Customer Reviews

Candy Stripers

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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

Candy Stripers won't win any awards, and it certainly borrows from other movies such as Aliens and Body Snatchers, but c'mon it is a fun little movie and is worth a watch.

An alien of unknown origin infects an auto accident victim who is wheeled into a hospital. She spreads the alien to a candy striper with a kiss. Then the fun begins. It doesn't take long before all the candy stripers are devouring all sweets in the hospital, including suger packets.

Our heros are high school basketball players, a cheerleader, and a diabetic geek chick who is a sister to one of the players. They discover a way to kill the aliens and begin runniing around the hospital Rambo style with air guns filled with insulin.

The special effects are OK, the candy stripers are hot, and we get some decent kills. It's a good DVD to pull out every now and then.

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.

the chiks are so damn hot....but it doesn't woth it, save your money or buy any playboy dvd

Im a sucker for low rent horror films. Im usually disappointed by some of them, but I cant help watching them. Ever time you go to a video store there is about fifty or so new direct to dvd horror films. I saw this movie and read the back of it. I knew this movie would be a real stinker from the get go. It was a rip off Species. All in all the movie wasnt too bad and it was kind of like a softcore porn film. Thats not why I liked the movie either; There was a few good scenes of death and hell I dont know. I just enjoyed this movie. The only problem was the ending. Why is every low budget horror movie have to have an ending that spells sequel?

This movie is for people that love horror types of movies i'm not one of them, what was i thinking.

I think I just summed up this whole movie in the title for it.

What little plot idea there is, it's about a guy who gets into a fight at his highschool basketball game, and ends up in hospital with some of his other team mates/friends. Only thing is, Aliens are invading, and there targeting the same hospital, a patient comes in infected by the alien who spreads it's worm with a kiss and the next thing you know all the nurses are having a lesbian kiss fest, acting like hoarz (damn amazons filter block) and being as far from sexy killers who crave blood and sugar as possible.

The characters are not much, most are terrible, the little side love stories they try to include are stupid, and the end was completely predictable.

No scenes worth remembering, no quotes worth quoting, no death scenes worth watching. A stupid plot, with stupid actors, in a stupid film that only 12 year old boys who aren't old enough to buy playboy will be this movies viewer when it's on TV late at night.

The only good thing about this movie is the picture-quality. The sound is bad, the plot is ripped-off from other movies, and the overall feel of the film is amateurish.

One look at the cover of this DVD should let anyone know what they are getting with "Candystripers". This movie is a total zero as far as horror is concerned. Several highschool basketball players get injured and have to stay in a hospital for a little while. However, some creature (kind of like the creeps) enters through the mouth of the candystripers, and that candystripers start killing people and spinning their webs over all of the male hospital occupants. If this movie seems as stupid as it sounds, well, you are absolutely right!! Horrible acting, a stupid plot and sheer absurdity mark this flick as more of an unintentional comedy than horror, but with Playboy playmates in it, what should I expect? Do not waste your money on this garbage...luckily, I just wasted 90 minutes of my life watching this junk on T.V. Yes, I was really, really bored out of my mind tonight, and that is the only reason I actually sat through this rubbish!