Zombie Strippers (2008)

DVD Talk 5 of 10
"Zombie Strippers!" You shouldn't really need more than a title to explain the experience contained within. However, what if I wrote that the picture is actually an elaborate critique of the Bush Administration and current political and social woes? Boy, I would sound nuts. But then again, so is "Zombie Strippers!"..."Strippers" is schlock, no doubt about it. Writer/director Jay Lee has feasted on a litany of grade-Z horror films to dream up his screenplay, and while his affection is endearing, his directorial skills could use some sharpening. Serious sharpening. "Strippers" is an ambitious piece of junk that somehow longs to be culturally relevant. It uses the distraction of female breasts to somehow contort itself into a semi-satiric, mostly-idiotic comment on the future world order, where G.W.B. has accepted a fourth term in office and America has made war with the entire globe, even Alaska...Generously digging into the gore-smeared sexuality of the role along with all the flesh-munching, Jameson is impressive and silly; the lone cast member to articulate camp without winking pathetically into the camera...Lee lobs the comedy very broadly, with racial, gross-out, and political jokes blasted at the screen with typical eye-rolling results. Part of the failure is the flaccid writing, but a majority of the picture's faults are tied to the low standards of the production, which employs ugly lighting and iffy HD camerawork to cover the no-budget seams. With nowhere to turn, Lee leans into the cheese quotient of the material, and if there's anything worse than camp, it's self-aware camp...With actors mugging for the camera, bodies torn apart, and Bush-age politics grilled, it doesn't take much to feel overwhelmed with "Zombie Strippers!" It's certainly meant to be a wild ride of breasts, bullets, and blood, but it feels more like a plastic bag slowly tightened over your head. - Brian Orndorf
 
The Onion A.V. Club 5 of 10
Say this for Zombie Strippers: It delivers on its title. No one can complain that there's a shortage of strippers or zombies here, or zombie-stripper hybrids that make ordinary strippers and zombies look like the dead-eyed husks of popular imagination. Yet in the not-so-grand tradition of other straight-to-video/late-night-cable T&A-fests;, the trouble with Zombie Strippers is that it doesn't come about its exploitation honestly. The film's devotion to smug, self-conscious camp lets the audience know early and often that the filmmakers and actors are in on the joke, and that they aren't mindless purveyors of boobs and blood. That above-it-all attitude isn't convincing, and what's more, it saps any fun or cheap titillation that might have been had from this dreary enterprise...In a reference that should gratify existentialist wankers the world over, the action takes place in Sartre, Nebraska, a rural outpost big enough to host a secret government lab and an illegal low-rent strip club. The satirical opening adds the obligatory layer of social commentary: It's President Bush's fourth term in office--thanks to a Supreme Court that includes his daughter Jenna--and in order to fight wars on numerous new fronts, scientists are tinkering with ways to reanimate the tissue of dead soldiers. When the experiment goes awry, troops are brought in to take care of the problem, but an infected soldier escapes into a strip club and bites the star attraction, played by porn legend Jenna Jameson...As one stripper after another gets the bug, Zombie Strippers turns into a slicker version of Ed Wood's long-forgotten Orgy Of The Dead, which basically featured one "undead" babe after another stripping joylessly in front of a campfire. The bodies are tighter and more synthetic here, but most of the second act consists of pole-dancing routines enhanced by creature-feature makeup and the occasional offhand reference to Nietzsche. - Scott Tobias