Mother of Tears

Father and daughter reunion as Asia Argento stars in her father's Mother of Tears (Myriad Pictures)

I fell in love with Dario Argento when I was17 I saw Suspiria. It scared the crap out of me and sent my friend running for the exit. None of his films since then have been able to duplicate the impressive jolt - like riding a rollercoaster and feeling like the tracks have suddenly disappeared and you're free falling - of seeing Suspiria for the first time. But I have found something to enjoy in each of his films. Now using the word "enjoy" to describe a Dario Argento "spaghetti horror" film is likely to offend some people who find his films excessively gory and sadistic. But Argento is a horror master who's made an art out of terrifying audiences. Suspiria, made in 1977, was the first of what would turn out to be a long gestating supernatural trilogy he called the Three Mothers. The second film was Inferno (1980), set in New York, and this year he delivers the finale, Mother of Tears (opening June 27 at Landmark's Ken Cinema), set in Rome. (You can listen to the KPBS Film Club for our discussion of the film.)

The Good, the Bad and the Undead: Zombie Strippers

Icons: Jenna Jameson and Robert Englund in Zombie Strippers (Sony)

By Alexander Bennett

The title alone to this film caught my eye, Zombie Strippers! Sounds like something that would be pretty funny to see and, hey I love zombie movies so this should be great I thought. This movie is definitely not one to take the family to or for the faint of heart. I'm not sure if raunchy even begins to describe it. When I saw that it was staring porn star Jenna Jameson I knew I was in for it, but I had no idea that it would be as bad as it was. I wasn't prepared for zombie boobs!

Zombie Strippers (playing exclusively at Pacific Gaslamp Theaters) certainly was an experience to remember. I'm just still not sure if it was a good one or not. Director, writer, and cinematographer Jay Lee takes us into his twisted vision of the near future where Bush is taking his fourth term as President; the U.S. is at war with more nations than you can count; and crowds are cheering to see undead super strippers! I never thought sex and zombies could go hand in hand, but here it has been done. In the search for better soldiers, the U.S. creates a serum that can reanimate the dead soldiers so they can fight again. This doesn't go so well though because the reanimated troops are highly aggressive and want to feast on your flesh. Oops! Looks like we got zombies on hand now. That's where Z-squad comes in to get rid of the problem. But while eliminating the "problem," one of the human squad members gets infected and escapes before his squad buddies can take out. He makes his way to a local strip joint, Rhinos, and mauls one of the performers infecting her. It is here we infuse sex with the grotesque. As the stripper Kat (played by Jenna Jameson) reanimates the story really begins to go downhill. As she continues to dance and drives the masses wild, the competition to be the better stripper begins. Kat dazzles patrons and then selects a lucky -- or so he thinks -- patron to go into the back room, where she devours him. Afterward they themselves become zombies adding to the problems.

Teen Critic Reveals All (Well Almost) About Zombie Strippers

Roxy Saint offers a lap dance to Robert Englund. Oh my! Zombie Strippers (Sony)

By Tony Galindo

Having already been given a chance to review one zombie flick this year I eagerly jumped at the chance to review another. Taking a quick glance at a trailer on Youtube I would have no idea what I was in for that night, and oh boy was I in for it with this movie. Zombie Strippers (opened Aptil 18 exclusively at Pacific Gaslamp Stadium Theaters) definitely has a title to catch anyone's attention, and is a movie to maintain everyone's eye -- or at least those old enough to see it [it's rated R for obvious reasons]. Directed by Jay Lee this low budget horror film shot in a few weeks was created more out of a joke then a serious take on an old horror theme.

Set in the "near future," we find out that Bush is in his fourth presidential term and has abolished congress because they were cramping his style. We are at war with everyone including Canada and our own state of Alaska.  The America we knew is long gone. To deal with wars all over, the government's solution to the countless loss of soldiers is a new chemical virus created to reanimate the corpses of soldiers, thus creating a zombie army. As undead soldiers,  they are stronger, faster, and better at what they do, which is kill people. After dealing with a breakout of the virus at a lab, a bitten soldier runs off in fear of being found out. He stumbles into an underground strip joint. After fully turning undead, the soldier launches himself -- due to his thirst for meat and blood -- at the club's star stripper Kat, played by Jenna Jameson. It's Kat's transformation to a undead super stripper that starts controversy amongst her fellow dancers and more problems for the club.

We find the strippers are split between who wants to conform and become undead to get paid more, and the more intelligent women who decide to stay alive. In this complete satire we find many hints of racist comedy as well as the struggle with conformity and doing whatever it takes to make the crowd love you. Even if this means giving up your life to strip like an undead superstar.

Seen by friends and I as "The best piece of S&!@ this year," this movie will not only make those willing to see it laugh, but also hide their face at the more then graphic scenes of testicle chewing and face splitting action that add to the film. The seemingly bad acting and special effects helped to make this movie the cheesy crap it came out to be. I mean really, I could count several times when the gunfire ceased but actors were still pretending to shoot while the flash of the shots fired had disappeared. Who would have thought that bad acting, horrid gore, sex scenes/humor, undead strippers, and Robert Englund playing a germ-aphobic club owner would make a horribly great film.

It was so hard to describe how I felt after seeing this film Monday night -- I loved it and hated it all at the same time. This movie is not for the faint of heart and greatly deserves the R rating it has received. When I say gore I mean GORE, with scenes that will make you want to run and turn away, only to make you turn back wanting more. If you are looking forward to seeing it, watching it with a live audience definitely adds to the experience with the random clapping and "hell yeah's" being yelled as the strippers began to fight and rip skin off. Or reacting to a certain undead gal deciding to shoot ping-pong and billiard balls out of somewhere never thought possible. I recommend this movie to all those willing to watch, to those into zombie flicks, and yes to those who only noticed "stripper" in the title. Some sexual content included in viewing of course, and not all considered pleasant. With all said and done, you'll either love it or hate it. All I can say is, "make like a bread truck, and get those buns moving."

-- Tony Galindo is a senior at Mount Miguel High. He was recently accepted at the Art Institute of San Diego where he wants to major in game art design and pursue a career in environmental design. Writing is a hobby of his as well as watching movies, so he thought it would be great to be able to share his opinions on film with people.

Zombie Strippers

Jenna Jameson (not yet dead) brings double-D dimensions to Zombie Strippers (Sony)

Naked women, undead hordes, Robert Englund and Friedrich Nietzsche all in one movie! I'd call Zombie Strippers (opening April 18 exclusively at Pacific Gaslamp Stadium Theaters, where you can still find George Romero's Diary of the Dead playing as a perfect second feature or warm up act) a guilty pleasure but I don't feel the slightest bit of guilt about enjoying it so much. I mean Zombie Strippers, what a brilliant idea. Director, writer, and cinematographer Jay Lee brings a whole new double-D dimension to the zombie genre - sex! With porn star Jenna Jameson as a zombie stripper, being undead has never been so cool or so sexy. Those lumbering, silent reanimated corpses have never been presented as sexy and honestly I never thought I'd want to see one of them naked but in Lee's hands, the idea works. [But if you are easily offended, I suggest you don't read on.]

NEW: Just added the audio from our Film Club discussion of Zombie Strippers. And just to be clear the Bush bashing I bring up is about George Bush but I didn't get to finish my comment.

Fighting for Life

Terry Sanders' Fighting for Life (Truly Indy)

This week two very different films deal with the Iraq War. Kimberly Peirce will serve up a Hollywood feature called Stop-Loss, and at the other end of the financial spectrum is Terry Sander's documentary Fighting for Life (opening March 28 at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas). Sanders won a 1955 Oscar for a short film he made with his brother Denis and a 1995 Oscar for producing the documentary Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision for his wife and fellow documentary filmmaker Frieda Lee Mock. [CORRECTION: I mistakenly said Sanders would be at the Ken Cinema on Friday to present his film and take questions from the audience, he will be at the Hillcrest Cinemas. The breakdancers will be at the Ken Cinema for Planet B-Boy. Sorry about the confusion.]

George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead

The dead are coming back to life... again. Diary of the Dead (The Weinstein Company)

Let me be upfront about this – I love zombie movies. I don’t know what it is about the lumbering undead that I find so endearing but they definitely charm me. And George A. Romero is THE master of zombie horror, having essentially created the genre with his 1968 black and white film, Night of the Living Dead. (There were some zombies before Romero but he defined them as we know them today, and anyone who saw him at his panel at last year's Comic-Con should be convinced of his master status in the horror genre.) This year, the 67-year-old Romero delivers his fifth zombie film, Diary of the Dead  (opening February 15 exclusively at the AMC Palm Promenade Theaters), so run, don’t “shamble,” over to catch the undead’s latest uprising.

The great thing about Romero’s zombies films is that you can enjoy them in any of a number of ways. If you just want a zombie gorefest, he delivers a bloody thrill ride of horror fun. But his films can also be appreciated as truly independent filmmaking in which Romero has complete control of everything; his films serve up primers on how to make a film on little or no money outside Hollywood. And finally, if you want something a little meatier, you can always find social commentary mixed in with all the blood and gore. Romero’s latest, Diary of the Dead, satisfies on all three levels.

George A. Romero Interview

George A. Romero reanimates the zombie genre with Diary of the Dead (Weinstein Company)

When George A. Romero made The Night of the Living Dead in 1968, he essentially invented a genre. But potential distributors were not initially impressed. In fact, they asked him to change the film's bleak ending. But he simply said, “F--k you.” That pretty much set the tone for Romero's relationship with the mainstream film industry. Like John Waters, he's a filmmaker who has remained outside the industry (Pittsburgh for Romero and Baltimore for Waters) making the films he wants. This year he delivers the much-anticipated zombie outing, Diary of the Dead (opening exclusively at the Palm Promenade Theaters).

“It's not a continuation, it's not sort of a fifth film in the series,” Romero explains, “It goes back to the first night when the dead are coming back. I sort of felt that I had gone far enough with Land of the Dead, and I was ready to get off of that train… There was a collection of short stories, actually two volumes, called Book of the Dead, and they were all stories about what happened on that first night. I came to realize that I could sort of keep doing stories about different people over those first two or three nights.”

Rambo

Sylvester Stallone directs the latest Rambo sequel (Lionsgate)

At 61, Sylvester Stallone beats out Bruce Willis (seen in last year's Live Free and Die Hard) by almost a decade to be possibly the oldest action star still kicking butt in Hollywood. (Chuck Norris is older than both but he hasn't made an action film since 2005.) Two years ago Stallone stepped in the ring for the sixth time as Rocky Balboa. This year he dons the bandana for the fourth time to play Vietnam vet and one-man army John Rambo in Rambo (opened January 25 throughout San Diego). As with Meet the Spartans, Rambo was not screened for critics in advance of its opening. The two films ended up one and two respectively at the box office over this past weekend. I don't know if reviews would have changed that but I think these two films are so clearly defined -- Meet the Spartans as a lame brain spoof and Rambo as a gorey actioner --that viewers knew exactly what each film had to offer and knew in advance whether they wanted to see either one. And apparently quite a few people were interested.

Black Sheep

Ba ba Black Sheep (IFC)

Black Sheep (opening July 13 for one week at Landmark's Hillcrest Cinemas) just seems to invite baaaad puns from critics and bloggers. Everything from are ewe ready for killer sheep to ba ba bad sheep to a film that's not sheepish about gore to violence of the lambs... Yikes! I'm not sure what's scarier the movie or the pull quotes.

While everyone else avoids Friday the 13th, horror films relish the opportunity to get a little extra oomph out of opening on such a superstitious day.This month Black Sheep, a black comedy about killer sheep, and Joshua, a creepy kid film, are battling for the horror/thriller fans this Friday the 13th. But these two indies stand little chance of scaring up much business in the wake of the latest Harry Potter.

Black Sheep joins Eagle vs. Shark as a comedy this summer from down under. But these two Kiwi films employ very different stlyes for their comedies. Black Sheep taps into the fact that New Zealand has a lot of sheep. One statistic states there are more than 15 sheep to every person. So with a ratio like that maybe New Zealanders have good reason to fear their farm stock.

Hot Fuzz plus interviews with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright

Here come the fuzz! Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, the comic geniuses behind 2004's Shaun of the Dead, take on the American cop film to deliver Hot Fuzz. While Tarantino and Rodriguez are sending bloody valentines to the grindhouse pictures they love, Wright and Pegg reveal their affection for the American action films of the 80s.

Three years ago Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg decided to make a romantic zombie comedy, and their first thought was to call it Teatime for the Dead. That perfectly summed up their cheery British take on the American cult horror classic Night of the Living Dead. Then, the pair decided to take on the American cop movie. But Edgar Wright says he and his partner faced some problems: In the U.K. there really arent any action films and theres really not many cop films at all. Theres far too many gangster films so we felt that it was time to redress the balance and do a British cop film. And also address the fact that not really a lot of crime happens in the U.K. and so how can we make that interesting for a two hour running time.