If you missed it this summer, you can catch “Zombie Strippers” when it hits DVD next week. The movie will be packaged in two editions–an R-rated theatrical cut and an unrated edition from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.
Director and writer Jay Lee said the inspiration came to him while at the Sundance film festival. He and his sister, Angela, run an independent film company and were trying to get their films noticed by the mainstream studios without much success.
“We did a very shamelessly marketable horror movie, really, really low-budget, but it hit all the stereotypes and all the marketing points,” Lee told SciFi Wire. “And while we were shooting it, my only consolation was, “At least we weren’t making something like Zombie Strippers!” And when I said that, it got a big laugh. Then, when I started thinking about it, I thought, “That’s the perfect title for a horror movie,” and I was surprised it hadn’t been done before. So we started working on the concept from there.”
With a title like “Zombie Strippers,” audiences can count on two things–gore and nudity. However, Lee said he also worked to insert some comedy and social commentary into the film.
“For me, it really kind of just fell into place. It was a matter of allocating the different aspects to the right places,” he said. “Just in the casting, we needed the nudity and the beauty. We needed to let [special-effects makeup supervisor/puppeteer] Patrick Magee do what he needed to do with the makeup, for the horror aspect. And it was letting a lot of the actors play with the humor in the script. Robert and Jennifer Holland and Carmit Levite just had a great time with their characters. Watching it as the organic process of seeing a film evolve, it was scaling people back or letting them do their thing [on set] and then finding the balance in the editing room.”
Of course, any time a movie has two versions, fans will wonder what they’re getting on the extended and unrated edition.
When we got the R, they [the MPAA] had problems with the gore and some of the lingering on the aftermath of the gore. So we ended up cutting out a little bit more than a minute. That’s the only difference, really, but it’s like an essential minute of gore [including an unforgettable shot of a zombified Jameson chewing on a certain male body part, sending blood squirting straight at the camera],” Lee said.
“The extras, … there are a couple of great making-of featurettes that really cover what we were trying to do while we were shooting the film, about the messages, the references the script makes to plays and other movies” he continued. “And they allowed me to put in a lot of the deleted or extended scenes that give some of the characters a little more relevance and give three of the characters an ending, because, unfortunately, their ending was cut out of the film.”
Should the film find success and a cult following on DVD, it could warrant a sequel. And Lee say that he’s ready for another installment.
“I have a great idea. I’m just going to keep my mouth shut about it until we can talk, so no one runs off with it,” he said.”
“Zombie Strippers” hits DVD on October 28.
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