Pole Position: The Most Legendary Strippers in Film

Image via Complex Original

Sadly, few non-comedic male stripper movies have come down the pike. With the exception of a handful of terrible TV movies, the male stripper is relatively new to the big screen. Decades before Magic Mike though, the 1983 film A Night in Heaven brought male exotic dancing to the big screen. The film was ahead of its time, as it starred a nubile male stripper (Christopher Atkins) opposite an older woman (Lesley Ann Warren). Bear in mind, this is before we even had the term cougar. These were dark times indeed.

Unfortunately, there isn't much else positive to be said about A Night In Heaven. The film is convoluted without being interesting, and falls back on old-fashioned moralizing whenever it comes close to saying or doing something daring. Vincent Camby of The New York Times described the film as one where "all boredom breaks loose."

Let's give what little credit is due this film for offering something of a female gaze, even if there isn't much else to be impressed with in A Night in Heaven.

Infamy is still notoriety. Many decent films are lost to time, forgotten mere weeks after they end their first run. Truly terrible movies are immortal. The notorious awfulness of Showgirls and the utter mishandling of its NC-17 release stands alongside Ishtar and Heaven's Gate among the greatest misfires in cinema history. The film tanked Elizabeth Berkley's burgeoning film career, spawned a parody musical and tongue-in-cheek sequel, and earned seven Razzie Awards.

Oddly, this spectacular failure led to the film's immortality. In Naomi Klein's No Logo, she describes Showgirls' cult status: "... trendy twenty-somethings were throwing Showgirls irony parties, laughing sardonically at the implausibly poor screenplay and shrieking with horror at the aerobic sexual encounters." She then adds that MGM stoked the flames of the film's ironic appeal, actively molding the film's legacy as the next Rocky Horror Picture Show. As a result, Showgirls eventually made money, earning over $100 million in video rentals and a place in the "so bad it's good" pantheon.

Though Elizabeth Berkley would likely give a lot to have never made Showgirls, Nomi Malone has followed an odd, winding path to dubious immortality.

If not for Showgirls, Striptease might have become a cult classic. The film is just as self-serious, if not quite as awful. Though the film made money, it was critically panned. Leonard Maltin may have put it best when he said the film was, "not funny enough, or dramatic enough, or sexy enough, or bad enough, to qualify as entertainment in any category." Though the film is widely considered a failure, Demi Moore's fierce performance as FBI secretary turned stripper Erin Grant lives on. The odd, almost avant-garde stripping scenes evoke the worst excesses of '80s music videos and '90s melodrama at once. Though it's hard to imagine many people sitting down to watch Striptease today, GIFs and video clips of Moore's performance will likely float around for years to come.

Strip clubs as shitty as Kadie's never have dancers who look like Jessica Alba, but we'll just chalk that up to movie magic. Alba's Nancy is your standard stripper with a heart of gold who needs protection from a man with a dark past. Though we've seen all of this before, you tend to forget that when you see how well Nancy can handle a lasso. To be fair, there are things that make Nancy's story unique, like being followed by a creepy yellow man, and the fact that she continually tries to jump the bones of the much older Hartigan (Bruce Willis). Strippers getting the hots for older customers is definitely something that only actually happens in movies, even if that customer happens to have saved her life.

The occupations of the characters in the love quandrangle film Closer only matter insofar as they facilitate plot twists and make them more interesting. Dan Woolf (Jude Law) is a writer, which is only important to the film in that it allows him to meet Anna (Julia Roberts), a photographer. Anna's photography serves the plot because it allows Larry (Clive Owen) to recognize a picture of Alice (Natalie Portman) and so on and so forth.

Why is important for Natalie Portman to be a stripper? Well, the scene between her and Clive Owen where she does a split is pretty dope.

If you've been to a strip club, you may have been fed the age-old story of the stripper putting herself through college or supporting her ailing grandmother with her hard-earned tips. Though it's none of our business how a woman makes her money or how she spends it, there is some sense among men that helping a stripper in need makes lap dances somehow more noble. If this is true, the gentlemen of The Full Monty strip for some of the most noble causes in exotic dancing history.

When the steel mills of Sheffield, England fall on hard times, the out of shape, middle-aged steelworkers decide to put on a nude burlesque show to make ends meet. What the gentlemen lack in looks, they make up for in determination. Though it is clear that they are never going to give the Chippendales a run for their money, their efforts lead to one glorious striptease to Tom Jones' "You Can Leave Your Hat On."

You don't often associate stripping movies with feel-good stories, but in the case of Gaz and company, their stripping gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling, and not the one your normally get from watching a striptease.

High school teacher / stripper Miss Davis plays a small but pivotal role in Varsity Blues. The part isn't important whatsoever in terms of the plot of the film, but the scene played a vital part in bringing life to the fantasies of pretty much every high school student of a generation. The film asks, "What would happen if the hot teacher worked at the strip club?" The answer the film provides is, "It would be awesome." 

It's hard to imagine that this scenario would turn out well in real life. It's more likely that the teacher would be mortified and report the boys for underage drinking. Also, why would a teacher want to perform a teacher routine when she strips? Isn't stripping partially about escapism? Maybe she'd want to be a cowgirl or a lady astronaut instead? It is easy to nitpick this sequence, but Varsity Blues deserves a hand for perpetuating and bringing to life our adolescent fantasies, no matter how unrealistic those fantasies may be.

This isn't your typical stripper movie. This is not the kind of movie you rent with your buddies when you want to watch porn but don't actually want to admit you want to watch porn. Gypsy is probably one of the most square, but also one of the most poignant, portrayals of a stripper in film history. Adapted from a Broadway musical that was first adapted from a memoir, Gypsy is about the mother-daughter relationship between stage mom and the daughters she tries to live through vicariously.

Often, strippers in films function as mere window dressing, as damsels in distress or femme fatales. Gypsy offers a different vision of an exotic dancer. Through dancing, Louise (Natalie Wood) self-actualizes and transforms into Gypsy Rose Lee, an independent fulfilled performer. It is also through her dancing that her overbearing mother finally comes to terms with the insecurities that have caused her daughters so much pain.

The best aspects of Cherry Darling's (Rose McGowan) character come to light once she switches careers from stripper to gun-leg wielding, zombie slaying badass. Though a life doling out vigilante justice suits her, she uses her past skills to her advantage. She distracts a pair of kidnappers with her dance moves before attacking them with her initial, inferior wooden prosthetic. Shortly after that encounter, her wooden leg is replaced with an M4 Carbine equipped with an M203 grenade launcher attachment. Her incredible dexterity with her machine gun leg has to owe at least something to her years honing her agility on the stripper pole.

Sometimes the right tools are put in the right hands on the right legs, and that is a beautiful thing.

People who make money with their bodies can hear the ticking clock. With each injury that an athlete endures, with each wrinkle a stripper discovers while looking in the mirror, they are one step closer to being put out to pasture. Younger, hungrier bodies are waiting in line as the old lions to play out their last fading moments.

Mickey Rourke (Randy "The Ram" Robinson) and Marisa Tomei (as Cassidy) perfectly capture the desperation, pain, and regret of those final days in the twilight of their careers in The Wrestler. Both actors understand the odd relationship the aging entertainer has with their audience. On one hand, they are grateful for even a shred of the approval they once enjoyed. On the other, they resent the people who have sapped them of the vibrance of their youth and left them an aging husk. 

In The Wrestler, Rourke and Tomei remind us that the end of a career based on selling your beauty is rarely pretty.

It's unclear if future generations will be able to appreciate the phenomenon that was Magic Mike. The film itself is unremarkable, if ably directed by Steven Soderbergh. Though Channing Tatum brought some complexity to the Mike Lane character and McConaughey came with the best version of his effortlessly world-weary charm, the rest of the cast were hired more for looks than skill, and the story was thin. What made Magic Mike remarkable was what the film did for audiences.

Women are often given male figures to appreciate on film, but far too infrequently are they invited to actively enjoy and celebrate male bodies. Reports from early screenings of Magic Mike had an aspect of rock concert fanfare with audiences hooting, wooing, and laughing along with the sexy proceedings. The film was a surprise triumph for female sexuality and female fun. Bachelorette parties and book clubs united in their love of Channing Tatum's abs, and the world was a better place for it.

Headdress, foot fetish, giant snake: what more could you want in a fictional stripper? If you answered, "to turn into a murderous vampire," then you are into some pretty fucked up shit. And also, you're in luck. Though few would agree that a lap dance from Ms. Pandemonium is worth it, Hayek's turn as the undead stripper stands as one of the sexiest performances in film history with one of the most surprising twists.

Her dance wasn't just sensual, it also taught us a valuable lesson. If you're going to stop at a roadside strip club, be sure to check if it is located above an ancient Aztec temple before you take a stack of singles out of the ATM.