I had the displeasure of having to both watch and review director Sean Skelding’s previous movie—the steaming pile of crap a.k.a. I AM VIRGIN (click here to read my scathing critique)—and concluded my assessment by writing, “I AM VIRGIN? Not anymore. After seeing this dismal film, I feel like I’ve been f**ked.” Well, I’m still a virgin (I’m 35 and saving myself for a nice girl who doesn’t mind a guy who is balding, weighs more than Val Kilmer after a hot-dog-eating contest, has fewer teeth than a 6-month-old and collects Happy Meal toys), but, boy, I feel like I’ve been f**ked again. Yup, Skelding has made another abominable film, STRIPPERLAND. And, yup, I have to review it. Man, I really wish that Rapture apocalypse had taken place on May 21…

First off, STRIPPERLAND (IMD/MVD) is even worse than I AM VIRGIN for one simple reason: It’s 103 minutes long! WTF?! That’s 13 more miserable minutes than VIRGIN, and trust me, when you’re suffering through a Skelding opus, every extra minute feels like Pinhead and co. are tearing your soul apart. If you never saw I AM VIRGIN, well…I envy you. It’s an awful erotic spoof of I AM LEGEND that’s neither sexy nor funny. And now we have STRIPPERLAND, an awful erotic spoof of ZOMBIELAND that’s also neither sexy nor funny. Skelding certainly has his crappy formula down pat. After viewing this dreck, you’ll be longing for the sorry spoofmeister duo of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (MEET THE SPARTANS, DISASTER MOVIE, VAMPIRES SUCK) to make another movie. OK…maybe that’s stretching things a bit.

Ben Sheppard is Jesse Eisenberg…I mean Idaho, STRIPPERLAND’s awkward, quirky, timid narrator and hero. Instead of a world where most people have been turned into the undead à la ZOMBIELAND, STRIPPERLAND gives us the “novel” idea of a world where “women have turned into exhibitionist man-eaters.” Yup. Zombie strippers. Hey, isn’t that the plot of another movie as well? Something called…ZOMBIE STRIPPERS with Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund? Let’s just say that when Skelding goes to KFC, he must always order “extra crispy,” ’cause this dude doesn’t know what “original” means. Idaho joins Woody Harrelson…sorry, Frisco (Jamison Challeen), Emma Stone…sorry… OK, this joke is getting old, but it’s still better than any gag Brad McCray’s script has to offer. So, Idaho and Frisco are joined by a pair of females, Virginia (Maren Mcguire) and West (Ileana Herrin), and off they go on a road trip through the zombie apocalypse in order to meet up with Virginia’s grandma, who supposedly lives in a safe and secure community that’s free of the undead.

STRIPPERLAND is such a blatant, stale and shopworn ripoff-disguising-itself-as-a-spoof of ZOMBIELAND that it makes the setup and story of THE HANGOVER PART II seem groundbreaking. Just like Eisenberg’s Columbus, Idaho is a nervous narrator who has a list of rules that he lives by: Rule #2—Strippers are not prostitutes. Rule #8—Strippers love heels, which makes them slow and easy to hear. Attired in Harrelson’s hand-me-downs, the cowboy-hatted, shotgun-totting Frisco is the film’s tough and gruff guy, but instead of craving Twinkies (like Harrelson’s Tallahassee), he longs for fresh baked goods. Wow. Really? That’s a friggin’ rollicking riff! Ha! And then you have the chicks Virginia and West. The former is the sweet one whom Idaho is smitten with; the latter is the Stone clone: attitudinal, wiseass and independent.

You get the point: STRIPPERLAND is ZOMBIELAND with strippers. The filmmakers can call it a spoof, but what STRIPPERLAND really is, is a cutrate imitation missing two crucial elements that made ZOMBIELAND good: laughs and entertainment. What you get instead is a road picture where our heroes run into the stripper ghouls and kill them off using guns, bats and whatever other weapons they have at their disposal. Over and over and over again. The undead erotic dancers are neither menacing nor threatening (they’re slow and easy to kill), the CG bloodletting is shabby and the FX aren’t anything to write home about.

OK, so the film isn’t scary or a jubilant gorefest. What about the nudity? Well, if you’re coming to STRIPPERLAND because you want to see funbags and babies who have back, sure, there’s some of that. But I AM VIRGIN features way more skin, and frankly, these zombie strippers didn’t tantalize or terrify me. Let’s just say if I was at a strip club with these ladies, I’d be leaving the joint with a lot of George Washingtons in my wallet. I’m not disparaging the dames in this flick as much as I’m pointing out that even if Skelding had gotten Olivia Wilde, Scarlett Johansson and Megan Fox in this movie, he still wouldn’t be able to stage a sexy scene.

So what’s left? The “comedy.” I’ll let these lines speak for themselves: “I didn’t bring any bills, bitches!” Frisco repeatedly being told that he “can have all the pie he wants” when they get to Grandma’s place. And of course, “Hasta Winnebago, bitch!” And STRIPPERLAND isn’t simply satisfied with knocking off ZOMBIELAND. There’s STAR WARS: “Stripper alley—never will you find a more wretched hive of sex and villainy.” SHAUN OF THE DEAD: a series of “I’m sorry” fart jokes.

Plus unfunny nods to THE EVIL DEAD, DAWN OF THE DEAD and many others. The jokes and pacing (103 minutes!!) are awful and lamentable. Rounding everything out are a series of “celebrity” cameos: Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman as Idaho’s dad. Thom Bray (remember the nerdy RIPTIDE dude?) as a mad scientist. Boyd Banks (briefly seen in LAND OF THE DEAD and DIARY OF THE DEAD) as a pimp. Linnea Quigley as Virginia’s “Grambo” (yes, the scream queen plays a grandmother—my, how time flies!). And, no shit, Daniel Baldwin as the rapper Double D! Decked out in a cap, sweats and a gold chain—you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve watched this Baldwin brother rap it out in front of an audience of undead females. (Note to self: Pitch a 3D 8 MILE remake with DB in the Eminem role to all the major studios.)

I don’t know if I believe in reincarnation, but if there is such a thing, I must’ve been a Grade-A douchebag in my previous life, because I had to sit through the piece of crap a.k.a. STRIPPERLAND three times. That’s because the disc includes two commentaries, one by Skelding, McCray and editor David Wester. I specifically recall how delusional Skelding was during his I AM VIRGIN discussion (he compared the acting challenges his lead actor faced in that film to Tom Hanks in CAST AWAY), and not surprisingly, he’s equally warped in this chat, noting on more than one occasion how much better and funnier his film is to the very movie it’s ripping off, ZOMBIELAND. Listening to Skelding pat himself on the back for changing Frisco’s food of choice from Twinkies to fresh baked goods and congratulate himself for all the allegedly superior “twists” he added to ZOMBIELAND’s story, I felt like I was being cornered at a bar by an insufferable drunk who can’t shut up about how much of a genius he is. I was hoping that maybe McCray or Wester had a fresh baked good to shove in Skelding’s mouth to put an end to his hubris, or at the very least that Wester would’ve shaved a good 45 minutes off the commentary’s running time. When not admiring how hilarious their movie is, the trio talk about the other features STRIPPERLAND references and how Baldwin ended up in it.

The other track features FX department head Christina Kortum and visual FX supervisor Austin Healey, who comment on their contributions to the film and the limited budget and short schedule they had to deal with. They point out certain digital enhancements, additions and removals that you might not notice, as well as how they decided on and sometimes combined the practical and visual FX. The pair are likable enough, but considering there’s also an FX featurette on the DVD (“Blood Guts and More Blood-SFX”) with both Kortum and Healey, this second commentary wasn’t necessary. After sitting through STRIPPERLAND for a third time, I now understand Alex’s agony during the Ludovico Technique sequence in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. And I think he got the better deal.

I will say that the DVD certainly delivers on the extras:  There’s also a blooper reel, music videos, deleted scenes and two more featurettes. “First They Dance, Then They Kill!—the Girls of STRIPPERLAND” focuses on the actresses who essayed the zombie peelers. Not surprisingly, some of them are really strippers and/or porn stars, and all of them were thrilled at the chance to put on ghoul makeup and chomp down on fake guts. One woman in particular stands out: After talking about how excited she is to be in her first movie, and to have her first role be in a horror film, we cut to said woman’s fleeting onscreen moment: a fantasy sequence where she has no dialogue and shows off her love pillows. Oh my! The final extra is “Kickass Begins with the Celebrities of STRIPPERLAND!”, focusing on Kaufman, Bray, Baldwin, Banks and Quigley.

After being subjected to two Sean Skelding films, three viewings of STRIPPERLAND and writing yet another snarky, lengthy review of one of his miserable movies, I’m spent. If Skelding wants to make another zombie spoof (how about 28 GAYS LATER, an apocalypse where the undead are homosexual?), count me out. If I have to review another one of these turds, it just might kill me. And I want to have sex at least once before I die. Now that I’ve been f**ked twice by this filmmaker, any hotties out there looking for a bald, obese dude who still buys Happy Meals and speaks in Klingon?

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