By Geno McGahee
I love whodunits. They are actually my favorite sort of horror film. I love the journey to discovery of the identity of the killer and what their motives were and how they are, usually, totally normal until the great reveal where they go complete ape shit.
DANCE WITH DEATH is a film that stars Maxwell Caulfield. I’m actually a fan of GREASE 2 and I am not a fan of musicals. There’s just something about that movie that is just so ridiculously absurd that I dig it. So Caulfield gravitated to another absurdity with this horror flick and it’s about as enjoyable as it gets.
Hopper (Drew Snyder) runs a paper and has an employee that is really driving him up a wall. Kelly (Barbara Alyn Woods) is an ambitious reporter that will not take no for an answer. She desperately wants to make a name for herself and she is insisting on a good assignment. This leads to the Bottom’s Up strip club, where there’s an unknown killer going around taking out the dancers. What a great name for a strip club.
Kelly decides to masquerade as “Dominque” and gets a job at the strip club and she doesn’t do well at first. Another stripper notes that “the only thing that will save her is a great pair of tits” and when they are revealed, she says “not bad.” The dialogue in this film is so fucking funny from jump to the end.
Shaughnessy (Caulfield) is a detective that has been investigating the case and finds out that Kelly is a reporter and the two team up to find out the killer’s identity while sparking up a romance. If I was an investigator, I would insist on being assigned to a strip club full time. Most jobs will not assign you to a strip club. Trust me, I’ve asked every job that I have ever worked for. Ignorant fuckers.
The top suspect, Henry (Michael McDonald), seems like the right guy. He’s always there. He likes knives. He is a registered sex offender that raped people and molested kids. He has those pedophile glasses and is grimy as fuck. I would have bet on him too, but Kelly isn’t so sold. Shaughnessy believes it, but she just thinks he’s a creep.
The film keeps throwing out suspects. We have the DJ, Dermot (Steven Williams), that seems obsessed with the girls. We have Art (Martin Mull), the owner of the club that has a sex tape with Whitney, one of the strippers. We have Hopper, the boss at the paper, that also has a sex tape with Whitney. Damn, what is up with these fucking sex tapes?! I’m just happy that Art and Hopper didn’t have a sex tape together…then again, they never said that they didn’t make one. Perhaps it’s in the deleted scenes.
Kelly gets nearly raped by three goons. (Note: I may say things that are not PC and if you get offended, please stop reading now.) One of the goons is wearing a Canadian tuxedo (all denim), and I will NEVER stop calling it that. I was raised calling it a “Canadian tuxedo” and I’m getting old and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well, that guy and two other guys have their asses handed to them by Shaughnessy. After they get laid out, the dude in the denim says “all I wanted was a blow job.” Hilarious stuff.
I just realized that Henry is the same guy from Mad TV. I think he had some contract with HBO because I think HBO produced this and another one called “BODY WAVES,” which was produced the same year and was just as awesome. Shaughnessy catches up with Henry and calls him a “mother fuck.” I bet he was supposed to say “mother fucker” but stopped short and they kept the take, which really made it that much funnier.
(Spoilers) Shaughnessy busts a cap in Hopper’s ass. It was glorious. Hopper was chasing Kelly, presumed to be the killer, and would get taken down viciously by the gunfire of Shaughnessy. We learn that Shaughnessy is the killer and I wept. He’s not the same guy I remember from GREASE 2. If this is a sequel to GREASE 2, Stephanie broke his heart something fierce.
DANCE WITH DEATH is fantastic. It reminds me a lot of ZIPPERFACE and CITY IN PANIC, which is a good thing. I really want to watch them all back to back. DANCE WITH DEATH is as overdramatic as it gets. There’s not a lot to it with most of it being attractive women dancing naked, but that was enough to keep me interested as the story developed. This checks all the boxes for a whodunit slasher film. I can’t recommend it enough. The death of Shaughnessy gets an extra point.
