Zombie Strippers

Directed by Jay Lee. With Robert Englund, Jenna Jameson, Roxy Saint. Distributed by Stage 6 Films. One hour, 34 mins. Rated

R

(Gore, violence, porn stars, fake breasts, nudity). Playing at: Ritz at the Bourse

Could it be? That the only good woman is a nude, blood-drenched dead woman with massive breasts?

That seems to be the deep meaning of low-budget horror auteur Jay Lee's shallow schlockfest about a group of low-rent strippers who are transmogrified (or are they transubstantiated?) into flesh-eating killer zombies.

What's most excellent about these creepy-looking, blood-drenched silicone-stuffed barbie-doll amazons is that they totally crave to get back on stage and strip 'n' dance until they drop - or 'till they find some poor horny sap in the audience to munch on.

Lee's puerile exercise in porn-horro-medy, which stars porn star-turned-C actress Jenna Jameson as the baddest stripper of them all and horror legend Robert Englund as a sleazy strip joint owner, has some genuine laughs and a couple of good scares.

But Lee seriously overreaches when he tries for social commentary. In scenes that read like a Saturday Night Live sketch gone wrong, he takes a few flaccid swipes at the Bush administration. And while Lee gets some yackety-yucks by stuffing the flick with philosophical allusions - our story takes place in Sartre, Neb.; Jenna's character is a Nietzsche scholar - more often than not he comes across as an earnest, unschooled sophomore.

Worse yet, being exposed to Ms. Jameson's body - which bears the signs of plastic surgery as plainly as Joan Rivers' face - for a whole 90 minutes is simply too much to take.

- Tirdad Derakhshani