Zombie Strippers (2008)

...................Okay. There have been a few films I have reviewed in which I have no idea what to say about it, with 'The Undead' being the most recent one. And then there's this...thing. What we have here, is 'Zombie Strippers'.

In the near future, in the US, stripping has become illegal, leading to underground strip clubs. However a government facility has secretly created a zombie virus which breaks lose. A squad is sent in to take care of it, but one of them gets infected and (After seeing his squadmates kill a suspected infectee), flees and stumbles onto a underground strip club, run by Ian (Robert Englund...why the Hell are you in this?). Here he attacks stripper Kat (Jenna Jameson...just why?), who reanimates and becomes a mega ultra stripper.

Yes, this zombie virus creates perfect zombie strippers. This is because the zombie virus which was created by the government remains pure only in women; if you're a guy you turn into a mindless normal zombie, if you're a girl you pretty much retain all of your intelligence, you just go slightly zombieish. And slightly nutty. Well this is the first zombie virus to be sexist.

The thing with this film, it can be so contradicting. This isn't a zombie film to be taken seriously, far from it, it's meant to be over-the-top. BUT, there are certain plot elements which are just bizarre. Okay, first of all, the introduction to this film is hilarious, hands down it is the funniest bit of the film. Then we're introduced to some kind of military unit before the film seems to take a completely different turn when it gets to the strip club. Which just happens to be next door to the secret government lab. SPOILERS And then the film leaps right back into the military unit towards the end, before doing something so completely and utterly stupid I can't even describe it. You need to see for yourselves. And really? The zombie virus makes girls into the perfect strippers?

The acting...is stupid. Okay, Robert Englund (I still don't understand why you're in this) is of course the ebst actor in this film, being the only one who actually provides any acting, and, bizarrely, I do have to say that Jenna Jameson does actually provide some snipets of a decent performance. And Joey Medina was sort of a unsung character who should have gotten loads more screen time. It's still stupid overall though. Most of the others are so bland and dull I began wondering if that was how the characters were meant to be portrayed.

Roxy Saint is one of the worst culprits, being so bland she could be mistaken for a wall. Then again her character Lilith is meant to be depressing. To be honest though the different groups, the military unit, the scientists, the strip club employees, they're all effectively portrayed the same, so there's really no real way of separating them. The strippers for instance are all bitchy, they all hate each other, and most of them want to become a zombie to become a 'better' dancer and nothing else. The military unit meanwhile have virtually no individual personalities whatsoever.

I did recognise Penny Drake however, though she eventually disappeared into the crowd of no originality. And the only reason I recognised her was because she was the only thing worth watching in another film called 'The Cook (2008)', where she played a lesbian mistress seducing/dominating a religious heterosexual girl. I will review that film at some point, but, like I said, the only thing worth watching in that film (Oh God this film is making me want to see one of the worst films I have ever seen). Wished she did it again in this film, there is a religious girl in this too. Well, Jessy (Jennifer Holland) is suppose to be a religious individual but I just can't believe that she would be reduced to stripping, no matter what the reason, and she does provide one of the stupidest lines of dialogue to try and persuade the military unit that she and her boyfriend or whoever aren't zombies.

Moving on. The effects...hmm. I suppose I can say that the flares from the guns are on the spot, most of the time, but the effects really aren't that good. They include poor sound effects, poor gore, and bullets which don't work like bullets. The make-up, I suppose is actually really decent, especially the zombie make-up. Well, the zombie make-up on the proper zombies, the zombie make-up for the super ultra female zombies deteriorate over time; in its defence it's to represent the decomposition of the female zombies, which is a nice touch, but it just looks awful at the same time.

And that's the thing with this film, for whatever good things I can say about it, there's something bad to cancel it out. It's not a good film, far from it, but is it an entertaining film? Hmmmmmmm......see here's where it gets complicated. It's entertaining in some ways I suppose, but it's really stupid in others. I guess it is worth a watch, I suppose I would watch it again, for Robert Englund alone, he certainly makes his scenes enjoyable. But it's most likely going to be a film you won't mind missing.

Cockneys vs Zombies (2012)

Continuing with the zombie theme for Halloween, I'm going over 'Cockneys vs Zombies', a film which has only just come out. I heard about it a while ago, and had mixed feelings about it; it looked really good, but at the same time you had the feeling it was going to be a huge disappointment.

I can say it was not a disappointment. I absolutely loved this film, this has proven to be a true gem this year.

The zombie virus actually kind of follows the same origin as the book 'Zombie Apocalypse' written by Stephen Jones; namely, that a construction crew uncovered an old crypt which held the zombie plague. Apart from explaining the outbreak in modern day London, it does not explain how the zombie virus came into being in the first place, a homage if you will to the Romero films. It's not just that though, it also follows the fact that people can't trust each other. At first anyway. Speaking of which the film does actually refer the zombies as zombies, but doesn't make it stupid by comparing zombie films, like 'The Undead' and 'Dead and Deader' do.

The main aspect of this film is, of course, the humor. This obviously isn't going to be a pure 100% zombie film, it's in the same aspect as 'Shaun of the Dead'. And this film is funny. It is really funny. It manages to take the mickey out of the zombies (One of which was how slow they moved), and some moments which are just so awesome-yet-bad you can't help but find it hilarious. Then of course there's what the trailer showed us; the elderly wielding machine guns. Awesome.

Of course there's other aspects, like the characters. They are all actually enjoyable in their own ways, even the characters you don't like. They really do add the humor, the action, and damn near anything else you want in this film. And these characters are in fact smart, unfortunately it isn't consistant; for example, despite knowing that they're zombies and that a head shot would kill them, some of the time you see the characters shooting the zombies everywhere else. Then again the film does raise some interesting zombies; SPOILERS one with a metal plate in its head.

I suppose the acting is a major part in making the characters so likable, and the acting is great. All the actors are so suitable for their roles, even Michelle Ryan who I normally hate. But, there are some instances where the acting appears to switch itself off.

In fact, that's really what this film is, it's not perfect, but there's still plenty of stuff to enjoy. Personally, I love this film, I think it's one of the best of the year. The characters are brilliant, the humor is fantastic, the effects are great, the acting is superb, there really isn't really anything bad to say about this film. Go see it. Now.

Coming up next are a selection of films which have (At least) one thing in common...strippers.

Zombies of War (2006)

Do you know what there's quite a lot of? Zombie Nazi's. They've become popular since 'Call of Duty: World at War' had the zombie mode which involved defending yourself from zombie Nazi's, what with recent films like 'Dead Snow (2009)', 'War of the Dead (2011)', 'Outpost (2008)', and 'Nazis at the Centre of the Earth (2012)'...apparently. There have been Nazi zombie films from long ago, like 'Zombie Lake (1981)' and 'Shock Waves (1977)', but it has been more popular in modern times.

Insert 'Zombies of War', known as 'Horrors of War' over in the US. Here a squadron of American soldiers go behind enemy lines to find a German scientist, but find themselves being hunted by something other than Nazi soldiers.

The plot...mmmmmeh. I would say it's good, but the problem is it feels like the film restarts multiple times, namely because the film changes its cast about every twenty minutes. And that also leads to a problem, namely you don't feel invested in the film because you don't really learn much about the characters.

Really, the only permanent character is Schmidt (Jon Osbeck), and even then you struggle to like or get to know him. The only other character, off the top of my head, I believe was Simpson (Chip Kocel), and whoever his supporter was, and that's only because they infuriated me so much, through their dialogue and their actions.

The acting meanwhile, was really bad. I mean, every single actor basically portrayed their characters in the same way, and this lead to not really knowing which character was which, even if you were paying attention. I suppose Osbeck was slightly better than the others, but, really, there isn't much to go on. The same can be said for lines of dialogue which are bad or have no point, one example being when the group of soldiers had a little argument on how to pronounce 'For Sale' in a French accent.

The effects, oh my God, the effects. In the very first shot of the film you can see how bad the effects are, especially for the CGI planes. Look at the photo, that's not a cutscene from a video game, that's a shot from a film. I mean, the Asylum do better effects than this! Not only that, but there are shots from a creature's (I'll come back to this in a second) point-of-view which is all stringy. Look, it did not work for 'Zombie Attack: Museum of the Dead', it isn't going to work here, basically for the same reasons; the audience can barely tell what's going on. And then there's the combat effects, where grenades give off a little smoke, cannons sound like a tennis ball machine.

Okay, I know I said that I would say that the plot is good, but, it isn't. Firstly, it drags out. Again I believe it's because we can't really connect with the film when it changes cast (It does this twice, so we have three main groups). There's that, but there's also another thing, there are hardly any zombies in this. There's an opening zombie, which disappears at the third minute, and then the next time we see a zombie is literally forty-nine minutes later, that's over half the film gone. In fact, for those forty-nine minutes, we are subjected to a pointless rape scene which is only in there to make us hate a character who will be killed off in ten minutes. And we also see that the squadron is being hunted (For the most part of those forty-nine minutes) by a werewolf.

Yes. A werewolf. I bet you didn't expect one of those to turn up in this did you? Well, two turn up in fact. And do you know how many zombies are in this film? Six. Six bloody zombies, and they don't even turn up at the same time, they come along one at a time, so the last half of the film ends up being 'zombie turns up, squadron kill it', rinse and repeat. Then again the squadron is stupid, because, despite knowing that these things are only killed by head shots, they continue to waste bullets by shooting the zombies everywhere else until they remember the head shot.

You know what? Let's take a look at the cover for this again.

Look how many zombie Nazi's are on there. There's an entire squadron of zombie Nazi's there! Hell, see that zombie Nazi Commandant at the top there? He doesn't turn up either. Nor at any point is this film set in a...a village let alone a town or a city. Wow, I didn't think I'd be able to steal a line from one of Spoony's reviews, but basically this entire cover is a lie. Apart from those planes, there were some of those. Then again apparently the UK distributor decided to zombify the cover/title, like I said in America it's called 'Horrors of War', and here's that cover.

So basically, the Nazi squadron look a bit less zombyish, so the non-zombie Nazi squadron that appears in the film counts for them, but we still don't go into a city, nor is Hitler in this film. The 'Horrors' part of the title though suits the fact that zombies and werewolves are in this.

You know what else? SPOILERS We see a fight take place between a zombie and a werewolf. And guess what? THE ZOMBIE WINS! How is that possible?! As much as I prefer zombies to werewolves, a werewolf should not be able to lose to a zombie!

Basically, this film is bad. Everything in it was bad, the acting, the effects, the story, everything. Really, it wouldn't be that bad, if the film wasn't so boring. That's the main problem with this, the film makes no effect to appeal to the audience, it drags on, it just isn't interesting. Still, at least it had a more coherent plot compared to 'Zombie Attack: Museum of the Dead', and the low budget gave it an excuse for the boring action scenes, unlike the multi-million pound budget 'Resident Evil: Retribution' had. Bottom line, this film is just dull, uninteresting, and bad.

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

So, after the unexpectedly entertaining 'The Undead/Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood!' and 'War of the Dead', I was hoping to make it three for three. I guess I was asking for too much from the fifth installment of the Resident Evil movie franchise.

We follow on from the last film, where Alice (Milla Jovovich) and co are attacked by Umbrella, lead by Jill Valentine (Sienna Guillory). Alice is captured and wakes up in an Umbrella facility, where she is rescued by Ada Wong (Bingbing Li) and, bizarrely, Albert Wesker (Shawn Roberts). Wesker has sent Wong to rescue Alice and has also sent another team, consisting of Barry Burton (Kevin Durand), Leon Kennedy (Johann Urb), that Luther guy (Boris Kodjoe) from the last film, and a few others I don't really care about).

And, let's be honest, the film immediately hits a brick wall with the opening credits. It shows the battle between Alice's group and the Umbrella soldiers, in reverse, in slow motion. I admit it did actually look good when Alice was in the water, but then it continued, and continued, and continued. While it was good to see Alice get her arse kicked for once, to remind us that she is, in fact, depowered, apparently, but really, this could have been done a lot better. Especially since after the slow motion of the battle in reverse, Alice does her usual "My name is Alice. I worked for the Umbrella Corporation..." speech that she has done since 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse'. Okay, this is the fifth, the FIFTH, film in the franchise, do you really think by this point that the people who have stuck with the film series have forgotten what has happened? And then, after all of that, the battle scene is shown once again, in the right order, but sped up. The scene which the audience really wanted to see, has now been ridiculed. Basically this is blatant time wasting (And I will be mentioning that a LOT throughout this review).

And that's the main problem with this film, it's BORING. Seriously, when I went to see this, when one of the action scenes ended, I heard members of the audience YAWN. And this was the middle of the afternoon. Much of the film is dragged on, mainly through slow motion and unnecessary scenes. Mainly the slow motion. While in past films the slow motion was effective or somewhat effective, here, it's used pretty much at every given opportunity, which quickly becomes tiresome.

Along with that, we have to remember that Alice is no longer superhuman. So why is she superhuman?! She does jumps which she shouldn't be able to do, she's somehow fast enough to combat multiple zombies (Who have evolved from slow zombies to fast zombies) and then catches a gun clip that was thrown in the air, she shouldn't be able to do this!

Oh right, hold on, after the battle scene at the start, we see Alice wake up in a suburban neighborhood (Which turns out to be Racoon City) with her husband Todd (Oded Fehr) and their daughter Becky (Aryana Engineer), before they are attacked by what appears to be Las Plagas infected (I'll come back to this in a minute). They also meet up with (Good) Rain (Michelle Rodriguez). I'll admit I really did like this sequence, it's how modern day zombie films should be done. But this is ruined because this was obviously pointless, and only serves to waste even more time.

And it just raises so many questions. It's revealed that the suburban scene was a simulation. I'll explain from the beginning. Do you remember the Red Queen from the first 'Resident Evil' film? Well, apparently Umbrella somehow recovered her (Don't ask me how, the team they sent in the second film were torn to shreds, and the Red Queen was probably wiped by the EMP burst from the nuke strike). Umbrella put her in charge of the main facility, for some reason (Seriously, the last facility she was in charge of she killed everyone, is that really the best kind of computer to put in charge?), and now the Red Queen has taken over and is waging war against humanity. She still runs simulations however in order to, as Wesker says, to learn about the bio-weapons and how to control them. Firstly, WHAT?! She apparently does control them! Or how is she waging war on humanity with them?

Secondly, these are simulations, HOW CAN THEY HURT THE MAIN CHARACTERS? The infected and others, I'll come to in point three, but everything else? Where do all the cars come from? Basically everything, even the slightest detail, Umbrella happens to have stored away somewhere, and it's put onto the test arenas every so often.

Thirdly, these simulations are done by clones, and the Red Queen uses past dead characters as basic models (Except Alice), including Rain, Carlos (Again, Oded Fehr), One (Colin Salmon), and J Pop Girl (Mika Nakashima, because apparently acting like a tree impressed Paul W.S. Anderson and Jovovich). This now raises further questions, namely, why doesn't the Red Queen just simply make multiple teams of One, Rain, and Carlos to take on Alice and Wong? Why use those characters at all? Did Anderson run out of actors who were willing to take part in his films?

Fourth point, why is the Red Queen here?! Again, how did Umbrella recover her? And doesn't Anderson remember her objective in the first film? There, her objective was containment of the infected, the Red Queen was trying to SAVE humanity, why does she now want to destroy it? Is it that the infected are now 99% of Earth's population so the Red Queen decides killing humanity is easier? We are literally not told why the Red Queen changes her objective. I can only guess being shut down twice in 'Resident Evil' screwed up her programming, and she's royally pissed off that Alice killed her twice.

And remember her line from the first film "You are all going to die down here"? I'll be honest, I think that line is brilliant in the first film. We the audience know what she means already, but the characters don't, they're unnerved by that line, that line effectively signals the chaos and death that will now follow the characters. And so this film uses that line AGAIN in 'Retribution', where it feels out of place and stupid.

You know what, fifth point, WHY IS WESKER A GOOD GUY?! I'm sorry, but in the last film Wesker was trying to eat Alice, and in the games, his endgame was to basically wipe out most of humanity with Uroboros, only leaving those worthy (A.K.A. the survivors). Why does he now support Alice? How come his little condition is never mentioned? Did a case of exploding helicopter all he actually needed to stop the T-Virus from taking over his body? I can only guess Wesker has something big planned to the sixth film. Yes there's (Most likely) going to be a sixth film.

Then there's the fact that characters from the last film are disregarded., namely Chris and Claire Redfield, and K-Mart. No, wait, no K-Mart is a good thing, I hope she stays gone. But where are the Redfield's? I can only assume they were either killed by Umbrella's assault at the start of the film, or they were captured and were in the same facility as Alice. In which case *SPOILERS* they're now dead, since Wesker's team flooded the base.

In fact, the returning characters aren't really given that much depth. When Alice was told that the Red Queen had taken over, she was more concerned with the fact that a computer was now calling the shots, rather than questioning the fact that the Red Queen was back. Then she doesn't really care when she sees her deceased former colleagues back; she does say Rain hasn't changed, but that's it. What about Carlos? Didn't you and he have a thing in 'Resident Evil: Extinction'? What about One? You had great respect for him in 'Resident Evil'.

*SPOILERS* Alice comes across Becky, the daughter of her cloned self. Becky thinks Alice is her mum, and film apparently decided that it needed to make Alice feel like a mum. And when Alice and Becky come across the cloning facility, Becky says "You're not my mummy are you?", Alice replies "I am now"...WAS THIS MEANT TO BE CHARMING? NO! It was creepy and disturbing! It now feels like you're kidnapping her rather than helping her!

And Las Plagas is not a zombie! It's a parasite! It makes the host highly aggressive and mutates them, but they're NOT zombies! It is not an evolved form of the T-Virus! In fact, there is a shot of the T-Virus structure, and guess what? It's in the shape of a 'T'. It is not in the shape of a 'T', it's called the T-Virus because it's supposed to create the Tyrant. I admit though, those points about Las Plagas and the T-Virus are nitpicking issues.

Back to the film, the acting is half arsed. Basically nearly everyone looked like they couldn't be bothered to give any effort whatsoever in this, primarily Salmon, Li, Rodriguez, and Fehr. Even Jovovich was struggling at times, I think even she's getting bored with her character being stronger than God by this point. The only people who actually managed to lift this film were Durand and Guillory. Durand was really entertaining as Barry Burton, and even has one of the film's few good moments.

But while Sienna Guillory was really good in this, why did her costume basically advertise her only weakness? Wouldn't it have been a good idea to, I don't know, hide the mind controlling device? Then again it gave an excuse to show Guillory's cleavage, so I'm not complaining. And I will say this, the film does give us an eagerly awaited match between Alice and Jill.             *SPOILERS* It is also good to see Alice get her arse kicked by Jill for once.

I will say something good for this film, the effects were really good. Okay they were a bit hit and miss for Las Plagas, but the giant Licker was exceptionally great. And seeing the bullets fly back into the guns at the start were really spectacular. Okay, the visuals in this film were stunning, I will give them that.

So, to conclude, this film is awful. This film is just a confusing, boring mess. Basically, 'Resident Evil' was really good in my opinion, 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse' was really only saved by having Nemesis, and while the other films were quite bad, at least they were still watchable, at least they were still somewhat entertaining. This installment, was sooooo stupid. The story is dull and confusing, the acting is overall wooden, the dialogue is moronic, the characters seem to have no idea what side they're on, the slow motion is overused and stupid, and the action scenes are just soooo boring. I'll give the film some good bits, but really, this film just has no idea what it's doing.

The Undead (2008)

So. This exists. This...I don't even know where to start. This, would have to be one of the most unique films I have ever seen, and I'll let you decide whether that's a good or bad thing.

The plot is as follows, two gangs and a police officer join forces when zombies start to attack the living. Wait...this isn't...okay I just checked, this is NOT 'Gangs of the Dead'. In this film the zombies were created by a solar flare, in the other film it was a meteor shower. Although this film is better known as 'Mutant Vampire Zombies from the 'Hood!', and that is a much more accurate title since the creatures in this AREN'T zombies! Zombies don't talk, they don't mutate, they don't rape (Yes, these are rapist zombies), and they don't shoot guns! Really the better known title is the best way to describe them since they do seem to be a hybrid of mutant, vampire, and zombie, so I'm just going to call them hybrids.

This was one of the most bizarre films I have ever seen, and I really am struggling to write something. The plot...is okay? According to this film, a solar flare can cause the following:
- Turn people to mutant into hybrids
- Cause fuel to become non flammable...apparently
- Tint outside shots white
- Causes fuel to become unusable
Basically a whole load of stuff which was missing when solar flares hit Earth in the past.

The flow of the film meanwhile feels disjointed, one second the group are all converging on a drug deal (Well, a sugar deal), then one group has control, then they're outside meeting Gandalf (Or rather 'Old Man', played by Maxie J. Santillian Jr), then they're friends, it just feels like it's all over the place. Then there are bits which really don't amount to anything and then the film just ends, no real conclusion, it just ends. And most of the dialogue is stupid beyond belief.

This is NOT a good film, and yet, I like it. Yeah. For every bad thing I have to say about this, there's something good I want to say as well. The acting, okay is actually pretty decent, but there are some moments when the acting could have been done so much better. This includes pretty much whenever anyone attempts to scream, Rachel Montez Collins attempting to portray concern, Johanna Watts, and anyone acting as a hybrid.

The effects, are pretty bad as well. The guns firing, fine they're okay, the sound effects for them are off pretty much all the time. The solar flare was basic, and yet it was still pretty decent. The make-up though is actually really good, it doesn't look like they just stuck spaghetti on people, it actually looks authentic.

And while the acting can be better, the characters are really enjoyable. I found myself liking David (C. Thomas Howell) and G-Dog (Tyshawn Bryant) the most, despite the fact that they should be opposite ends of the spectrum, they have the best chemistry and interactions of all the characters. Lisa (Johanna Watts) was my least likable character, she was just unbelievable in her role, and, as mentioned earlier, her acting is just awful which doesn't help. In fact, there's one point where she says she has one clip left for her assault rifle, and she goes and wastes it all on THREE hybrids. She just stands there and unloads her entire clip into these three hybrids, despite the fact that the entire world is now populated by the hybrids.

This film, is so hard to talk about. Basically, it's an awful film. But, and this is a huge but, it's sooooo enjoyable. It is so hard not to enjoy this film, it is so bad it's good, and I believe this is mainly down to the characters, they're so likable and fun to watch. And they've sequel baited, in the credits it says "G-Dog and friends will return in Ninja Pirate Werewolves in Space!'.

And for once, I hope they do it.