Starring Circus-Szalewski, Eve Mauro, Victoria Levine, Adriana Sephora, J. Scott, Don Baldaramos, Tanner Horn, Brittany Gael Vaughn, Adam Brooks, Patrick Lazzara, Brad Potts, Jonathan Erickson Eisley, Paul Vinson, Chance A. Rearden, William Thomas Jones
Directed by Alex Nicolaou
Expectations: Moderate, the trailer was good, but I’m still apprehensive. It is called Zombies vs. Strippers.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
When Full Moon announced the film Zombies vs. Strippers, I expected two thing from it: strippers and zombies. I didn’t really expect them to fight as I assumed that Full Moon was just creating a flashy title for their next pseudo-softcore movie. To my surprise, Zombies vs. Strippers is much more reserved with its nudity than you’d expect (not that it doesn’t have its share of titties), but unfortunately it’s also somewhat reserved with its use of the zombies. There are many problems here, but the main one is a question of the budget. One location is fine if you’re innovative, but most of the time Full Moon is never clever enough to keep your mind engaged so that you won’t notice.
The Tough Titty is a strip joint in a shit part of LA run by Spider (Circus-Szalewski). He’s in love with the tiki aesthetic and flower-print shirts and his titty bar is a reflection of that personal style. It’s not the most modern decor, but it is unique. The zombie apocalypse is happening throughout the city, but everyone in the bar is completely oblivious to it. When the only two (zombie) patrons in the bar don’t raise anything more than a tired groan when one of the dancers shakes her thing for them, no one thinks anything is amiss. Even when one starts eating the other’s fingers, they just shrug it off as two crazy dudes. I suppose that’s not a crazy response to that situation; if I saw two guys eating each other’s hands at my workplace I might think of zombies, but I wouldn’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that the apocalypse was upon us. For once it seems that Full Moon has provided us with a realism in the characters we never knew we wanted. It doesn’t really work for a zombie movie, but the character’s reactions do lead us down some good paths that the quick-thinking, self-aware yahoos of some zombie films would have never let us see. Things like a stripper giving a man turning into a zombie a lap dance and thinking he’s complementing her when he groans “Brains!” after she asks him why he likes her so much.