''Zombie Strippers'' is a 2008 American

zombie comedy The zombie comedy, often called zom com or zomedy, is a film genre that aims to blend zombie horror motifs with slapstick comedy as well as morbid humor. History The earliest roots of the genre can be found in Jean Yarbrough's ''King of the ...

film shot, edited, written, and directed by Jay Lee. The film, starring

Robert Englund Robert Barton Englund (born June 6, 1947) is an American actor and director. He is best known for playing the supernatural serial killer Freddy Krueger in the '' Nightmare on Elm Street'' film series. Classically trained at the Royal Academy o ...

Jenna Jameson Jenna Marie Massoli (born April 9, 1974), known professionally as Jenna Jameson (), is an American model, former pornographic film actress, businesswoman, and television personality. She has been named the world's most famous adult entertainme ...

Penny Drake Penny Vital (born July 20, 1977), better known as Penny Drake, is an American independent film actress and model. Her modelling career since 2008 has included work for Herra Couture, Flora Zeta and Ed Hardy. In June 2009 she appeared as the vide ...

, and

Roxy Saint Roxanne Saint (born November 5, 1977) is an American singer, musician, video producer, director, and actress who started singing at age 17. She's known for her role in the film ''Zombie Strippers'' and as the lead performer in the goth band Rox ...

, was distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

Plot

The film opens with a news montage showing a

dystopic A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ- "bad, hard" and τόπος "place"; alternatively cacotopiaCacotopia (from κακός ''kakos'' "bad") was the term used by Jeremy Bentham in his 1818 Plan of Parliamentary Reform (Works, vol. 3, p. 493). ...

near-future in which

George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...

has been elected to a fourth term. The

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

has been disbanded; public nudity is banned; the United States is embroiled in wars with

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

, Syria,

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, and

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S. ...

. Due to there being too few soldiers for all the wars, a secret laboratory run by Dr. Chushfeld in fictional Sartre, Nebraska, has developed a virus to re-animate dead Marines and send them back into battle. However, this virus has broken containment and infected test subjects and scientists, and they are at risk of escaping from the lab. A team of Marines code-named the "Z" Squad is sent in to destroy the zombies. One of the Marines, named Byrdflough, is bitten but escapes. He ends up in an alley outside an underground strip club named "Rhino". The Marine dies and awakens as a zombie who goes into the club. "Rhino" is run by Ian Essko. A new stripper named Jessy has arrived at the club to save up enough money for her grandmother's operation. She is introduced to the club's dancers, including star dancer Kat. Kat begins her dance on the stage, but is attacked by Byrdflough. Essko, concerned about losing his best dancer, lets her go back on stage as a zombie. To everyone's surprise, Kat is a better and more popular dancer as a zombie than she was as a human. The other strippers now find themselves faced with the prospect of losing their customers, as the customers prefer zombie strippers to human strippers. One by one, the human strippers become zombies, some by choice in order to compete or (in the case of gothic rock stripper Lillith) for fun. During private dances, the zombie strippers bite and kill their customers. Essko tries to keep the zombies hidden in a cage in the club's cellar, but eventually, the zombies escape after Gaia, wanting to become one, releases the zombies, who overrun the club. Kat and the underrated stripper Jeannie fight for supremacy. The remaining humans in the club struggle to survive until the "Z" Squad burst in to destroy the zombies. They discover that the zombies have been allowed to escape by the Bush Administration in the hopes that the ensuing zombie plague would distract Americans from their gross mishandling of the war effort and the economy.

Cast

Inspiration

The film is loosely inspired by the play ''

Rhinoceros A rhinoceros (; ; ), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. (It can also refer to a member of any of the extinct species ...

'' by Eugène Ionesco, in which the characters exhibit indifference when people around them begin transforming into

rhinoceros A rhinoceros (; ; ), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. (It can also refer to a member of any of the extinct species ...

es.

Reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics. On

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

the film has an approval rating of 39% based on 62 reviews, with an average rating of 4.6/10. The site's consensus states: "Though intentionally campy, ''Zombie Strippers'' suffers from poor execution, and never rises above its silly premise." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

the film has a weighted average score of 45 out of 100, based on 15 reviews. It has been criticised as having poor production values, and poor execution, while recognizing its intentionally camp style and its attempt as a

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming ...

. The film absurdly transforms the classic zombie introduced in '' White Zombie'' (1932), a mindless being without human traits, into nice, sexually attractive and desirable creatures.

Richard Roeper Richard E. Roeper (born October 17, 1959) is an American columnist and film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times''. He co-hosted the television series '' At the Movies'' with Roger Ebert from 2000 to 2008, serving as the late Gene Siskel's success ...

of Ebert & Roeper stated, "It looks terrible. It doesn't work as camp. It doesn't work as low budget crap". Dennis Harvey of ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' also called it a "one-joke pic". In contrast, Michael Rechtshaffen of ''

The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly larg ...

'' thought that there was something "perversely affecting" about this film, despite its "lame political satire".

References

External links