Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast that watches all the zombie movies we can stomach. Today, a bunch of actors take a night cruise to a remote island.

“This island doesn't smell so hot. Well, that's because a zombie don't bury the dead too deep.”

That's convenient. Our actors decided it would be fun to summon the dead.

“Hail, satanic majesty!

Hail, mighty master of evil!”

And guess what? The dead respond. It's the 1972 film Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things.

You know, I've seen people act like that in pictures. What do they call them, zombies or something?

Zombie.

Zombie?

What's a zombie?

Well a zombie…there’s um... ...Mr. Bill there’s... ...the living dead.

They are the living dead.

Get me the zombies!

Against an army of zombies, no armies could stand!

The unburied dead are coming back to life and seeking human victims.

I’ve seen the dead rise.

Kill the brain, and you kill the ghoul.

Welcome to Zombie Strains. I'm John.

And I'm Andy.

And I'm Brad.

Welcome back, producer Brad. We missed you last week. One of these days, we're going to drag you into a modern zombie film.

Someday I'll have time to join you.

You know, conversation Andy and I had that you weren't party for is the amount of tension we can handle in a movie or a video game. And we discovered that Andy can handle a lot more than I can. Like I just couldn't play the Resident Evil games. It would stress me out too much. And in the theater, like my eyes were half closed, I left the time for the first half of this movie. Like how do you handle scary movies in your prime of life, producer Brad?

I don't seem to have the issue that you do. For this film in particular that we watched today, I will say that I kept nodding off.

Yeah, yeah.

Until it suddenly turned. It was hard to keep my interest in this one.

I have some questions, but yes. On that note, we are watching 1972's Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, directed by Bob Clark, who we will get into in a second. However, I remember, producer Brad, this sort of being a notorious film when we were young. Is that your recollection? Because I'd certainly heard of it.

I actually don't remember it at all until I did the research for this podcast. So it was not on my radar.

So what do you remember being notorious about it?

I just couldn't remember beyond the name, but I remember it being something like that was creepy that you had to watch. But I don't recall watching it back then because I think, I think I would have remembered the lead character's outfit the second time if I had watched it before. But that title is very familiar to me. So I'm just curious, was it new to both of you?

I think I'd heard of it, but I had no prior association or sense about it.

Well, if it's notorious, it's for reasons that aren't the typical horror movie reasons. So maybe we should let producer Brad tell us how this thing came to be.

Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things was released on May 12th, 1972. It's also been known as Revenge of the Living Dead, Things From the Dead and Zreaks, that's Z-R-E-A-K-S. Other movies released that same month, just what was out at the same time, were Woody Allen's Play It Again Sam, Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy and Billy Dee Williams' In, The Final Come Down.

Oh, all right.

So hang on, hang on, Zreaks? Is that like Freaks but Z for Zombie?

I would assume, yeah. And you know, it listed as another title. It may have been in one release, like one video release, and so it may not be a wide scale release that most people have seen or heard of.

It's interesting that it was released at all, but again, we're getting ahead of ourselves.

It made money, not in the US at the time, but it made money.

All right.

Well, Bob Clark directed, and he is the first director in Zombie Strains, since Jacques Tournier, director of I Walked with a Zombie, and Michael Curtiz, director of The Walking Dead, to not only break out of the horror genre, but to find massive box office success and cultural success.

I can't wait till you list the movies.

And that means classy movies, right?

Yeah, well, one at least.

Well, we'll get into it. His biggest success was the 1981 film Porkies, but he also directed the 1983 holiday classic A Christmas Story.

Now, hold on a second. Like, nobody watches Porkies anymore, and everybody's seen A Christmas Story. So I got a pitch that A Christmas Story is actually his most successful film, even if it didn't make as much at the box office.

I had no idea the same person did those two movies. I'm kind of, I'm staggering right now.

Wait, did the three movies also Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things? In interviews, he said that later in life fans from Porky's have come up to him and said how much they loved the film, and he felt like he was getting a better reputation over time.

Really? I don't know that I would recommend anyone watch Porky's today.

For him, it was what his teenage years were like in Florida. So he felt like a slice of life and he was commenting on what he saw.

All right. I remember one joke from Porky's, and I think this is the joke. Maybe I've got the wrong movie, but they get busted for watching a dirty movie, and because it's like pre-videotape, it's actually like a film, and the principal or whatever says, I sat through every disgusting frame of this film twice.

That's a pretty good joke.

So Clark grew up mostly in Florida, and side note, he went to Hillsdale College in Michigan on a football scholarship.

Whoa.

He transferred to the University of Miami in Florida and became involved in theater, and we can see the result of that in the cast and the staging of Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things.

You know what? Can I just say something funny about that? Because I don't know if it's funny or not, but my immediate thought is you don't get a lot of football players who go actor, but you do if they're famous, but that's a weird shift to make young in life. However, I did know an actor at the University of Michigan who was on the football team, and I said, what do you play? He just goes, well, I'm just the punter. That seemed to be an excuse why he could be an actor and still be on the football team.

I think you also don't get a lot of people that graduate from Hillsdale College to go on to direct trashy horror and sex comedy movies. What is Hillsdale? I mean, I don't know the name, but what is it? Maybe everyone who graduates from Hillsdale goes on to do that. I think it's like an ultra right-wing institution, isn't it?

Oh, I don't know.

I don't know, but the way the history is written in his comments and quotes, he went there on a scholarship. It doesn't say he graduated from there because he then went to Miami.

All right.

It doesn't say he graduated from Miami either.

I'm genuinely interested in that, not just as a piece of trivia, but because I hope that we can talk a little bit about the conservative nature of horror like this one. I am actually really curious if this is how it might have been shaped by his college years either embracing it or rebelling against it.

He made two low-budget films in the late 60s. His first film, The Emperor's New Clothes, are none other than John Carradine.

Well, I love that movie. Oh wait, it's not the animated one, nevermind.

It is considered a lost film and no copies can be found.

Oh wow.

His second film was an exploit-

Why that film and not this one? I just-

How does John Carradine end up connecting to all these people? He must just say yes to every offer that comes through.

Yeah.

Gambling problem? I don't know.

Maybe.

His second film was an exploitation film called She-Man about a man blackmailed into taking estrogen and becoming the maid of a mystery woman. Clark said in interviews he was glad She-Man wasn't available anymore and couldn't be found, but you can actually find it on YouTube now.

Well, I was about to say I was glad it's no longer available, but I'm just going to forget you said that last part.

And Clark's third film was Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. He wrote it with Alan Ormsby, who plays Alan in the film. They raised $50,000 and shot the film over 11 nights in Miami in 1971. It was released in the US by Ted V. Mickels, the director of The Astro Zombies.

Oh, all right.

I want to say my favorite thing about the cast here, but I'll let you go on and I'll hit you with it later.

Okay, I will come to the cast. Clark followed this film with two films in 1974. Death Dream, which is also on our Zombie List to watch, and Black Christmas, which is considered one of the first slasher films.

Oh.

Now, Black Christmas has an impressive cast for being what's called the first slasher film. Olivia Hussey from Romeo and Juliet, Keir Dullea from 2001, Margot Kidder, who went on to be Lois Lane in Superman, and John Saxon, who 80s kids know as the dad in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

That you just knocked me over there. Now, I really want to see it. We're not going to watch it, but now I got to go watch it on my own.

In 1979, Clark directed a Sherlock Holmes movie called Murder By Decree with Christopher Plummer and James Mason as Holmes and Watson, and also in the cast were John Gilgud and Donald Sutherland.

Wow.

That was crazy, right?

It is crazy.

We don't have these conversations with directors on our films.

No, we do not.

And then after Murder By Decree, his next film was Tribute, which was released in 1980, and that starred Jack Lemmon, Robbie Benson, Lee Remick, and in one of her first roles, Kim Cattrall.

Oh, okay.

You're blowing my mind right now.

Well, and that leads us to 1981 and Porky's, the film about Florida teenagers in the 1950s. It was a huge success, the fifth highest grossing film of the year, tallying over $100 million at the domestic box office.

That's amazing.

I take it both of you saw Porky's when you were 13 or 14, right?

On Showtime or the equivalent or Cinemax or whatever I saw it on. Yes.

I did not. By the time in my life when I had the option to go and watch it, it was pretty hopelessly outclassed, I would say, by the times.

Yes. It's all we had back then for smutty movies.

Yeah.

Late night when you're at a friend's house and parents aren't watching, you flip that on.

Yes. I'm not proud of that, by the way.

Clark went on to a successful Hollywood career directing Rhinestone with Stallone and Dolly Parton, Loose Cannons with Gene Hackman and Dan Aykroyd, and the 1990s film Baby Geniuses.

Do you guys think this is something like the biggest profile director of a zombie film we have encountered in this podcast so far? Would you say that's true?

Well, there's two people that could tend with him. One would be Jacques Turner because he also did Night Of The Demon and the original Cat People. But I think he would be behind Bob. The only other one is George Romero, who would be higher profile. So I don't know. What do you think, Brad?

Well, I think George Romero, his stature is mostly in the horror genre. He never quite broke out. But I would go back to Michael Curtiz from the 30s who did The Walking Dead with Boris Karloff. He went on and did Academy Ward level films. And The Walking Dead was like an aberration. And it was still like a studio film too. So it's not the low-budget world of Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things.

So that was a good movie, actually.

It was a good movie, right. So that's why Bob Clark is really unique in all this.

Interesting. I'm curious to see because now, today we were just talking about that Zach Kramer can put his name in front of a movie, and he's only ever done horror. And I don't think he has any plans to do something other than horror. You know what I mean? It's not a stepping stone anymore.

I'm interested as we continue through the 70s and get into the 80s. You know, how someone like Clark, I mean, he is able to move from the world of trashy, low budget to almost prestige Hollywood, it sounds like. And he had a lot of contacts in the higher prestige world. I'm curious how many of... If we're going to see more of these B-movie zombie directors winding up with lots of ties to kind of quote respectable Hollywood, or if this is a one off, I don't know.

I'll be curious.

Well, Bob Clark died in 2007. At the time, he'd been planning to remake Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, but it didn't happen. Alan Ormsby, who has the screen credit of Screenplay Collaboration, he also went on to an interesting career. He wrote and directed a 1974 horror film called Deranged and co-wrote Death Dream for Bob Clark. He wrote the well-received 1980 film My Bodyguard and the 1982 film Cat People.

My Bodyguard was in 1980.

Christopher Makepeace played the young kid and the bodyguard was Adam Baldwin, who you might know from Serenity. Oh. He played Jane. Okay, so Ormsby in 1996, he wrote The Substitute starring Tom Berenger. Do you remember that film?

Yes.

It's about a mercenary who's on a wife or a girlfriend gets attacked at school. She's a teacher and he realizes there's something nefarious going on, so he goes undercover as a substitute to figure out what kids are involved in what, and he takes them out.

I've seen clips of him of this where he's beating up kid punks in this.

Yeah.

He's such an interesting actor because he was in that, but he was also in like, wasn't he in The Big Chill and Platoon?

He was in The Big Chill, yeah. He was the guy who had, wasn't he like the movie star of the group in The Big Chill?

Yeah, and he loved the football.

You know what, is there a more vigilante fantasy movie than that? Like going under, like an action hero to undercover at school to deal with like the drug dealing punks?

Death Wish and Charles Bronson is a vigilante dream.

Yes.

That's the top of the line.

But this is of that, on that strain. But boy, are we avoiding talking about Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. Okay.

Alan Ormsey had one last credit. He also wrote four episodes of Nash Bridges.

That's much later than this. So how did he just get in for four episodes and then?

I don't know, but he kept writing and was involved in stuff. So he had a successful career.

All right.

Now the cast is an interesting mix of local actors who did a few films with Clark to two who went on to lengthy acting careers. Jane Daly, who played Terry, has 60 credits with many bit parts on 80s TV shows like St. Elsewhere, Give Me A Break, Moonlighting, Highway to Heaven and Star Trek Next Generation. Most audiences might remember her from playing the mother to Michelle Monahan in Mission Impossible 3.

One of my favorite things is looking at who plays. Guest actors on Star Trek shows are the best because a shocking number of Romulans, and Cardassians, and Klingons are that guys underneath the makeup. You don't always notice it when they're on the screen, but once it's pointed out, you're like, oh, of course it's that guy.

Yeah, absolutely. One thing I like about the cast though, is that the characters have the same first name as the cast member. That makes it easy. Val is Val, Paul is Paul, Anya is Anya. Yeah, it makes it a lot easier.

Alan is Alan, yeah. Now, Jane Daly, her last acting credit was in 2022 on the TV show The Rookie, so she's-

Starring Nathan Fillion. Everything's connected.

The other actor who had a good career was Bruce Solomon, who played the zombie winds. He had a good run in the 70s, 80s with bit parts on TV shows, but he's best known for 104 episodes on the TV show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

I remember that.

That is what I have for production notes on this film. John, anything you want to add?

No. Other than Andy, I think we have to do it. Please give us a- We almost got a description of the whole plot in the intro, but why don't you give us a slightly meatier one?

All right. Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things is a cautionary tale of a bunch of young people. I think it's a strain to call them children. Would you say? I think they're in their 20s. Anyway, so a sadistic director takes his little troupe of actors with him. All of them are, I guess you would call them young people. His purpose is, because this island is now used just as a cemetery, and did I understand correctly, it's a cemetery for criminals? Or is that a reading to it? I didn't catch that. Okay. Yeah, I didn't catch that. The island is just known at this point, it's mostly abandoned, there's this creepy cemetery there. And his ostensible plan is he's going to take these actors there and they're gonna do an edgy, evil ritual to They- raise the dead. Now, this sadistic director, his name is Alan, he actually plans to prank his actor troupe. But, of course, none of them take it seriously. But evil is very, very real. And the dead, in fact, do rise. And we get it ends with a kind of a Night Of The Living Dead style barricaded in the house, surrounded by zombies, sort of classic zombie scene. And everybody dies. The end.

Everybody dies. The end. This movie has, let us just say, our last movie, Resident Evil from 2026, we described as having two very different tones. And I think we would say that about this film as well. Wouldn't you, Andy?

Yes, I think so. There's the first hour of this movie, and then there's the final 20 minutes of this movie.

Yeah. Well, let's get into it because I think it's funny. So this movie is so leaning into the worst excesses of 70s culture and art. And I'd like to start with some music that plays while the boat that our heroes are on is landing at the island. I feel like we've been waiting for this for a long time.

Yes. How much of that could you stand, John? Did you make it through the credits without having to pause and take a break?

No, I made it.

I did make it.

The music was done by Carl Zitter, and he did 11 movies, nine with Bob Clark, including A Christmas Story.

All right. Andy, the next thing I'd like to point out that is super 70s is the outfits. If you could, would you please describe the hair, facial hair, and shirt and pants of our leader, the sadistic director, Alan.

Oh man. Well, so first I gotta say, one thing I genuinely appreciated in a movie like this that consists of a bunch of pretty interchangeable victims is they're all wearing a different bright color of clothes. So, like I couldn't be bothered to learn their names, but you could say like, oh, the red one is now talking to the green one and the orange one is over in the graveyard.

It was kind of Scooby Doo like in their color coding.

If your characters are not going to be strong enough that I'll learn or care about their names, at least give me a nice visual cue. All right, so Alan the Director is wearing, it's a bright orange.

Yeah, orange-ish yellow silk shirt.

Yeah, and striped, white and black striped, tight striped pants.

If they were only white and black, Andy, they're all the colors of the rainbow, but all the worst ones they never show you. Vertical stripes unhinged, unleashed in this film. It's amazing.

He's got a lot of hair and beard and mustache. He looks like, I don't know, if you picture someone who was in Led Zeppelin or something like that, he looks like he just walked off of a psych rock music act.

Yes, absolutely. His facial hair is like a go-to, but it's grown out, so it's long and sinister looking. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Everybody else is wearing, just when you think somebody's wearing something normal like Paul, looks like he's wearing a green T-shirt, you zoom in and it's like a ribbed sweater with vertical ribs on it. Nobody escapes the horrible fashion of the 70s in this movie.

If any listeners are looking at the poster, Alan is the one on the left. That's a stylized drawing of him.

Yes. Now, first of all, Andy, I want to ask you a question. I think they meant for it to be a comedy. Did you get that too? It's not a comedy, but I think that's what they were going for.

Partway through, I looked this, I pulled it up on IMDB because I was trying to figure out the character names. I saw it described as a comedy. Maybe this is a good time to talk about it. This is the most meta-comedic film we've seen, I think, in our Zombie Strains run so far. I'm not saying that it's a haha funny movie that succeeds at being a comedy, but the comedy is the characters joking with each other, not the movie itself setting up gags, if that makes sense.

It does. In fact, in case it isn't clear, I asked Brad to play some scintillating humor from our guest as they walk across the island.

Hey, Alan, who's your travel agent, Count Dracula? Wow, I feel like I'm on the Late Late Show.

I'd whistle past the graveyard, but my lips are afraid to be separated.

Gee, I wonder if Tamp Hunter started like this.

Oh, I haven't laughed this hard since Granny got caught in the wringer.

So that is the comedy of this film. That's why I asked if we thought it was a comedy, and I think it's supposed to be.

John, you should have warned listeners to, if they're listening while driving, to pull over because they would be paralyzed by laughter upon hearing that. So apologies. Yeah, I mean, a huge chunk of this movie is the characters basically ribbing each other in exactly that way and with that delivery.

Yes, and it's only punctuated by Alan being sadistic, and when everybody crosses him or makes fun of him, he says, well, you're employed by me as an actor, you better watch it, and he's a huge jerk.

So in all seriousness, I wouldn't call a movie a comedy because the characters in it are being quote funny in that way. But can you think of a famous good comedy that uses this style of humor?

No.

There must be, though.

None of it's situational, right? There's no good jokes around setups, there's no payoffs. I mean, I guess there's one setup and payoff, but yeah, there's kind of nothing. You know, I can't think of one.

Does this dialogue, does it seem more authentically youthful to you than other youth dialogue we've seen in zombie movies? And I ask, and again, like set aside the question of are the jokes funny? Do they land or connect? Does the fact that this is a bunch of like snarky, wannabe comedian teens or sort of teens poking at each other, is that, does that seem more believable or is it executed in such a way that it's just as unbelievable as the like, gee, golly, guys, sorts of dialogue we got in earlier movies?

I think it's just as unbelievable because the problem is, like producer Brad, let's say, a couple of our friends are known to give each other a really hard time. For example, I made a comment at the wrong time during a football game yesterday and was ribbed heartily for it all being my fault that it went south. But we don't do that all the time, right? Like most of the time we just talk like regular people, and only occasionally do you swear at me like that. So I feel like that's not realistic, you know what I mean? Like even people who always give each other a hard time take a break every now and then.

Yeah, I think I would agree it doesn't really work in this movie and it's very tiresome. It's very tiresome, but yeah.

Yeah, so there is a little bit of a plot here, right? Like you said, they sailed to this island. I can't tell if they're sailing or not. It looks like a sailboat, but like.

They are sailing. And so we have one thing I thought was kind of interesting. They are within visual range of like a major modern city. Yes. So yeah, the opening scene is them. The quality of the version I was watching was, the visual quality was extremely bad. And I have learned, and we've been corrected by listeners, that I need to blame this on like which version of the film, like the streaming service paid for.

Right.

But I, you know, Brad, is there like a remaster Blu-ray that is sharp and crisp?

I read there is a 4K scan out there on Blu-ray of this film.

It's not shot on video. I know I'm obsessed with finding the first movie shot on video, but it really looks like it.

Well, the credits sort of lead you to that at the beginning because that green looks so video and like modern clean. So maybe the credits were added on and cleaned up.

Okay, maybe. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway, it looks bad. How about that? The lighting is bad. The framing is bad. Folks are walking across this island. So they get off the boat. There's some innuendo between Alan and one of the women. So we immediately dislike him. He's set opposite Paul, who's the handsome guy. His relationship with everybody else is immediately antagonistic, and the height of 70s cool to be sarcastic about everything is on display here as well.

Do you think the film is trying to be clever, having this director be just a huge obnoxious jerk? He's like theater kid stereotype cranked to 11. Yeah.

I don't know because they're clearly making fun of him. He's dressed ridiculously. He clearly is dealing with things he can't handle and nobody likes him.

He's super pretentious and obnoxious about it.

He's such a nerd is what he is. He's like a nerd before nerds were okay, you know what I mean?

And yet, when someone threatens to leave, he then says something to bring them back that he has total control over them. Kind of like a cult, kind of like, I drink your blood.

Yes. It does feel like that. Yeah, it does. In fact, later, there's a couple of readings of like satanic scriptures and stuff and I almost pulled one, but they were really long and by that point, we were just kind of hoping the movie would be over. So I didn't want to drag things out.

Do you ever worry, we've pulled some clips of rituals. Do you ever worry that the ritual might work and one of our listeners will be near a cemetery or something while they're listening?

I look behind me to see what's going on when I play them.

Yeah. I worry, no, that's what I'm going for.

Okay. Well, I know you want to move on, John, but I want to make one last comment just about the quote comedy of this. The characters make a ton of meta jokes about the horror genre that suggests that the characters in this film have seen a lot of horror movies, and the viewers of this film are assumed to have seen a lot of horror movies, because they make lots of jokes that I usually associate with more modern horror films about, like, hey, it seems like we're in a horror movie, or hey, don't go out there by yourself, don't you know that there's probably a satanic killer back there. Like that sort of little meta gag. What did you think about that?

Well, Andy, it's so funny because all of the things you sort of introduced here and set up, I also noticed, and I noticed them to the extent that I asked Brad to pull a clip. So let's hear our clip number three, which is exactly that sort of thing.

Look, I shouldn't ask, but whatever happened to the other caretaker, he hanged himself. He shouldn't have asked. In this very room, if I'm not mistaken.

No, wait a minute, this is too much. You tell us the first caretaker murdered his family, the second caretaker hanged himself. I mean, it's like a great B-movie where the villain tries to drive his victim's man.

Right? I think that's what you're talking about, right?

That is, I put that line verbatim in my notes here to get to it. So, sorry to jump ahead if you want me to put it that way.

No, we are in sync here and yes. So, the answer to your question is absolutely. And, I don't know that it works, though, I will say, and we'll talk about it when we get there, when the movie takes a turn, it is quite shocking, actually.

Yeah, yeah. So, I'm going to harp on this just for one more quick moment.

No, do it.

I feel like we have had at least one other zombie movie that had the confidence that the audience had seen a bunch of zombie movies and could laugh at the genre. I want to say it was maybe Scared Stiff. Do you remember us calling this out?

No, I know. No, I don't. But I know it happened.

Okay.

For me, I don't look backward. I look forward to Return Of The Living Dead. That's the film that this seems to channel, or the Return Of The Living Dead seems to channel this film. Have you seen that one from the 80s, Andy?

Not recently, no.

Well, the tagline is that that are back from the grave and ready to party.

Yes.

Okay. Well, it is maybe a little interesting. They reference a lot of horror movie genres. They reference vampire movies. They reference serial killer movies. They reference the Manson family and evil hippie cults. The one genre they don't specifically reference is the zombie genre.

Yeah, because I don't think it exists yet. I think he's just ripping off Romero because it's low budget. I know we are constructing a history of the zombie genre or learning about one, but I don't think he knows that. I don't know. What do you think?

Yeah. I think you're right, Tom.

You know what? Let's go back because we did forget something, which is at the beginning, there are two zombie-like creatures who attack someone and it's supposed to be scary. That's actually how the movie starts, is trying to poke you with this scary bit. These two top-wearing zombie-looking things attack a caretaker, or not a caretaker, an undertaker or a grave digger, and you think he's dead. So I just wanted, we've completely forgotten about that. It does actually become important later, which is crazy.

Well, it has a jump scare that we have seen as recently as the last episode in Resident Evil 2026. This is the classic horror movie thing where you approach someone from behind and you don't see their face, and you call out to them or you reach out and you tap them on the shoulder and they turn around and it's something scary instead of what you expected.

Yeah, it's a classic.

Yep.

Yeah, absolutely. So to move on from that, so the plot of this movie is they're going to go to the house and then they're in this abandoned house. There's rats in the house. They're talking about what they're doing here. And Alan tells them they're going to do some black magic, right? So he's going to cast some spells. He's going to summon the dead. He's vague about all of it. Now, first of all, they have a chest full of stuff. And one of the things in the chest is a shotgun. And Andy, this is the exception that proves the rule or something, because we have Chekhov shotgun, which we never see again.

Oh, yes, you're right.

Right? Isn't that weird?

Yeah.

They kind of made a big deal out of it. They mentioned it more than once. Even before we see it, one of the characters is like, Well, thank God we've got a shotgun. Yeah.

Oh, interesting. I can't decide if that's clever or if they just forgot there is a shotgun.

Yes. Well, the other thing in the chest, and this is where we've got to get into Andy's grammar corner here.

Welcome to Andy's Grammar Corner.

Producer Brad, would you please play what he says about the book he pulls out of the chest?

This is a Grimoire, a book of ancient spells, descending in a direct line from the Druids and the old religion.

He says, Grimoire, and I was half expecting your head to just split open right there, Andy. Tell me what's wrong with Grimoire.

That was difficult to hear when I watched it, and it was difficult to hear when you just replayed it again.

I'm sorry.

First, I have to say, I need us to step out of Andy's grammar corner because this is a matter of pronunciation, which normally would fall into the category phonetics or phonology. So step with me over to Andy's phonology corner, and let's talk about the Grimoire.

I'll work on a theme for that later, Andy.

Yeah, please. Okay. Fantastic.

So you and I know this. I mean, you probably know it because you've read actual history books and stuff or the Bible or something.

I know it from D&D. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, this is one of many vocabulary words I picked up from Dungeons & Dragons books as a kid. So let's talk about the word grimoire, which is the correct pronunciation of grimoire. Do you think, first of all, a quick question, do you think that is a deliberate mispronunciation designed to show that he's a poser? Or does no one involved in this movie know how to pronounce that word?

I think nobody involved in the movie knows how to pronounce that word.

Okay, so.

Because they've, I mean, I guess, I feel like they make him so obnoxious, like that would be, I don't think they're smart enough to make a joke that's subtle, I guess is what I said.

I get the feeling, I disagree. I think there was an intentional slide at the character.

They thought of, there'll be some future Andy, we can crush his soul by saying grimoire.

All right, so Brad's gonna go to bat for this movie's wit and cleverness, fair enough. Well, anyway, we have to talk about the word grimoire. So John, do you know what a grimoire is?

It is a book of spells and presumably a book of evil spells.

Yes, sort of. So you guys, bear with me. I will circle around to the point here. What is exciting to an etymologist about the English word fragile?

I don't know.

Brad, do you have any guesses?

It's French?

You are, no, but you're on to something there actually. So if I told you the word fragile was something called, and it's part of what's called an etymological doublet. Do you know what that means? No. An etymological doublet occurs when two words in the same language descend from the exact same ancestral word or base root, but they came into the language from two different vectors. Oh, wow.

Okay.

So for example, English has the word fragile. So imagine whatever there's a Latin word, I think, I don't know, it might go beyond for back line. Whatever, there's a Latin word called fragilis. Yes. English takes it through the years and kind of morphs it and modifies it, and we get our modern word fragile. So cool. We have the word fragile in the English language and we happily use it. So, but French speakers took the Latin word fragilis and they did their own mangling of it the same way English speakers did. And in France, they start to call it frail. And so then English then absorbs the French word frail so that in English, we now have two words descended from the exact same root, but they came in from different vectors.

And they mean slightly different things even though they're similar.

They're not synonyms. They could be, but they don't need to be. So a synonym is two words that have the same meaning regardless of, but regardless of what their etymological history is. An etymological doublet is like the dark mirror universe version of a synonym. It's two words that are based on the same root word, but regardless of what their meaning is. So what I'm all leading up to this is the word grimoire is incredibly exciting to a language person. Okay. Grimoire is an etymological triplet.

What?

That means there are, it is one of three words used in the English language that are descended from the exact same historical root. Do you want to guess what they are? Hold on. Now remember, they could mean similar things or they could have totally different meanings.

Okay.

I'll give you a clue. The meanings are all at least somewhat related.

Is one of them armoire? That was just a wild guess.

Okay. Brad, do you have a guess?

Grammar.

Brad is correct. So grimoire comes from the same word as grammar, and they both come from the same root as glamour. So it all started with Greek. There's a word called grammaticae, and it moved into English as grammar. It moved into Scottish English as glamour, and then it moved into French as grimoire. English notoriously takes words from other languages, so we just grabbed them all, and now we have all those three lovely words.

Was the glamour version the meaning like a glamour that a fe would put on you?

Yes, like a spell or something like that, yeah.

So the actual definition of grimoire, because it comes from that grammar, in older English, a grammar was a book of like religious or scientific ideas. Because it was always written in Latin, it looked like incomprehensible, mysterious gibberish to the average person who couldn't read it. So it started to acquire this vibe of like mysterious or occult contents. Anyway, there's a bunch of other etymological triplets in English. We've spent too much time in the phonetics corner, but this got me really excited. I spent more time researching the etymology of grimoire than I did watching this movie. So, yeah.

You know what? So a couple of things here. That makes me so happy. You've just made my day. That I picked this. I picked that word. We weren't with this. It was not planned. I picked that because I knew you would be annoyed by the pronunciation and the gift you've given me of this grammatical entomological study of this word is amazing. It means we're really in sync because that's three for three.

Yes. Well, I should say we didn't coordinate this in advance. You said that you were going to have a grammar related item. And I just kind of guessed what it was going to be. That we could have been very embarrassed as if you meant something totally different by time.

No, but it totally worked out.

There's more, like you guys don't know how much I'm restraining myself right now. There's more, but I think we need to stop. Well, let me ask a question.

Do either of you have a grimoire in your house?

Not that I'm aware of.

I don't think I have something like an occult, a real occult type of tome. I have, you know, in the original sense of like a book of, you know, religious writing in Latin or something, I would have some of those around the house, but not a magical tome of occult secrets.

Unless the chick tracks are right and my D&D books actually contain actual spells, then no.

Well, my son has a book called The Bass Grimoire for bass players.

Oh, interesting.

And it's a music book full of frets and charts for the bass.

Oh, okay. And please tell me it's written in Latin.

It's red and it looks sort of Celtic and sort of spiritual on the cover. So it carries that kind of look about it.

That's amazing.

So at any rate, the grimoire in this movie is a pretty, you know, traditional looking grimoire. It's a big, thick tome that looks dusty and stuff like that. So John, do you want to pull us back into this movie? Let's pull up a little bit of work I did to try and get us away from talking about this movie.

I think the work was trying to get you back to the movie.

Yes. All right.

So anyway, let's talk about it a little bit. So they hang around this house for a long time. Then they say they're going to go to the graveyard and they're going to raise the dead. He's going to cast a spell. There's this big ceremony. They open a coffin and there's a body in there. They do this ceremony and then is it Val that is the doubter? She's kind of the hippie looking woman with the headscarf.

So that was one I couldn't figure out her name. So Val works.

Okay. So she mocks him and he convinces this really goofy guy, Jack, to get in the grave and pull the body out. Then what happens?

Well, the body in the coffin grabs Jack and there's lots of screaming that happens. Yes, but it's not quite what we think.

No, it was a practical joke. This whole thing, if you didn't dislike Alan enough, he has now said that this whole setup, that beginning part, he's made two of his friends dress up as like undead zombies and play tricks on his friends. Because when the zombie jumps out, then one of the women, Jane, runs away to be grabbed by the other one and we think the zombie apocalypse is on. But no, it was all just a joke. And so these are the two guys from the intro that I said a little while ago, along with The Undertaker, and Alan laughs his ass off and everybody's really mad. But what does poor Jack do, Andy? Because he keeps telling us over and over and over.

Was this supposed to be funny?

No, it was supposed to be funny and it's not.

Okay. Well, he keeps remarking that he has peed his pants.

In the same tone, like just occasionally, he just goes, I peed my pants. And then it's like a running with air quotes, running with air quotes joke.

He probably said it four or five times. Yes.

Yeah. You know, it's like the Letterman School. If it doesn't work the first time, just keep hitting them with it and eventually it'll work.

Can I just say, I did not see evidence that he had peed his pants. No. Because that was how bored I was. I thought, I'm going to investigate and try and see if he really did pee his pants. But it does not look like he did. I mean, from the external evidence.

Yeah. And what you do get when we zoom in closer on him for the first time, he's wearing a white t-shirt, but it's covered in pink hearts. So that was nice. So that happens. Now they did conduct a ritual using the dried blood of a baby. A dried blood of the unborn. And I forget how they say they got it. I remember Alan saying like, but don't worry and then something, something.

I don't want to do it. I know murder was committed or something like that.

But he doesn't say how they got the dried blood of the unborn.

So here's a question, John. So after the practical joke, Alan resumes with the ritual. What is Alan's end game here in this movie? So it's not just to prank them, although he has gone to great lengths to set up this elaborate prank.

Yeah.

What is he doing?

I'm not sure.

Does he want, does he think that his ritual might actually work?

I don't know because the next thing they do, and we don't have to jump too far ahead is they take the corpse that was in that grave and they bring it back to the house with them and sort of play with it. It's a dead thing that they're playing with. Like that's the next part of the movie.

The corpse is named Orville, by the way. Orville, yeah. I thought, you know, we have occasionally seen zombies, you know, with actual names. I always think of like Day Of The Dead as a zombie who is, I think, named Bub or something.

Yeah, maybe that was, yeah. That might have been Day Of The Dead.

Yeah, it was.

So I don't know because he thinks it's all a big joke. He brings a corpse back to the house and he's going to conduct a wedding. So I don't know if he's serious or not with anything in this movie.

So there is something, a nuance here. So he does his ritual and it's like all, you know, hail Satan, please raise the dead. And it doesn't work. And so did we say it was Val?

Val.

Val, Val, who seems like the coolest of the other ones. And also like 30. Yeah. She starts mocking him and she says, you're doing it, you like, you idiot, you're doing it wrong. I'll show you how it's done. And then she does her own ritual. She does her own like incantation. And I wasn't entirely, do you think, so I mean, the punchline of this movie is that the ritual worked and the dead come back to life. Do you think that it was Val's version that worked? Do you think that both of them quote worked?

I think it had to be both together because later they try to solve it by burning the dried blood, but that doesn't actually work.

So Val says to Alan, you're doing it wrong. You don't believe it's never gonna work if you do it. This is how you do it, meaning that she believes and she can make it happen.

That was my interpretation.

That makes a certain amount of sense. She definitely seems like she knows more about the occult than Alan does, or at least takes it more seriously.

When she does the summoning, which we heard earlier in the clip, it sounds more evil. When he does it, it sounds like it's on a stage. It's like a theater reading.

I actually really enjoyed her summoning because she's insulting Satan and saying, look, we are here to cut a deal, give me a break. It's so easy for you to give us to send a couple of zombies. We did our part, you loser, why don't you do yours? I really appreciated the antagonist. That felt like, I don't know, if you're a cinematic satanic cultist, that's the kind of ritual I feel like the Lord of Darkness would approve of, one where you're a jerk.

Yeah, I love that about it. I'm not sure, Andy, if it was both of them together. I feel like the material component, which is a term from D&D that I'm going to use, here was the dried blood that he does sprinkle on the grave of the first zombie to animate and sprinkles on all the other graves. So it could be a combination, it has to be a combination of the two.

Yeah, okay, anyway, that's a distraction though.

But I also think it's interesting that we now have back-to-back films where our young heroes think it'll be safe and fun to summon the dead, because Baron Blood did the same thing.

Yes, yeah, just messing around, except I don't know how funny Alan is being. I'm just not sure. Like, I think he really wanted to do it, but I think, I don't know, Val is the one who sort of challenges him, so.

If I wanted to give this movie more credit than I think it deserves, I think Alan is unsure what he wants when the ritual doesn't work. The prank made everyone angry at him rather, like, and so people are starting to get really mad at Alan. And then his ritual doesn't work, and then Val kind of mocks him with her own version of the ritual.

Yeah.

I think, I don't think Alan has a plan. Like, it's his idea to take the corpse back and do a fake wedding and stuff. I think he's just kind of flailing around trying to exert his dominance over the group at this point.

Yeah, I think so.

So, all right, carry on. All right.

So, and I'd like to get to that. So, so what happens next is they take the corpse back, they put it on the couch. So first of all, there's no way that doesn't smell so bad somebody could stand to be in the same room with it, much less next to it. So let's just be clear about that.

Do you want to describe what it looks like, John?

Yeah, so it's a very tall man. He's got his arms crossed across his chest as if recently buried with green skin, a very long face with green skin and a shock of white hair that sort of like blown back. So he almost looks like a zombie vampire or something. You know what I mean? Yeah. Wearing a suit, of course. So they take him back and there's this long extended sequence where they perform this wedding. There's a bunch of different stuff happening. I don't even know that we need to get into it. This is just weird to me.

Yeah, you can skip through most of this.

The only thing I want to say about it is, this behavior is so outside. Up until this point, Allen tricking his friends, playing an elaborate practical joke. I don't know about the summoning ceremony, but it was within the realm of somewhat realistic behavior. But I don't know anyone under any context who would do what they're doing here.

Agreed.

There's tempting fate, and then there's doing something that is like, horror movies are supposed to be transgressive. That's one of the reasons we like them. But what he's doing is something transgressive as a joke. I think this is supposed to be funny. It just doesn't work at all.

And nobody else thinks it's funny. It's incredibly bizarre behavior. That's why I think, if you think of him as sort of a cult leader type of character, isn't that a thing that cult leaders do? You constantly are pushing to see what you can make your followers do.

Yeah, I suppose so.

You're always trying to push the boundary and to test how far they're really going to go for you. And so he keeps escalating these bizarre demands to haul this, dig up this body, haul it over the cabin, go through this dumb... He makes one of the characters apologize to the corpse in this extended sequence for rebelling against Alan. I think, again, to give this movie a little credit, I think this movie is showing a cult personality attempting to just completely dominate his followers.

And he does have a super follower, right? Anya, who believes in the mystical stuff. She at one point lays down in the grave they've opened. At this point, she freaks out because they think, she thinks they've really upset the spirits and she's the one who can feel it, even though Orville hasn't done anything. And then the problem, the reason we're not going into this anymore is that they just stretch out the tension. They show these long shots of the grave and maybe a branch moving or something and then back and forth, it feels like forever before anything happens.

So at this point, we're probably an hour and 10 minutes into the movie at this point.

And nothing, it's been completely linear and almost nothing has happened. I mean, there's been some incident, right? They dug up a body, they played a joke, they took the body back to the house, but there's no plot here, right?

And to make it even worse, while they're at the house doing all this stuff, they cut back to the two at the graveyard who are trying to return the graves, they show graves behind them and they show the ground moving. And then that's it. Then five minutes later, they come back and they show the graves and another piece of ground is moving. So you know something's going to erupt, but they keep teasing it and stretching it out. And it's so boring. Just let them rip out of the ground.

Let's get to it. Exactly. So in any case, that does happen. The zombies burst out of the ground in the graveyard. They attack.

Well, hon, it's really cool when they burst out of the ground.

Yeah, let me stop, actually, because, all right, this is where the movie pivots. Do you want to say anything about the first 70% of this movie before we get into the part that people actually care about? Okay.

I think we've already said too much about it.

All right, so this part, I hate to say it, is actually kind of good.

Yeah.

It's really good.

Yeah, like a lot of, like we talked about this, I think it was in The Plague Of The Zombies, where there was the sort of first zombie hand. I can't remember what movie it was, the first zombie hand.

I think it was actually Plan 9 from Outer Space. That's right.

But there's a lot of great shots of like arms coming up, they grab an ankle, the horrors emerging from the ground. I feel like this is where they expended most of their effort on these practical effects on these zombie looking people. They're not all great, right? Like there's one woman who's looking up and she's got green on her face and there's a clear makeup line on her neck. It's not perfect, but clearly this is the thing they wanted to do. Show all these gross people, decaying people in torn clothes, bursting out of the earth and it's pretty great.

I like that there is a variety of zombies. Zombies dressed in grave clothes, there are zombies. I don't know, they were wearing a variety of different things. It felt like they had just expended most of their creative energy on the zombies.

Exactly. I was just so curious that the movie now became interesting. After we'd suffered for so long. But they attacked the two who are hanging around in the grave, including the Undertaker who for some reason, they never untied from the tree.

Yeah. What was the plan there, do you think?

I don't know. In any case, they killed the two but one of them escapes and almost makes it to the house. Then we get a scene of the zombies trying to break in that feels like the end of Night Of The Living Dead. I don't know another movie to compare it to. It seems like it's just a lift.

It is straight out of Night Of The Living Dead.

They were clearly reacting to that film.

Yes, 100%. We got to remember, it's been a long time since we talked about Night Of The Living Dead, but it's only four years ago at this point. It was playing midnight shows for years. For all we know, he just saw it a year or a month before he made this movie.

What are the specific beats, John, that are lifted straight from Night Of The Living Dead?

Well, at one point, the zombies are trying to break in and they try to hammer a door into place.

Yes.

Then there's someone leaning against an opening and a zombie arm bursts through and tries to grab them. What are some others? Were there others that you noticed?

Well, it's just the general scene is paced almost exactly like Night Of The Living Dead. I mean, so the zombies surround the house. They're trying to bang their way in clumsily but insistently. You have the frantic trying to nail boards across windows, trying to hold doors shut while other people try to nail them closed, things like that. It's all exactly, it's just a less good version of Night Of The Living Dead.

Yeah, and this becomes interesting because they do try to do things. They look in the grimoire to find out how to reverse it, and it says, well, if you touch fire to the dried blood, they'll go away, but that's later. The first thing they try is they're going to distract them and Paul, who's like the jock, is going to run out and make it to the boat to go get help. That doesn't work at all. Paul makes it like 10 feet and then another zombie gets him.

I like that Alan, the director, is utterly useless throughout this whole sequence. He's been bossing everyone around the whole movie, and as soon as the real crisis is, it's other people making the plans while he stands there like an idiot.

Yes. And so then the next thing they try is they try to burn the blood, as instructed by the spell. And it seems like the zombies go away, so they venture out.

Can we back up to Paul? Because when they show Paul and he's been taken down, it's extremely bloody. Like there's a zombie leaning over him, blood dripping down her mouth, she's been eating him, his stomach is ripped open. You don't see guts, but you see blood everywhere. It's pretty gory.

Yeah. And this movie is PG according to the poster. So what do I know? Yeah. This and up. So anyway, so yeah, Paul's dead. So they go out, the zombies seem to have disappeared. However, that was just a ruse. The zombies will come running back at them. Are these fast moving zombies? I mean, we'll discuss this later, but I feel like these are not slow zombies.

I think these are normal human speed zombies.

Normal human speed zombies. Okay.

I don't think they could sprint after you, but they could move after you at a good brisk pace.

Yes. So this is actually, I mean, it's not great, but compared to what we've been sitting through, it's actually pretty good. Yeah.

If this had been the whole movie, I would have better thoughts about this film.

Yeah, exactly. So a bunch more of them get killed. But at the end, there's two left. There's Alan and there's Anya, who is like his super fan who believes in the mystic stuff. They're backing up a staircase and Alan just throws Anya into the middle of the zombies to escape. He goes up into the upper bedroom and he locks himself in. But who did he forget he put up there, Andy?

He forgot the one zombie who we haven't seen rise yet, and that is Orville.

Looking menacing.

Looking menacing, he approaches. There's a lot of trippy, slow motion stuff in this scene as Orville grabs Alan and zombies burst in. I don't think we see anything real gory with Alan, but he's clearly pulled in and killed by the zombies.

Having Orville seated on the bed with his arms crossed is pretty effective. When he gets up to get Alan, it works. They've given us in the last 20 minutes of this film, stuff that it works. Maybe it's just, again, Stockholm syndrome. We've been trapped in this movie for an hour. But I don't know. Well, we'll get to it when we get to those questions.

I think it's really good. I think the last 20 minutes or 30 minutes are really good.

Yeah.

No disagreement. I had the thought, I don't think this rises quite to the level of we need to start asking about it like it's an element of the zombie genre. But I do love a good villain that pitches, that sacrifices other survivors for his own benefit. And this is like a classic, I'm gonna pitch you at them to buy me a few seconds to get away. That's just such a delicious villain move. And I do like it when it shows up in horror movies.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, Paul Reiser in Aliens is a favorite from our youth that we were like, you scumbag.

Yeah, exactly.

So I don't have anything else to say about the movie. Alan dies, everyone's dead, the movie's over.

Yeah, the last shot is of the zombies swarming the boat.

Oh, that's right, the zombies get on the boat.

I couldn't tell if we were supposed to believe that the zombies might be able to use the boat and, for instance, boat over to the city that we can see in the background. What do you guys think?

I think so.

From what I could see, they were working the boat. They were doing what's needed to get the boat in motion, so they knew what to do. They were getting to the big city.

Yeah. It was going to happen. And my difficulty was in telling what was happening on the screen because it was so poorly lit. It was like ambiguous. Yeah. It was shot from a distance. It was an ambiguous creative choice. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Anything else before we sort of get to our wrap up here?

No, I think we should just jump right on in.

All right. Let's do it.

All right. John, let's go through our traditional questions to place Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things in the Zombie Family Tree.

All right.

In Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, is there a hero party?

Yes. It's the group of actors in Alan. The hero is a strong word for this group, but there's a group of survivors. They're a party. They're a walking party. They're trying to have fun. How about that?

Do you detect, do these feel like, do these individual survivors, do they feel like they embody familiar zombie hero party archetypes or not really?

I feel like we're still more in the cultural archetypes of the 70s. Okay. We are in zombie archetypes. That's my take on it, but I don't know. What do you think? I don't think we're there yet.

I don't think that these fit slot real neatly into archetypes. They made some effort to differentiate a couple of them, like Anya with her spooky true believer, I always eyes wide open demeanor. But nobody else just seems to have enough of a personality to.

Yeah. There's no noble one who's going to sacrifice himself. Really, I mean, I guess kind of Paul, but everybody's kind of flat and awful in the same way. Like in Dawn Of The Dead, or Zack Snyder's Dawn Of The Dead, we had the real jerk and then we had the people who get it, and then the honest, honorable guy like Vick Reims.

The person that can't deal with it.

The person that can't deal with it, yeah. None of those are really here. There's other archetypes, but I think they're more 70s related. Anya is like a 70s mystic. She's not a zombie movie character yet.

How does the party do? What's the mortality rate?

The mortality rate is 100%. They all die, killed by zombies.

Can we do a quick recap? What other movies have we seen that had 100% total party kill? Do you remember Last Man On Earth? Maybe.

Last Man On Earth.

Night Of The Living Dead.

Night Of The Living Dead. And...

Dr. Satan and The Black Magic.

Is that true?

Yeah, well, Dr. Satan and...

That's true. There's the explosion at the end. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. All right. So none of them survived.

None of them survived. Now, we were talking about this, yes, last time, Andy, about Resident Evil. Here it is right here. Like I said, doesn't it seem like movies are more nihilistic now? And the answer, I guess, is no. Because it's not like everybody's dead, like nobody had a chance, you know what I mean? And I wasn't expecting it this early, even though it was in Night Of The Living Dead.

Everybody dying is a little brutal because some of these characters are pretty sympathetic to you, believe it or not. Like we just complained about how dumb they all were. But like that Anya character is trying so hard to get them to stop making fun of the corpses and to take it more seriously. Yeah, you feel bad for her. And there's like Terry, I think, has killed the yellow shirt.

The young woman in the yellow shirt.

Yeah, I mean, some of these and, you know, green shirt Paul, he seems like a nice guy. Yeah. You know, so there's a little bit of, you know, I don't think this movie feels like there's a lot of bite, but there's a little bit of like, oh, it's too bad that the, you know, everyone died, I guess. Okay, I'm sorry. Where were we? Okay, John, let's talk about what kind of strain of zombie are we dealing with here?

So the strain of zombie. So these are interesting. They are, so they look just like a standard zombie horde, right? That we would see in a zombie movie, but they're clearly magical. Their origin is accidental magic. It's not a curse. It's just a magical spell that somebody accidentally invokes. It causes that, or semi-intentionally invokes. We're not quite sure.

But the summoning spell was designed to do what it did.

Yes, it was, but it's not like a virus or something like that. It's pretty clearly magic, just without hands down.

Yep. We already established they are sort of regular human speed. How are zombies destroyed or killed?

None of them get killed in this movie, so I don't know that we know. They seem to be indestructible.

We don't have much data. They don't really attempt to kill them. They don't make any serious attempts to kill them, so we don't know what would or wouldn't work.

There's a scene when the bulk of the group is going out the front door to distract the zombies so Paul can go out the back. Terry has a flashlight, and she's monotically flashing all the zombies in the eyes. I'm looking to see, oh, maybe it works, and it doesn't do anything.

It doesn't do anything.

But she's acting like it's important.

By the way, that flashlight she has, is that like an old type of flashlight? It's huge. It's like a flashlight, and there's something the size of a car battery under it. Is that what flashlights used in the 70s were like?

I don't know, but I feel like I've seen that in a movie before, but like in a Second World War movie, not in a...

Yeah, I guess maybe if they brought it in from their boat, or it's like a heavy duty flashlight, maybe they would have had it on their boat. Okay, anyway, let's see. Is there a zombie horde?

There is a zombie horde.

Yeah. Yep.

Straight out of the graveyard.

It doesn't, like 20 plus.

Yeah, there's a lot of zombies. Yeah, a surprising amount given the whole movie we've been hanging out with like seven people, and then all of a sudden, there's like 20 zombies.

Is the world threatened by the zombies?

I think it suggests that at the end, that's headed, but I have a question about that. So the threat, the threat is the zombies themselves, because the one thing we don't see in the movie is contagion, and I know we haven't gotten to that question yet. So the threat is there, but not like in other movies. So yeah.

Yes. All right. So thinking about all that, is there anything new here? Are there any new strains of zombie that we need to add to our growing list of zombie strains?

I'd like to pitch something that seems new, but it might have happened before. And let me say this. So it is magic, right? They're summoned, but there's not one mention of voodoo or Haitian tradition or anything like that. It's just black magic. Zombies risen from the dead, completely divorced from any reference to traditional cultural zombie origins, you know what I mean? I don't know that that's new, but it felt kind of different. I was surprised that there was no reference to voodoo or something like that, you know what I mean?

Yeah, no, I think that's a good point. All right, can zombies, I should have asked this earlier, can they return to being human?

I don't think so. They're all dead. They're super dead.

All right, John, let's move on to the four pillars of the zombie film genre that you identified way back at the beginning of this podcast. John, does this movie feature an apocalypse?

Maybe, it suggests that the zombies are going to get to the city, but that doesn't feel like an apocalypse.

I'll say no. Yeah, there's no apocalypse in the movie.

Right, right.

There's an apocalypse of bad jokes.

Yes.

The movie is apocalyptic, yes, but not in the way intended. All right, we already established there is no contagion in this movie.

Right, which is weird.

It is. Are there tough moral choices?

No, I don't think so. I mean...

Alan tossing Anya into the...

I was going to say, that's the one. Alan tosses Anya.

Into the zombie so he can get away.

There is just a little bit. So tough moral choices in a zombie movie isn't always like, should I sacrifice this person to buy us time? No. Sometimes it is people just not knowing and disagreeing strongly about the best course of action. And there are tiny hints of that. I mean, Night Of The Living Dead does this beautifully, as there's very different arguments for what they should do in Night Of The Living Dead. And the tension is that what makes those a tough decision is that it's not clear who's correct. There are little hints of that as they try and brainstorm like how they're going to get out of this situation, but not enough time is spent to make those feel like full-fledged moral decisions.

Yeah, I agree.

Sorry, I didn't mean to butt in and answer the question.

No, you're right.

I think that one was a bit of a stretch.

And does this have loved ones turning against you?

It does not, because if you don't have contagion and the people who were just killed rising, then you can't have them turning against you. Exactly. So what I'd like to point out here is, what's interesting is it really doesn't do any of the pillars super well or at all. However, I think we all recognize this last segment as a zombie movie, right?

Yes. Yeah, absolutely.

So anyway.

All right. So John, you, we usually pivot here and you ask me a couple of questions about the seventies.

Yes. And let us do that because certainly I think you're going to have a lot to chew on here. Does this movie evoke a terror of crime, lawlessness and anarchy?

I think that it does. The kids in this movie themselves make a lot of reference to like scary stuff that's happening. And you hear about that hippie cult that, you know what I mean? There's a lot of that stuff that sort of suggests that like, yeah, all sorts of scary stuff is happening. These kids themselves are, you know, they're breaking the law. They are transgressing social norms with what they're doing on this island, right? And they are, in fact, kind of being the creepy, hippie, Satanist law breakers, you know, that people like to imagine were lurking everywhere in the 70s. So I'm going to say, you know, a modest yes to this answer. Do you agree?

I do. And after a few more questions, I want to dig into what you just said a little bit more, but does it push the boundaries of onscreen violence or sexuality?

Not really. Yes, there are a couple of shots with a lot of blood, but there's nothing like upsettingly gory. There's not much of what I would actually call gore in this movie. In fact, I don't think there's like any real gore. So it's not really terribly graphically violent at all. And there's no, like there's some uncomfortable bantering about sex towards the beginning, but for the most part, it's pretty tame as far as that goes. So I'm going to say no, unless you want to disagree and...

No, I agree.

Okay.

Does it evoke a divide between new and old generations?

It does. And it's right there in the title of this movie. The moralistic, scolding tone of this movie's title, Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. The whole theme of this movie is, your parents wouldn't have been in this situation because they took important stuff seriously unlike you. So I think that there is a strong element of that in this movie. What do you think?

So this is yet another movie that features hippies, that it's clearly a, look how stupid hippies are movie, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I think so, which show lack of trusted institutions and authority figures. I think that we answered that kind of, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, let me expand on this a little bit. Let me take a couple of these questions and expand on it. This is, this movie is kind of what we are, what people are talking about when they say that horror and this generation of horror is a fundamentally kind of conservative medium or storytelling genre. And it's because however transgressive or shocking, or norms or boundaries pushing the actual content on the screen might be, and this film doesn't have much of that. Maybe it would have been shocking to hear, you know, like the prayers to Satan, I don't know. But you know, the ultimate message of this and other movies is, you should listen to your parents, right? And you know, when you think like the Exorcist, which is when does the Exorcist come out? Is that 75?

74.

Okay. So it's coming out real soon after this movie. You know, that's like the the urtext of the conservative horror film, right? Right. 73. So it's right around the corner. You know, that's a movie that has, if you look at like the reactions to the Exorcist, it is interesting to see among kind of conservative elements of culture, there were quite different reactions. So your sort of evangelical Christian reaction was to condemn it because of the Exorcist, because of all the shocking stuff that happens on screen. So Billy Graham, I think, famously said something like, the devil is in every frame or every scene of this movie. But the Catholic Church had also a very conservative block, generally speaking, I'm oversimplifying, but not known for being like a hyper progressive segment of American society. Had a more nuanced take on the Exorcist. And that is because they understood that the message of the film was kind of reinforcing a cultural message that they thought was important, which was that evil is real and you are helpless to deal with it without the help of God, basically.

Yes.

And this movie is a very pale version of that. But I felt that that sort of paternalistic scolding messaging throughout the whole thing. I would love it if you disagreed or thought I was on the wrong take there.

What do you think about all that? I hate to tell you, but I think you've nailed it. The only reason there's not more distrust in authority figures is there's none present.

Right. Exactly.

But I think that's the point.

Yeah.

Right. Like you're saying, if they had listened to authority figures, it's implied that these fools are off doing foolish things.

Yeah. The only authority figure is the caretaker and they tied him to a tree early in the movie.

Yeah.

Absolutely. All right. Go ahead then. Move on.

Yeah. Evoke anxieties about the Vietnam War?

I don't think so. No. Not so much.

Yeah. How about anxieties about sexuality, reproduction and bodily autonomy?

I don't think so. There's like a really awkward exchange about sex at the beginning, and there's like the tiniest hint of abortion and the use of unborn infant blood or whatever. I don't know if that was intended to be a shocking thing or not, but I'm going to say generally no on this one. Alan's kind of dominance over his quasi-followers, there is sort of a sexual undertone to that, I think, of the way that in particular he demeans, is it Terry, by forcing her to apologize at length, grovel before the corpse and stuff? But I think my answer to this, despite all that babbling, is not really. What do you think?

Yeah, not really. Economic anxiety and consumerism gone amok?

No, except that repeatedly through the film, Alan does basically threaten to fire the other characters from, and that is such a dire threat that they go along with his outrageously stupid stuff. So I guess that would have been a pretty scary threat. So kind of, but not really.

And does this evoke tensions between urban and rural life?

No, but, I keep saying but. No, but, so I am intrigued at the idea that this takes place like 500 feet from a big city.

But is rural in its presentation.

Yeah, there is this slight sense of like, all you have to do, once you just like leave the boundaries of the city, you're in like Satan land.

Yeah, you might as well be in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for all. Exactly.

So, you know, do I think that's a real strong theme of this movie? I do not. However, it's there if you squint.

It is there, yeah.

Okay.

All right, Andy, back to you.

Yeah. All right, John, we always close with the same traditional questions. John, would you and I survive in the zombie world of Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things?

This is one of those things where, like, I want to say I would survive because I wouldn't get mixed up with this moron. But assuming I got mixed up with this moron, then I'd die like everybody else.

John, you were in a theater group.

I was in a theater group. You're right. Were you the leader? No, I don't think so.

Could you relate to Alan, John? Is that what I'm hearing? No, no, no. I had answered the same way. Yeah, we do, it is a little, to answer this question, we can't always just say we'd be too smart to get involved in this situation. However, this movie does involve the characters, like, continually choosing to stick with Alan instead of doing the obvious correct thing, which is to leave. And so I would have made it like halfway through these shenanigans. And then I would have said, you know, I'm gonna go wait on the boat for you guys to finish up this EDSC.

Exactly.

Then I would have died because everyone died anyway, so. Yeah. Okay, John, is this a zombie movie or a movie with zombies?

It's a zombie movie, shockingly, surprisingly.

And it is almost, the last 25 minutes are almost a good zombie movie.

Almost, yeah.

All right, John, do you recommend this movie first to, you know, fans of good movies in general? And secondly, do you think this movie should be watched by the zombie-loving listeners of this podcast?

Andy, way to lead him with your question, to fans of good movies, should he watch this?

Yeah, I'm sorry. I should have tried to play it more straight.

I thought because I had heard of this movie, it was going to be sort of a cultural artifact that I might have to recommend anyway, but no, I'm not going to recommend it to a general audience. So, Zombie fans, maybe. I mean, you have to watch the whole thing to get there, and maybe that's too much. But after this pivot, it is interesting. It's a rip-off of Night Of The Living Dead, but it also has its own things going on. I'm going to land on maybe. Sorry.

No, I think that's mine too. As for recommending to a general audience, it's just too boring. It's just too boring. It's just punishingly dull until the last part. But yeah, I'll give it a quasi-recommendation to Zombie fans. You could just watch the last 20 minutes. Maybe you would miss out on a little bit from the build-up, but I don't think so. But don't really go watch it. Rewatch Night Of The Living Dead is kind of, I guess.

But it is interesting to see the effects of Night Of The Living Dead finally showing up in American films.

It is, yes. Very clear here. All right, Andy. The most important question we ask, Andy, should your mom watch this movie?

My mom should not watch this movie. I think my mom wouldn't enjoy all the Satan-summoning stuff. And I think the character of Alan is probably designed in a lab to be the least appealing sort of character for people of a certain generation. And I think that includes my mom. So mom, give this one a pass.

All right. Well, what remains, Andy?

What remains is the scariest part of the episode, John. Even scarier than all of that Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things stuff. Because we're about to learn what zombie movie Brad is going to make us or invite us to watch next.

All right.

Well, we're staying in 1972. And I don't know if you meant to do this, Andy, but you kind of...

I didn't mean to do whatever it is you're talking about.

Well, early in this episode, you mentioned prisoners rising from the dead. So let me give you the trailer for our next film, and then I'll show you the poster.

Garden of the Dead.

Yes. That is a long screen.

Yeah. Oh my, okay. Death was the only living thing. What?

Whoa.

Okay.

Garden of the Dead. Also rated PG. What is happening?

But John, most importantly, this one is filmed in dead color.

All right. Can I say that this poster is actually kind of effective? It is. It's a painting and it shows some gravestones and then what looked like zombies carrying tools, presumably to dig their own gravestones or to harvest the Garden of the Dead. And then it has this really sort of freaky looking zombie sort of in the top. I don't know. This poster, it's corny. It's 70s, but it works.

It promises, if this is snow, it promises a different setting than we have seen in any zombie movie to date. So maybe this isn't snow and we're just looking at a bad poster. And we all know posters have lied just shamelessly to us in the past.

Posters are liars, yes. But I want to believe.

Garden of the Dead.

All right. Well, hey, if you haven't given us a rating in the podcast app or in Spotify or subscribe to our podcast yet, please do that. It really helps us out. Our audience is growing, but we'd like to grow up more. We love doing this and we'd like to share it with more people. So please, if you get a chance or you know what's better, tell your friends. So in any case, thanks everybody for listening. We will see you next time for Garden of the Dead. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed our podcast, please take a moment to rate us in your podcast app of choice. Tell a friend, follow us on Instagram at ZombieStrains. All of this helps like-minded people find the show. See you next time.