By Jeremy Azevedo

Friday Night Midnight Movies is an irregularly occurring feature whose purpose is to showcase little-to-no budget films that play at late night theaters in the slums of America and the bombed-out megaplexes of the former Soviet Republic Eastern Bloc!

This week’s film is “Zombie Strippers”, a movie that artfully combines two of every man’s favorite things: tits and zombies. Both as dumb as it sounds and infinitely more intelligent than you might expect, Zombie Strippers is exactly the kind of self-referential horror-comedy that pleases hardcore fans and casual enthusiasts of the genre equally.


Robert Englund about to get a lap dance from Marilyn Manson?

I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, but Zombie Strippers is actually loosely based on the French existential Theatre of the Absurd play “Rhinoceros” by Eugene Ionesco. The original play dealt with the concepts of conformity, morality and what it means to be human. This inclusion lends an absurd, high concept element to an otherwise silly and poorly acted film about strippers who become zombies and start eating the patrons at the titty bar whislt pole dancing like a whirlwind of rotting silicone.


Totally not a still from "Planet Terror", I swear.

Jenna Jameson successfully makes her non-porno acting debut here alongside cult favorite Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger, duh!). Jenna is no Traci Lords or anything but she does ok. There are also some corny marine characters that march around yelling “Semper Fi!” and who exist solely as bookends to the paper-thin plot, but they can largely be ignored. Really, the acting is terrible, but since most of the film centers upon smoking hot porn stars in zombie makeup pole dancing with their tits out and ripping people’s heads open like those plastic Easter eggs that have money inside them, I don’t think anyone will really notice or care. If anything, it sorta adds to the humor of the whole thing, and the humor is what keeps Zombie Strippers from degenerating into total sleaze.

Zombie Strippers Trailer



I hate to keep saying that I was surprised, but really I expected Zombie Strippers to be absolutely terrible. In fact, it was well photographed, the effects were great, it was fun to watch, and it was mercifully short. Zombie Strippers was about ten times better than the latest Day of the Dead remake (which probably cost twice as much to make), I can tell you that much. If Zombie Strippers is playing theatrically in your area, go see it. If not, buy/rent it on DVD.