Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Giancarlo Esposito and Kevin Bacon also star in this Tinseltown-set follow-up to ‘X’ and ‘Pearl.’

A glorious paean to the lurid sensuality and gory excess of 1980s sexploitation and horror, MaXXXine completes Ti West’s trilogy of star showcases for his fearless muse Mia Goth on a delectable note. Like its predecessors, X and Pearl, this is a gleeful dive into retro movie tropes with vivid period evocation, this time featuring a deluxe supporting cast. As Elizabeth Debicki’s ice-cool British filmmaker giving Goth’s Maxine Minx the chance to jump from porn stardom into a more legitimate career says of her feature project: “It’s a B-movie with A ideas.”

Unfolding in Texas Chainsaw Massacre country with dark and dirty grindhouse flair, X told the story of an amateur film crew shooting a porn movie in the Lone Star State hinterlands in the late ‘70s, until their withered Holy Roller hosts on an isolated farm get wind of what’s going on in the barn. Pearl rewound the clock to 1918 to revisit the farmer’s wife — back when youth and beauty were on her side and her dreams of stardom still intact — mixing the lush style of a midcentury melodrama with that of Technicolor musicals.

The new installment, set in 1985, picks up on Goth’s Maxine in her early 30s. She’s riding high as a bona fide star of the booming video porn market, tooling around Hollywood in a convertible with “MaXXXine” vanity plates, though still having to supplement her adult-film work with a peep-show gig.

Borrowing from real-life history, a serial killer dubbed the Night Stalker is terrorizing Los Angeles, preying on young women. But Maxine insists she can take care of herself, which she demonstrates by teaching a painful lesson to the testicles of a knifepoint assailant in Buster Keaton drag (Zachary Mooren). “Drop it, Buster,” she tells him as she whips out her gun.

The Night Stalker killings have fanned the flames of the family-values crusaders protesting the violence and smut flooding the entertainment market, and West (who also edited) emphasizes that climate of moral hysteria by slipping in a quick clip of Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider arriving to testify before a Senate committee in opposition to music industry censorship.

The film proper gets underway as we watch from inside a darkened soundstage while Maxine slides open the doors and struts in with confidence under a voluminous cascade of feathered hair, poured into a matching acid-wash denim halter top and jeans with spike-heeled boots. She reads for the lead role in The Puritan 2, a demonic possession thriller that ambitious director Liz Bender (Debicki) intends as her stepping-stone from video-nasties to mainstream projects. Maxine also sees it as her crossover vehicle. Naturally, she nails the audition, blithely taunting the lineup of blondes outside that they’re wasting their time.

Liz demands Maxine’s total commitment, but that proves challenging when unwelcome distractions keep popping up, not least of them the flashes in her head of traumatic X memories.

Two of her friends from the porn business, Amber (Chloe Farnworth) and Tabby (Halsey), are last seen heading to a party in the Hollywood Hills, thrown by a mysterious producer. Maxine receives an anonymous video recording of disturbing violence, and two detectives, Williams (Michelle Monaghan) and Torres (Bobby Cannavale), start leaning on her to share information as the victims connected to her start multiplying.