The Good, the Bad and the Undead: Zombie Strippers

Icons: Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund in Zombie Strippers (Sony)

By Alexander Bennett

The title alone to this film caught my eye, Zombie Strippers! Sounds like something that would be pretty funny to see and, hey I love zombie movies so this should be great I thought. This movie is definitely not one to take the family to or for the faint of heart. I'm not sure if raunchy even begins to describe it. When I saw that it was staring porn star Jenna Jameson I knew I was in for it, but I had no idea that it would be as bad as it was. I wasn't prepared for zombie boobs!

Zombie Strippers (playing exclusively at Pacific Gaslamp Theaters) certainly was an experience to remember. I'm just still not sure if it was a good one or not. Director, writer, and cinematographer Jay Lee takes us into his twisted vision of the near future where Bush is taking his fourth term as President; the U.S. is at war with more nations than you can count; and crowds are cheering to see undead super strippers! I never thought sex and zombies could go hand in hand, but here it has been done. In the search for better soldiers, the U.S. creates a serum that can reanimate the dead soldiers so they can fight again. This doesn't go so well though because the reanimated troops are highly aggressive and want to feast on your flesh. Oops! Looks like we got zombies on hand now. That's where Z-squad comes in to get rid of the problem. But while eliminating the "problem," one of the human squad members gets infected and escapes before his squad buddies can take out. He makes his way to a local strip joint, Rhinos, and mauls one of the performers infecting her. It is here we infuse sex with the grotesque. As the stripper Kat (played by Jenna Jameson) reanimates the story really begins to go downhill. As she continues to dance and drives the masses wild, the competition to be the better stripper begins. Kat dazzles patrons and then selects a lucky -- or so he thinks -- patron to go into the back room, where she devours him. Afterward they themselves become zombies adding to the problems.

Fighting for Life

Terry Sanders' Fighting for Life (Truly Indy)

This week two very different films deal with the Iraq War. Kimberly Peirce will serve up a Hollywood feature called Stop-Loss, and at the other end of the financial spectrum is Terry Sander's documentary Fighting for Life (opening March 28 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). Sanders won a 1955 Oscar for a short film he made with his brother Denis and a 1995 Oscar for producing the documentary Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision for his wife and fellow documentary filmmaker Frieda Lee Mock. [CORRECTION: I mistakenly said Sanders would be at the Ken Cinema on Friday to present his film and take questions from the audience, he will be at the Hillcrest Cinemas. The breakdancers will be at the Ken Cinema for Planet B-Boy. Sorry about the confusion.]

Nanking

Nanking, a new documentary about "the rape of Nanking" (THINKFilm)

In the summer of 1937, Japan began a full-scale invasion of China. The Japanese army attacked Shanghai and launched a massive air raid campaign on the then Chinese capital of Nanking. Within a few months, Shanghai had fallen. By December, the Japanese invaded Nanking. The once bustling, cosmopolitan city was looted and burned, prisoners of war were executed, and the city's citizens were subjected to horrific violence at the hands of the invading Japanese soldiers. The events, eventually referred to as the Nanking Massacre or the Rape of Nanking, lasted some six agonizing  weeks. The new documentary Nanking (opening February 1 at Landmark's Ken Cinema) looks to the events immediately prior to the invasion and the weeks of brutality that followed.

Frank Miller’s 300

Frank Miller's 300 arrives on the big screen. (Warner Brothers)

Graphic novelist Frank Miller had long been a hold out from Hollywood. But then a maverick filmmaker from Austin coaxed him into adapting his Sin City books to the big screen. Now he has allowed his 1998 graphic novel retelling of the famous Battle of Thermopylae,300 (opening March 9 throughout San Diego), to be filmed by Warner Brothers, and his fans should be pleased once again.

300 is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel about the pivotal ancient Greek Battle of Thermopylae that took place in 480 B.C. But don't let the ancient setting put you off. The events are taken from historical fact but the story is told with such audacious innovation that you'll be riveted to your seat. The story involves the Spartan King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 of his fiercest soldiers who fight to the death against Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his massive Persian army. Facing certain death, these Spartans fought with such valor and sense of sacrifice that they inspired the rest of Greece to rise up against the invading army and make a stand for freedom.

Buffalo Soldiers

Joaquin Phoenix stars in Buffalo Soldiers

"Where there is peace the warlike man attacks himself." This quote by Friedrich Nietsche opens Buffalo Soldiers (opening September 5 at Madstone Theaters), a film set on a U.S. army base just outside of Stuttgart, West Germany in 1989.

The Berlin Wall is about to fall and peace threatens to make life on base unbearably dull. As specialist Ray Elwood (Joaquin Phoenix) puts it, you've got all these highly trained soldiers with nothing to kill but time-and that's a potentially dangerous situation. Elwood kills time and fights boredom by running a lucrative black market. He sells everything from Mop ‘N' Glo to weapons, and then he'll cook heroin for the base's head of Military Police in his spare time. Elwood has the place wired and his kind but inept commander (Ed Harris) never suspects anything.

Titus/Interview with Julie Taymor

Anthony Hopkins as Shakespeare's Titus

Director Julie Taymor won a Tony Award for her stage version of The Lion King. This month, she makes her film debut with a screen adaptation of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (opening January 28). Four hundred years ago, English theater didnt have to compete with television. But it did face stiff competition from other venues says Julie Taymor.

JULIE TAYMOR: "You had public executions on one corner and bear baiting on the other and you had the dramatist who had to do something very alluring to get their audiences."