Money and image, Baltimore's in the middle of a renaissance, and the city fathers want "the block", the notorious queue of strip joints to go on the block as prime real estate. Developer Harold Rollins who seems to have his own agenda, judging by the way he enjoys rubdowns from his masseur, calls it a blight on the city. Rollins' speciality is to make besieged areas like that disappear.

With anti-porn groups pressuring the politicians, the cops, in turn, are being pressured to take some action. You figure it would be pretty simple because all the club owners do, is sit around on their fat rumps and reminisce like Burt Lancaster in Atlantic City, ("you shoulda seen this place back then"). This also gives Blaze Starr a chance to sneak in for a cameo.

Enter Libby (Marilyn Jones) who apparently was a stripper in the big time but got hooked on junk: "You know what the bottom looks like —no pride, no dignity." Invariably this sets the scene for her to befriend a fellow stripper who's a major league mess when it comes to drugs. Libby herself is entrapped in a prostitution bust, and the cop (Jerry Whiddon) who takes her under his wing is a kook in his own right and even uses words like "fuck" inside of a Catholic Church.

A gritty, tempestuous drama, On The Block, unfortunately, gets a little too preachy, and the way men fight over Libby/Jones, you'd think she was the only good looking girl in Baltimore. Actually, in this film she is, since most of the strippers look like Ned Beatty. Although there is brief nudity here and there, some of the down and out stripper are too sad to be sensual.