THE STRIP SEARCH AWARDS by Joe Doe AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. I PRESENT...THE STRIP SEARCH AWARDS! I created a few categories and nominees. However, if others feel like adding any additional and Lakewood wishes to put this in a poll format when a category reaches critical mass, all the better. I would encourage you to explain your nominee a bit. Remember a lot of people might not have seen the movie. Our first category is: BEST PORTRAYAL OF HUMILIATION BY AN ACTRESS WHEN STRIPPING: Also referred to as the "most mortified" (or the "Morty" for short), this award is given to the actress who does the best job of portraying the deepest sense of shame and humiliation in a strip search situation. The nominees: 1) CHERYL LADD FOR CAGED ANGEL, DEATH IN CALIFORNIA, LOCKED UP, ETC: Between Charlie's Angels and all her Lifetime Television movies, the lovely Ms. Ladd has been in and out of prison more often than Robert Downey, Paris Hilton, and Lindsey Lohan combined. Nonetheless, she always makes each time seem like the first time and does an awesome job portraying a beautiful, innocent ice princess being introduced to the shame and humiliation of life behind bars. The lithe Ms. Ladd is quite petite, which means that, when she's stripped of her fancy high heels and forced to parade around in her skimpy prison towel, barefoot, the guards tower over her. Of course, eventually the moment comes when (gasp!) even the towel must go. At these moments, Cheryl proves to be a master of the Joe Doe school of acting –- she bites her lip, looks away, looks up, looks at her bare feet, blanches, flinches, and appears totally mortified. The fact that she's always being chucked into prison for a bogus or unfair reason makes her shame all the more delicious. Two big (gloved) fingers up for Ms. Ladd, and here's hoping there's many more such assignments in her future. 2) SALLY KELLERMAN IN M*A*S*H: Can any stripping fan forget the moment when the shower curtain rises and "Hot Lips" shows her colors? Poor Hot Lips! Soap in her eyes, naked as a jaybird, with nary a towel in sight, showering out in the open for all to see. Stripped of her rank, her title, and everything else, a public spectacle for the enjoyment of officers and (ahem!) lowly enlisted men alike. Our plucky major doesn't take her humiliation standing up. She crouches down to preserve a tiny shred of her dignity, but succeeds only in knocking over the bench that might have offered some minuscule amount of protection. Was there, perhaps, a towel on that bench? It doesn't matter; our silly little bunny, in her frantic struggles, has knocked it away. Looking every bit the complete bimbo, our bare ass bunny scoots backwards into the corner. But the laws of gravity require her to lift her luscious naked bottom in the air for her grateful audience to enjoy. And what an audience it is, with the boys shouting "encore" and "author" as if her shameful unveiling was a scheduled entertainment, a frolicsome theatrical lark to spice up an otherwise lazy afternoon. Even the nurses seem to be amused, secretly delighted, no doubt, that their snotty boss has been taught a well-deserved lesson in humility. Sally's virtuoso performance runs the full gambit: helplessness, humiliation, anger, bargaining, acceptance. Sally moves through the several stages in 3 seconds. From her comical squirming on the shower floor to her righteous indignation as she storms into Henry Blake's tent, still soapy and half naked, Sally's performance is a MAJOR delight. MOST GRATUITOUS SEARCH: Our second award (the "Gratuity") goes to the movie that presents the most outrageously gratuitous and clearly unnecessary strip search. This does not refer to cheap porn movies where the cop comes to the door and says, "Mind if I search you?" and the bored porn actress immediately disrobes. Rather this award is granted to movies that attempt to realistically portray a shameless abuse of male authority. To qualify for a "Gratuity," the search should be unnecessary, and the female victim should be wholesome and innocent. The search must be performed for no other reason than the twisted authority figure has the power to make it happen. Our nominees are: 1) SWEET COUNTRY: Gosh, does physical fitness REALLY require women to play nude basketball? El Capitan in charge of a group of female prisoners decides quite logically that the "exercise period" should be in the nude, and that the women should be spread out as they kneel naked on the floor and give themselves orgasms. The women do an excellent job portraying the shame and humiliation of a group of ordinary women being put through their paces. I read somewhere that the women were in fact ordinary housewives, university students, professional women, and the like, who were given only a general idea of the nature of the scene before the cameras rolled. Furthermore, the women were selected so as to represent a good cross section of society: "academic," "blue collar," "professional," "homemaker," etc. Actresses or not, their distress seems quite genuine. The necessity for such a search may be clear to males with a particularly keen sense of national security, but it will leave many women puzzled. 2) DEATH WARRANT: Most prisons strip search male prisoners AFTER their conjugal visits. In a rare innovation, this prison searches the FEMALE visitors BEFORE the visits. Furthermore the searches are conducted by the male staff. The injustice is compounded by the fact that we know the "prisoner" is in fact an undercover officer investigating the corrupt prison, and his "visitor" is his lovely partner. But law enforcement officer or not, "I'm afraid (ha!) I'm going to have to ask you to remove your clothing." And since (tragically) "no female officers are available," the comely cop has to perform her forced striptease to order in front of two grinning gorilla guards. Speaking of tragedies, the filmmakers cut away while the actress is still removing her blouse. However, the rather transparently medical nature of the room and the leering looks from the male guards made it clear to this particular viewer at least that the search would be painstakingly thorough. 3) SOUTH OF THE BORDER: In many judicial facilities, lawyers are routinely waved past security upon presentation of a license. Ditto for diplomats possessing diplomatic immunity. What are we to do then with a lovely female lawyer from the embassy who has both a law degree AND diplomatic credentials? Strip search! Despite her protests that "this isn't necessary," the lovely lawyer is groped and given a very thorough probing by the guard, a man who obviously enjoys his work. As if that isn't enough, the warden (an obvious proponent of Joe's "double check" policy from "The Worst Part is the Waiting") strips and probes the same lawyer again, despite her protests. The warden, determined to "conduct his own investigation," clearly believes in a "hands-on approach." Well, if it meant giving Ashley or Natalie a slow, lingering cavity search, I would insist on conducting my own investigation, too. 4) PIT AND THE PENDULUM: A luscious young woman is stripped and groped by a group of judges so reactionary that even the Tea Party would filibuster them. The reason? They have to search for the "witches mark," proof that an otherwise wholesome and chaste young woman is, in fact, Satan's concubine. Satan, clever little devil that he is, never corrupts the wicked and always hides his mark in the most private and intimate of places. The evil one's duplicity forces the truly just to strip lovely and innocent village girls butt naked, in an attempt to ferret out hidden evil. Even though I don't believe in witches, I certainly believe in this particular method of witch detection. The flimsiness of the charge, the innocence of the victim, and the lip-smacking self-righteousness of the judges make this movie a prime contender for a "Gratuity." BIGGEST MISSED OPPORTUNITY 1)CAGED TUSHY: Pretty girls, a gruff butch guard who knows how to act, and a realistic set. How could they go wrong? Easy. They do the same scenario over and over. Misdemeanor arrest, guard gets angry, strip search. Same search, same way. I sent them some notes pointing to the stories on this group, and the fact that our group has 8,000 members, so there must be some interest in the psychology of these situations, and they are totally missing the boat. They never responded. Please feel free to host your own letter-writing campaign; I'm still hopeful something can be salvaged. Write Caged Tushy and ask them to film a Joe Doe style story, with a female judge or police officer getting searched. 2) GOTHIKA: The setup for this movie is perfect. A snotty, know-it-all psychiatrist finds herself chucked into the very institution that she had once lorded over. The movie even has a craggy, hatchet-faced nurse who delights in giving Amanda Grey her "medicine" in every sense of the word. "Now it's time for your shower," she intones in her best sing-song, Mary Poppins voice. Nonetheless, from the point of view of THIS forum, the movie misses two golden opportunities to be an all time stripping classic. Dr. Grey loses consciousness outside, some distance away, and wakes up inside the asylum, in her regulation shorty green institutional hospital gown. The skimpy and humiliating uniform leaves her lovely legs attractively bare. Amanda is forced to conduct her first interview with her former colleague, the rather suspicious Doctor Pete, barefoot and without the benefit of pants. Poor little Amanda! I hope those cell floors weren't too cold for her cute little bare feet. If I were doing the re-write, Amanda would wake up in her car the next morning, fully dressed and ready for work. When she entered the asylum, the police would be waiting to arrest her. After a quick trip to the station revealed that she was as nutty as a granola bar, our little fruit loop would be sent BACK to the asylum -– for full and complete processing. Amanda would naturally resist Nurse Ratchet's demands to disrobe, which would force the summoning of two male orderlies. Can you imagine the exquisite humiliation of being forced to disrobe in front of the minimum wage flunkies who a few hours before had been at your beck and call? Perhaps Chloe, the patient whose "imagined" rape Dr. Grey had patronizingly dismissed the day before, can be mopping the floor and watching with a knowing smile as poor little Amanda is processed. I'm sure Chloe would enjoy watching Dr. Grey shower -- and bend and spread for Nurse Ratchet's glove.... The second missed opportunity occurs later in the movie, after the shower scene. (See my "'GOTHIKA' REVIEW.") The staff clearly suspects that Amanda had some sort of weapon while naked in the shower ("God only knows where she was hiding it," one of them intones). Where? Where? WHERE? How could doctors in charge of a mental institution be so dull-witted? Any reader of this forum could tell them exactly where to look. Dr. Pete, the lonely doctor who had once flirted with the teasing and formerly untouchable Dr. Grey, does examine her, but wastes his PERFECT excuse to order her into the stirrups. Oh well. Perhaps when Nicole Kidman or Charlize Theron does the remake, they'll do it the RIGHT way.... 3) DOUBLE JEOPARDY: The lovely Ashley Judd is chucked into prison after being convicted of murdering a husband who is in fact faking his own death. So far so good: an innocent woman, bogus charges, a sleazy male unworthy of anything but extermination -– perfect for this group. However, although she ends up in prison, there is no humiliating search, no long, lingering showers, no lesbian affairs, and no harassment from the guards. The prison is basically a large feminist health club run by a fellow inmate who advises her to buff up so she'll be ready for her revenge. It's a Lifetime Channel movie for women, without the ritualistic prison exploitation scenes we've all come to know and love. When she emerges from prison a few brief scenes later, Miss Judd is tanned, rested, and ready. If she had been put into a prison run by, say, Warden Doug Playful, I doubt she would have been so sassy when she got out. Indeed, the rest of this movie could have been avoided, as Miss Judd would have been too timid to do anything other than apply for a job at Hooters. 4) IMPULSE: Here, Theresa Russell plays Loni, an impossibly attractive undercover cop battling the leering advances of her sexist boss and the natural schizophrenia of her "cop by day, hooker by night" persona. Outstanding setup. The movie does have a nice payoff: during an undercover drug bust Loni is frisked by the superior whose advances she had shot down. Actually she is groped -– with her hands cuffed behind her back, her breasts are fondled through her t-shirt. "Didn't want to blow your cover," he explains, wearing a smarmy expression as he half drags her toward the squad car. At the station, Loni is herded together with the other female felons. Her superior resists all efforts to release her, and lazily shaves as he watches her pace in her cage. But, eventually, she is released. Boo! Boo! She was arrested for drugs! She needs to be SEARCHED! Can you imagine the scene where the matron enters the room with the one-way mirror and orders the girls to strip? Loni can't tell the matron who she is; that will blow her cover. But she KNOWS that her piggish boss is watching from the other side of the glass. What a pickle! Loni grits her teeth and turns her back as she pulls her grimy t-shirt over her head. Behind her, the tubby matron snaps on her rubber glove. ****************************** At this point, I'd like to invite all of the female nominees onto the stage for the final wave goodbye, which naturally includes the traditional leg spread, squat, and cough to loosen any contraband. Thank you all for watching, and don't forget to cast your ballots. Edited by C. Lakewood