You had me at strippers. I always appreciate it when the ladies take off their clothes, but when they’re a reanimated corpse that tends to take the fun out of it. Actually the awful acting by some of the cast made me think some of them were un-reanimated corpses.
According to the opening scroll of the film, George W. Bush has been elected to a fourth term, dissolved Congress (sound like a good idea to me), and the United States is in an ongoing war with France, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Canada, and Alaska.
Even worse, there’s been a ban on public nudity and this has shut down all the strip clubs – what’s a guy to do? Never fear since capitalism will find a way and the clubs have just gone underground.
Meanwhile, at a top secret testing facility scientists with the “W” corporation are testing out a new virus that reanimates corpses so that our soldiers can continue to fight on after dying on the battlefield since we’re running out of warm bodies for the wars why not use the cold ones?
A group of soldiers are called in because the testing facility has had a zombie outbreak. When one of them gets bit and sees that if you’re infected that you’ll get a bullet in the head he flees and ends up in Club Rhino, an underground strip club run by Ian (Robert Englund). The infected soldier watches the set of head stripper Kat (Jenna Jameson) and is infatuated. Her gorgeous knockers are the last thing he sees since he drops dead.
However, since he’s infected he just pops back up and takes a seat to wait for the next show. After a bit of backstage bickering with stripper rival Lilith (Roxy Saint), Kat returns for an encore. She gets a little too much appreciation from our infected grunt as he leaps up and tears out her throat. She expires on the floor, but you can’t keep a good stripper down as after a time she rises from the dead and heads for the stripper pole and does a show that the crowd appreciates even more than when she was alive.
The dollar signs light up in Ian’s eyes and soon the other strippers are joining the ranks of the living dead, but if you take one back for a private lap dance then you’re lap is going to be lunch.
Zombie Strippers, with an exclamation point on the film’s titles, seems to have a great many pots on the stove. It’s trying to be a comedy, a political satire, and a titty flick. I’ll give it the score of one hundred in the boob department, but the political satire seems a bit strained (as well as tired since I bet W appreciates Jenna Jameson’s lovely jugs as much as I did – yee haw!). Sadly, the comedy is usually shot down by some rotten acting.
There are some funny moments such as Kat reading Nietzsche during her break but doing the same after dying; laughing hysterically, and saying that now it all makes sense. The problem is that for every good thing in the script there are two or three rotten bits. I know, I know, only a critic would be so damn picky when there’s lots of female flesh to ogle, but I guess I’m just too damn old.
The special effects also seem pretty cheap, especially when they replace latex and wet work with some really bad CGI. I miss those George A. Romero head shots. Those who love the shambling dead will be amused, but watching the zombies do their stripteases felt a bit like necrophilia to me.
It’s an amusing idea done with an 83 cent budget which the filmmakers try to make the most of, but they fall a bit short of the mark.
Zombie Strippers(!) is presented in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1) and is enhanced for 16x9 televisions. Special features include a commentary from director Jay Lee, Jenna Jameson, Robert Englund, and Joey Medina (“Paco” the janitor). Next are 37 minutes of deleted scenes with an optional commentary by director Lee and Englund.
There are also two featurettes, the 8 minute “Champagne Room” is a making of and the 5 minute “The Dressing Room” is about the make-up effects. There are also previews for other Sony DVDs.
Only Robert Englund and Jenna Jameson seem to hit the right comedic marks in this strip off (not that I want to see Englund prancing on a stripper’s pole). It’s a funny idea but it was tarnished by a low budget and some horrible acting. However, the ample amount of female flesh made up for those shortcomings. Well, until they started rotting.
Zombie Strippers is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK . Visit the DVD database for more information.
USA
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