A Gresham Gregory Review: Everyone will have their own favorite ‘line’ by the end of flick. For me, it was ‘It’s Paco time.’ As long as you go in with the right expectations, you’ll all be infected with giggles because its ridiculosity (you’ll also be making up words afterwards like they do in the film) is evident from the get go.

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Genre Breakdown:
Action/Gore: 35 percent
Comedy: 60 percent
Drama: 5 percent
Mystery: 0 percent
Romance: 0 percent

Cool Factor: 60 percent

Silencing Factor: 75 percent

Best facet of the film: Its unabashed silliness (even if sometimes unintentional [think Rocky Horror Picture Show])

Concept Crossover: Frankenhooker inspired camp fest with a political agenda amidst above average porn movie production values

Peapod Review:

Friends Pea:
Everyone will have their own favorite ‘line’ by the end of flick. For me, it was ‘It’s Paco time.’ As long as you go in with the right expectations, you’ll all be infected with giggles because its ridiculosity (you’ll also be making up words afterwards like they do in the film) is evident from the get go.

Family Pea:
There are way too many parts where children will be confused and overly concerned (possibly giving a few nightmares here and there. They could probably handle the nudity and the gore, but they won’t get that they shouldn’t take anything seriously, unless they’ve got a decent amount of film context to ‘get’ the camp. Actually though, if they understand the concept of camp (and not sleepaway), they’ll probably be okay.

Cinephile Pea:
This is the movie you see when you want to clean your palate. You’ll label it the worst movie you’ve seen within the first minute, but won’t be able to look away from the xx minute intentional traffic accident.

Escapist Pea:<br> You’ll be the one catching the 1 a.m. showing after getting your fill of gloss from the two movies you just watched before. You’ll ride the train home surprised that you laughed so much. You’ll wonder whether you should wait until the DVD before seeing it again in an altered state of mind. Above all, you’ll remember the film.

Geek Pea:
The exorbitant amount of one liners and film homages/references will require an immediate DVD preorder, whether it’s available or not. You might just get more enjoyment from tearing it apart and pointing out continuity errors, while rewriting it in your head to match Frankenhooker more. An in depth discussion about Heather Hunter and Jenna Jameson’s mainstream efforts is inevitable, but equally inevitable will be your search for a real Zombie Stripper club.

Main Review:

Flabbergasted is the word. Zombie Strippers is silly from the beginning, and if you go in not expecting anything gripping, it’s thoroughly enjoyable. I have no doubt, though, that some things were intended to be serious, but the film is funnier, and actually gets its point across better, when it goes over the top with any of its political and philosophical intonations. This is basically the type of movie you watch just for the ‘tidbits’. If you’re looking for a film above B-level status, then don’t bother. This is definitely one of those ‘just go with it’ films. Still, I liked many of those random ‘little’ things. There’s no denying the thought put into the Bush Cheney Mount Rushmore corporate logo on an office door, and it was one of the things that made up for the inaccuracies. Like, let’s take the ‘commando’ team.

Even though any self respecting military man will frown at the ‘attempted’ strike force, once a real soldier gets past the dozen violations that will assault one within the first few minutes of the ‘team’s’ introduction, it becomes so over the top in its inaccuracy, that humor settles quickly in its place. It seems that director Jay Lee was keeping the focus on the gore, which will definitely get Fangoria fans buzzing, while allowing the accuracy and acting to be left to its own devices. The script definitely had its moments, and although the delivery of quotes from Nietzsche, among various other philosophical and literary musings from the cast, garnered laughs without fail, the intent got across better as a result. It’s pretty easy to say that the acting had to be atrocious for German philosophy to get giggles, but at least the director (who is also the writer, DP, and, although imdb doesn’t list it, editor), tried to make it believable by having a nice, and very unforgettable, shot of Jenna Jameson sitting and reading a thick book on Nietzsche.

There were definitely memorable images, and although the gore fills one’s memories the most, Paco’s ‘final battle prep’ was just so ridiculous, I imagine it would be difficult for even the most staunch anti-stereotype media watchdog to try and hold back a smile. For me, every ‘do or die’ should now be prefaced with, “It’s Paco time!” It was one of may one liners that made me wish I had a pen and paper on hand to get more of them down. However, it was one of the less ridiculous lines, and really needs to have a visual context to be appreciated. Being flabbergasted comes into play again, because one frequently has a mixture of shock, awe, giggles, and confusion. Some of the nonsensical, wildly inaccurate and random sayings, require more time to sink in. It’s not a matter of stuff being forgettable, it’s more like, ‘did they just say that?’ The attacks on the current Presidential administration were sort of their own separate entity, and, for me, held the least laughs. It wasn’t because they were over the top; it was because they got hammered into your head too much. Any filmmaker wishing to push a political or societal agenda should watch the first Robocop film to see how much is enough to memorable, and enjoyable.

Zombie Strippers is no masterpiece. It isn’t even a movie with a bunch of porn/ex-porn actors (there’s lots of nudity, but there’s no sex, or even clear vaginal shots, and with my initial searching, Jenna Jameson was the only person ever to have done porn). With her name on the marquee, I’m sure a lot of people might assume everyone else is/was into porn, but aside from a Playboy playmate, no one else even comes close. Then again, this also doesn’t give them the ‘porn’ excuse of lackluster acting. Most everyone has done a decent amount of roles, so any acting criticism needs to go to the director. Since he was the editor too, he was responsible for the pre-zombified stripper dance scenes that made the film drag a bit (although. admittedly, they offered a good contrast to the zombie-stripper segments). It might have been the constant use of the same framing for the audience watching the pole dances that made the scenes stagnant, but the camera work, in general, needed more inspiration.

Jenna Jameson’s boyfriend, UFC fighter Tito Ortiz, is in the movie as a bouncer. I’ve only been catching Tito on The Celebrity Apprentice, but I know they could have given him more to do in the role, and he could have handled it. It felt like many of the actors were let down a bit, with costumes, framing, and personal direction. A bunch of them were actually in a previous film from Jay Lee, The Slaughter (2006), so things should have been tighter, since many of them had worked together. Instead, connection, emotion, and motivation were clearly missing throughout. Robert Englund did the smart thing and played everything over the top, so even the lackluster editing couldn’t hide the fun he was having (I’d be surprised if he didn’t improv the lines intoning “How much do I suck?!”). It was surprising that no one in the audience answered back, but I think that by the point in the film, where he started saying this, everyone had decided to abandon cinematic hopes and dreams, and were just in tune with the silliness. Still, even Freddy himself (and Jenna too) was upstaged by musician Roxy Saint, who stole every scene she was in. Roxy was definitely the MVP of the movie.

The art direction in the film is where a lot of the thought put into the production shines through, from the choice of the rhino club motif (referencing a play), to the office decoration for club owner Ian Essko (Robert Englund). It helped with the fact that there were a limited amount of locations, which gave one too much of a confining feeling. While all the little details can’t boost the movie past it’s camp status, they definitely allowed one to forgive other gripes, especially if you got all the references.

The zombies needed better direction. Instead of choosing a humorous route or a menacing one, the zombies felt like the only direction they were given was to just act like a zombie. The head-blowing up shots and the emphasized action gore were fine, and all pretty cool, but the standing/meandering/rampaging zombies felt like they were thrown in as an afterthought.

A lot of the blame for any criticism will necessarily have to fall on Writer/Director/DP/Editor Jay Lee, but one has to appreciate someone in full control of their project (although I think that taking on the DP role hindered his direction greatly). There’s a lot of cool things in Zombie Strippers!, but just keep in mind that you’re going to have ignore a few major gripes to embrace the ludicrous. You’ll be laughing both with and at the story, but hey, you’ll be laughing (or at least pleasantly confused). There’s was only one thing that got me angry, and it was purely the theater’s fault. The top scroll in the opening ‘newscast’ was cut off more than halfway by the projectionist, making it unreadable and killing about 5 minutes of humor from what was probably a bunch of ridiculously funny news fantasies. Regardless, if you need a movie to make you forget the bad day/week/month you just had, Zombie Strippers! will do the trick.

Final taste test: You’ll need to be in the right mood to enjoy it, but you’ll definitely have some fun.

After taste test: I’ll be picking up the DVD just to have the dialogue, which is perfect to make a ton of silly ringtones.

Official sites:
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/zombiestrippers/index.html

http://www.myspace.com/zombie_strippers

(Note, most all of the main performers in the film are ‘friends’ on the MySpace page, so you can check out their pages as well)

Roxy Saint link:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=5698922


The WORD’s Gresham Gregory can be reached at overthere@mac.com.