Good-hearted stripper Adele Silva stabs a creepy customer (Martin Kemp) with a silver pen in a private booth. Said customer was actually a werewolf and a member of a mafia-style brood of werewolves, headed by nasty Billy Murray. Now Murray and his gang are headed for the strip club, owned by tough-as-nails Sarah Douglas. Meanwhile, Silva frets telling her boyfriend about her day job, unaware that he’s harbouring a dark secret of his own. Alan Ford turns up as a former hard-arse who works the bar at the club, Steven Berkoff is a rival gangster, Lysette Anthony is a cinema patron, and Robert Englund turns up as a currently imprisoned, but viciously evil werewolf.
Directed by Jonathan Glendening and scripted by Phillip Barron and Pat Higgins, this 2012 mixture of crime, comedy, lycanthropes and mostly clothed strippers offers a few fun casting decisions and cameos (Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet early on, Lysette Anthony near the end), but is so slow and overpopulated that its two story strands take forever to unite.
The irritating title cards giving everyone’s name flash by so quickly I couldn’t even bloody read them. That’s just poor filmmaking. It also bothered me that the werewolves held down their end of the bargain, but most of the strippers never actually…y’know, strip. It’s a disturbing trend in movies these days and it needs to stop. Yes, I am a pervert. Your point? Sadly even when some of them do deliver the goods, it’s at that exact moment that Glendening and his editor have both chosen to have epileptic fits, rendering things utterly useless. Don’t even get me started on the similarly unnecessary split-screen, either. Also, I don’t know what cut-rate, S Club 7 knock-off electro pop act provided the music for this film, but it sounds cheap as hell, and seriously awful. The film is streets ahead of “Zombie Strippers”, so that’s something. It ain’t on the level of “Cockneys vs. Zombies”, however, and that’s not a high rank to achieve in the first damn place.
The performances by Sarah Douglas (who got old, but hey, I’m getting there too), TV veteran Billy Murray (the best performer by far and apparently a real-life former associate of the Krays- one of whom Martin Kemp played in the 1990 flick “The Krays”!), and the inimitable Alan Ford (who only ever plays Alan Ford but is extremely good at it) are a lot of fun, and the cameo by Robert Englund shows that when required, he can deliver the goods. Not a good actor per se, but an effective one when given the opportunity and here he’s nasty as hell in short time. It was also fun to hear veteran Shakespearean actor Steven Berkoff use a cockney accent, and it’s a shame he only gets the one brief scene.
I have to take lead actress Adele Silva to task, though. If you’re going to have a no-nudity clause and you’re not a very good actress, please don’t sign on to a film called “Strippers vs. Werewolves” playing the lead stripper! She doesn’t even nude up for her sex scene! In fact, there’s more nudity in non-stripping scenes than the stripping scenes, which is just insane.
This is too slow and overpopulated to really work, and although a couple of the strippers are likeable (Ali Bastian in particular) and Billy Murray stands out as the main villain, the film needed a lot more Alan Ford, Robert Englund, and Sarah Douglas.
OVERALL SUMMARY
Pretty average and unnecessary, really. Cheap-looking and sounding, rarely funny and not much chop in the horror department, either. Cute Duran Duran song choice early on, though and a few fun moments here and there if you’re undemanding.
