Zombies Vs. Strippers

Zombies Vs. Strippers (2012)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Producer Charles Band and Full Moon are back with this greatly titled but disappointing exploitation film. The story is pretty simple as a group of people take shelter inside a strip joint when the world outside starts to fall apart from zombie attacks. At first the owner thinks this would be a good way to make some quick cash but soon his ladies are having to fight the living dead. ZOMBIES VS. STRIPPERS would be a perfect film for the drive-in era because it gives us a great title but the film itself can't back it up. I think there are quite a few good things going on here including non-stop gore and violence as well as plenty of naked, pretty ladies kicking butt but the biggest flaw is that it's really not all that fun. With a film like this you really shouldn't have to do much but somehow the story just never works and it's just not good enough to where it grabs your attention and holds it. Without the start and end credits this thing only runs 68-minutes and there are many sequences that just get dragged out for no reason. It's clear that the writers weren't sure what to do and especially during the first thirty-minutes as things really do get dragged out. Once the gore and violence does start things pick up but by this time it's a little too late and this stuff still isn't fun enough to save everything. The performances are what you'd expect but I thought for the most part the actors did just fine. The gore effects for the most part look extremely good and there's no question that there's plenty of the red stuff to go around. In the end, ZOMBIES VS. STRIPPERS is worth viewing for "Z" movie fans but there's no question that it should have been much better.

This movie is one of several films to come out at the same time with the theme of Zombies vs. Strippers, it is also the most directly titled. It also possibly had the most simple story and the lowest budget, and in many ways it succeeds because of this.

While the other examples on the list try to do some weird stuff, (face dance anyone?) the simplistic elements of this story make the film able to use what it has to make a pleasant zombie-horror-watching experience.

Do you want to see people being eaten? Do you want to meet a whole host of survivors who get slaughtered mercilessly throughout the movie? Do you want to see a group of attractive women nearly naked the whole time? Well then this is a movie you will enjoy! (If the answer was no to any of those questions then move along since this film has little else.)

Most bad zombie movies suffer from excess plot but this movie is stripped to its bare essence and benefits considerably. The lead is a fellow named Circus-Szalewski (that's his real name, his character's name is "Spider") who puts on an excellent performance as the down and out owner of a sleazy strip club in the bad part of town. After years of struggle to keep the doors open he decides to sell, but have one last party to say goodbye. Inside the employees peel back their inhibitions and denude their feelings for each other while outside it's the apocalypse. The blaring music attracts patrons dying to get in, some in fact already dead. ZvS is a good bad movie. The acting is all over the place but then some were hired for their assets not their thespian experience. The characters are colorful and varied, especially those remaining robed while the strippers are attractive and contribute more than simple eye candy. The biggest letdown are the zombies. Clearly the extras had no previous experience as walking dead, received no briefing and no directing during. Someone clapped them on the back and said get in there and it shows. The gore is light but B-movie effective with plenty of finger biting and some dismemberment. Most of the budget went into hiring the girls and for this kind of movie that isn't so terrible.

This is one of those movies that struggles with its identity. Billed as a comedy it really doesn't contain that much humor. At the same time, it doesn't quite measure up as a good zombie film because of all of the attempted comedy. In other words, it suffers from the exact same problem that so many other "zombedy" (zombie-comedy) films have--they're neither scary nor funny. Add in the fact that this was a low-budget production and the difficulties become even more pronounced. Having said that, this wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. The acting was adequate for the most part with Circus-Szalewski (as the bar owner named "Spider") probably putting in the best effort. Likewise having Eve Mauro (as the stripper "Sugar Hills") and Adriana Sephora (as "Jasmine") certainly helped to improve the scenery. All in all then, this film wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been and I suppose I should be thankful for that. Slightly below average.

As a zombie aficionado, I have to put my decaying hands on just about anything zombie I can come across, and with a title like this, I was fearing that it was going to be as bad as the 2008 "Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!" movie. But luckily I was just a notch better than that movie, not much, but just enough to make it bearable to sit through it to the very end.

Full Moon have some fairly questionable, but still worthwhile horror movies to their names, movies that are pseudo-legends in their own way, such as "Puppet Master" and the like, so you generally know what you are going to get from this movie. And it has been quite some time since I have stumbled upon something from Charles Band, so it was a nice surprise with this movie.

The story is fairly simple and straight forward, easy enough to follow even for the zombies amongst us in the audience. Set in a small, shady strip club, a group of exotic dancers and their boss find themselves trapped in their going-out-of-business strip club with hordes of the undead wrecking havoc in the city and pressing hard against the doors, hungry to get in to the debauchery and subtle flesh beyond the unlocked doors.

The zombies in the movie were adequately made, not overly amateurish, but just lacking enough gore and ghastly effects to be outstanding. But in overall, they did well enough with the zombies, and I have seen far worse in many other zombie movies.

As for the characters in the movies, well they were so one-dimensional and stereotypical that it was just downright awful. I am not saying that the people cast to portray these were doing bad jobs, just that the characters in the movie were not really characters that came off as cleverly thought through. And the questionable dialog all throughout the entire movie sure didn't help make the characters become more realistic.

If you are a zombie aficionado like me, then "Zombies vs Strippers" is well worth a watch if you haven't seen it already. Yes, it is low budget, but they pulled it off well enough to be entertaining.