Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! (2008)

"Strippers vs zombies!"

Plot

An experimental drug goes wrong and turns people into flesh-eating zombies. A group of exotic dancers become trapped inside the club they work at and together they and the other survivors must find a way of keeping the zombies hordes out until help arrives.

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I'm not quite sure who thought zombies and strippers would make good bedfellows but in 2008, someone clearly did. When two films featuring zombies and strippers fighting to the death are released within a month of each in the same year, then you know it's inevitable that people like me will compare the two together and that’s the case with this one and Zombies Vs Strippers. Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! fares the less well out of the two simply for the fact that doesn't have the star power of Robert Englund and Jenna Jameson in it (arguably the two, or should I say ‘three’ reasons why Zombies Vs Strippers is a hell of a lot better). It also has a fraction of the budget which is somehow impossible given how low the budget for the other one was.

Zombie Strippers had a sense of fun, goofiness and general winks to the direction of the horror fan boy crowd with its cornball approach and laughable execution. Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! doesn't manage half as many laughs or naked women, or even zombies for that matter. It kind of kills the film when the only reasons to watch are for laughs, boobs and gore and this delivers little on all three, failing massively to live up to its exploitative potential. The film is clearly pitching to a certain demographic yet doesn't do enough to keep them happy, holding back on its sleazy trappings as much as it can. Embrace it or don't tease it, there's no middle ground for a low budget film like this. Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! is content to keep everything to a bare minimum and drag itself slowly from one talky scene to the next.

The low budget was never going to allow for much scope in the film's narrative and so confines itself to the easily-filmed location of the strip club. Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! just looks like an amateur camera crew went to the worst strip club they could find, picked the skankiest-looking women present and asked them to act out a few scenes with guys in zombie make-up. The women look dog-rough - the sort you'd more likely see hanging around street corners than expensive gentlemen's clubs. It's blatantly clear why the blonde chick was cast in one of the lead roles. She acts with her chest (although they are Oscar-winners!) but unfortunately for us, the film opts to keep her clothed. In fact for a film about zombies battling strippers, there's very little stripping.

There's an assortment of characters that have to hole up in the club including the strippers, various patrons and a stereotypical pimp. A lot of time is given to these characters before the action kicks in but it's all rather pointless in a low budget film like this. If I'm watching a big budget mainstream flick, I like a bit of character development but in something as juvenile as this, I want to see blood, guts, boobs and action as soon as possible and not really care less about the characters - one-note stereotypes might annoy me depending on how bad they are, but at least they do the job in giving me as much character development as I need before they're ripped to shreds. It doesn't help matters when Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! assembles a poor group of actors who can't act for their lives - I'll at least give the pimp some credit as he has some funny lines but it's scraping the barrel.

The film also joins the growing trend of straight-to-DVD horror films to use CGI blood instead of good old fashioned make-up effects. I hate this, I really do. Everything else effects-wise is going computerised but with something like blood and guts, it's just impossible to get it looking realistic enough on a computer. Give me the corn syrup and imagination over the computer any day. The CGI also looks rather old for some strange reason. You wouldn't think that filmmakers have had access to it for years now but with results like this, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was still in the developmental stage. At least the zombie make-up looks half-decent because you can't do that on a computer.

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Final Verdict

How many reasons out there to watch a film about zombies and strippers anyway? Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! offers up no answer to the riddle unlike it's better budgeted, better acted and all round better counterpart Zombie Strippers. Unlike that one which took levels of sleaze and cheese to new extremes, this one lacks the conviction to treat its subject matter with the degradation it deserves! You're better off with those high brow strippers as opposed to being ripped off by these bottom dollar skanks.

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Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! Director(s): Jason Murphy Writer(s): Anthony Steven Giordano (screenplay), Zack Kennedy (story) Actor(s): Lyanna Tumaneng, Jessica Barton, Hollie Winnard, Sean Harriman, Anthony Headen, Valensky Sylvain, Juliet Reeves London Duration: 82 mins