Taxi Dancers Reviews

This low-budget, scurrilous action picture is set against the seedy world of LA dancers, seemingly much changed since the days of SWEET CHARITY. Meet a few of the colorful denizens of this lower depths ballroom: Miguelino (Robert Miano), a former cop turned ballroom procurer; Sparkle (Josie Boyd), a drugged-out danseuse turned informant to the underworld; and Mercedes (Mirage Micheaux) an Afro-American swinger with a quip for every occasion. Although new girl in town Billie (Brittany McCrena) tolerates pelvis-thrusting while the glass ball is spinning, she's her own woman after hours. Ever the romantic, she is torn between the pizza delivery man Bobby (Randall Lee Irwin) and a Vegas gambler, Diamond Jim (Sonny Landham), who offers to take her to Vegas. Unbeknownst to Billie, her sugar daddy is in hock to the Vietnamese mob for a sizeable sum. Acting on information obtained from Sparkle, mob goons bust into the dance hall several times searching for Diamond Jim, and soon resort to seizing Billie for ransom. Bluffing the trigger-happy kidnappers with a phony cancer story, Diamond Jim pulls a pistol and forces his Asian creditors to back off. While club regulars discuss the metaphysics of loneliness and having to pay for a fox trot, Diamond Jim and Mercedes hit the pavement where the high roller is finally gunned down. When Sparkle succumbs to a drug overdose and Miguelino deposits his ex-employee in a dumpster, the danceteria loses its luster for many of the hostesses. Although Billie finds true love with Bobby, a new girl arrives fresh off a Greyhound bus to take her place. The Taxi Dance of Life goes on. The murkily photographed TAXI DANCERS shoves your face into the midsection of a dirty business, so men who fancy softcore porn but don't like to visit peep shows will probably find this sleazy film worth a drool or two. Hampered by poor performances, TAXI DANCERS founders most in making nudity, drug abuse, attempted murder, and pseudo-prostitution so stupefyingly dull. The movie unspools like an action picture played at the wrong speed; the strong-armed enforcers seem more like ticked-off repo men than frightening assassins. At other times, TAXI DANCERS simply calls a halt to the narrative in order to wax philosophical; not only do the individual vignettes about each hostess fail to shed light on one another, they're pallid and uninteresting in themselves. Even the sweaty palm trade will be disappointed, not because there isn't ample flesh on display, but because the film is so indifferently directed and haphazardly written. Boring and unsatisfyingly salacious, TAXI DANCERS does not choreograph its tales of the flesh trade into a stimulating erotic ensemble. (Extensive nudity, extensive profanity, graphic violence, sexual situations.)