Candy Stripers

You can derive a whole lot from a movie's title as well as from the image displayed on the DVD-cover. If you're going to complain about how terrible, amateurish and stupid THIS particular movie is, perhaps you should have thought about that before, for example when choosing to watch a movie that is called "Candy Stripers" and that cheerfully depicts three sexy nurses with half-rotten faces licking lollipops on the cover. Obviously this is a pretty insignificant and quite retarded B-movie, but it's undeniably entertaining and at least it respects the good old principle of the three B's. Blood, boobs and beast! There's enough blood & gore to fill a couple of buckets, boobs of the sexiest type of women (=nurses) and beast because the yummy girls are in fact malicious aliens. Slimy alien creatures invade a small American town's hospital. What exactly their purpose is or why specifically they chose this offbeat location is apparently of no importance whatsoever. They exclusively prefer to use the bodies of attractive young candy striper nurses as hosts (hey, who can blame them?), force them to feed on sugary treats and transform them into even hotter & sexier man-eaters. The girls then subsequently seduce the men in the hospital and unleash throbbing monster before the horny victims can unleash theirs. Among the endangered remaining humans trying to escape the hospital are a clique of teenage basketball players and their cheerleader girlfriends. Personally, I look at "Candy Stripers" as a cheesy and amusingly inept homage to silly B-movies of the 80's. The main characters are all stereotypes, the script is incoherent as can be, the candy stripers are purely cast on their looks and may elements in the story don't make the least bit of sense. The hospital, for example, had issues long before the aliens ever took over the place. The doctors were already sexist men that drink Schnapps during their shifts and the nursing staff has meetings about the outbreak of deadly viruses in the middle of the hall where patients and visitors can hear them. The teenage protagonists are all insufferable and you hope for them to die quick and painfully. Especially the main cheerleader is a true caricature. Nobody can be that vain and shallow! The concept of "Candy Stripes" has a lot in common with another recently released horror/comedy called "Decoys". Both films are recommended, albeit very forgettable.

If "Decoys" was "Species" for horny teenagers, then "Candy Stripers" is "Decoys" for... Heck, I don't know. All I know is, I was kind of deeply disappointed with this one. The only thing it delivers, is some naked boobies from some extremely delicious babes, and some girl/girl kissing (which could be described as 'not your average kinda tongue-action'). Things that the movie fails to deliver: Good acting, tension, surprise-twists, great effects, good cinematography, and above all... a plot! Oh well, I've seen worse. Might be fun if you're in a very undemanding mood (in which I was when I saw it, so I don't regret the watch).

Candy Stripers is just plain horrible, and not in a scary way, even by B-movie or Z-movie standards. In case you were curious, the title refers to the female hospital volunteers in the US that wore white uniforms with red stripes. With a title like that, you would expect some stripping and nudity, there's not much of it here on display except a couple of quick breast shots, nothing really past the half-way point. It feels and plays like a cheap TV show with an extremely low budget, kind of a B-movie Goosebumps for teens. It takes place mostly in a hospital slowly being "overrun" by sexually aggressive women possessed by slugs. I actually make it sound better than it is.

The writing is lame, the dialogue is cliché, and it doesn't even have those wonderfully corny one-liners you usually get in that type of movie. The acting is laughable and doesn't even reach TV soap quality, which would have been nice here actually. Worse, you have 2 of the main guys, supposedly teenagers, that are balding. The special effects are pathetic, and not even funny pathetic, just cheap-looking and bad (especially the distortion CGI effect when the "creatures" die). The suspense and enjoyment are non-existent, and the movie felt twice as long as it actually is. And this is from someone who usually enjoys those kind of movies as long as there's some cleverness, enthusiasm and talent behind it. This review is already too long for such a piece of manure. Don't get suckered by the cover art. Don't expect good titillation, gore or fun. Don't pay for it, don't even watch it for free. If you already did, then you now understand what I meant. You want something good in the same vein, rent Lesbian Vampire Killers instead.

A blind girl (Sarah Ball) infected with an alien seed lies in a hospital bed, a candy striper (Deanna Brooks) watching her. "Give me a kiss" she asks and the candy striper, a little weirded out, gives this dying girl her last wish. While they kiss, an alien pops out her mouth and infects her as well. Now this candy striper infects the others (Monique Cooper, Eliza Swenson, Serria Tawan) and they go on a mission to either infect or kill the rest of the hospital, right as out heros (Brian Lloyd, William Edwards Jr., Kevin Thomas Fee, Nicole Rayburn, and Tori White) arrive.

Okay, everyone here is pointing out the fact that Playboy bunnies are given starring roles in this movie. Sure, they're not so great at acting, but they surprise you with OK jobs and they do more than sex scenes (There's only 2).

The special effects are pretty bad, even though I was satisfied with the aliens that pop out of the mouths and the last look at the alien in full form.

It all has a sort of "Slither" type feel. Slither in a Hospital, if you will.

A worthy entry to the "so bad it's good" pile!

When the Candy Stripers in a small town Hospital are taken over by voracious aliens, they become killing machines hell bent on breeding... playboy playmates Deanna Brooks and Serria Tawan star in this campy-horror feature.

Injured in an out-of-town college basketball game Matt and his team-mates end up in the local hospital. He suffers a broken leg and is placed in traction making him unable to move. Really weird things are happening... the sweet young Candy Stripers are seducing all the men in the hospital, then wrapping them in a hideous web-like substance. Matt realizes he and his friends must escape but after the hospital is put under quarantine they're trapped! Heading for the basement they find a terrifying scene... an alien makeshift maternity ward! Yet another small DTV release desperately seeking attention. Candy Stripers is a borderline film as far as entertainment is concerned, it really is leaning on the edge waiting to be shoved into the zone of regret. The fact that it was a combination of playmates and aliens in a film, the temptation and curiosity was too much for me to pass up. Especially with the voluptuous DVD cover art that the movie possesses.

So to explain this movie, you just need to follow a fairly laid out pattern. Sex scene, sex scene, gore scene, sex scene, gore scene, gore scene, almost a sex scene... wait yes, we get a sex scene, more gore etc. Really, that's pretty much it. Not really a bad thing but it's also not favoring the movie as far as the premise is concerned. As the movie started, I told my wife "It'll probably have a sex scene every five minutes." Lo' and behold... it was like that.

There are some fairly decent gore moments in the film, not surprising but pulled off quite successfully and does not have an over-abundance of poor CGI effects. There is some CG imagery, even though it's not great it's still tolerable especially when comparing to a lot of the other recent direct-to-video horror flicks. It passes the effects test just barely, a fun watch for the gore indeed.

The thing that holds Candy Stripers down is its plot and actors. Neither are worth the time of the day. The plot is tiring, overdone and has no substance. The opening scene is actually one of the worst scenes in the movie and is NOT a good first impression for the viewer, keep watching though... it gradually gets better but loses steam near the end. The two actors in the scene seemed to just be reading their lines and not showing any "real" emotion what-so-ever. Also the fact that they were driving a car that didn't look like it was moving and when it was moving it made them look like they never even passed their driving test.

A good one-time viewing but only for gore fans. If you're looking for anything more than unnecessary sex scenes and gore/violence, you're not going to enjoy this much at all.