Friday Night Flicks

Let the Right One In (2008, Sweden) tells  the story of  Oskar and Eli. Two school age children who fall in love for the first time.  Oskar is a skinny blond weakling who is constantly picked on by schoolyard bullies. Eli is a dark haired gypsy looking girl who happens to be a vampire.

The story begins with Oskar practicing with a knife against an imaginary enemy. It’s at this time we meet Eli who moves into Oskar’s apartment building with her grandfather. It has all the appearances of love at first sight.

As the story progresses we learn more of Oskar and Eli’s relationship.  Conversations are had, candy shared and affections grow. During this time we also learn more of Eli’s condition. Her thirst for blood, her aversion to sunlight and her natural vampiric abilities,  tendencies and weaknesses.   The filmmakers did a great job of unveiling Eli’s conditions slowly throughout the movie. Things you expect to happen don’t, at least on the schedule you might have in your movie going mind.

Along with a wonderful story the visuals of this movie are well shot.This beauty of this film is its capture of the essence of a long cold Stockholm winter: People sip schnapps in local pubs, students practice swimming in huge indoor aquatic centers and frozen rivers dot the landscape accompanied by huge snow drifts.

The strong point of this movie is the believable relationship between Eli and Oskar. I found myself wanting the relationship to flourish while also finding myself concerned that the relationship couldn’t possibly last.

This flick should be put right on top of your Friday Night Flick queue.

If you are a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse movie you will definitely love  Zombie Strippers .  About 5 minutes into this flick I said to myself: “This is the part of Grindhouse house that was missing: The part containing the zombies AND the boobies.” A friend of mine who knows my fine taste in films found a blurb about Zombie Strippers on the web and shot it my way. And it was love at first site.

The two above the line actors in Zombie Strippers are Robert Englund (of Freddy Kreuger fame) and drum roll please….. Jenna Jameson. Who’s “body” of work a lot of people may or may not be familiar with.

The movie starts off in typical zombie movie fashion. Evil military lab dorks release a virus that reanimates dead people. The army arrives to save the day, shoots up a bunch of zombies and one finds himself bitten. He takes off only to find himself in a clandestine strip club owned by Englund and headlined by Jameson.

The bitten soldier boy starts turning into a zombie and bites Jenna. The kicker is the zombie virus doesn’t turn women into brainless zombies. They keep their “senses” about them and rock the strip club like only Zombie Strippers can. This is where the fun ensues.

I won’t go into too much more detail here  as I don’t want to spoil the experience for you… it’s a fun flick and you will laugh when you see it.

One note is that the special effects were actually pretty good. They reminded me much of the Dawn and Day of the Dead which had the best zombie effects I have seen to date

Give it a try. If you are a grindhouser you will like Zombie Strippers.

OK folks this is my first review. I am going to start off with a movie idea:

Zombie Nation Poster

• Start with a porno movie.
• Remove all sex scenes.
• Keep all the plot lines.
• Add a tit or 2 (Gotta climb the Joe Bob Briggs scale)
• Find an open porno set not being used.
• Hire your german buds and a bunch of c grade actors.
• Go to Ikea to but some lights for your “set”
• Buy a plastic shark’s mouth for a voodoo scene.
• Borrow Britney’s snake from her show in Vegas.
• Buy some mascara to make some zombies.
• And make sure your lead walks from the water at the end so you have a chance for a sequel (when you make your $1,251.00 budget back)

And you have Zombie Nation