El ataque de las zombies

It's hard to knock a movie like "Zombie Strippers" because it's fully aware of how audaciously stupid and ridiculous it is. It doesn't matter that it isn't high satire or even reasonably solid on a technical level because when it comes down to it, some guy sat down one day and decided to make a movie that combined two of the average drunk male's favorite things- zombies and strippers, and "Zombie Strippers" doesn't just contain zombies and stripping (actual stripping included, by the way), it goes as far as fulfilling its title and providing a horde of surprisingly sexy... you guessed it, zombie strippers.

Commenting on the quality of the direction or the quality of the script with a movie like this just isn't worth it. This movie isn't the worst ever made (that's a fact, sorry), but it is a pretty terrible movie anyway. Could this movie have actually been funny for its jokes? I don't know. Could this ever have been a quality project in the first place?

"Zombie Strippers" is a movie about zombie strippers. By nature it is going to be pretty darn stupid and pretty darn bad. Using this criteria, "Zombie Strippers" is nowhere near as awful as it could have been. I even chuckled a couple of times. The girls all look good too, Jameson being the least attractive, and to think she was the object of every North American man's desire in the 90's (don't go near plastic surgery, girls). This movie does exactly what it says on the tin, and that deserves some level of respect. Oh, the audacity.

3/10 as a movie, but I can't say it wasn't fun on some level.

This is poorly made in most respects, and that's part of its appeal. In fact, I liked it. It has more jokes, and better jokes than any of the parody movies I've seen in years.

Here's the setup. W Bush has stolen a fourth term and declared war on a dozen countries, including France. So many soldiers are getting killed that labs have invented a virus that reanimates them so that they can keep on fighting, and harder. This virus gets into a stripper establishment with the result that the strippers once infected get "better," or at least more popular with the goofs.

Sounds like it could be a mess, and it is. I think of it as some sort of triangulation among Tarantino's fake sleaze "Death Proof," but more genuine, "10,000 Corpses" but with something other than snarls and "Shaun of the Dead" but with more clever jokes.

The interesting thing is that there are breasts here. But they are part of the irony, the big joke. They are deliberately depicted to be as artificially defective as the zombie countenance. In fact, the folding here is that we have an on-screen audience of male louts who reward the zombie strippers above the "regular" girls, so they willingly become zombies to be sexier.

The jokes range from cinematic jokes to comments on social issues, and they are at a higher level than usual.

One of the strippers is a former Playmate and that's supposed to be some sort of draw. Its hard to tell which one.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I thought of giving it a higher mark because the moments that work do work extremely well. Problem is is that sometimes it's hard to tell why we are laughing. One moment it seems like the filmmaker is not in on the joke but then along come moments so blatantly outrageous with cues (such as music or the way something is framed) that make one thing the filmmaker is aware of the tone of a scene and how the acting and the comedy and the horror, etc. are working. In any case the shifts in tone were a little hard to get used to. The gore is sometimes very delicious and creative with attention paid to fans of organic gore. Sometimes it looks plain old cheesy, bad CGI style gore. The acting is overall good, even when over the top. However for my taste no matter how aware they were of their own "bad" performances I think the movie could have benefited from a lot less "Look at my bad performance wink wink" acting and more of the playing-it-straight acting (believe it or not Jenna Jameson is one of the more successful at keeping this in mind). Robert Englund strikes just the right balance between over-the-top and playing it straight, he stops shy of taking it too far. O yea and although not really partial in that hormonal way to T & A I must admit what the movie offers is sure to please. The dancing is fun to watch in the first section and bizarre and hilarious in the second (I refuse to spoil).

OK the title says it all, but don't be fooled this movie has a lot going for it. The writing is crisp (the Mexican American jokes in particular) and the actors clearly get the idea that it's supposed to be funny and schlocky. I think most viewers and reviewers will miss the commentary on strip clubs and the objectification of women here. Yes Zombie Strippers has a message!

The FX and makeup are outstanding and of course over the top.

This is not a rip off or a copy (any more than any other zombie movie is)and I found it funnier than Shawn of The Dead and at least as funny (if not more) as Return of The Living Dead.

Kudos to Jenna for poking fun at herself and her profession.

BTW the audience at the screening LOVED IT.

"Zombie Strippers" manages a preternatural combination of theater of the absurd, hot pink lingerie, and the Smith and Wesson air soft pump action shotgun.

The ability of the 20th century's major Continental philosophies to adapt to the 3rd millennium is examined through the competing Weltanschauung of a cadre of sharply divided strippers in the American Midwest.

The characters are forced to define and own their ontology when a government manufactured zombie virus is unleashed. Yes, it may be possible to continue stripping after coming back from messy death, but is there more to life?

Ultimately, both the Nietzschean Ubermensch and Satre's existential despair are shown to be inadequate responses to the human condition, as well as to the zombie condition. In fact, a greater level of alienation then has been previously imagined is shown to be possible when a being is left severed from humanity while still sentient.

The failing Gestalt of excessively broad Panglossian optimism is laid bare, along with the entire cast. Rather than presenting a justification for self-annihilating submission to a mob which demands conformity as payment for acceptance, the protagonists must embrace individualism both qua the only reasonable way to survive and qua the innate demand of humanity.

Sacrificing the enduring emotional vitality and undeniable free will of a human life span for the illusion of release to be found in reanimation leads only to unrecoverable angst for those strippers who submit to the zombie virus.

This piece is properly read as a modern re-assessment of the lessons the Enlightenment. While a cynical view of religion's ability to define the scope and meaning of life is buttressed, we all - even a zombie in her actual death throws - must account for our choices. Infinite rebirths are not an option.

Meanwhile, fresh philosophical challenges are brought to bear in the characters of an aging Russian lap dancer and her harsh pragmatism and Paco, the illegal janitor who draws on his own cultural traditions to script a deeply personal reaction to the zombification of his co- workers.

Numerous definitions of humanity are tested: rationalism, logic, empathy - but it ultimately our ability to choose life and to find beauty in the sheer act of being alive that separates the living from the merely undead. The audience is asked to reconcile being human and being alive, having first debated if there is is a foundational schism at all.

More deep is the question hinted at and left unanswered by the film: if science, in the form of a toupe wearing lab tech who unleashes a chemo- virus that reanimates dead flesh, unleashes evil; and if the humanities, in the form of remarkably fresh looking strippers who toss off gems of epistemological wisdom between turns on the stage, are left to address the terrible question of whether to choose zombification for greater tips, where is the solution?

Believers in eleatic monism may be disappointed, but anyone who has ever wrestled with Being and Becoming will find some common themes dressed up like new with nipple tassles.