Zombie Strippers

Jenna Jameson (not yet dead) brings double-D dimensions to Zombie Strippers (Sony)

Naked women, undead hordes, Robert Englund and Friedrich Nietzsche all in one movie! I'd call Zombie Strippers (opening April 18 exclusively at Pacific Gaslamp Stadium Theaters, where you can still find George Romero's Diary of the Dead playing as a perfect second feature or warm up act) a guilty pleasure but I don't feel the slightest bit of guilt about enjoying it so much. I mean Zombie Strippers, what a brilliant idea. Director, writer, and cinematographer Jay Lee brings a whole new double-D dimension to the zombie genre - sex! With porn star Jenna Jameson as a zombie stripper, being undead has never been so cool or so sexy. Those lumbering, silent reanimated corpses have never been presented as sexy and honestly I never thought I'd want to see one of them naked but in Lee's hands, the idea works. [But if you are easily offended, I suggest you don't read on.]

NEW: Just added the audio from our Film Club discussion of Zombie Strippers. And just to be clear the Bush bashing I bring up is about George Bush but I didn't get to finish my comment.

Teen Critics on Diary of the Dead

I want to introduce you to something new here on the Movie Blog -- Teen Critics. That's right, I will be working with a group of students taking a Film and Lit class at Mount Miguel High School, and having them post reviews on a regular basis. I'm very excited about this opportunity for a number of reasons. First of all, I think these are a great group of students and I enjoy hearing their opinions. Plus, those opinions come from a very different place than my own and that makes for a livlier discussion. Second, I have always felt that the great thing about public broadcasting is the diversity of voices, and hearing from a younger generation about the pop entertainment that they consume so ravenously is a point of view that's worth checking out. And finally, I feel that the best thing we can do for the next generation of filmgoers is to get them thinking critically about what they see. So I hope that writing these reviews will help this group of students learn to view film more critically, and that by example they may encourage others their age to look at film from a more thougtful perspective. That being said, this is not going to be a dry academic exercise. This is all about movies so there's definitely room for fun. For out first Teen Critics outing, I took them to see George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead (playing exclusively at AMC Palm Promenade Theaters). So here for the first time -- drum roll please -- are the Teen Critics sounding off on the undead. I am including five reviews here, and short bios of the students participating. In the future, each reviewer will post his or her review separately. And just to prove that I haven't tried to influence their opinions, you will notice that a few of them disagree with my own reaction to Romero's latest zombie outing. I hope you will both enjoy their perspectives and encourage their efforts.

George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead

The dead are coming back to life... again. Diary of the Dead (The Weinstein Company)

Let me be upfront about this – I love zombie movies. I don’t know what it is about the lumbering undead that I find so endearing but they definitely charm me. And George A. Romero is THE master of zombie horror, having essentially created the genre with his 1968 black and white film, Night of the Living Dead. (There were some zombies before Romero but he defined them as we know them today, and anyone who saw him at his panel at last year's Comic-Con should be convinced of his master status in the horror genre.) This year, the 67-year-old Romero delivers his fifth zombie film, Diary of the Dead  (opening February 15 exclusively at the AMC Palm Promenade Theaters), so run, don’t “shamble,” over to catch the undead’s latest uprising.

The great thing about Romero’s zombies films is that you can enjoy them in any of a number of ways. If you just want a zombie gorefest, he delivers a bloody thrill ride of horror fun. But his films can also be appreciated as truly independent filmmaking in which Romero has complete control of everything; his films serve up primers on how to make a film on little or no money outside Hollywood. And finally, if you want something a little meatier, you can always find social commentary mixed in with all the blood and gore. Romero’s latest, Diary of the Dead, satisfies on all three levels.

George A. Romero Interview

George A. Romero reanimates the zombie genre with Diary of the Dead (Weinstein Company)

When George A. Romero made The Night of the Living Dead in 1968, he essentially invented a genre. But potential distributors were not initially impressed. In fact, they asked him to change the film's bleak ending. But he simply said, “F--k you.” That pretty much set the tone for Romero's relationship with the mainstream film industry. Like John Waters, he's a filmmaker who has remained outside the industry (Pittsburgh for Romero and Baltimore for Waters) making the films he wants. This year he delivers the much-anticipated zombie outing, Diary of the Dead (opening exclusively at the Palm Promenade Theaters).

“It's not a continuation, it's not sort of a fifth film in the series,” Romero explains, “It goes back to the first night when the dead are coming back. I sort of felt that I had gone far enough with Land of the Dead, and I was ready to get off of that train… There was a collection of short stories, actually two volumes, called Book of the Dead, and they were all stories about what happened on that first night. I came to realize that I could sort of keep doing stories about different people over those first two or three nights.”

28 Weeks Later

Robert Carlyle in 28 Weeks Later (Fox Atomic)

When 28 Days Later opened in 2003 it reinvigorated the zombie horror film. There hadn't been any good, serious entries in the genre for years and it burst on the scene as fresh and gory. But 28 Weeks Later (opening May 11 throughout San Diego), the film's sequel, faces more competition as it arrives on the heels of Shaun of the Dead, Goerge Romero's Land of the Dead, the remake of Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Robert Rodriguez' Planet Terror half of Grindhouse.

Technically, 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later are not zombie films. Like Robert Rodriguez' film, they are about infected people rather than undead or reanimated cadavers. That may be a fine point of distinction to most moviegoers but it's important to fans of the zombie genre. The distinction also changes the nature of the horror, moving it from the realm of the supernatural or unexplained to a much more terrifying real world kind of apocalypse.

George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead

Asia Argento's very much alive but not everyone is in Land of the Dead (Universal)

Zombies are making a cinematic comeback with recent films such as 28 Days Later, the Dawn of the Dead remake, and the brilliant zombie romantic comedy Shaun of the Dead. But this summer the man who made the seminal zombie film Night of the Living Dead returns to the screen. Land of the Dead (opens June 24 throughout San Diego) is George A. Romero's all-new chapter in his undead saga.

Haute Tension/High Tension

Alexandre Aja's Haute Tension

The French send over their bloody entry into the slasher genre with Haute Tension/High Tension (opening June 10 throughout San Diego), a sexy woman in peril film with a twist. The recent Filmout: San Diego's Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, served up Hellbent, which they promoted as the first gay slasher film, a label the filmmaker seemed to not only welcome but which he embraced for promotional reasons. Alexandre Aja's Haute Tension/High Tension doesn't seek a gay label but Aja definitely tints his horror tale with some lesbian overtones as a pair of French babes is threatened by a knife-wielding maniac out in remote countryside.

Shaun of the Dead/Interview with Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead (Rogue Pictures)

The new British import film, Shaun of the Dead (opening September 23), sounds like something that was thought up in a pub after one too many pints. But the surprise of this self-described romantic comedy with zombies (that's a zom-rom-com) is that it's a clever homage to George Romero's original Dawn of the Dead. I spoke with Shaun's creators at the San Diego Comic-Con.