Peelers: Zombies in a Strip Club

We know from Train to Busan a speeding bullet train is the worst possible place for a zombie apocalypse. In contrast, a divey roadhouse strip joint ought to be a relatively advantageous spot. It is relatively isolated, with plenty of parking and no spying neighbors. However, its strict “no touching” policy will go out the window when the infected hordes attack in Sevé Schelenz’s Peelers (trailer here), which releases today on VOD, from Uncork’d Entertainment.

This was always supposed to be the club’s last night, at least under the management of Blue Jean (don’t call her “BJ,” unless you want some serious bruising). She was forced to sell out to an obnoxious local developer with mysterious plans for the property. Presumably Blue Jean will survive. She still hurls a mean fastball and drives a current issue police patrol motorcycle, but her torch-carrying bouncer Remy will miss seeing her every night.

Of course, personal dramas will have to be put on hold (perhaps forever) when four miners start acting crazy violent. Apparently, they were contaminated with some sort of petroleum-based zombie pathogen. Rather inconveniently, they start acting ultra-aggressive and they won’t stay dead.

Oddly enough, Peelers is a little slow out of the blocks, but it offers a few clever twists on the zombie genre, in accordance with the properties of oil. Obviously, Peelers is tailored-made for VOD, but most of the strip club business is played for American Pie-style laughs rather than erotic titillation (which is probably true of most strip clubs in the boondocks).

Look, you know what you’re getting here, but for what it’s worth, Wren Walker shows real, potential movie star presence as Blue Jean. She also develops some rather pleasant chemistry with Caz Odin Darko’s Remy. Momona Komagata adds a further bit of empowerment to the mix as Frankie, the stripper Remy was teaching martial arts. Unfortunately, the rest of her colleagues are shallow stereotypes, at best.

This isn’t even the first undead exotic dancer movie (hello, Zombie Strippers with Robert Englund and Trump super-fan Jenna Jameson), but the basic concept is pretty bullet-proof. Peelers is often amusing and it is arguably smarter than its predecessors. Recommended for zombie fans in the mood for a meathead movie, Peelers releases today on VOD platforms, including iTunes.

Demy’s Americano

Considering Martin, the deeply depressed Frenchman, holds dual American citizenship, one would expect him to be a shrewder traveler.  Instead, he blunders through Tijuana asking for trouble.  He finds plenty in Mathieu Demy’s Americano (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Martin has issues with his estranged mother that now may never be resolved.  She has recently died after years in Los Angeles without contact.  Reluctantly, Martin flies out to dispose of the flat holds only unpleasant childhood memories for him.  However, family friend Linda paints a far rosier portrait of his childhood years.  Intrigued by references to his mother’s life-long confidante Lola, Martin heads south of the border in Linda’s Mustang convertible to track her down.

It turns out Lola is a stripper about his age, working as the featured act at the extra divey Americano club—a fine place for the French tourist to have his midlife crisis.  Martin wants insight into who his mother really was, but Lola does not want to talk.  She just wants his money.  Over and over again, characters have the opportunity to save themselves and others so much grief if they would just act reasonably.  Yet, each time they pass it up, which becomes dashed distracting.  Leave a vintage car parked on the Tijuana streets with your passport and cash in the trunk?  Sure, why not?

As the son of Jacques Demy and Agnès Varda, any film from director-screenwriter-lead actor Mathieu Demy will come loaded with expectations.  Clearly, the name Lola is no coincidence.  However, the younger Demy raises the stakes, incorporating entire scenes from his mother’s Documenteur, in which he appeared as a child actor, while also lifting George Delerue’s melancholy soundtrack themes.  While it positions Americano as a pseudo-sequel, it also highlights the contrast between it and the work of his parents.  At times, viewers can maybe possibly see some of humanistic solidarity of Varda’s The Gleaners and I in his depiction of the down-trodden Tijuana working poor, but that’s pushing it.

It must be like old Dusk Till Dawn times for Academy Award nominated Salma Hayek, once again playing a bordertown stripper.  At least her Lola is only a metaphorical vampire.  In truth, she ultimately plays the character with admirable sensitivity, yet that makes her early set-up scenes somewhat problematic in retrospect.  As Martin, Mathieu Demy is a bland screen presence leaving little lasting impression.

Despite its seedy setting, Americano is not aiming for cheap titillation.  Nonetheless, the sluggish pace makes the characters’ dubious decision-making all the more conspicuous.  Given its lineage, there will definitely be a constituency for this film hoping it will be better than it is.  Fatally underwhelming, it opens this Friday (6/15) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.