OMG Horror.com

It seems the horror genre has long been a refuge for mega porn-stars desperate to cross over into the mainstream. Sure, it makes sense, especially since many a provincial mind consider horror films one short step above porno films to begin with. Besides, quite a smooth transition it is; instead of screwing some stiff to death, now you're actually out to kill them (or simply avoid being killed by them). We saw it in the late '80s early '90s with Traci Lords, who broached commercial filmmaking with such genre fare as Not of This Earth, Shock 'Em Dead, The Tommyknockers, etc. Ginger Lynn Allen (Buried Alive, The Devil's Rejects) is another immediate example. Now Jenna Jameson picks up the torch, doing all she can to keep her flame burning bright in Jay Lee's incompetently silly Zombie Strippers!

Stripped to the Bone...
Zombie Strippers! opens with a satirical CNN type news screen admonishing that the story takes place in the near future. W's in his fourth term as president, we're at war with practically the entire Middle East, even declaring against our Northern friends in Canada and Alaska. Being that the army has worn thin, the government has concocted a chemo-virus to cultivate aggressive reanimated corpses who can fight abroad (a bunch of broads, it turns out). A mishap ensues, and a small counter unit is sent in to annihilate the zombies before they can run amok domestically. Cut to an underground strip club in the red stated small town of Sartre, Nebraska; where we meet the steely cold head stripper, Kat (Jameson) and a few of her colleagues. Quite a stretch for Jameson here, who is introduced via lurid strip-tease, peeling off all her clothes by her first minute of screen time. It must be said that Jenna's face isn't looking so cute anymore; I've seen smaller lips on a swimming pool. For real, she's so shot up with shit that she looks like a sad cross between Joan Rivers in that Geico commercial and the twisted up Zelda from Pet Sematary. Not too impressive indeed!

Soon a zombie breakout occurs in the club, and Kat is the first one to get her neck gauged and blood feasted on. When she revives, she offers a more inspired and animated strip tease than she did alive. She struts her stuff with a gored and profusely flowing wound in her neck; a necrophiliac's wet-dream-come-true. Noticing the vim and vigor of the reanimated, all the living strippers sacrifice themselves as a way to appease horny customers and earn more money. We meet Ian (Robert Englund), a super greased out bar owner who takes no umbrage with exploiting the living dead strippers who attract more business than their healthy counterparts. It's a shame to see Englund as a diluted reflection of his own once bad-ass image. Here he sports a filthy hairdo crossed with Billy Idol and Howard the Duck, emulating the kind of sleaze-hound that probably frequents blacked out porno theaters in a rain slicker. I mean, the guy uses Lysol as cologne and stripper disinfectant. Dirty!

...Layer By Layer
We meet Jessy (Jennifer Holland), our heroine and local untainted Sartre-rian. She wants to become a stripper, but hasn't the gall. Riddled by stage-fright and some clown named Davis (John Hawkes) who borders on stalker, Jessy is the kind of protagonist who is more in tune with mere survival than being a save-the-day type of Stallone that we most associate with. But her story line, like most of the film, is abandoned and left unresolved. The flick culminates with a ridiculous stripper showdown between Kat and Jeannie (Shamron Moore), where Jenna's character fiercely rifles ping-pong and billiard balls from her vaggie. No, seriously, she does! Okay, it's clear that women have the ultimate power of giving life, but good heavens, I had no clue the very anatomy could be so deadly. I had no idea that they could project rounds of ammunition at a faster clip than a semi-auto nine. But leave nothing unattainable for Jenna, who now adds a different set of balls to her impressive "vaginal resident" resume.

The most impressive thing about Zombie Strippers! is the fact it actually endured a theatrical stint. Aside from that, there's a short list of things that I quite enjoyed. The opening and closing title card and the accompanying score are nice, unabashed B-movie touches. I like how self-contained the film is (budget constraints), most of the action centered right there in the strip club. I was taken aback with the amount of stripping, as slimy as that sounds. There were like 8-10 numbers performed, and with a title like Zombie Strippers, it certainly doesn't fail to deliver in that area. There's a decent gore effect here and there, one victim gets his mouth forcibly opened and his whole head splits apart. Jenna eats some dude's dick piece (no, not like that) and chews it up into a bloody mass. The movie kept me entertained for the better part of its 94 minute run time.

But overall the flick has many detractors. The production values are embarrassingly low, I've seen better in some of Jenna's Vivid work. The acting is deplorable, line readings given like six year olds in a Kindergarten ensemble. The narrative becomes muddled, uninteresting. Really, the flick is akin to a late night skin-e-max entry, only laced with more blood and intentionally camped out jokes. The direction never immerses you or invites you into, at least a semi-plausible world; instead it's painfully obvious we're watching a bunch of people trying to act and wade their way out of a waist-deep lake of self-reflexive excrement. And that doesn't really work!

Terror Rating: 1 out of 5
Originality: 3 out of 5
Level of Gore: 3 out of 5
Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5

• << prev
• next >>