Strip Tease Murder (1961)

Director: Ernest Morris

Cast: John Hewer, Ann Lynn, Jean Muir

Synopsis: The compere of a strip show investigates the suspicious death of his girlfriend.

Anyone hoping to get some titillation from this dusty example of cheap British 1960s b-movie-making is in for a disappointment, I’m afraid.   Not much is revealed, although Strip Tease Murder was no doubt quite daring for the early 1960s.   There’s nothing particularly seductive about the stripteases – in fact ‘Delightful Diana’ (Jean Muir) disrobes in such a rush that you’d think she had a bus to catch.   The story, such as it is, is completely barmy.   One of the strippers (Ann Lynn – A Shot in the Dark )blackmails a crime baron (Kenneth J. Warren – I, Monster, Demons of the Mind) who is trying to dump her, so he hires some guy called Perkel (Peter Elliott) – who’s clearly supposed to be gay, and is by far the film’s most interesting character – who has invented a box with a dial that sends a signal to a receiver which causes the unlucky target to suffer a stroke.  Unfortunately for Delightful Diana, she ends up being zapped by mistake.   Her boyfriend (John Hewer, who would later find fame as Captain Birds Eye in the long-running TV ads), the club comic with a drinking problem (probably brought on by the daft outfit he’s forced to wear on stage), smells a rat and undertakes an investigation which transforms him from an object of derision to a trenchcoat-wearing sleuth.   It’s as silly as it sounds, with the storyline pausing every five minutes so another girl can tease us with a strip. At least the ladies here are nicely rounded in all the right places, with no designer-chic bones trying to poke through their skin.

(Reviewed 20th December 2011)