The only thing worse than a picture about zombie strippers is a picture about zombie strippers with a message. People who volunteer to pay to see something literally titled “Zombie Strippers” want gore and naked girls; hold the mayo … and the insight.
But even though today’s horror satire makes its shallow intentions clear by headlining porn goddess Jenna Jameson and “Nightmare on Elm Street’s” Robert Englund, two of the most hideously lame acting talents in the known universe, it also deigns to jam in heavy-handed Bush administration bashing and non sequitur pseudo-philosophical
references to Sartre and Nietzsche.
Hello? We’ll just take more mutilated body parts and quivering silicone, please.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing witty or even sufficiently kitschy about this story of a lethal virus, generated by the Bush-Cheney military industrial complex, which ends up leaked to an underground nudie bar and produces super-powerful, customer-eating, undead pole dancers.
And yet despite the obviously cheap and cheesy proceedings we have here, I was almost tempted to give this blood-drenched crumb of B-movie schlock a perfect “five” out of five stars instead of grading it a “zero.”
Why, you ask?
Well, I thought — for one deranged moment — director-writer Jay Lee deserves some kind of special recognition for sheer gall. The badness comes on such an epic scale, should we not honor it in some way?
Plus, there is one gag near the end that will live forever in cinematic infamy. In it, as club owner Englund’s attempt to exploit his stable of newly reanimated flesh-munching floozies goes awry, his decomposing main star (Jameson) gets in a catfight with her zombie rival for stage dominance. The enduring moment comes when Jameson’s almighty monster chick does something remarkable with billiard balls that can’t be described in a family newspaper.
But is it worth seeing “Zombie Strippers” for that sublime moment of perverted legerdemain?
Oh, heck no.
‘Zombie Strippers’
(zero stars)
Starring: Jenna Jameson
Director: Jay Lee
Rated R
Running time: 94 minutes
