Zombie Strippers

Zombie Strippers (2008): First you have to ask yourself, is all the gratuitous nudity involved with this movie worth it to get to a few scenes of strippers quoting the philosopher Nietzsche and other existentialist tidbits of wisdom. “That which does not kill you makes you strong.” That statement can get kind of murky in a zombie movie depending on your philosophical outlook as to whether zombies are actually not dead or not. Was that a double negative? See how deeply into philosophy we have already fallen and the review isn’t half over. In addition a number of the characters are named after well known philosophers.

The answer to the initial question is a resounding yes, what we have here is a pretty funny movie, a sort of philosophical zombedy with relentless nudity. If you can get past some pretty lame satire about the former President G. W. Bush, you should get a number of chuckles as you watch this flick take a rather different slant on the traditional zombie movie plotline. It seems that the nasty government has developed a virus to increase the number of soldiers in the military but it makes men into drooling mindless zombies and only women have any mental faculties after zombification. Well, naturally one of the strippers gets bit and suddenly becomes the most popular performer at the club. All the other girls are jealous and the club owner (slimily played by Robert Englund of Elm Street fame) sees nude dead dancing girls as a way to cash into the big time. There is a minor side effect in that on occasion the dancer will eat a customer in the back room where thinks he is getting a private table dance. The patron then becomes a mindless drooling zombie that has to be locked up. I’m sure you can see where this will all lead to and it does. The big finale comes when the two best zombie dancers have a big undead cat fight on the stage while in various stages of decay. Since they don’t have many clothes on at this point, they must have used a massive amount of body make up to get that slightly decomposed look. Overall, this is a very funny movie with a hefty dose of satire. The movie is not rated but could probably be stripped down to a hard R for: relentless nudity, massive pole dancing, massive decomposer exposure, massive drooling, massive philosophical references, multiple exploding heads, well read strippers, for the setting in a town named Sartre, Nebraska, and for the massive amount of body make up used on the decomposing dancing strippers .

Zombies, Zombies, Zombies

Zombies, Zombies, Zombies (2007): Here is a rather well done independent film populated by a lot of first time actors and crew. Its main plotline concerns the battle between some crack head zombies fighting a bunch of strippers for possession of the local strip club. Throw in a loud mouth pimp, a few patrons, a large bouncer, an ineffective policeman and you wind up with a can’t miss plot. It seems a government lab has developed a cure for cancer that has unfortunate side effects including zombification of those who take the drug. Naturally it gets into the hands of a patron of the local strip club and things go downhill fast. The flick is more of a zombedy rather than a straight horror flick but it does shed the fake blood over most of the cast and walls of the strip club with great enthusiasm. It has many imaginative endings for zombies including the more traditional shot gunning and chain sawing as used in most zombie movies. It also has the wettest finale I’ve seen in a long time and we’re not talking about water here. It concludes with a great rap tune over the closing titles with some great lyrics appropriate to the movie. This is highly recommended for fans of horror and zombie movies and be sure to bring your air sickness bag with you. Those with more traditional tastes probably should pass on this one. The original opening sequence was filmed in 3D so if you have a spare set of glasses you can watch that scene in the extras section of the DVD. The movie is not rated but would surely bite off an R for: Massive hordes of zombies, massive extinction of zombies, massive neck biting, massive blood flinging, topless dancing, topless zombies, headless zombies, armless zombies, ineffective wallboard, and for the unique solution the group comes up with to solve the ‘zombie problem’.

Sombre

Sombre (1998): If you insist on watching this movie, be sure to wear tight headgear or your head might explode while watching. I’ve had a run of decent French movies of late but definitely reached a new low with Sombre. The title means dark and this must refer to the subject matter as well as the quality of the lighting used in the film. This appears to be an art house movie about a serial killer and much of the movie takes place at night in very dark places. However, this is a French serial killer so no knives were damaged during the filming. I might have missed something, but it seemed to me that he massaged his victims to death.

I suspect the photographer was a crack head with withdrawal symptoms since many scenes were filmed with the unsteadiest steady-cam ever seen. He also seemed to be using the ‘focus optional’ route for film making as many shots were blurry and out of focus to give you that art house feel. My head almost exploded while watching one scene that starts out in a car looking out the side window as the scenery passes by. The scenery starts to go faster and faster, ‘focus optional’ cuts in, which slowly changes into meaningless electronic noise like patterns passing by, which then fade into another strange pattern which turns out to be the killer’s hair blowing in the wind as the camera pulls back. I’m sorry but I just didn’t get what the herpes that was supposed to mean. Another head throbber was the wacko killer always staring at the ceiling of his room or just staring up at the trees or the sky for much of the movie. One sky staring scene shows a jet’s contrail slowly cutting across the frame from upper right to lower left. Nice shot, but what the heck was it doing in this movie? The director probably was shooting when he saw the plane pass by, filmed it, and allowed it to become another potential involuntary cranial expansion causing scene for sensitive viewers. He also must have wanted to have another art house moment for his masterpiece.

The story goes something like this; a puppeteer doing children’s shows tends to have lots of sex with ladies of the night but it is usually fatal to the gals and the rather graphic episodes have lots of groping, messaging, moaning and rolling around if you like that sort of stuff. Enter two sisters, one blonde, rather loose in the moral department and the other dark, uptight and not adventurous. The uptight lassie has seen the puppeteer go off with a couple of ladies but the sisters still go off with Mr. Wacko and soon he almost kills the blonde but doesn’t due to intervention of the dark one. He offs another tute for good measure while traveling with the gals. Do the gals leave? Of course not; they wind up at a hotel with him. After an extra long threesome groping scene in his room, he ties up the blonde and Ms. Uptight goes to a bar with him. Now is this anything close to rational behavior? The uptight one ties one on with Jack Daniels and soon she and Mr. Wacko join two other guys and go to their house for a little of the old you know what. Soon more drinking and groping occurs. Mr. Wacko gets a bit annoying to the two carnal hopefuls and they proceed to bash Mr. Wacko to a pulpish consistency. Uptight escapes, frees her sister, puts her on a train and then goes back to Mr. Wacko! What? She finds him stumbling along the road, gets out of his car she stole and comforts him. Give me a break! They then have a lot of groping, messaging and rolling around in the dirt, rocks and twigs, when the normal expected end point is reached but he doesn’t kill her. He flags down a car, puts a somewhat loosened Ms. Uptight in it and tells her to go away. A long boring conversation between Ms. Uptight and the French woman driver occurs, Mr. Wacko falls down and appears to fall asleep in the dirt and the scene mercifully fades to black. But just as you hope to see the closing titles roar past, you get approximately 4 minutes of someone filming out of a car at a bunch of French people parked along a road apparently waiting for the Tour De France bicycle race to pass by. Having by now reached the limits of human endurance the closing titles finally start to roll and your head returns to normal size. This could possibly be the worst movie I’ve seen in years and if you are a regular reader, you know there is a lot of competition for that honor. Unfortunately, like so many French movies this one has no beginning, no ending, and an excruciating painfully long middle. The movie is not rated but should grope a hard R for: graphic nudity, massive massaging, massive groping, massive sky staring, excessive tree blowing, meaningless dialogue, missing dialogue, excessive shaky-cam, lack of focus, lack of plot, and lack of almost everything else needed to make a decent movie.