Headless Body in Topless Bar is a 1995 American black comedy and psychological horror film directed by James Bruce and written by Peter Koper.

While a bartender dispenses drinks, a topless dancer moves listlessly on stage for a handful of patrons: a businessman, two hockey fans, and an old man using a wheelchair.

Discovering the young woman is a mortician's assistant, the Man suddenly explodes into a manic episode, obsessed with erasing evidence of his crime.

Koper said the one "poetic" fact he gleaned from the news story is that the gunman, having discovered one of his hostages works as a mortician's assistant, forces her to remove the head from his victim's corpse.

[1] Headless Body in Topless Bar was shot in eighteen days, three of which were spent shooting exteriors on location at the Baby Doll Lounge in Lower Manhattan.

[1] The ensemble cast worked for what Bruce and Koper called "hostage scale," earning Barry's pay for the day should they manage to steal the gun from him as per the plot.

"[3] Like Stratton, Stephen Holden of the New York Times also praised the cast's "fine ensemble acting," compensating for what he considered a long-winded screenplay.

Holden singled out Raymond Barry for imbuing the role of the killer with "a lithe, springy intensity, a glint of intelligence, and enough charm to keep the audience emotionally off balance."

When the film was released in California, John Anderson of the Los Angeles Times compared it to Lifeboat and No Exit, and shared Kehr's assessment of the audience's experience.