DRAG STRIP

What could be sleazier than Vincent Gambuzzo’s Tiffany Gentleman’s Club, where exotic dancer Sierra Lavotini holds on to her headliner status by devising such inventive numbers as a tribute to The Wizard of Oz, complete with red-sequined pasties and stiletto heels? Only the Dead Lakes Motor Speedway, where the crowd that owner Mickey Rhodes has enticed likes only one thing more than the throb of engines powering hot, slick bodies over the finish line. So Gambuzzo sends Sierra and her junior colleague Ruby Lee Diamond over to opening night at Dead Lakes to drum up some publicity by getting pinched black and blue; Sierra endures the season’s cutest meet-cute when dirt-track racer Roy Dell Parks plows into her Camaro and she interrupts his halfhearted apology with a fist; and Ruby Lee gets her neck broken by an admirer who doesn’t know when to quit. In an atmosphere that shrieks testosterone, every male in attendance is a suspect. But until a second murder clarifies the issues, the biggest mystery is why Sierra’s sometime suitor, Det. John Nailor of the Panama City Police Department, seems to be skulking behind every bush in sight, imploring Sierra not to tattle on him to the partner who’s handling the case or to his ex with the DEA. Reliable work from Sierra and all the supporting zanies who made their debut in The Miracle Strip (1998)—though you’ve still got to wonder about the virginal Catholic-school alumna who strips down to her G-string in record time but can’t commit to the cop who’s chasing her even harder than the perp.