Stripperland

In the middle of a zombie apocalypse, a loser teams up with a lone hunter to head towards a rumored safe-heaven nearby, and when they meet up with a pair of sisters who are also seeking safety the group attempts to brave the zombie-riddled landscape to reach it.

For the most part, this is an enjoyable if potentially grating cash-in. What really makes this one enjoyable is when it focuses on a rather fine mixture of zombie mayhem and comedy. The opening attack in the supermarket or the first flashbacks to the attacks being shown on the news reports all give this a wholly enjoyable time. The action here is handled really well, not only the attack in the mall where they burst through the barricade to overrun the building to the exceptionally fun encounter at the casino with the mad doctor and his group of captive zombies. Alongside the high-energy finale of their series of encounters in the stripclub or their final encounter at the hands of the zombie horde in the middle of the infected creatures, the fact that the action here is all decidedly light and intended to be comical makes this an all-around easy digest alongside all the great gore makeup for the kills and zombie attacks. These here are what hold this one up over its flaws. There are some big issues here, starting with the film's outright inability to rip off its premise from another film entirely. This one takes the entire premise, of a young loser teaming up with a grizzled, hardened hunter to survive in the middle of a zombie apocalypse and later find a pair of women to share their journey with, which is taken straight on from that other film. Even side bits, like the loser living by a strict set of rules, the hunter with a traumatic family backstory that drives his quest to obtain a specific food important to him and the featured cameo here by a celebrity within the film world. That this is topped off by the addition of the two girls into the situation with much of the same resolution and outcome as the other film in its entirety simply causes this to reek of the outright pilfered material found here. This is made even worth with the additional facet that it's so brazen and forthright in doing this which really stands out quite dominantly on the whole, being so open about it and not doing much different to change things up. The other big issue here is an entirely wrong-headed approach to women that makes this one extremely cringe-worthy at times. There's a lot of talk here about the objectification of women through the idea of taking all women and turning them into sex-obsessed, flesh-hungry maniacs that have to chase after men in high-heels, skimpy lingerie and getting distracted by club music, especially due to a lack of information given for the outbreak. Nothing is given about why it only affects women or whether men could get infected, or even how the virus got loose to target them, leaving this section rather frustrating and troublesome. These here are what hold this one down.

Rated R: Extreme Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and Nudity.

This was the only non-vampire movie left (I hate vampire movies) on my AppleTV's horror gallery, so I just had to see it. I regret it now, I have to say. Why does Apple allow amateur movies in? This movie needs plenty of work on the audio. (My $120 cheap'o camera almost does better, even without an external microphone.) It needs plenty of work on the blood splatter effects. They don't look like splatter at all, but rather like something someone put on for "good effect" after plenty of beers. And without knowledge of physics.

The acting is extremely bad, and the nudity is non-existent. And the script... Well, they could need another script. One of the actresses is kinda cute, though. But not cute enough to make this movie valuable.

Dear Apple, please print an "amateur" warning on when you but things like this one my AppleTV. It's not funny, and it would probably not have been approved by Steve if he was still alive.

But of course, this might be a parody of something of which I have no relation whatsoever. If that is the case, some might find it funny. Good for you, then.

'STRIPPERLAND': Three Stars (Out of Five)

Another spoof of a spoof! 'STRIPPERLAND' is a very low budget ($500,000) spoof on 'ZOMBIELAND'. The premise is basically the same as 'ZOMBIELAND' except instead the world has been taken over by zombie strippers, rather than just regular zombies. It was co-written (with Brad McCray, Shawn Justice and Tyler Benjamin) and directed by Sean Skelding and features a cast of mostly unknowns (with the exception of a few brief cameos by the likes of Daniel Baldwin, Boyd Banks and Lloyd Kaufman). The movie is pretty bad but it does have some good laughs, nice performances and a few decent zombie scenes.

The story revolves around a young man (Ben Sheppard) who's managed to survive in a post-apocalyptic future due to his book of rules of course. He explains to the viewers, as the movie opens, that a virus caused most of the world's female population to turn into zombie strippers, which began feeding on everyone else (although they're unlike any other movie zombies being that they can be killed by any shot to the body and not just one to the head!). Very early on the young man hooks up with a tough loner (Jamison Challeen) passing through town and the two give each other the nicknames Idaho and Frisco. They then team up with two young women (Maren McGuire and Ileana Herrin) and the four make a plan to head to Portland, Or, the stripper capitol of the world (and there are continuous jokes about how many strippers and strip clubs there are in Oregon)!

The filmmaker Sean Skelding also helmed the movie 'I AM VIRGIN' in 2010, which is a low budget spoof on 'I AM LEGEND'. That makes a lot more sense to me! Spoofing a serious action / horror film like 'I AM LEGEND' and making it about the last living man (a virgin) in a world of sex-crazed vampires is a pretty good idea (although I've heard the movie is horrible) but spoofing an already very clever spoof like 'ZOMBIELAND' makes no sense. It is better than other spoofs of spoofs like 'SCARY MOVIE' or 'THE 41-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN' but it's still pretty bad. An argument can be made that it's 'so bad it's good' though. Like I said it's saving grace is a few good jokes, some nice performances and some cool zombie actions scenes (if you're a die-hard fan of zombie movies).

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There's very little to be gained from parodying a film that was essentially a parody in the first place, which is why Stripperland, a pitiful, cheap-assed send up of Zombieland, screams blatant cash-in rather than inventive spoof.

Strip away (pun intended) the dumb gimmick of a world over-run by all-female, sluttily dressed undead, and this IS Zombieland, minus the budget, the decent cast, the cool effects, the witty script, the amusing star cameo, and anything else you can think of that made that particular film such a blast.

What little genuine originality director Sean Skelding does bring to the table is imbecilic in the extreme, and includes such excruciatingly bad ideas as Linnea Quigley leading an army of OAP zombie killers, Thom Bray as a mad doctor intent of turning the zombies into obedient 'retro-wives', and Daniel Baldwin as rapper Double D performing to a crowd of scantily clad, dancing corpses in order to keep them from eating him!

The film's only saving graces are hotties Maren McGuire and Ileana Herrin as sisters Virginia and West, both of whom look great in next to nothing (shame then that for most of the film they remain completely clothed!) plus some enthusiastic old-school splatter (shame also then that the film relies so heavily on crap CGI for many of its effects!).

I should say that I absolutely hated the dumb-beyond-belief ZOMBIELAND, so this ZOMBIELAND spoof had little chance of appealing to me. Having watched it, I'm absolutely gobsmacked at how this gets away with being a scene-for-scene copy of that film, merely replacing zombies with zombie strippers but otherwise keeping everything exactly the same.

Does this film exist in some kind of weird limbo where copyright laws no longer apply? Or is it so cheap and so amateurish that the studio behind ZOMBIELAND just didn't bother filing a lawsuit? Whatever the reason, it will remain a mystery for me, and it doesn't change the fact that this is an awful mess of a film. Derivative, unfunny, with bad acting and worse special effects.

The best STRIPPERLAND can manage is to string together a series of cheesy cameos by various figures like Daniel Baldwin (a new low for the actor), Linnea Quigley, and Lloyd Kaufman. I was particularly put off by the quality of the actresses playing the zombie strippers; they make the starlets of ZOMBIE STRIPPERS! look like professionals by comparison. Anyway, STRIPPERLAND is hands down the most derivative film I've ever seen, and viewers should shun this homemade film in their droves.