he bites, he bites down hard. Other than being called a faggot by a disgruntled dancer, De Noia’s sexuality is never remarked upon, but Nevargic makes it clear the choreographer is a vicious queen. He’s not on screen nearly enough.

Not all male stripper movies are stupid, as Magic Mike recently proved (not so its pointless sequel, Magic Mike XXL). And some male stripper movies are actually TV shows, like TOY BOY, a Spanish-made series currently streaming on Netflix. I was drawn to its male stripper-seeks-justice storyline, envisioning thong-clad men beating the shit out of people, something I’d hoped Jean Claude Van Damme might have treated us to in the ’90s. Alas, Toy Boy doesn’t give us something so glorious, though it’s still very much worth watching. Hugo (Jesús Mosquera) is a stripper framed for a murder he’s sure he didn’t commit (he was drugged at an orgy; how that flaming corpse ended up on his sailboat is a mystery to him), and once released from prison he seeks to clear his name by finding the real killer. Though he gets in plenty of dangerous situations, Hugo’s quest, aided by his lawyer Triana (Maria Pedraza), is more methodical than violent. The story that unfolds, involving rival wealthy families, corrupt policemen, rape, pedophilia, illicit affairs and doomed loves, is more Prime Time soap than crime thriller, and that’s OK. More than OK, in fact.

Though Mosquera and his exotic dancing brethren are easy on the eyes, it’s the women who make Toy Boy interesting. Macarena Medina (Cristina Castaño, stealing almost every scene she’s in), Hugo’s sugar mama until he was sent to prison for murdering her husband, is the show’s vixen character, a bit more dangerous than Dynasty’s Alexis Carrington but not quite as vicious as Game of Thrones’ Cersei Lannister. Just as ruthless is Benigna (Adelfa Calvo, also excellent), matriarch of the wealthy Rojas family. Benigna presents herself as a kindly grandmother, content to just tend to her tomato garden while her son-in-law manages the family fortune, but she’s a ball-breaker of a bitch behind the scenes. She’s a live action embodiment of Mom in Futurama.

Carlo Costanzia as Jairo.

There’s also a gay romance between one of the dancers, Jairo (Carlo Costanzia, whose got a Kit Harington sad-eyed-puppy thing going on), a mute, and Macarena’s blue-haired son Andrea (Juanjo Almeida), a basket case. The show is very matter of fact in its treatment of homosexuality. None of Jairo’s co-workers seem to care that he’s gay, only expressing concern that he’s turning tricks to supplement his income (never mind that Germán, the sole Black stripper, regularly services older women for cash), and Macarena is more concerned about her son’s mental health than his homosexuality. Jairo and Andrea’s relationship doesn’t really progress beyond the hand-holding stage, though this can be attributed to Andrea being a fucking mess. Most of same-sex action shown in Toy Boy occurs during drug-fueled orgies, as if gay sex is nothing more than a kink to be indulged once the molly kicks in.

It’s in the prurient interest department that Toy Boy disappoints. Sex scenes, straight and gay, are few and relatively tame, and the series is surprisingly stingy with the nudity. In scenes showcasing the dancers in action, of which there is at least one per episode, the men don’t even strip down to thongs but Speedos and boxcuts. You’d see more man ass in a season of American Horror Story, and don’t even think about seeing any dick.

You’ll see some dick in the 2018 documentary THIS ONE’S FOR THE LADIES — if you watch the NC-17 version, that is. What I saw streaming on Hulu was rated R and the exposed, erect cocks were all blurred out. In the words of one of the women interviewed, “Why’re you running? It’s just penis.” Fortunately, like Toy Boy, This One’s for the Ladies has more to offer than just bare flesh.*

Director Gene Graham focuses his camera the male exotic dance circuit in Newark, New Jersey. What sets Graham’s documentary apart from other docs about male dancers is he’s focusing on Black dancers (according to IMDb, Graham made this movie in response to the lack of diversity in the Magic Mike films). Though the temporary venues aren’t much, the shows are flamboyant, rowdy and plenty raunchy, making Magic Mike look like a church Christmas pageant. (Channing Tatum never sported a sequined cock sock on his stiff member or ate a cupcake off a woman’s ass.) “Y’all ready to see some sexy motherfuckers?” emcee Sweet Tee asks the crowd. Hell, yeah!

Among those sexy motherfuckers are Young Rider, who learned showmanship from a drag performing uncle; Fever, a hardcore Superman fan whose energetic performances make him a fan favorite; Satan, whose ripped body makes a church-going woman shudder with dirty thoughts (“…[H]e got up on stage, took his piece out, and I’ve just been in love with him ever since,” she gushes); and, my favorites, the brothers Raw Dog and Tygar, who were encouraged to dance after taking their shirts off at a house party. Only Tygar was interested initially: “Raw Dawg told me from the rip, ‘It’s gay and I don’t want nothing to do with it.’” As so often happens, money helped change Raw Dog’s mind.

One of Raw Dawg and Tygar’s promotional photos. Raw Dawg
had no worries about appearing incestuous, either.

There’s even a female dancer in the mix, Blaze. She a lesbian, but what’s interesting about her story is that she is able to find a place in the roster of male dancers, and that she has fans in an audience of straight women. “When Blaze is here I’m gay that one night,” says one fan, who goes by the handle Poundcake. I’m pretty sure audiences at  Penthouse Executive Club, say, would not be as accepting if a male dancer were introduced into the mix.

There’s a side of social commentary that creeps into this documentary, though it’s never explicitly addressed. The dancers and their fans live working class lives, and expectations are calibrated accordingly. One dance event, benefiting an autism organization, nets less than $300, which is nothing to sneeze at but still seems low. Yet the organizer deems the event a success. More positively is the strange sense of community that shown among the dancers and fans—strange only because it arises from doing Jell-O shots and watching men swing their dicks around. I can certainly think of worse causes for communities to coalesce.

*That said, when I watch a movie about strippers, I expect to see everything, goddammit.