ferbs54
Indulge me for a moment, please, as I quote myself from an old review: "It can be a tricky balancing act, coming up with the perfect film in the genre known as the horror comedy; a picture that is hilariously funny while at the same time being truly scary. And while there is no shortage of films with a decidedly uneven ratio of horror::comedy--such as 1960's 'The Little Shop of Horrors,' 1974's 'Young Frankenstein' and 1975's 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show'--such films usually come off as pure comedies, only with a horror setting. But when the balance is just right, such as in 'The Ghost Breakers' (1940), 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein' (1948, and still probably the finest exemplar of the horror comedy ever made) and 'Spider Baby' (1964), the result can be a timeless and wonderful entertainment." I wrote those words in my review of the 2002 cult item "Bubba Ho-Tep," which succeeded wildly as both horror and comedy, I felt. Well, now I must report that, to my great surprise, I have discovered yet another picture that manages that tricky balancing act: Jay Lee's "Zombie Strippers" (2008), which is not only laugh-out-loud funny, as might have been expected, but also features more gross-out, gut-munching, head-bursting zombie carnage than the last three George A. Romero movies combined!In the film's hilarious opening, a ridiculously gung-ho Marine team, the Z Squad (clearly patterned after the tough-as-nails crew in the sci-fi epic "Aliens"), is called in to quell a zombie revolt at a government lab, where the living dead were being developed to act as the supersoldiers of the future. The zombies are effectively slaughtered in a gonzo bloodbath, but one of the Marines, Byrdflough (!), gets bitten and infected during the battle. Fearful of being preemptively shot by one of his team members, Byrdflough escapes the scene and hides out in the local Rhino Club, which is run by a character named Ian Essko, and played by none other than Freddy Krueger portrayer himself, Robert Englund. (Literate viewers may recall that French playwright Eugene Ionesco came out with a play in 1959 called "Rhinoceros"; just one of the many literate in-jokes scattered throughout the film.) Before long, Byrdflough turns into a zombie himself, and attacks and kills the club's head stripper, Kat (played with zest by "The Queen of Porn," Jenna Jameson). But Kat doesn't stay dead for long, and her abilities as a pole dancer are only enhanced by her zombified state, resulting in her enormous popularity with the male buffoons in the audience! And soon, all the other jealous ecdysiasts are desirous of becoming zombies, too. Ian's new zombie strippers are raking in major bucks for the club, before long, but there IS a problem: All the male customers who the gals infect have in turn become zombies themselves, and have been locked away in the Rhino's basement. And that basement is reaching the point of maximum capacity....All the gore hounds out there who may be thinking that this silly-sounding movie won't deliver the requisite zombie mayhem might be in for a big surprise as "Zombie Strippers" proceeds. The FX in the film are terrifically impressive, the makeup work all that could be desired, the blood and guts worthy of approbation by Tom Savini. Just watch as Lilith, the Goth stripper, splits a guy's head open to eat his tongue, or how Madame Blavatski (the hilarious Russian in charge of the strippers, and named, of course, for whatever reason, after the notorious Russian occultist of the 19th century, Madame Helena Blavatsky), after being zombified, has her body blown apart, bit by bit, by machine gun fire. And you won't believe what a zombie can do in regard to a pole dance...simply eye boggling! The film, as mentioned, is also wildly funny, with many hilarious lines; the references to this viewer's all-time favorite movie, "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," as well as to the cult fave "The Warriors," almost made me fall off the couch with laughter. Other hilarious bits: the newscast that opens the film, detailing George W.'s fourth term as president (yikes!), and the scene in which Ian's assistant, the Mexican Paco, looks at a photo of his wife and two daughters, before going off to fight the undead, and tearfully says, "Adios, Maria, Maria, Maria...." And just get a load of what zombie Kat is able to do with a bunch of pool balls (decency prevents me from saying)! As for Englund, he gives a fine comedic performance here, and his obnoxious, germaphobic character (he is constantly spraying disinfectant on the girls, and saying things like "You walking herpe") is a genuine inducer of big laffs. Of course, the film features fairly copious amounts of nudity, and many breasts are on display...some of them even natural. (Certainly not Jenna's, though; no two breasts could ever be that perfectly matched and symmetrical!) The picture is also a lot smarter than it needs to be, with numerous philosophical references (Kat, hilariously, is shown reading a book by Nietzsche, which she cannot understand until after she becomes a zombie; the film transpires in Sartre, Nebraska; and several of the strippers indulge in fairly deep existential discussions), a recomplicated plot finale, and timely and clever put-downs of the Bush administration (granted, a fairly broad target for satire). The film is surely not in the same great league as "Bubba Ho-Tep" or the other wonderful classics mentioned up top, but it still manages to succeed as both horror and comedy, for which the picture has my grudging respect. Who would have ever thought that a film featuring zombie face dancing could be so good?
Woodyanders
Stuck-up headliner Kat (notorious porn starlet Jenna Jameson in peak snarky form) works as a stripper at the illegal underground gentleman's club the Rhino in the repressive near future. Kat becomes a major money-making attraction after she transforms into a lethal, yet sexy flesh-eating zombie. Will the other girls at the club resist the temptation to follow suit? Writer/director Jay Lee delivers oodles of outrageously graphic over-the-top splatter and gobs of tasty excessive female nudity while drawing the wacky characters in colorfully broad strokes, taking wickedly clever satirical potshots at politics, religion, conformity, and philosophy, and blithely wallowing in a gloriously tacky'n'tasteless sense of cheerfully rude'n'crude lowbrow raunchy humor. Yep, this picture sure ain't no subtle and sensitive work of substantial cinematic art, but it nonetheless comes on like delightfully deviant and deranged gangbusters because Lee goes all the way and then some with the intrinsic cheesiness and sleaziness of the hysterically lurid premise. Moreover, it's acted with definite hammy panache by an enthusiastic cast: Robert England has a ball as smarmy, greedy, and amoral club owner Ian, Jameson likewise really sinks her teeth into her juicy part, buxom knockout Shamron Moore hits it out of the part with her deliciously venomous portrayal of the jealous and spiteful Jeannie, Joey Medina contributes a gut-busting turn as bumbling janitor Paco, and Jennifer Holland projects a winningly sweet'n'spunky charm as naive farm girl Jessy. The bevy of smoking hot babes that include sultry Goth goddess Roxy Saint and tall ravishing redhead Penny Drake certainly don't hurt matters any. Lee's sharp widescreen cinematography provides an appropriately garish look. The spirited score by Billy White Acre and the thrashy rock soundtrack do the right-on rousing trick. A real schlocky hoot.
scarletheels
A group of soldiers named the Z-Squad is summoned to Nebraska to take care of a zombie outbreak at a government commissioned lab headed by Dr. Chushfeld. With the United States at war with so many countries, George W. Bush has sanctioned the development of a virus that reanimates dead soldiers. During the brouhaha with the undead, Byrdflough, one of the Z- Squad members is bitten. After witnessing the shooting of a lab assistant who is infected, he panics and manages to escape from the facility, ending up at Rhino, an underground strip club. The seedy establishment is run by Ian (Robert Englund) who despises the women and is off-put by their affection toward him, as well as a bit OCD with his can of disinfectant spray. Upon the arrival of an angel-faced newcomer, Jessy, Rhino's most popular dancer, Kat (Jenna Jameson), is attacked and infected by Byrdflough. Competition brews as they see Kat command more money and attention as a zombie stripper. One by one, they succumb to their desire to become one of the undead so that they can steal the spotlight for their own. There isn't too much to say about this gory, sleazy, ham fest. You want boobs? You want zombies? You want porn stars with boobs as zombies? You got it but be warned that the exotic dancing isn't all that titillating (hello, there's a pole there - use it!) until their eyes are sunken in and their flesh is puckered and grey. Even though Jenna Jameson is billed as the main attraction in this film, sexy Shamron Moore outshines her as Kat's bitchy, resentful rival - both in looks and acting. She's prettier, curvier, and doesn't have Botox-injected lips the size of Texas. The film's biggest mistake is smothering us with social and political rhetoric. Please leave that to Michael Moore or Fox News. The satire fails miserably. It's injected into the movie without any thought or concern about who is spewing it, when, how, where, or why. Zombie Strippers! works as a campy blood-and-guts fest but not as some wanna-be philosophical caveat.The decapitations, zombie feasts, limb removals, disembowelments, and other nasty, revolting displays of carnage will have splatter hounds howling with joy. Some of the CGI is downright laughable but so is the rest of the movie.
