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‘Zombie Strippers’: Bada bing, bada yuck

I wish I had not seen "Zombie Strippers," a godawful horror/comedy featuring porn star Jenna Jameson as a dead stripper brought to life by a zombie virus.

The other day, our newspaper ran an ad for a strip club touting an appearance by a porn star named Lizzy Borden.

The name, of course, is borrowed from the notorious murderess who, as the rhyme notes, took an ax and gave her father 40 whacks.

I'll confess that I do not readily see the nexus between Borden's profession and the homicidal psychosis suggested by her name.

I understand the Freudian implications of a name like Marilyn Chambers. Or Chesty Morgan. Or Dirk Diggler.

But Lizzy Borden? The erotic content escapes me, unless it's something to do with porn consumers and the phrase "40 whacks."

Of course, all of this presupposes there is no connection between mangled corpses and sex. It may be that such an association exists, and that I simply don't get it. If it does exist, I surely do not want to get it.

Which is why I wish I had not seen "Zombie Strippers," a godawful horror/comedy featuring porn star Jenna Jameson as a dead stripper brought to life by a zombie virus.

She performs with a gouged-out neck, blood covering her naked torso, the whites of her eyes gone black, flesh falling off. The customers cheer wildly.

To say that this movie is repulsive is the height of understatement.

I tried to to look for some kind of redemptive idea - like maybe Jameson deconstructing porn culture, making a connection between her character and the dead-flesh embellishment (silicone, Botox) of female porn stars.

That's a reach, but not as big as the one the movie makes. "Zombie Strippers" tries to pass itself off as a commentary on the Bush administration and the Iraq war. Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund has a role as the club impresario who cynically creates a spectacle of carnage for profit, and I guess he's meant to be Halliburton, or something.

But it's the filmmakers who are the cynical profiteers. As other sadistic horror movies have shown, a reach for relevance via cheap references to Iraq/Afghanistan is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

And now the pimp. *

Produced by Angela Lee, Larry Schapiro and Andrew Golov, written and directed by Jay Lee, music by Billy White Acre, distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.