STUDIO: Sony
RELEASE DATE: October 28, 2008
STARRING: Jenna Jameson, Robert England, Joey Medina, Shamron Moore, and Roxy Saint
WRITTEN BY: Jay Lee
DIRECTED BY: Jay Lee
FEATURES: Titillation And Sass: The Zombie Strippers Pop-Up Trivia Track
Gory Scenes Not Shown In Theaters
Blu-ray Live Enabled
The Champagne Room: Making Zombie Strippers
The Dressing Room: How To Glam A Zombie
Commentary With Writer/Director Jay Lee, Jenna Jameson, Robert Englund And Joey Medina
Deleted Scenes With Optional Commentary

Zombie Strippers? Really? The very existence of a movie like Zombie Strippers on Blu-Ray from a major studio like Sony cracks me up. I just wish the movie was better. I'm a huge zombie fan, a huge low-budget horror fan, and, well, a huge fan of a few of the assets on display in Zombie Strippers. But the movie proves that even with gorgeous bodies and glorious gore, if the screenplay is a howler, the movie's not going to work. Still, I find it so remarkable that major year-end award contenders like Snow Angels didn't merit release on the next-gen format but I have a high-definition copy of something called Zombie Strippers. It truly is a brave new world.

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 at their job - they're too busy making bad jokes. A soldier gets bit and, instead of letting his buddies ice him, he escapes and ends up at an underground strip club. In the new world, 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 and a riveting sequence in zombie flick history. Viewers will be as speechless 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.

As for the Blu-Ray release, it's an impressive one, as most Sony titles are, and even more so when you consider the B-movie nature of the film. There's something undeniably odd about watching a low budget flick like Zombie Strippers in high definition and with perfect Blu-Ray sound. This is the kind of movie that almost SHOULD be seen on a bootleg tape or a drive-in screen. But the picture and sound are typically remarkable for Sony and the collection of special features is impressive. The trivia track is kind of a waste of time in its obviousness - Soldier Birdflough is named after the actual bird flu?!?! Really?!?! - but the extent of the extras is all fans of the movie could ask for. Commentary with Jenna Jameson AND Robert Englund? That should be enough to get B-movie fans in line to pick up Zombie Strippers. Like I said, it's just a shame that the movie itself isn't better. But the Blu-Ray release of Zombie Strippers is unimpeachable. Yes, Zombie Strippers. Seriously.