REVIEW: Return Of The Stripping Dead
When I was giving the chance at seeing Night of the Stripping Dead at the Admiral Theater for FREE courtesy a press pass- I was ecstatic! I thought, “What the hell?! This is great! I brought my girlfriend along for the fun and really was looking forward to this event. In addition to girls stripping fully down to their bare nakedness, there would be the zombie pinup beauty contest, Mark the Knife (a 3rd rate comedian/trick artist) paying tribute to Ash from the Evil Dead (the tribute to Ash part was really a stretch and probably just thrown in there to keep in line with the horror theme that was prevalent), Miss Maya Sinstress and the Human Centipede (feat. Vine and Uscie), and the main event Masuimi Max (really the only thing I was looking forward to!).
With all these guests and performances, I thought it was going to be pretty damn enjoyable. I could not have been more wrong. In fact, I felt downright cheated when I left the theater shortly after 11pm.
Admission to the event was $25 online and $35 at the door. I got in for free via a press pass, but I had to pay for my girlfriend. I did not notice it was $10 more at the venue, so that was a surprise to me and did not make me happy right from the get-go. I will note that most of the staff and security were very cordial and accommodating. I was granted access wherever the hell I wanted to go (minus the “champagne rooms†and V.I.P. areas). So my girlfriend and I ventured into the main stage area of the theater and were shocked to find so many open seats and tables. I thought that this was great. We were told it was “Standing Room Only†when we arrived but we saw a fair amount of seats open. Upon further review, we found out the empty seats and tables were all reserved. So, I now had just paid $35 for my girlfriend to stand next to me until a seat or table opened up. I was not about to spend my night hunting down for two seats while missing the stage entertainment. Slowly, I was becoming more and more annoyed with the whole event.
So, after getting shuffled around to an area that did not block waitresses, strippers, patrons views’, and pose a fire hazard, we were able to lean off to the side by the lap dance booths. I now was hot, tired from standing, and sick of looking at open seats that I could not sit in. Finally, I thought screw it and just told my girlfriend to sit in one of the open seats near us. The worst they could do was to boot her out of the seat. We arrived there after 9:15 so we missed the introduction to the Zombie Pin-up Beauty Contest. Suffice to say I don’t think we missed much. The girls that we saw stripping really were not much to write home about. This was not my first time at the Admiral. In fact, I had been going there every weekend for several months at one point in my life with co-workers when I was a theater manager and I was quite familiar with the place and the caliber of women that took their clothes off on any given night. The talent they had working that night was less than spectacular. I was not impressed at all.
The next act we witnessed was the “comedian†Mark the Knife who was supposed to be paying tribute to Ash from Evil Dead. I don’t recall at any point the jokester even MENTIONING The Evil Dead or Ash. I may not have been paying to close attention to what was coming out of his mouth because I was too busy trying to find a damn spot to sit down at. Mark told embarrassingly executed jokes, most of which Mark himself was the butt of the joke. Granted, there was some laughter by folks in the audience but I just did not think he was really that funny. The parlor tricks he performed were more entertaining. My interest was held when Mark pulled out a bullwhip and had a member from the audience hold up newspaper and various other objects for Mark to whip at and slowly trim down in size. He also tried to light a match and toss it into the air and light a cigarette that he was holding in his mouth. This trick never really worked but it got a few laughs out of the audience, regardless. Mark’s shenanigans went on for about 20 minutes or so and then he was finished. The whole act seemed like something I would probably be privy to at the Improv or Zanies, but not at a strip club. So far, I was not impressed at all with where my $35 was going. I could tell that my girlfriend was not very impressed either and the feeling of being new to the Admiral Theater and its whole experience no longer held any weight with her.
Now, the main event was finally at hand: Masuimi Max, the American fetish model of Japanese and German descent. You may have seen her in the films Here Lie Lonely (1999), The Devil’s Muse (2007), and XXX State of the Union (2005), or perhaps even in David Lynch’s Inland Empire in a brief cameo at the end of the movie as the girl with the blonde wig who has a monkey…or maybe not. Point being, Max has been in movies, television reality shows (Fear Factor), modeling for import cars at shows, in a Tiger Army music video, and somewhat of a well-known celebrity in certain circles. Sadly, I have seen her in a few of the aforementioned films, but never really knew who she was before this event at the Admiral Theater.
Now, knowing how everything up until Max’s performance went (in terms of quality and entertainment), one would think that the final performance would be lackluster in execution and delivery, but that could not have been further from the truth. Masuimi Max’s performance was the ONLY thing that I was impressed with at the Admiral Theater that night. Max starts off her EXTREMELY short set of dancing (it lasted about 8-10 minutes, if that!) with the first of two unique segments sitting in a chair with fake legs coming out at all angles in circle. The prop was made to look like Max’s midsection had 7 or legs connected to it and visually looked very cool. Max has that unique talent of popping and locking her joints-arms, legs, and neck. She moves and contorts her body in such an unnatural manner that one is helpless to look away at any point while she is on-stage. I was in a spell while she dances. I had never seen anything so entertaining before in my life. I never wanted it to end, but unfortunately before I had the chance to reach a mental orgasm from her performance, she was moving on to act 2 of the Masuimi Max show. After only showing us her tits in the first performance, I was hoping she would drop everything for the 2nd part. No such luck. Max only bared her breasts and one tiny little trick Max did involving those perky breasts was to shake them back and forth, as many strippers are known to have done in the past, but Max used hand motions during the breast jiggling to imitate them having strings tied to them, pulling invisible strings in the air as if she were a puppeteer and her breasts were the puppet’s arms and legs. I really enjoyed this spark of creativity.
The second act consisted of her wearing a pair of butterfly wings and dancing around on a level of professionalism that NO GIRLS possessed during the two hours that my girlfriend and I were privy to. Then it was over. I had paid $35 for my girlfiend so she could see amateur girls with less than average bodies stumbling through stripteases, a 3rd rate comedian, and a very talented fetish artist and dancer let viewers get a tiny glimpse of what talented strip teases and dancing she can do. I felt like I had been monetarily RAPED after leaving the theater once the “main event†was concluded. If I did not bring my girlfriend along, I still would have been pissed off just for knowing that a majority of the individuals at the Admiral DID have to pay $25-$35 for admission, plus any extra services or non-alcoholic drinks that were consumed throughout the night. All in all, seeing my pal Kitty Zombie and a few familiar faces from Zombie Army Productions ranked among the high-points of the night and had nothing to do with the Admiral Theater and their exorbitant admission fee into the theater and its event.
