A zombie virus breaks out in the lab, and a team of military specialists goes in to take control of the situation, in Zombie Strippers. Of course, they do a piss-poor job and someone who’s been infected escapes and heads for the nearest illegal strip club, Rhino’s, owned by a fast-talking sleazoid named Ian Essko (Robert Englund).
The girls are a mixed lot containing a virgin from Sartre, Neb.; nasty rivals; one who reads Nietzsche (after she becomes the walking dead, she says, “Now this stuff makes so much more sense”) and star attraction Kat (Jenna Jameson). The male audience goes nuts for the girls after they become zombies, and the limbo bimbos turn into the super-strippers.
The picture was written, directed, shot and edited by Jay Lee, with dialogue assistance from Zarathustra. Supposedly inspired by Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist play Rhinoceros, in which everyone is eager to conform by becoming the title beast, Lee’s script is a grab bag of horror movie parodies — one zombie begging to be shot in the head is a dead-on poke at The Fly — and some kind of commentary on people who love the dead a little too much. As if that’s even possible.
Mostly, however, the whole thing is an upraised middle finger pointed at mainstream filmmakers who enjoy slumming by making imitation down-and-dirty exploitation movies while maintaining their memberships in the Cahiers du Cinéma fan club. You ain’t gonna catch Robert De Niro in the sequel to this puppy. —Doug Bentin
Coinciding is the arrival of a busload (literally, a busload!) of teenagers in their swimsuits, shaking their tailfeathers to the groovy tunes of the Bobby Fuller Four, who experience seizure-like jerks as they perform. A MILFy Nancy Sinatra is among the bunch, and she belts out a number of her own. There’s a plant among the teens in the form — and oh, what a form! — of Quinn O’Hara as Sinestra, a curvy, busty, nearsighted redhead who plots to kill one of the young men on the hunt for the treasure. What is it about attempted murder that makes for lighthearted comedy?
Baio plays Barney, a teenage genius who inadvertently gains telekinetic powers when his experiments go awry. A better film might have used his odd situation to develop an actual plot, but the filmmakers behind Zapped! decided instead to just use it as an excuse to tell a series of increasingly unfunny sex, drug and bodily function jokes, causing much more sadness than laughter. It doesn’t help that the two stars have all of the charisma you’d expect from two future reality show has-beens.