Zombie Strippers! (Blu-ray)

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"They'll dance for a fee, but devour you for free." -- Zombie Strippers!

Sometimes, it's all in the name. One of the best examples of this was when Samuel L. Jackson signed on to be a part of "Snakes on a Plane." The man loved the ridiculous title so much that prior to signing on for the project he didn't even bother looking at the script. Jackson immediately agreed to come on board with only one stipulation--the producers had to keep the title. Whether or not he expected "Snakes on a Plane" to become a huge sensation or he just wanted to try something totally bizarre, the movie still ended up being the most talked about film in years.

Writer-director Jay Lee had a similar epiphany, although his didn't get quite as much hype as "Snakes on a Plane." Like most guys, Lee felt zombies are cool and strippers are hot, so why not put them together? At first this was just a crazy idea, but the more Lee thought about it, the more he liked it. So much so that he pitched his idea around the filmmaking community and it slowly started to snowball until finally he had all sorts of people jumping on the bandwagon just on the name alone. The only thing is, when one mixes cold with hot, isn't the result usually lukewarm? Well, that's exactly what his black comedy "Zombie Strippers!" turned out to be. Lukewarm.

"Zombie Strippers!" begins sometime in the near future where a CNN News-style broadcast fills viewers in on the current fictitious state of the United States. George W. Bush has been elected to a fourth term as President, his administration has phased out Congress, and the country is now at war with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, France, Canada, and even a newly independent Alaska.

Since troops are being spread too thin to handle all of the new threats, a top-secret research agency has developed a virus to reanimate fallen soldiers and put them back in the heat of battle. These armies of undead marines would essentially become their own reinforcements, since desperate times call for desperate measures.

The mysterious pathogen somehow escapes containment and turns many of the researchers and test subjects in the laboratory into bloodthirsty zombies. A platoon of marines, codenamed Z-Squad, is sent in to deal with the situation before it gets out of hand. But during the clean-up, one of the marines, aptly named Byrdflough (Zak Kilberg), is bitten by one of the infected and quietly slips away fearing he'll be on the chopping block by his comrades.

The soldier stumbles into an underground strip club known as Club Rhino. This part of the story is apparently very loosely inspired by the play "Rhinoceros" by Eugene Ionesco. I say "loosely" because the only real similarity is the name of the club, and instead of people sprouting horns and turning into rhinoceroses, here they are transformed into zombies. Hey, don't raise your eyebrow at me. I'm just the messenger.

Anyway, one of the strippers in the club named Kat (played by former adult film star Jenna Jameson) is the first victim of Byrdflough. Get it? No offense to Jenna, but she should really file a lawsuit against her plastic surgeon. I almost didn't even recognize her (not that I've seen much of her... I think I'm digging a hole here) so let's just say her lips are so full of collagen Samuel L. Jackson could almost use them as a runway. You know... to land the plane.

Kat turns into a zombie, but the thing is it affects women differently in this movie. Rather than becoming the stereotypical mindless living corpses hungry for flesh, the women are more intelligent and seductive--kind of along the lines of vampires. So Kat takes the stage, and to the surprise of everyone, her act knocks the socks off of all the peeping patrons.

Needless to say, the money starts rolling in and makes the owner of Club Rhino, the greedy Ian Essko (Robert Englund) see dollar signs. Having the only zombie strip club in existence, he plans to corner the market and really rake in the dough. Englund always lives up to my expectations being a terrific character actor, and here he doesn't disappoint. He models Essko similar to his part in "Dance of the Dead" from the "Masters of Horror" series, although not quite as despicably slimy.

However, the other dancers aren't happy campers like Essko. Jealousy kicks in, especially when the normal dancers are booed off the stage and the crowd demands more naked zombie action. The only way for the surviving women to steal some of the spotlight is to unlive it up, or start packing. What's a girl to do?