PEELERS – directed by Sevé Schelenz – SPOILERS ⁓

Peelers is a riveting tale, skillfully assembled. The blood, gore, and dismemberment is muted enough to allow the characters to become interesting, and the film is, by turns, funny, campy, and poignant. There is a bartender (Cameron Dent) who fixes chainsaws and can’t deal with funky nipples, and a chef (Jason Asuncion) who makes Gordon Ramsay seem polite.

Kiwi actor Kirsty Peters turns in a lovely performance as the very pregnant Carla (stage name Licorice), who puts honey on everything, including pizza. Should there ever be a post-apocalyptic sequel to PEELERS, Carla’s kid could be part of it.

Several coal miners, one with a nasty looking leg wound, walk into a small town strip joint to celebrate. One by one, they begin to fall ill, and one by one, they disappear into the men’s room. Their absence goes unnoticed for a while because the featured dancers, Elaine (Nikki Wallin), and Frankie (Momona Komagata) hold everyone’s attention.

Elaine’s stripper name is “Baby”. Frankie’s is “Thundercunt”.

What turns the miners murderous is the oil they inadvertently discovered deep underground. Whether the writers intended it or not, the malevolent black oil serves as a metaphor for ecological disaster.

One of the film’s best moments involves Tina (Victoria Gomez), a dancer new to the club. As she waits to go on stage, she becomes more and more apprehensive as she watches Elaine’s performance (an act that would be difficult for anyone to follow) but once on stage, she slowly regains confidence as she dances to Chillin’ Trippy Me by Alex Morch.

Then there’s the deadpan knitting lady. Is she an observer from the future? An alien hiding in the B.C. hinterland?

But the story centers around club owner and former baseball pitcher Blue Jean (Wren Walker). Jean specialized in knuckleballs, although we see her throw a mean and accurate fastball, and demonstrate some skill with the bat. As the film begins, Blue Jean is reluctantly selling her club to a fellow named Chromagnum (Al Dales) who has reasons for buying Blue Jean out that are much more involved than she has been led to believe. (The aptly-named businessman turns out to be surprisingly essential to the story.)

Director Sevé Schelenz told Michael Parsons of DC Filmdom: ”I wanted the female protagonist to be this strong character, so I went to Lisa and started pitching it to her. A light bulb went on in her head. And she said: ‘You know what? Something happened to me in Las Vegas.’ And that sort of became the catalyst of the script. 90% of the film is from her. It’s from her mind, her personality… obviously I edited it, changed it a little to clean it up before it got to the big screen.”

The opening title sequence features Vancouver model LaLaa Love dancing to the music of Blue Foundation, and throughout the film, the music is great. (Notable tunes include Wild Girl by Espionage, Hillbilly Love, by Hillbilly Hellcats, Whiskey Song by Chinaski, I’m Gonna Get You by Memphis Nights, and Burnin’ Up by King Junior.) Lisa DeVita, who wrote the screenplay, appears in the film as Officer Castanza and director Schelenz has a cameo as Officer Carter.

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PEELERS can be streamed on TUBI.

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** — originally published on 16 April 2017