Product Description

No Description Available.
Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Release Date: 2-OCT-2007
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53827 in DVD
• Brand: AARONSON,SCOTT
• Released on: 2006-06-27
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 89 minutes

Customer Reviews

Sweet
Thanks to an auto accident, a parasitic alien manages to get into a hospital. It quickly moves from the crash victim into a candy striper. Among the patients at the hospital are some rather short high school basketball players. It is through them that we watch the events unfold. The infected, or inhabited, candy striper becomes predatory. She goes after men for sex and after women to spread. Infected women develop an incredible sweet tooth and devour anything sweet they can find. The horror then spreads.

As the horror takes over more of the hospital and the CDC locks it down, the basketball players and a few friends do everything they can to try and get out of the hospital. But soon it becomes evident that the problem has spread too far. Now if they manage to escape it will only be to delay the inevitable if they cannot halt the spread of aliens before they get out and take over the whole world.

As one would expect from the title and cover, there are plenty of curvy women in this one. Plenty of nudity too but surprisingly very little gore. I was reminded of Blue Monkey what with the hospital setting and the way the story develops. Unfortunately the budget was a little short so the hospital is very vacant. Hallway scenes show no one in what is supposed to be a busy hospital. But other than that it works pretty well. There are some tried and true plot devices and complications including a love triangle. The effects are pretty interesting and non-standard. Check it out.

Won't live up to your personal candy striper fantasies
Hollywood knows us so well. Any self-respecting horror fan will know that this film almost has to be sub-par, yet so many of us just can't resist the allure of R-rated candy stripers having their way with a cast full of characters. I'll bet it will be really gory, we rationalize, but all we really care about is seeing some of our sick candy striper fantasies realized, however vicariously. It's the same instinct that gets most of the male cast members of this film killed. We just can't help ourselves, despite warnings such as the one I am about to deliver: Candy Stripers is a silly, laughable film that just doesn't deliver the goods.

The only surprising thing about this low-budget cheesefest is the fact that the director serving up this round of candy striper titillation is a woman (Kate Robbins). Maybe that explains why there is a lot less nudity in this film than I was expecting. To be frank, I didn't even find these bodacious candy stripers all that attractive, including those portrayed by Playboy Playmates Deanna Brooks and Serria Twain. (Eliza Swenson is totally hot as Nurse Sally, but she doesn't get much screen time.)

There's no sign of an original thought to be found in this film. The plot is utterly predictable, and the characters are all hackneyed stereotypes. You've got your dumb jock, your loud and abrasive jock, your heroic jock, your blonde bimbo head cheerleader, and of course your geeky girl who is secretly in love with said heroic jock. After a basketball game turns ugly, three players (representing 60% of the team, as there is not a single bench player to be found on the sidelines) end up in some unnamed hospital. Only Matt (Brian Lloyd) is seriously injured (broken leg), but his buddies hang around because of all the hot candy stripers walking the halls. The girls are awfully friendly, especially when they make late-night bedchecks on Matt and his bud Joey (William Edwards, Jr.). Before long, though, the hospital staff (all ten of them) are worried about an "infection" going around that seems to leave victims covered in mysterious webbing. By the time Matt decides it's high time to get out of this crazy place, a quarantine has been declared and the candy stripers are running amuck. Apparently taken over by strange alien phalluses which require copious amounts of sugary snacks, they quickly begin to decimate the male population of the hospital.

The rest of the film has our teenaged heroes running for their lives all over the hospital, which proves very upsetting to Matt's girl Krystal (Nicole Rayburn) because she just had her hair done. Unable to find a way out, the gang (what's left of it, anyway) ultimately decides to fight back, a decision which somehow transforms geeky Tammy (Sarah Ball) into a hottie. Insert your standard predictable ending (complete with lame final "twist"), and you're done.

About the only thing Candy Stripers has going for it, at least initially, is a decent gore factor, including hearts ripped out of chest cavities and gunshots to the head. Then the director and her special effects crew went completely overboard when it came time to start taking down the alien-infected candy stripers. Much derisive laughter ensues, thereby ensuring Candy Stripers' place among the ever-growing ranks of juvenile, ill-conceived low-budget horror films. One hates to criticize the acting because the characters are all so grossly stereotypical, but no one in this film is going to be winning any acting awards any time soon. It's also clear that director Kate Robbins didn't go the extra mile for this film. Not only did she not include any little extras in terms of scenery and story, I just can't get past the fact that she gave us a high school basketball team with only five total players. That tells me that she just didn't care enough about this film.

Invasion of the Alien Nurses, film at 11 (after the kiddies are in bed)...
Candy Stripers (Kate Robbins, 2006)

Really, you don't check out a movie with a title like Candy Stripers expecting horror. Cheesecake, yeah. Lots of high-school girls half-out of uniforms? Awesome! I expect that the movie's low rating on IMDB-- 2.1, as I write this-- has to do with the movie's almost complete lack of cheesecake more than it does with its thoroughly complete lack of horror. It's a Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie, but without any of the edited-out bits edited out.

The plot: after a particularly nasty high school basketball game, three guys from the visiting team find themselves in a hospital far from home. Team captain Matt (Doll Graveyard's Brian Lloyd) is the all-around nice guy who seems a little bit smarter than those around him. Tammy (Portal's Sarah McGuire, premaritally Sarah Ball), the team manager, has a crush on him, but he's too busy dating the head cheerleader (Boo's Nicole Rayburn), appropriately named Krystal, to have noticed. Tammy's brother Joey (William Edwards, Jr., in his first screen appearance) is in the next bed over, while power-hungry Brian (Kevin Thomas Fee) is just down the hall. No one's complaining all that much, since the hospital seems to be stocked with peternaturally beautiful candy stripers. But they all have this weird sweet tooth. And they all seem to be nymphomaniacs. Oh, yes, we're all set up for cheesecake city. Well, except for the whole alien-invasion scene at the beginning of the movie...

I know it's a minor thing, but I have to get it off my chest. Why is it that low-budget horror movies have this thing for taking the cast's most beautiful girl and putting her in the "homely sister" role? It happens all the time, but it's more noticeable here than usual; we've got a cast that's jammed full of beautiful women (including two Playboy playmates) running around throwing themselves at everything that moves, and then you get this jaw-dropping beauty who's supposed to be the mousy member of the family. Hey, guys? It doesn't work. It never has. It never will. More germane to why this movie is as bad as it is is, well, everything else about it. The script plays out like this was actually supposed to be a cheesecake comedy, not a horror film. (Jill Garson and writer/director Kate Robbins are both first-time screenwriters, and it shows.) The acting ranges from the competent to the horrendous. Surprisingly, the playmates are both on the competent side of the equation. The characters are barely shallow enough to be called paper thin, with stereotypes running hard and fast. (You've met Krystal in at least three dozen teen comedies in the past twenty years.) The plot is predictable when it's not being stupid. And every once in a while those two components join forces for an all-out assault on both the senses and the sensibilities of even the least discerning viewers.

And yet despite all this it's stupidly watchable, in that Sci Fi Channel Original Movie way. (Expect to see this one hit Sci Fi relatively soon, though if you have a thing for breasts, you'll want to rent the DVD.) It's fun if you're not expecting anything even remotely akin to good filmmaking. Unlike most of IMDB's raters, I'm giving this one nipple up for the cheesecake factor, the barely competent acting, and the stupid, mostly unintentional humor. And because I would be willing to watch Sarah McGuire read the phone book for two hours. ** ½