Starring: Jenna Jameson, Robert Englund, Jennifer Holland

Written & Directed By: Jay Lee

Released: 2008

Grade: B+

Writer/director, Jay Lee, used Eugène Ionesco’s play, Rhinoceros, as inspiration for his film, Zombie Strippers. The underground strip club in the film called “The Rhino” is even named after this. In the film, you guessed it an outbreak of zombie strippers take the place of Rhinos. You can expect a gory fun time of decapitating flesh and a rising epidemic of the living dead. Surprisingly enough, the film doesn’t limit itself to this alone though. It has a political agenda, but it uses the zombie strippers and actions of the other characters to show this rather than simply telling us these critiques.

The film takes place during George W. Bush’s fourth term as president of the United States. A chemo virus has been injected to innocent people. The poor and immigrants are test subjects for this project. However, this virus doesn’t stay contained to just them for long. Since the disease has the y-chromosome, women are more easily able to sustain there normal identities. With men things become more complex and deadly. The transformation of zombies does stay hidden at first when it unloads on the strip club, The Rhino. Kat (Jameson) the star performer at the club gets infected first. At this time, Jessy (Holland), joins the strip team from a small town with Christian values to save the money her needy grandmother is depending on. Her boyfriend who comes from the same type of lifestyle is having a hard time dealing with Jessy’s new job as a stripper. The other strippers aren’t too fond of having her there either.

At first, Kat still appears be normal for the most part. Still she seems to have some sort of super abilities that simply drive the men in the crowd wild. As more girls change in to this there becomes a lower and lower tolerance for the human strippers. Soon enough the zombies do start to become darker and more decayed. This just arouses the men even as they take many as their victims, thinking they will be getting sexual favors but only get turned in to zombies themselves. The men are not idolized like the women are since they immediately show that they are walking corpses. Those who fall victim to this are assured that everything will be okay. However, this is really just done in order to distract them and finish them off while the female zombies still run free to kill as they wish. The owner of the club, Ian (Englund), sees this as a miraculous business profit and can’t exploit the girls enough. The living strippers form an intense jealousy over those who have stolen the show from them. The zombie strippers become more and more destructive. If they aren’t stopped then everyone will fall victim to the diseases they carry.

It is no surprise that Jenna Jameson is convincing as a stripper, but she also does very well as a scream queen. The intellect that is given to her character isn’t quite believable, but I took this as more of a parody than something to take seriously. While some might have wanted to see the film for Jameson, Robert Englund was really the one who initially got me interested in the film. This is one of my favorite recent performances of his. You can really tell how much he likes playing the creepy guy. Through every crooked move and evil laugh joy is just seeping out. This makes it so much more fun for the audience, especially since he is a bad guy but not even one of the zombies. He is the bad guy that is very real in our world today and puts greed and his own selfish desires above the safety of everyone else even when dealing with a zombie epidemic.

In an interview with HorrorMovieFans.com Radio Jay Lee said “I wanted it to be fun, a great ride, but at the same time have some subtext”. Lee gave a great balance to the film, making it both cheesy fun and thoughtful. By making the material humorous and light it didn’t hit us over the head with his views or seem too preachy. The disease itself and all of the experimentation used were designed to get more soldiers, ones that would be able to eternally fight. After they were shot down, they could just get up again; making them undefeatable. An army of zombies, especially in the hands of George Bush could be very dangerous, but this is the very thing the government is willing to take lives for. By using the poor and those who don’t have other means of work, it shows what disregard there is for them. The existence of what is going on just shows that we go out of our way to create disaster for profit.

Going in to the film I thought it would use men’s fascination with naked women, combining it with zombies to induce fear in them. Surprisingly enough though, the men seem to be even more fascinated and attracted to them, which was an interesting turn in logic. How blind people become to the walking dead is what is really frightening. Another aspect where the film benefits by using strippers as the main characters represent the need for acceptance and conformity. One of the girls uses excuses for why she strips, but especially when the living ones are booed she craves the cheers of the crowd so she can be okay with herself. The structure and image of strippers and particularly the fascination with the zombie strippers shows how this acceptance only comes with a certain image.

There are plenty of different character types shown from goth to good girl to the traditional easy blonde. The strippers, especially Kat, often quote philosophers. This was clearly making fun of the notion that they are limited to their bodies and therefore must not be very intelligent. As I mentioned with Jameson’s delivery of this, it is not at all convincing. It really isn’t meant to be and just has some fun with the notion. Of course, the zombie strippers have some completely great cheesy lines that play off of seduction and death. This combination is pretty funny and works really well. They use lines like “I could eat you alive” and “Love is Dead” as they are using their bodies to lure just as they rip their bodies apart with their jaws.