Dancing at the Blue IguanaMovies like Dancing at the Blue Iguana
- Key Features:
- Strippers, Porn industry, Los Angeles, Interconnected stories, Relationships, Survival, Personal struggles, Human connection, Friendship, Nudity-moderate, Drama, Character study
- Tone:
- serious, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Character-driven drama fans, Indie film enthusiasts, Viewers interested in social commentary
- Emotional Arc:
- Isolation → Connection → Acceptance
Dancing at the Blue Iguana

At the Blue Iguana, L.A.'s most notorious strip club, the lives of five exotic dancers converge, clash and ultimately bond over the course of one week.
Dancing at the Blue Iguana
An aspiring actress makes a pact with her fiancé to take a job as an exotic dancer to care for her cancer stricken father. Once the pact the couple made is broken, their lives are changed forever.

In the upscale Toronto strip club Exotica, dancer Christina is visited nightly by the obsessive Francis, a depressed tax auditor. Her ex-boyfriend, the club's MC, Eric, still jealously pines for her even as he introduces her onstage, but Eric is having his own relationship problems with the club's female owner. Thomas, a mysterious pet-shop owner, is about to become unexpectedly involved in their lives.

He's a low level criminal with no future and just out of prison. She's a low level lawyer never noticed by others, a lost soul without a life. Their anger and hostility makes them serious criminals. Love happens in the strangest of places.

Single mother Diana struggles to provide for her child and pay for her college education. When she meets two dancers from a nearby gentlemen's club, Diana's convinced there's fast money to be made stripping.

Fresh to Las Vegas with no connections, Nomi Malone takes a job as an exotic dancer. Her talents are quickly noticed by Cristal, a headlining dancer who senses an opportunity to bolster her own act. But Nomi won’t play second fiddle and soon begins her venomous path to the top, ruthlessly backstabbing anyone who gets in her way.

A small town strip club owner must defend her bar, her strippers and her life when violent infected patrons show up on the final closing night and all hell breaks loose.

A waitress agrees to accompany an exotic dancer, her put-upon boyfriend, and her mysterious and domineering roommate on a road trip to Florida to seek their fortune at a high-end strip club.

A crew of savvy former strip club employees band together to turn the tables on their Wall Street clients.

She's sexy, shameless and loves taking people to their limit. She's a dangerous young woman who dreams about a jaguar that licks her naked body and sleeps by her side. Her past is bathed in blood and weird passions. Now she's met the man of her wildest dreams. He's dark, tough and mysterious. He likes robbing banks, trafficking in corpses and spicing it all with voodoo rituals. Together, the duo sets off toward Mexico destined to become the most feared outlaws in the continent.

Five best friends from college reunite 10 years later for a wild bachelorette weekend in Miami. Their hard partying takes a hilariously dark turn when they accidentally kill a male stripper. Amidst the craziness of trying to cover it up, they're ultimately brought closer together when it matters most.

A serpentine day in the life of ten seemingly disparate women: a porn star, a flight attendant, a psychiatrist, a masseuse, a bartender, a pair of call girls, etc. All of them with one crucial thing in common. Trouble.

A police detective in a South American country is dedicated to hunting down a revolutionary guerilla leader.

A short Arizona motorcycle cop gets his wish and is promoted to Homicide following the mysterious murder of a hermit. He is forced to confront his illusions about himself and those around him in order to solve the case, eventually returning to solitude in the desert.

A Los Angeles policewoman's partner has her pose as a stripper to lure a killer of strippers.

Fatherless barrio Puerto Rican Rico is a menial car mechanic by day, but lives for the nights, when he dances and dates hot dancing girls, cockily convinced the title of Salsa king in fancy nightclub La Luna's upcoming contest is to be his. He encourages his best friend, courteous gentleman Ken, to date his sister Margarita so he gets a free hand with her flirtatious classmate Lola. The reigning salsa queen Luna's interest in Rico as dance-partner threatens his on-off relationship with Vicki. More jealous trouble follows when Ken and Margarita fall in true love.

Ali leaves behind a troubled life and follows her dreams to Los Angeles, where she lands a job as a cocktail waitress at the Burlesque Lounge, a once-majestic theater that houses an inspired musical revue. Vowing to perform there, she makes the leap from bar to stage, helping restore the club's former glory.

Two dancers at an elite ballet academy in Paris must compete for a contract to join the highly coveted Opéra National de Paris as they confront their competitive nature, sexual awakenings and how far they would go to win.

Polina is a young dancer from a modest family. After years of ballet academy, she is accepted by the Bolshoi; still, she decides to try and audition of a modern dance company in France. She makes it, but her journey will not end there...

Strippers in Manhattan are being stalked and murdered by a psycho. A hard-nosed police detective and a conflicted ex-boxer-turned-private-eye, hired by the strip club owners, set out to find him before he strikes again.

Mickey, who happens to be a werewolf and a crime boss, gets all worked up and hairy during a private dance at a strip club. Justice, the dancer, grabs the nearest weapon and lands a fatal blow: her silver fountain pen right through Mickey's wolfed-out eye. This ignites a small-scale war between Mickey's group of werewolf mobsters and the sultry strippers of Vixens.

Bounced from her job, Erin Grant needs money if she's to have any chance of winning back custody of her child. But, eventually, she must confront the naked truth: to take on the system, she'll have to take it all off. Erin strips to conquer, but she faces unintended circumstances when a hound dog of a Congressman zeroes in on her and sharpens the shady tools at his fingertips, including blackmail and murder.

In pre-revolution Cuba, Katey Miller is about to defy everyone's expectations. Instead of a parent-approved suitor, Katey is drawn to the sexy waiter, Javier, who spends his nights dancing in Havana's nightclubs. As she secretly learns to dance with Javier, she learns the meanings of love, sensuality and independence.

The world of dance can be brutal. The rehearsals are grueling. The competition is fierce. At the Arts for Living Centre in New York City, the best of the best are dying for a part in a major production. But only a select few will be chosen. The selection process seems to be at the hands of mysterious killer who pierces women's bare breasts with a hatpin, puncturing their hearts. Ambition and jealousy appear to be the motive, which makes everybody a suspect!

Lucía, a club dancer on the run, takes refuge in a sinister building on the outskirts of Madrid where her sister Rocío lives with her daughter Alba.

A defrocked Episcopal clergyman leads a bus-load of middle-aged Baptist women on a tour of the Mexican coast and comes to terms with the failure haunting his life.

A gifted young dancer arrives in New York City and joins the downtown contemporary dance world. With talent to burn, he soon must choose between his responsibility to his broken family in the Midwest, and forging a life and career for himself.

In an effort to land the guy she's been pining after since grade school, Abby hires a local stripper named Santa Monica to teach her everything she needs to know about confidence and sex.

Ensemble drama centered around a group of ballet dancers, with a focus on one young dancer who's poised to become a principal performer.

A drama centered on a go-go dancer with multiple personality disorder who struggles to remain her true self and begins working with a psychotherapist to uncover the mystery of the inner ghosts that haunt her.

Interweaving stories of four different women involved in the sex industry offers a glimpse into the dark underbelly of Los Angeles and the taboo lifestyle of a sex worker. A teen runaway, single mother and two career escorts interconnect through their own personal journeys filled with loss, betrayal and the struggle to survive. Written by anonymous

A chronicle of the life of a middle-class French girl's sexual adventures, her then fall into prostitution, and her ultimate redemption.

A stripper at the club Studio Six is murdered. A political scandal takes off when the Minister of Commerce appears to have been at the club. He resigns - but only to hide an even bigger secret.

A struggling young dancer joins forces with two breakdancers and together they become a street sensation.

Alex Owens, a young woman juggling between two odd jobs, aspires to become a successful ballet dancer. Nick, who is her boss and lover, supports and encourages her to fulfil her dream.

The Los Angeles club scene is a place of booze-fueled decadence and debauchery. In a night full of possibilities, eight 20-somethings take to the clubs seeking good times, companionship and maybe a little sex. But in the harsh light of the morning after, their worlds are thrown into a spin of confusion when hungover Sara accuses hard-partying Mike of date rape. Loyalties are tested as each among them is forced to take sides.

A trio of thrill-seeking go-go dancers kidnap a young girl and attempt to seduce an old rancher and his two sons out of their small fortune, but their scheme doesn't play out as intended.

Rookie cop Megan Turner orders a burglar to drop his gun. He whirls to shoot. Too late. Turner fires, killing him instantly. When someone lifts the assailant's gun from the crime scene, the police hold Turner accountable for killing an unarmed man. That same someone carves Turner's name into the bullets and uses them in a series of murders. Turner teams up with detective Nick Mann to clear her name and catch the killer. But she is drawn into a deadly game of wits with a psychopath who's always one step ahead… and much closer than she thinks!

Zander Raines, a dazzling and tempestuous young choreographer, gives the break of a lifetime to two hopeful artists when he casts a stunning contemporary dancer, Barlow, and innovative pianist, Charlie, in New York’s most-anticipated new Broadway show: Free Dance. But the move throws off the show’s delicate creative balance when Charlie falls hard for Barlow, while Zander embraces her as his muse.

When a dance troupe is lured to an empty school, a bowl of drug-laced sangria causes their jubilant rehearsal to descend into a dark and explosive nightmare as they try to survive the night—and find who's responsible—before it's too late.

New Orleans, 1981. Sonny Phillips, just discharged from the Army, returns home. The only life he's known is as a gigolo, working for his mother, but he wants to leave that behind. However, the job his Army buddy promised doesn't materialize, and he can't escape his past.

On the gritty streets of LA, the destinies of four people desperate for connection and redemption are about to collide.

A tale of love and violence when a man on his emotional last legs finds a savior seductively dancing in a run-down strip club. And a life most certainly headed off a cliff suddenly becomes redirected - as everything is now worth dying for.

A private detective is hired to find a missing stripper but the job turns complicated when everyone he questions ends up dead. From the mean streets of Los Angeles to the desolate desert of New Mexico, Cruz must contend with a brutal Russian Boxer, three brash LAPD detectives, an aged billionaire looking for the Big Bang, and the billionaire's stunningly gorgeous wife. The solution to the mystery will cost ten lives, net $30 million and just might explain - well - everything.

Diana arrives in a town to start a new job. She's threatened into working as an exotic dancer. She's later kidnapped and let loose naked in the wilderness as prey for the psycho hunter, like many women before her. Will she survive?

A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that her lover has married.

A brutal Los Angeles police lieutenant is determined to bust up an organization that forces underage girls into prostitution.

Two young women find themselves struggling to survive in Paris, street-wise Nathalie, a stripper, and naïve Sandrine, a barmaid. Together, they discover that sex can be used to their advantage, and pleasure.

Sam Clayton's marriage to ex-stripper Freddie comes about when she's strong-armed into the match by Red, a club proprietor who once did her a favor. But Freddie falls in love with Jjaks, Sam's brother, and the pair tries to escape the situation together. It isn't long before both Sam and Red catch up with them, resulting in threats against the two of them -- although tension also starts to build between Sam and Red.

When a brothel closes because of new laws, four of the prostitutes decide to go into business running a restaurant. They discover they cannot escape their past.

9to5 - Days in Porn focuses on the people behind a controversial and multi-billion dollar industry "The Adult Entertainment industry". It depicts their stories, each one different, unadorned and authentic, without glorification or prejudice. It delivers deep insight into their personal lives - from glamorous to grotesque - strange, fascinating, offensive, absurd and sometimes funny moments all at once.

A woman from the country moves into to the big city of Buenos Aires to start a new life. Things are not going very easy and she soon finds herself working as a prostitute.

After a night out with friends, Hyun Jae accepts a late night ride home from a young fire fighter. What begins as a night of promise quickly turns into a nightmare when she is abducted and imprisoned outside Las Vegas as a sex slave.

Expecting the usual tedium that accompanies a summer in the Catskills with her family, 17-year-old Frances 'Baby' Houseman is surprised to find herself stepping into the shoes of a professional hoofer—and unexpectedly falling in love.

A young sex worker from Brooklyn gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened as his parents set out to get the marriage annulled.

Young Cuban Rafael just buried his mother, and comes to Houston to meet his father John for the first time. The difficult part is that John doesn't know he is Rafael's father. John runs a dance studio, and everyone prepares for the World Open Dance championship in Las Vegas. It soon becomes clear Rafael is a very good dancer, and Ruby is the biggest hope for the studio at the championship.

A couple checks into a suite in Las Vegas. In flashbacks we see that he's a computer whiz on the verge of becoming a dot.com millionaire, she's a lap dancer at a club. He's depressed, withdrawing from work, missing meetings with investors. He wants a connection, so he offers her $10,000 to spend three nights with him in Vegas, and she accepts with conditions. Is mutual attraction stirring?

19 year old Linnéa leaves her small town in Sweden and heads for Los Angeles with the aim of becoming the world's next big porn star, but the road to her goal turns out to be bumpier than she imagined.

Three dance crews – one Latin American, one European and one Canadian – prepare to battle at the International Beat the World competition in Detroit. Along the way, they struggle with gambling debt, bad break-ups and their own egos. In the final showdown to become world champions they find that their lifelong hopes, dreams and even lives, are at stake.

Exotic dancer Nicole finds herself terrorized by a black-clad assailant determined on procuring her murdered father's stolen gems. Fleeing Paris in hopes of evading her knife-wielding pursuer, Nicole arrives in England only to discover that death stalks her at every corner.

In order to win the Street Dance Championships, a dance crew is forced to work with ballet dancers from the Royal Dance School in exchange for rehearsal space.

High schooler Jason has found his dream girl—the gorgeous Anastacia. There’s just one problem: she doesn’t know he exists. If he can win a spot on the school’s hottest dance crew, Jason might have a shot. But before he does, he’ll have to overcome his battle-ax of a mother, survive Anastacia’s gangsta brother, and pass the crew’s initiation—in this fresh, sexy, and outrageously funny comedy.

Guy Carter, an insecure expectant father unable to find work in his field, accepts a job driving hookers around Los Angeles. One long and crazy evening proves to our hero that he is, in fact, up to the task of fatherhood.

A former stripper's talent with numbers lands her a job with a professional gambler who runs a sports book in Las Vegas.

After 6 years together, Mike's girlfriend leaves him, so he travels to LA to be a star. Six months on, he's still not doing very well— so a few of his friends try to reconnect him to the social scene and hopefully help him forget his failed relationship.

A drama centered on a troubled young woman who moves to San Francisco, where she gets involved in pornography and aligns herself with a cocaine-addicted lawyer.

The gruesome tapestry of psychological manifestations of a nineteen year old bulimic runaway stripper-turned prostitute as she descends into a hellish pit of satanic nightmares and hallucinations.

When a serial killer interrupts the fun at the swanky Coconut Pete's Coconut Beach Resort -- a hedonistic island paradise for swingers --- it's up to the club's staff to stop the violence ... or at least hide it!

Emily arrives in Miami with aspirations to become a professional dancer. She sparks with Sean, the leader of a dance crew whose neighborhood is threatened by Emily's father's development plans.

When aimless Manon begins work at À mon seul désir, a strip club that offers high concept performances, she instantly bonds with her fellow strippers, particularly Mia, an aspiring actress with a boyfriend and child. Manon learns that it is “not easy money, but fast money” and when she finds herself falling for Mia, she is forced to question her priorities as she explores her newfound erotic life.

Shane O'Shea, a Jersey boy with big dreams, crosses the river in hopes of finding another, more exciting life at Studio 54. When Steve Rubell, the mastermind behind the infamous disco plucks Shane from the sea of faces clamoring to get inside his club, Shane not only gets his foot in the door, but lands a coveted job behind the bar - and a front-row ticket to the most legendary party on the planet.

A Molokai-based civilian pilot and an undercover DEA agent intercept a delivery of diamonds intended for druglord Seth Romero. Seth, his henchmen, and other island undesirables launch a full-scale assault on the duo. If they're going to survive, they'll need the help of agent Rowdy Abilene and his partner/kickboxing expert Jade.

Six would-be thieves enter a prestigious dance competition as a cover for their larger goal of pulling off a major heist.

An underworld drama set in the early 1980s, about a lonely factory worker whose life is transformed when he becomes a nightclub doorman.

When Sam learns his mother cannot afford to send him to another school after he is kicked out, he and his friends start their own escort service for mature women to pay for his tuition.

In the not too distant future a secret government re-animation chemo-virus gets released into conservative Sartre, Nebraska and lands in an underground strip club. As the virus begins to spread, turning the strippers into "Super Zombie Strippers" the girls struggle with whether or not to conform to the new "fad" even if it means there's no turning back.

A case involving drug lords and murder in South Florida takes a personal turn for undercover detectives Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. Unorthodox Crockett gets involved romantically with the Chinese-Cuban wife of a trafficker of arms and drugs, while Tubbs deals with an assault on those he loves.

Marko, an aspiring filmmaker, is unable to pursue a career in horror films. He ventures into the porn industry, but his unorthodox style fails to impress producers. Frustrated, he assembles a crew of junkies, homosexuals and transvestites and starts a traveling live porn show. Soon a shady producer appears, he will pay them real money if they are willing to start making snuff films for him.

Biarritz. Sixteen-year-old George, the high school hottie, falls in love with Alex. To get his attention, she initiates a group game with Alex, Nikita, Laetitia and Gabriel. They will discover, test, and push the limits of their sexuality.

After his family is killed by a Serbian gangster with international interests. NYC detective Nick goes to S.E. Asia and teams up with a Thai detective to get revenge and destroy the syndicates human trafficking network.

Carefree single guy Charlie Waters rooms with two lovely prostitutes, Barbara Miller and Susan Peters, and lives to gamble. Along with his glum betting buddy, Bill Denny, Charlie sets out on a gambling streak in search of the ever-elusive big payday. While Charlie and Bill have some lucky moments, they also have to contend with serious setbacks that threaten to derail their hedonistic betting binge.

A bank accountant who moonlights as a high-priced call girl becomes embroiled in the lives of a money launderer, his seductive wife, and his bodyguard.

Mike, an experienced stripper, takes a younger performer called The Kid under his wing and schools him in the arts of partying, picking up women, and making easy money.

A young reporter enlists a top notch private eye to solve the murder of a female stripper at a Chicago nightclub.

In Monterrey, Mexico, a young street gang spends their days dancing to slowed-down cumbia and attending parties. After a mix-up with a local cartel, their leader is forced to migrate to the U.S. but quickly longs to return home.

Five women celebrate one of the girl's bachelorette party but one of them doesn't show up.

Mexico City, November 1901. The police raid a private home where a secret party is being held. Among those attending is the son-in-law of President Porfirio Díaz.

After his plane crashes in Siberia, a Russian dancer, who defected to the West, is held prisoner in the Soviet Union. The KGB keeps him under watch and tries to convince him to become a dancer for the Kirov Academy of Ballet again. Determined to escape, he befriends a black American expatriate and his pregnant Russian wife, who agree to help him escape to the American Embassy.

Beneath Bruce Garrett's under-confident, overweight exterior, the passionate heart of a salsa king lies dormant. Now, one woman is about to reignite his Latin fire.

The wealthy president of a company has built up an unpayable debt to a local crime lord, and to escape punishment he sells his famous dancer wife to the lecherous old man figuring a 90 year old can’t do too much bad with her. Perhaps not, but others can while he watches. She’s put on stage in an underground BDSM sex show and begins a spiraling decent from strongly independent woman to submissive sex slave

It's five years later and Tony Manero's Saturday Night Fever is still burning. Now he's strutting toward his biggest challenger yet - making it as a dancer on the Broadway stage.

A princess in the Amazon rain forests tries to fight a conglomerate threatening the forests by going to Los Angeles. There she links up with a rich kid who tells her that she must get on television to succeed with her mission. Quick as a wink, the two come up with the idea of winning a lambada dance contest.

Fresh out of college and stuck at his New Jersey home without a clear path forward, 22-year-old Andrew begins working as a party starter for bar/bat mitzvahs—where he strikes up a unique friendship with a young mom and her teenage daughter.

Nando and Erika, two young people in their twenties, meet several times without noticing. The story of the subculture of electronic music and rave parties and drugs like MDMA.

The story of Dylan Pettersson, a 23-year-old girl from a small island in the Swedish archipelago with big dancing aspirations.

After suffering humiliation by the crew Invincible, street dancer Ash looks to gather the best dancers from around the world for a rematch.

Elizabeth has just been through a particularly nasty breakup, and now she's ready to leave her friends and memories behind as she chases her dreams across the country. In order to support herself on her journey, Elizabeth picks up a series of waitress jobs along the way. As Elizabeth crosses paths with a series of lost souls whose yearnings are even greater than her own, their emotional turmoil ultimately helps her gain a greater understanding of her own problems...

"Slice of life" take on life of international porn celebrity, Moon, and her musings on modern life, love and loss.


