The Zombie Doctrine

I just caught up with Zombie Strippers, the last great anti-Bush statement of our national nightmare years.

The basic gimmick (“They’re zombies. They’re strippers. No, they’re zombie strippers!”) is more than enough to carry a exploitation horror movie, but director Jay Lee added some tart political satire to the tale. Seems that the zombie virus is the result of government malfeasance sometime deep in the fourth Bush Administration (including Supreme Court Judge Jenna Bush) and is being manufactured at W. Industries labs (with a funny logo featuring outlines of the heads of Bush, Cheney and Rove). The test subjects being reanimated to serve as soldiers for our wars in “Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, France …”) are the poor and desperate: “Homeless, addicits and the middle class.”

In addition to lots and lots of gore effects and supercharged pole dancing (seems that being turned into a zombie makes you an exceptionally limber and athletic pole dancer), the movie shows the results of too many college philosophy classes. The events take place in Sartre, Nebraska. The owner of the strip club is named Ian Essko; one of the strippers does a “Socra-tease .” Backstage, the performers debate the fine points of existentialism. Best of all, Jenna Jameson’s lead stripper is seen reading the complete works of Nietzsche. After recovering from a gaping neck wound thanks to the miracle of zombie-ism, Jameson picks up her book and says, “This all makes much more sense now.”