Striptease (1978)

This 1970's French/UK flick shares its title with a later Demi Moore film. It's not really any better, but it's far less annoying than the later film. A jaded film director (Terence Stamp) is "re-inspired" after he catches the act of a beautiful stripper (Corrine Clery), who was once a successful actress, but left the profession for personal reasons. He ends up casting her in a new project, but their not-so-platonic personal relationship creates friction between him and his fiancée (Pilar Velazques)and also her wealthy father, who is one of his producers.

This movie has a couple things going for it. Terence Stamp is always at least as good as, and usually much better than, the films he appears in. This is no exception. Then there's Corrine Clery (pant! drool! slobber!) who, just as she did in her first film "The Story of O", spends half her screen time either stripping or stripped (for better or worse though, she doesn't get tied up and/or whipped here like in the earlier movie). Clery would actually turn out to be a pretty decent actress, later appearing in the excellent Italian film "Hitch-Hike" and as a Bond girl (albeit in "Moonraker", one of the lesser Bond films). She's certainly not bad here (and far, far less irritating than Demi Moore).

Unfortunately, with the exception of Fellini's "8 and 1/2" and Truffaut's "Day for Night", these reflexive films about the lives of filmmakers are never very good. And the end of this one is ridiculously, even laughably, melodramatic. It's better than the Demi Moore movie "Striptease", but don't necessarily take that a recommendation.