Shocktober Revisited: Zombie Strippers

 Zombie Strippers is a movie that delivers exactly what the title promises; I'll give it that much. Lots of things about this movie just don't work: the comedy is lame, the cgi is cheesy, and the political satire is hamfisted. And yet, Zombie Strippers works in spite of itself. The film (if you can call it that) is doggedly set on reveling in its own retardedness and, by gum, it's entertaining somehow.

Maybe it's the strippers awkwardly quoting from your Freshman Philosophy class, or Jenna Jameson reading Nietzsche and declaring (once zombified) "This makes so much more sense now!" Maybe it's the dumb references, like naming the city Sartre Nebraska, or naming characters Ian Essko or Byrdflough (say them out loud). It might even be the unnecessary citations of The Warriors and Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and alone, any of these elements probably would have killed this movie for me.

But that's not the only dumb shit you find in Zombie Strippers. For example, this film is a LOT like Hillbillys in a Haunted House when it comes to demonstrating something over and over again to pad the running time. Admittedly, most people renting a movie called "Zombie Strippers" are expecting more of the latter and less of the former, but you get a bunch of normal stripping followed by even more zombie stripping. As blogorium pal Englund pointed out to me, "becoming a zombie makes the guys act like zombies. it makes the girls better strippers" which is true. All they want to do is strip and eat people, which is most of the middle of the movie.

What's so strange is that the retardedness of Zombie Strippers comes in small doses early in the film: at first, it just seems like a really cheap movie made on a very low budget, ala Blood Car. But like Blood Car, things start compounding, and by the time you get to the Zombie Stripper Dance-Off and the ensuing "Ping Pong Ball Trick" scene, the movie is so ridiculous you can't help but wonder where it's going next.

I guarantee you this movie has the best payoff for a "Mexican Stereotype" you're going to see.

So is Zombie Strippers worth seeing? Well, I wouldn't say this is a "So You Won't Have To", but you have to be a very particular type of B-Movie fan to enjoy this. I'm quite serious when I say it reminded me of Blood Car, Hillbillys in a Haunted House, and The Dead Hate the Living, even if it's nowhere near as good as they are.

Zombie Strippers is a very cheap movie that somehow bagged Robert Englund and Jenna Jameson and has just enough going for it that I'll say some of you might like it. Just fast forward through the "news" piece at the beginning and try to ignore the George W Bush and Cheney jokes. They go away for a while and it turns into a low-rent version of Feast with some decent gore and unintentional laughs, which is admittedly better than a lot of recent horror movies the Cap'n has been watching.