Zombie Strippers!

Just in case you weren't sure about a title like Zombie Strippers, yes - it's about the undead wearing very little indeed. Lots of tits, ass and blood. And not quite enough braaaaaains to go round.

It has political subtext up the wazoo. The Bush administration bares the brunt - Dubya has been re-elected for his fourth term. The boring premise involves defence contractors engineering a virus which will reanimate dead tissue, designed for soldiers who die on the battlefield - America is involved in so many wars, but has precious few bodies to fight them. The story reminds me of Joe Dante's slice of the Masters of Horror series - Homecoming - about undead Iraq soldiers turning up on polling day to vote against Bush. Zombie Strippers satire isn't quite as acidic and nowhere near as angry - but fun nontheless.

The virus is let loose, of course and kills its victims. The resulting undead rise and only a cast of marines culled from Michael Bay rejects - they defeated Satan and averted Armageddon on their last mission - with stars and stripes flagpoles up their asses, can save the day.

One of the marines is bitten by a zombie and stumbles into a strip-club, and infects Kat (Jenna Jameson - in one of her rare pornography-free roles), an exotic dancer. Her manager, Ian Essko (Robert Englund) doesn't want to lose his best dancer - and besides, she makes a killing for him anyway. So he keeps her as, you guessed it - a zombie stripper. He does his best (and fails miserably) to keep things under control.

The effects are cheap, with obvious bad lighting, poorly rotoscoped in backgrounds and pixelly digital tweaks. The zombies themselves are excellent makeup showcases - no comment on how much silicone was used.

The movie's script is occasionally very funny and creative in its satire - it often lets you know the writer is smarter than the story is, without losing sight of its audience. It also never tries to trascend its genre, unlike George A Romero's works, or irony-soaked entertainments like Shaun Of The Dead. It reminds me more of Blood Car, another entertaining minimally budgeted and not-quite-sharp-enough-to-be-satirical movie.

Ultimately, Zombie Strippers is an unashamedly low-budget, low-quality and good fun piece of shit. Expect zombified strippers and oodles of very bloody carnage and you'll be fine but expect little more. Watch it suitably tanked-up for best effect - the silly and stupid humour is more likely to hit home, and the deficiencies are more likely to be forgiven or enjoyed.