Thursday

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

aka Zombies vs Strippers (2007)

With a title like that, or should I say "two titles like those," how can it miss?

Many of you are wondering why we need another zombie stripper movie.

Why? Because there was only one zombie stripper movie out there (the one with Jenna Jameson), and one just isn't enough. Do we have just a single "one last job" heist movie? No. Do we have only one "slobs triumph over snobs" movie? No. Are we limited to a one movie where Nic Cage has a silly hairstyle? No. Is there only one "psychic naugahyde slug" movie? Well, yes in that case (The Item), and with good reason, but the point I'm making here is that if Zombie Strippers was the Citizen Kane of zombie stripper movies, where is the Gone With the Wind? The Annie Hall?

Probably not here.

This is your basic zero-budget amateur film like the ones Fred Olen Ray, David de Coteau and Jim Wynorski made in the 80s and 90s. Within that group, I suppose it's most comparable to Deathstalker II in that the directors of that movie and this one knew that they were making bad movies with non-actors and unrealistic effects, so they decided to use those elements as part of the entertainment. The effects in this film are not just bad, but are so bad that the director wants to show them to you, sometimes even in close-up, because it's good for a laugh. My favorite effect involved a zombie's head rolling along a parking lot. It was obviously just the head from a department store mannequin, with no embellishment of any kind - not even a wig - covered with a little fake blood.

By using that self-awareness as a gag, this Orlando-based "garage band" film turned out to be pretty funny.

From a technical standpoint, you and your friends could make a better movie in your backyard with a home camcorder and Microsoft Movie Maker, but I can forgive that sort of thing when a film gives me a few chuckles, as this one did. Everyone else in the film may have been carrying the big "Fail!" sign around, but the screenwriter come up with some good visual gags and some funny lines of dialogue.

Man (to stripper patching up his arm): Are you sure you know what you're doing with medical stuff?

Stripper: Duh! I have a nurse costume!

Given my modest expectations for a film called "Zombies vs Strippers," I encountered only one real disappointment: the nudity is surprisingly brief, and is restricted solely to breasts. Unfortunately, that one liability is a deal-breaker. Given the narrow array of possible reasons to watch zombie stripper films, I guess that kinda means the film isn't really worth your time.

Erika Nicole. I suppose she is a real stripper in the Orlando area. She had no screen time other than what you see here.

Hollie Winnard, as the innocent new stripper, and Jessica Barton, as the cynical world-weary stripper, provided some breast exposure.

Statuesque Stephanie Miller (she must be about 6'4", with massive implants) was the film's antagonist, a zombie created from a low-rent hooker who hates the hypocrisy of strippers.

 

 

  • * Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe).

  • * White asterisk: expanded format.

  • * Blue asterisk: not mine.

  • No asterisk: it probably sucks.

OTHER CRAP:

Catch the deluxe version of Other Crap in real time, with all the bells and whistles, here.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alley Cat

 (1984)

 

Alley Cat stars martial artist Karin Mani in a revenge flick. She thwarts a gang trying to strip her car, so the gang kills her grandmother as revenge. She vows counter-revenge. She also makes friends with a young policeman. His partner, a crooked cop, arrests her when she saves a hooker from rape, and she ends up in jail for contempt when she objects to the perpetrators getting off in court. While in jail, she is an object of desire for her cell mate, but she is having none of it.

I generally like the female martial artist revenge genre, but found this one tedious and predictable. The martial arts sequences are nothing special, and the bad guys could have been lifted from cartoon villains. The film's inadequacy is compounded the the fact that Karin, while more feminine than the typical star of such films, can't act at all.

We have exposure from Karin Mani, Britt Helfer, Moriah Shannon, Marla Stone, and ???.
 

Karin Mani

Britt Helfer

Moriah Shannon

Marla Stone

Unknown

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 
 

The Making of the Carousel Girls Calendar

(1993)


Some videotapes will never make it to digital media. The Making of the Carousel Girls Calendar should be one of them. This is, for most of its running time, a standard strip and pose - no wiggling at all - kind of tape. Gals get nekkid in two settings, once while they are posing for this calendar while riding a carousel ... you see where the title comes from ... and again out in the wild somewhere. The carousel posing is partly behind-the-scenes of the photoshoot and partly a more free-form, clothes-free romp. All that is just dandy and it takes up maybe 60% of the tape time. The other 40% is not so dandy as the folks who shot this tape turned it into a documentary about the photographer. One would not object except he is made out to be some sort of artist who sculpts and paints and only lately chose to shoot nekkid gals on film because that is just as legitimate a medium to work with.

He is a latter day Toulouse Lautrec, this guy - just as humorless

Only taller.

And no beard.

Anyway the gals look good and were this a DVD I might still be capping it. A few of them you know from real movies - Julie K. Smith, Samantha Phillips, Erin Ashley and Shelly Jones. Several others come with two names but seem to have done little more than pose for Penthouse - Robin Brown, Sasha Vinni, Shandra Rollins, Amy Morgan, Gina Passarella and Dawnya Welsh make up that group. With three women we are on a first-name basis only. Those would be the Pleasure Twins, Jennifer and Justina, and a pneumatic blonde named Heather (weren't all over-inflated blondes in the early 90's named Heather?).

Do keep in mind this was from an old videotape and so the quality is nothing to brag about...so I won't. But as I stated at the outset, videotape is all we are likely ever to see of the Carousel Girls and their calendar.
 

Day 11

Shelly Jones film clips. Collages below

  

 

 

 

 

 

Don't  Go in the House

1980

A "Babe in Bondage" day as we go back more than a quarter of a century for Don't Go in the House. Johanna Brushay in her one and only screen appearance does full-frontal tied-up nudity and has gasoline poured on her before she is torched. No wonder she never did another role. Caps and a clip.

 

 

"Late Night"


We go over to the TV side and lighten things up with Kate Walsh from "Private Practice" on the "Letterman" show. Nice legs and some cleavage and dirty old Dave is playing with her leg. Lucky man.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amanda and the Alien

1995

 

Alex Meneses film clips. Samples below.