The concept is really simple, totally ridiculous and absolutely brilliant. Strippers in an illicit Midwestern strip club suddenly turn into zombies in the long-overdue collision of two winning genres: zombie satire and porn.
But it's not only that. "Zombie Strippers" expertly blends lowbrow debauchery with sophisticated cultural reference. The movie is (very) loosely based on the French existentialist theater of the absurd play "Rhinoceros" by Eug??ne Ionesco. In the play, all of the people in town suddenly turn into rhinoceroses, leaving only the protagonist Berenger to decide whether to become one of the hulking, stinking beasts in order to fit in. "Zombie Strippers" is almost exactly the same - just replace "town" with "Rhino's strip club," "people" with "strippers," "Berenger" with "Jenna Jameson" and "rhinoceroses" with "zombies."
One of these things is not like the others, and that thing is Jenna Jameson. Mostly known for her illustrious career in hardcore pornography, Jameson covers up (a little) for this more mainstream R-rated film.
In the starring role as Kat, Jameson's performance is actually much more animated and lifelike than her omnipresent breasts. As the first to get bitten and subsequently reanimated, Jameson spends most of her screen time as a zombie. She fully embraces the advancing decay that comes with undeath, donning some impressive makeup and an exceedingly passable lurch in her step. And she doesn't let a little thing like undeath stop her from doing what she does best, which in this case includes a spectacular sequence of minimally clothed pole dances.
These dances are expertly choreographed and heavily backlit body roll-fests that seem to take place at least once every four minutes or so for the bulk of the movie. These are not average college girls writhing on the windowsill at a frat party. These are hard-bodied, experienced dancers working a paying crowd. And as much as one might not appreciate the sleaze of it all, one should at least give them credit for the skill. Zombification in this situation means an unstoppable ability to take clothes off. Apparently, the best strippers are undead strippers.
And undead strippers are not only the best - they are the smartest. Perhaps one of the greatest moments in modern, naked-horror cinema has the zombified Jameson, dripping with blood, paging through Nietzsche. In a possessed rasp she declares, "This makes so much more sense now!"
Nietzsche is not the only philosophy buzzword to make an appearance. The aptly named stripper Berengé suffers from a well vocalized existential crisis for much of the movie, struggling with the decision of whether to give in to zombification for the sake of becoming a better stripper.
Her small-town protégé Jessy sees the benefit in it, specifically for the "luxury of no longer having to think for myself." These shockingly sophisticated one-liners show up every so often, breaking up the monotony of the "let's strip, bitch" lines that comprise the rest of the script. Everyone gets a shot at delivering one of these meaningless lines, even the meathead military rescuers. Upon walking in on two survivors' pre-coital struggle, one yells, "Say something human! In a deeply ontological sense!"
If those pseudo-intellectual lines are an indication of anything, it's that at the very least, "Zombie Strippers" is great for shock value. You don't see topless ghouls pulling the arms off of men to beat each other in just any movie. Plus, Jenna Jameson reads Nietzsche! Even for those who have seen their fair share of movies, ping-pong balls have probably never been used quite the way they were in this movie. Even college-age male viewers will be taken aback, which is a fairly rare occurrence.
Most of the performances are stilted and uncomfortable. These aren't A-list actors in breakthrough roles. Besides Jameson and her boobs, probably the most recognizable face in the cast is Robert Englund, best known for his role as Freddy Kreuger in "Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984). The low-grade acting adds to the kitschy quality. It's not as if the actors had much to work with - the script is fairly basic. ("They're zombies! They're strippers! No. They're zombie strippers!")
