STUDIO: Sony
RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2008
STARRING: Robert Englund, Jenna Jameson, Roxy Saint, Joey Medina, Shamron Moore, Penny Drake, Jennifer Holland, John Hawkes, Jeanette Sousa, and Whitney Anderson
WRITTEN BY: Jay Lee
DIRECTED BY: Jay Lee
GENRE: Horror
RATING: R

The very fact that you're reading a review of a movie called Zombie Strippers is somewhat remarkable in itself. And the fact that Sony saw fit to screen a movie whose biggest stars are Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund, and with more bouncing breasts than the entire American Pie franchise, to a room full of critics that included such notable figures as Richard Roeper and Michael Phillips is absolutely praiseworthy. The modern trend of studios fearing critics and denying them even the opportunity of viewing their product with an open mind has helped create the growing divide between Hollywood and moviegoers. Why trust people who are trying to essentially sucker you into watching inferior product by keeping it from the folks who get paid to warn you? And it's great that Sony recognized that there are critics out there, especially those with a fondness for the work of Robert Rodriguez, Roger Corman, and Fred Olen Ray (the auteur behind Hollywood Chainsaw Hackers), who will not only view a movie like Zombie Strippers with an open mind, but will actually get excited about the idea of seeing it. I thought it would be the perfect B-movie way to start my week. It certainly gave me a reason to get out of bed that movies like Becoming Jane or Miss Potter just don't. Of course, that excitement and shock that the movie is even being screened wears off incredibly quickly once Jay Lee's film starts to roll. VERY quickly.

Zombie Strippers opens, like a lot of undead movies, with nefarious doctors messing about with mankind. It's a few years down the road but George W. Bush is still President and his daughter is a Supreme Court Justice (go ahead, roll your eyes, you're gonna be doing a lot of it). We're still fighting in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and most of the rest of the world, including Canada (keep 'em rolling), and the world has basically gone to sh*t. A group of soldiers are brought in to stop the zombie infestation from escaping the clinic at which it was created but, of course, they suck. One gets bit and, instead of letting his buddies ice him, he escapes and ends up at an underground strip club. Stripping has been turned illegal, driving all ladies of the night into what looks like factory basements. That's where our infected friend finds himself and, after letting the virus brew (and after letting a few topless dancers up the movie’s Skinemax factor), our horndog soldier zombie pal named Birdflough (ugh) tackles the star of the club (Jenna Jameson) and takes a bite out of her neck. What doesn't kill a stripper, makes her stronger, I guess. Our heroine becomes even popular with her new zombie powers, but the club’s owner (Robert Englund) has a small problem with the occasional lap dance gone awry. With his crack staff, he locks the newly-created zombies in the basement and watches the undead girls bring in more and more cash. A near-disaster of pacing, tone, and bad acting, Zombie Strippers never lives up to the B-movie promise of its title or even its clever concept.

I know what you're saying - "Clever concept?! Zombie Strippers?" Yeah, I said it. Many filmmakers have played off the idea that zombies would make for good soldiers with their lack of humanity and inability to die. The concept that a woman has to lose a little bit of what makes her human to become a better stripper is actually a pretty good one, and Quentin Tarantino could have had a blast with it in a variation on From Dusk Til Dawn, but the ingenuity of Zombie Strippers (mostly) stops dead (pun intended) with the concept. There's a reference to The Warriors that should be applauded and a few nods to Nietszche that stand out but, 95% of Zombie Strippers plays like what an 8th-grade boy would have written given the title. Even worse, the filmmakers almost seem to act like they're above the material, never embracing its B-movie potential. Horribly written jabs at the Bush administration, porn-movie level dialogue, and a few bits that are just embarrassing in their comic timing completely drain Zombie Strippers of its possible B-movie charm. In fact, the film most comes alive when no one's talking and we don't mean that in a perverted way. Mostly. After Jenna goes brain-eating, she does a strip tease - half-covered in blood and grinding away on-stage - that's easily the highlight of the movie. Viewers will be as riveted as the men in the audience on-screen. Like a lot of strippers, the problems only come about when they have to start talking again.