Peelers, or: Unaccompanied Miners

Good news, everyone–we’re getting back to our roots again this week! Though you may want to reserve your judgment on whether to celebrate that occasion: especially when this week’s film features zombies, rather thoughtless yet incredibly problematic racism, and so much vomit.

The Film:

Peelers

The Premise:

A zombie plague breaks out in a strip club mid-lap dance.

The Ramble:

In a hospital room, a nurse prepares a dose of medicine for a gruesomely bloody patient. The patient suddenly sits up, vomiting profusely–and then violently attacking a nurse. Psychotic break or…first sign of a zombie apocalypse? Zombie apocalypse. It’s a zombie apocalypse, everyone.

Cut to a strip club, where most of the action of our film takes place…in all possible ways. There are several ladies with different personas: the cutesy baby act, the martial arts stuntwoman, and the new girl with a schoolgirl thing going on. Unfortunately, it’s the club’s last night, as its owner Blue Jean (seriously) is selling the place to (and I quote) a “fucking beanbag” who will probably tear the place down.

In one of many incredibly cringey moments, a group of Mexican-American men arrive at the club, one of whom has a nasty-looking leg wound. So yeah…this is a good reason to have more diverse writers in Hollywood because otherwise you end up with a group of Mexican-Americans starting the zombie apocalypse by carrying their disease into a largely white establishment and spreading the plague to them. (And at one point, a character killing off one of the group who has gone full zombie says, “Adiós, motherfucker.”) And NO ONE thought this was problematic AF.

Since the group of Mexican-Americans seem to be miners straight out of the 1950s, they were excavating with pick-axes when they struck oil. …Or so they believed. The foul-smelling liquid erupts, causing an accident that injures at least one of the party and dooms them all.

The zombies in this film are characterized by gross open wounds, copious amounts of vomiting, and psychotic knife attacks. As the body count rises, the few remaining in the club search for a way out. Will anyone make it out alive? Will any viewers of this film care?

The Rating:

2/5 Pink Panther Heads

This actually isn’t a bad premise for a horror film–I imagined something like Coyote Ugly with zombies (and a LeAnn Rimes number in the mix certainly wouldn’t have hurt). Instead we got this empty slasher with even emptier character and plot development.

There is so little that actually makes sense here, even for a B zombie horror (B is with a generous curve). I admittedly get way too hung up on details, but it made zero sense to me that there’s a new girl starting at the strip club…on its closing night? And she’s one of the first characters to die–what is even the point of her???

The vision of mining also fails to have any grounding in reality. The group of Mexican-Americans working the mine seem to be the only ones there with no one overseeing operations. There might be an implication they own the mine; I can’t think of any other reason they would be so thrilled at the prospect of encountering oil. Also their most advanced technology for mining seems to be the pick-axe. I’ve got news for you, fellas. There are a lot of options that will make your mining operation less of a terrifying death trap, as well as way more efficient.

Speaking of things that are stupidly old-fashioned: the gender roles in this movie. JFC, the gender roles. The men here take on the leadership roles, while most of the women freak out and cry. Blue Jean is somewhat of a badass, but one of the men tells her with his DYING WORDS that she’s always such a guy and should sometimes be a girl. 😑 What a fucking shame that dude died.

Would my blog wife stay for a private dance with this one or aim her projectile vomit in its general direction? Read her review here to find out!