ZOMBIE STRIPPERS

By
Jacqueline Monahan

Jacqueline Monahan is an English tutor for the GEAR UP program at UNLV. She is also a consultant for Columbia College Chicago in Adjunct Faculty Affairs.
jaxn8r@msn.com

Talk about truth in advertising; you won’t be disappointed with the content of this film if zombie strippers are what you’re seeking. Most of the action takes place at the Rhino Strip Club in the small town of Sartre, Nebraska, sometime in the near future.

An opening news montage describes world events: George Bush is on the verge of a fourth term; the U.S. is at war with Venezuela, Iran, Canada and the state of Alaska, among a long laundry list of enemies. Combat is perpetual and so is the need for a renewable source of combatants. The army has come up with a secret chemo-virus that can reanimate dead soldiers to fight again, except that it turns both the living and the dead into flesh-eating zombies. Oops! Another example of our tax dollars at work.

One of the unfortunate soldier/zombie test subjects escapes into the Rhino and not surprisingly, blends into the crowd of salivating, pea-brained patrons. He has his way, as flesh-eating zombies will, with headliner Kat (Jenna Jameson) who then reanimates as one of the creatures herself, exotic dancing skills intact. The male audience goes wild for the newly dead, uninhibited and dangerous Kat. One lucky man gets to go backstage with Kat, with very gory results. Let’s just say the term “losing your head” can mean several things here.

Club owner Ian Eskko (Robert Englund) carries a can of disinfectant with him to spray after the girls if they approach him. He even calls one a “walking herpe” but understands the kind of revenue his sleazy establishment can generate. If the guys want zombie strippers, that’s what he’ll feature, needing only a storage space for the reanimated bodies and body parts of the fellows after they’ve been munched on. Kat’s fellow strippers debate whether they should “go dead” to be able to compete with her. Several do. Lillith (Roxy Saint) already has a Goth persona and Jeannie (Shamron Moore) considers Kat a nearly unbeatable rival.

Meanwhile, new stripper Jessy (Jennifer Holland) only needs enough money for her Nana’s colostomy. Her dressing table includes a picture of Jesus. She and a few others remain with the living, but are forced to stand in the shadows of the zombie sensations who can drive men into frenzies of lust, even though they are slowly decaying into cesspools of rotting flesh encased in corsets and g-strings.

Madame Blavatski (Carmit Levite) is a Russian den mother of sorts to the strippers, who greedily goes along with the scheme to separate men from their money by any means necessary. Paco (Joey Median) is the club custodian who didn’t plan on having to clean up after so many bloody mishaps. It’s rough having to hoist so many extra pounds of intestines to the trash with the empty beer bottles.

Rushing in to try to save the day is a special unit of military defense – the “Z” squad – mowing down the undead with shots to the head in mass annihilation sequences that will leave you wondering how many pounds of fake blood and guts it took to film the massacre.

Writer/Director Jay Lee (The Slaughter) is also the cinematographer of this gore-fest and he keeps the blood flowing. Some men may be disappointed at the lack of aesthetics in the strip routines, as the film is much heavier on gross zombie antics, and not especially keen on highlighting anything positive about strip clubs or the people that work there. There’s a fight between rival zombie strippers Kat and Jeannie that involves ping pong and billiard balls. You probably already know how they’re launched. Remember where you are.

Lee puts several literary references into his tale, with a nod to Theater of the Absurd’s Eugene Ionesco’s work Rhinoceros. Robert Englund’s character is named Ian Eskko and his club is called The Rhino. Kat reads Friedrich Nietzsche in both pre-and-post-zombie states, declaring now much more sense he makes now that she’s dead. One of the Z-Squad is named Major Camus (after the French philosopher/playwright). The Nebraska town is named Sartre. Lee, unlike the zombies, is not brain-dead.

The 11-person make-up/special effects team headed by Patrick Magee seems to have had the majority of work to do on the film, as scene after scene is filled with their achievements in ooze and entrails. Not for the squeamish, Zombie Strippers is nevertheless a guilty pleasure, with campy acting, witty wisecracks and a tongue-in cheek sensibility that you’ll need to keep in mind if you want the full effect intended. Except this tongue just might be nearly disembodied from a torn out cheek.

Bon Appetit!