Movie Review: Zombie Strippers

So last weekend I finally saw the Jenna Jameson/Robert Englund horror film Zombie Strippers.  (Took me long enough, right?)  Although it had its strengths and weaknesses, I thought the film was ultimately redeeming and fun.  In no particular order, here were my reactions:

• The zombies looked much cooler than I thought they would.  I was expecting pretty amateurish special effects, and while some of the CGI was so-so, the zombies looked really good.  The zombie chained up in the lab at the beginning was my favorite, and I thought Jameson did a good job of uglifying herself when she was a “late stage” zombie stripper.
• Robert Englund was hilarious.  Where the hell has this guy been?  His portrayal of a strip-club owner who is disgusted by strippers to the point of being deathly afraid of them is super funny and expertly done.  Englund should do more comedic roles like this.  Wow!
• Some of the best actors in the film were the strip club patrons.  Despite Englund’s antics, I might’ve laughed hardest at the men in the front row leering at the dancers when the camera switched to stripper-P.O.V.  Seriously, those guys were too funny.  Well done.
• The anti-zombie troops in the “framing narrative” were pretty lame.  I just didn’t “get” those chararacters.   It was neat that they helped open and close the film with zombie-fighting sequences, but I think that could’ve been accomplished by anonymous government troops.  We didn’t need to get to know them as characters, (and then when we did, they weren’t that cool or interesting).  Also, they all seemed improbably attractive in a porn-actor sort of way.  I mean, you expect the stippers to look like strippers, but the zombie shock-troops?  (When the film opened with them, for a while I was like “Uh-oh…”)
• The critique of the Bush administration was awesome.  The opening news-montage was like the best parts of Starship Troopers.  More horror movies should get in the political ring like this.
• Same thing with the references to “Rinoceros.”  I hadn’t read the French existentialist play upon which Zombie Strippers in based, but I still understood that something was “up” in terms of this movie’s philosphical agenda.  I liked the way each stripper represented a different school of philosophical thought.  It was ambitious and interesting.
• Jenna Jameson definitely looks different now.  But she was still pretty cool in this film.