Vancouver’s latest film coup: zombie strippers

Gentle reader, hide your family: Late Sunday night, part of downtown Vancouver will be taken over by exotic dancers of the undead.

Broadway between Ninth and 11th streets will be blocked off and transformed into “Stripper Alley,” a world inhabited by a troupe of zombie strippers. But it won’t stay that way for long — the horror show is just part of filming for a locally produced independent film called “Stripperland.”

A spoof on last year’s popular zombie flick, “Zombieland,” and of other brain-eating classics, the movie features four heroes who are travelling across the country, fighting women who have been infected with a virus that turns them into zombie strippers, said Luna Moon, director of marketing for the film’s production company, Cheezy Flicks Productions.

Torn fishnets, high heels and fake blood figure heavily into the costuming.

“That’s how they kill, they distract their prey,” she said. “Guys don’t know if they should be turned on or terrified.”

The heroes are attempting to make their way to Portland for their final showdown, as the zombies kill everything in their path, she said.

Along the way, a few actors who could also stand to see a career resurrection — comedian Gilbert Gottfried and Daniel Baldwin, to name a couple — will have small roles. Baldwin, who recently moved to Portland to launch his film company will debut his rapping career in Stripperland, according to a publicity release. As Icky D, Baldwin’s character staves off zombie strippers by laying down phat beats.

“They won’t eat me, because they’ve got to stop and strip,” he says in one track.

B-movie king Lloyd Kaufman, director of 2006 cult hit “Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead” will also make a cameo.

Just how the movie’s writers arrived at combining strippers and zombies into one comedy/horror hybrid was a stroke of situational inspiration, Moon said.

“There are so many kinds of zombies: fast zombies, slow zombies, underwater zombies,” she said. “We said, ‘Wait a minute! We live in Portland, Ore. It’s the stripper capital of the world. Stripper zombies!'”

And though there’s bound to be a lot of (decaying) skin, “Stripperland” is set to be rated R, not NC-17, Moon said. There will be no nudity as the crew shoots on Broadway.

“Vancouver has a fantastic downtown area,” she said. “The streets are quaint and smaller — we just liked the way the area looks.”

Moon said that the entire film, which has a budget of just under $300,000, will be filmed in and around Portland. Besides the celebrity appearances, all the actors are local, as well. The expected release date is this fall.

Director and Cheezy Flicks owner Sean Skelding grew up in the Portland area and owns a film distribution company there as well, she said. Skelding used profits from the distribution company to finance the film, and will also use his company to distribute “Stripperland” to up to 160 theaters in the United States and abroad.

Broadway between Ninth and 11th streets will be closed from 9 p.m. Sunday to about 5 a.m. Monday.

Andrea Damewood: 360-735-4542 or andrea.damewood@columbian.com.