Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast where we watch all the zombie movies in chronological order. This week, we jump to the 1960s with our first color zombie film, The Dead One.

You know, I've seen people act like that in pictures.

What do they call them, zombies or something?

Zombie. What's a zombie?

Just what is a zombie?

Well, a zombie? There's Mr. Bill is. The Living Dead. They are the living dead. It's an army of zombies. Because a zombie has no will of his own.

What is wrong, what is wrong?

Hey guys, hey everybody, I'm John.

I'm Andy.

I'm Brad.

Hi producer Brad. Hi Andy. Wow, so this was quite a movie. Anybody feel a little culture shock, jumping from the 50s to the 60s quite so suddenly, besides me?

The jump from 59 to 61 does feel like it was about a decade worth of jump psych, doesn't it?

I don't know if it's a color film or sort of the content of the movie or what, but yes, it feels like a big move.

Things are changing fast, I'll say that.

Yes. Interesting movie, it's called The Dead One. It has a subtitle or an alternate title, Blood of the Zombie. It's in Eastman color and we're back to Voodoo Rituals. For the first time, when was the last time we had a Voodoo Ritual in our zombie movie? I can't even remember.

The Voodoo Rituals but with a twist that we're going to get into, a geographical twist.

Yes, for sure, which is actually really interesting in my opinion. Just real quick, anybody reading any cinema or zombie-related stuff?

I'm still making my way through Romero's The Living Dead novel published posthumously.

Really? Interesting. I have abandoned. Last time, I think I said I was reading Countdown 1960, which is about the 1960 election. I DNF'd it. I did not finish. It was by Chris Wallace and I didn't realize it was the Chris Wallace, who's the son of Mike Wallace, who's the Fox commentator. It was so far-leaning. I'm like, why are you spending all this? I mean, I know JFK was a serial adulterer, but that seems to be all you're talking about.

Yes, it all makes sense, doesn't it?

It all makes sense now. I decided not to finish that one. However, I picked up George A. Romero interviews edited by Tony Williams. It looks like an academic publication. It looks really interesting though, and I've already read the first two interviews, which were about Night of the Living Dead, and they were fascinating. He wasn't George Romero yet. He says things like, well, there were bits I wasn't pleased with. It's just surprising how frank and unpolished he is. It's really cool.

That sounds great, actually. I'd love to read that, actually.

Yeah. Do you want to tell Brad the George Romero fact? We're not talking about Night of the Living Dead today, but as we get closer, I keep finding these factors. Do you want to tell Brad the factoid we heard about George Romero? His first paying job?

Yeah. We heard, and this is sourced from the Internet.

Yeah. I did do a follow-up search and heard that it was true.

But apparently, his first paying film job was for Mr. Rogers, filming some Mr. Rogers stuff.

That's awesome.

He figured he filmed some independent segments like one about, I think, a tonsillectomy. That was the first paying job. In a weird way, I mean, not in a weird way, in a geographical way, it makes sense. They're both from Pittsburgh and they were filmed in Pittsburgh.

Well, that's great. For trigger warnings, I usually talk about stuff to be aware of while listening to our discussion of this movie, or should you choose, God help you, to go watch this movie. But-

Tip the hand, Andy. Tip the hand.

Right. There's not a whole lot here. This is a movie that is more salacious than the movies we've seen in the 50s by a good mark, although it's nothing that a modern viewer would find particularly shocking.

Correct.

We are bringing back the topic of Haitian voodoo and slavery and the legacy of slavery. This movie doesn't deal with those topics in depth or nuance, but those are things that this movie touches on, and I'm sure they're going to come up in our conversation. That said, nothing really to worry about while listening to this episode.

What is strange is we were complaining about how whitewashed the 1950s are, and here we are in the 1960s. This movie is filled with people of color, but it's right back to being plantation workers with no real agency. It's like, well, I guess we did move forward in the last couple of decades.

One of these days we're going to hit a movie that gets it right. I don't know when it will be, but I'm excited about it.

It might be Night of the Living Dead, I'm telling you.

It could be. Yes. All right.

All right. Ready for little details on the movie?

We are so ready for that, Brad. Yes.

How many of the details involve pornography?

Well, there isn't a whole lot out there about the people involved in this film, or the film itself. It was lost for a long time. So this will be very brief. The Dead One, also known as Blood of the Zombie, was released on January 13th, 1961, the same month as Walt Disney's 101 Dalmatians.

So how do you feel, by the way, you said this was lost for a while, how do you feel when you find a lost-to-time film and it turns out to be The Dead One? I mean, it's kind of a, I don't know, I feel like there'd be an anti-climax.

You know, on Wikipedia, it said it was lost, and this is quoting a book, I think it's Ultimate Zombie Guide, that it was lost and then found and went straight to DVD. So whoever found it, I guess, was able to put it on DVD and make some money. So in that sense, I'm sure they were happy.

Okay, well good for them.

It is considered a regional film, which means it was made outside of Hollywood and independent of the Hollywood studio system. It was filmed in New Orleans with probably a local crew, and it appears to be a local cast for the most part. And according to Wikipedia, The Dead Ones had a short run at the Southern Drive-Ins before it disappeared.

You say that about, again, what's the term you use for the kind of film?

Regional.

Regional film. Night of the Living Dead is also a regional film. Sorry, I'm gonna keep hitting this point that independent film is important to us.

Well, in fact, when this movie starts, the logo is independent. It was II, can you remember the second I? So independent, you see that the first thing when the film starts. And as you mentioned, John, this is one of our first film, or our first film in color. And there are two that were made around the same time that came out within a few months of each other in color. The other one we will discuss at the end of this episode.

Oh, okay.

So Barry, I'm going to pronounce his name as Mahon. It's M-A-H-O-N. He wrote, directed and produced The Dead One. He was a World War II fighter pilot with five aerial victories, earning him the title of ace. He was an American volunteer in the RAF, and he was shot down and captured by the Germans. He was imprisoned at Stalag Luft III. The POW camp, or the Great Escape, took place, and he was one of the people who helped dig the tunnels. Now, he escaped before the Great Escape. He was recaptured. He escaped a second time. It was recaptured, and he was finally liberated by Patton's Army in 1945.

You know what? All is forgiven. This guy is an American hero.

Yeah, he is an American hero. Yeah, we'll see about how that had inspired him toward a sort of private Ryan-like angelic existence post the Second World War. Please continue, Brad.

I should say that all this information came from what I thought was the New York Times obituary, but then I noticed it says paid death notice, and it turns out that the New York Times will write obituaries, but companies and people can also pay newspapers to publish a notice. So this came from, I would assume, the family. So this is the family story of him. But Wikipedia does list him as an ace, so that part is true, and it does list him as being captured.

All right. It's not some Joe McCarthy thing where he just made up his own handle, tail gunner Joe.

I don't know, guys, I'm suddenly very skeptical. I just got to tell you.

I'm just saying that the source, I would assume it's mostly true.

It's roughly true. How about that?

Yeah. I mean, the ace part, they keep track of that, the military. That would be accurate. They do. Being part of The Great Escape, that's where I question. After the war, he was Aero Flynn's personal pilot. This is Aero Flynn, the movie star. So this is in the 50s, and this is sort of at the end of his career. He became Aero Flynn's manager, and then he produced some films for Aero Flynn, including one with Gina Lalla-Brigida.

Nice.

He then became a prolific, low-budget producer and director, and he directed 75 movies and shorts between 1960 and 1972.

Oh. And that quality really shows through.

Yeah, he has a style.

Would you like to read us the name of some of the other films?

Yeah, his early films were low-budget movies with titles like White Slavery in 1956, and my favorite, Rocket Attack USA. It almost sounds like a chant, like at a stadium. And that's from 1960.

I mean, that's got to go on our podcast where we just do movies based on how good their titles are, right?

Yeah.

I think that podcast might be 80% this guy's movies, right?

Yeah. And when I was googling his name, it came up a website was selling his artwork, Mahon's artwork. And I go, wow, he was an artist. And it turns out it was just a poster for Rocket Attack USA that he is credited as making. Then he became more exploitative with his films, and the titles become Bunny Yeager's Nude Camera, Nudes on Tiger Reef. Here's another one for your movie title podcast, International Smorgasbord, Confessions of a Bad Girl.

You said your titles podcast. I think you meant our titles podcast.

You're in this with us, Brad. There's no getting out.

I will leave you in, producer Brad.

I'll just read the titles. Confessions of a Bad Girl, Prostitutes Protective Society, A Good Time with a Bad Girl, and Trailer Camp Sex Ring.

You're leaving out the Diary of Knockers McCalla.

I'm leaving out a lot of titles, John. I had to stop somewhere.

Okay. So the last two listed are, and I quote, The Wonderful Land of Oz, and Santa and the Ice Cream.

Right. So-

What's going on here?

His death notice says he was prolific in children's entertainment, and I can only see four or five. At the end of the 60s, he started to do children's stuff and it's the same quality of film as what we saw. He did The Wonderful Land of Oz, Thumbelina, Jack and the Beanstalk and Santa's Christmas Elf. And when I searched for Santa's Christmas Elf, there's reviews saying this is a horror for children to watch. And it might be because the film has aged, but it's literally photos of what- you imagine like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, it's that stop motion puppetry.

Yeah.

The photos look like that, but then you realize all it is is photos, nothing moves. And it's really- and then the other ones are very cheap, they look like they're in a TV set, so I'm sure they were done cheaply for TV, but they were not of high quality.

Guys, I think this is my favorite director that we've encountered so far in this podcast.

But here's the mystery. His last title was 1971. He has something in 72, but it's something repurposed that he did before. And then there are no film credits after that. He was about 51 at that time. He didn't die until 1999.

Oh, wow.

So there's like 28 years where there's no output from him. Maybe he had a company and he had no credits on films. I don't know. I couldn't find anything.

Maybe he worked at a gas station. Like, who knows?

Sending people to Bela Lugosi's house. Go that way now.

That might be appropriate.

Okay, that's incredible.

Most of the cast, this was the only film they acted in. John McKay plays John Carlton. He has four credits. Three of them are Barry Mahon films and one episode of a TV show. Linda Ormond plays Monica. This is her only film. Monica Davis plays Monica, the villain of the movie. She has the most acting experience of any in the cast with 13 films. And her last credit is an uncredited part in The Swap, an early Robert De Niro film.

You know what else she has? Crazy eyes. Like, that's her secret weapon. She's, nobody here is a great actor, but she's got the crazy, possessed like stare and screaming down. Like, I hope we have a clip of that because that actually is good.

That is what I have for this movie. I hope it's enough because there isn't much out there.

I'm sad to hear there isn't some story of a future trailblazer, some, you know.

Yeah.

The first woman sound engineer to be allowed into the...

Well, The Death Notice also says that Barry Mahon was one of the first people to use computers in production for scheduling and budgeting. So what that means, I don't know. They didn't list a program or a company or any details. But if he... Maybe that's what he did after the films. I don't know. After 72?

I don't feel like computers in 1972 could help you with your budget.

Yeah. The CGI in this one was a little disappointing.

Well, do you want me to throw in a little historical context here?

Yeah. John, what was happening in the world of 1961 when this movie hit theaters?

Well, that's crazy because everything was happening in 1961. Andy and I are contemplating doing a 60s episode. I'm not going to do an entire shakedown of 1960s, but we've just come out of the 1960 election, which is considered by many to be the first modern election. It's called the TV election. A lot of reasons for this. There was a debate that was on TV that was watched by most of the country. And our first president, who was like, I mean, he was handsome and charming. It's also the first election where women voted very independently and came to the polls in record numbers because it was John F. Kennedy versus Richard Nixon. And they came out for John F. Kennedy in a huge way, in a way that we've never seen women come out and vote before. He's inaugurated in January of 1961. The Beatles performed for the first time at the Cavern Club. Yeah. And you actually hit me with a good one right before we recorded, Andy. So New Orleans, where this film is set, had finally started to undergo a little regulation. It had sort of been a little bit of a, the Wild West isn't the right word, but gambling, prostitution, the whole thing. It was a sort of unregulated, hedonistic fun park, basically. And it has started to sort of settle down. So even though it's very tame in this movie, I think we're supposed to feel like their experience in New Orleans is one of, incredible, salacious, what's the word I'm looking for, like deviation, because they go to strip clubs and jazz clubs, and though it all seems tame to us, it's supposed to be, I think, a little shocking in this movie. Yeah, absolutely. So that's the broad context. The 60s are starting, the 60s remain a lot of what we think about America is defined in this decade, and we'll do more of it as we go because there's so many movies in this decade, but we're just getting started here. There's still a sense of optimism about politics and politicians in the world in 1961. Just in time to say goodbye to it in the next few years. Did I miss anything big there, Andy?

No. I'm curious if you could share for our listeners, maybe Brad. Is the 60s a decade of a lot of zombie movies, or is it going to be another 1950s where we have maybe one a year?

Well, I think in 61, we have at least 405. Let me pull up my sheet. We have at least, I think, 20. Well, some of those we're doing flash forwards.

Yeah, not counting the flash forwards, I count 22.

I mean, that seems like a lot compared to the 50s, so.

Yeah, for sure.

It's starting to pick up. There's more of this independent film that's regional, and as we'll see in the mid 60s, some high-profile places will be featuring zombies.

All right. I'm looking forward to it.

Well, Andy, you're driving today. What do you want to?

I am driving today. Shall I start out with a 60-second overview of this film?

I think we need it.

All right. Yes, it's a terribly complex plot. But so in The Dead One, we follow John and Linda, a pair of newlyweds. We see the movie opens as they are leaving their wedding ceremony and heading out for their honeymoon at the Sinister Plantation of Kenilworth. Kenilworth Plantation is run by John's cousin Monica. But the will of John and Monica's grandfather is that as soon as John gets married, he inherits ownership of Kenilworth. That's something that Monica has very negative feelings about. And so this movie tells the story of John and Linda arriving at Kenilworth, interacting with their bitter cousin, Monica, over the ownership of Kenilworth. And wouldn't you know, Monica has ties to Haitian Voodoo and she turns to that as a way to murder Linda via a zombie and thus gain legal ownership of Kenilworth Plantation.

Right, because John will no longer be married.

Exactly, did that make any sense?

I mean, it did to me. I have a question though. It's said in New Orleans, so is it still Haitian Voodoo or is it now New Orleans Voodoo? Because those seem distinct in a lot of sources.

So that is a great question, John. I am not a historical expert on this topic. But yes, this is New Orleans Voodoo, which is different from Haitian Voodoo. And it was influenced by the interaction of slaves in New Orleans with things like the Native American population of America at the time, and just their circumstance as slaves in this city of New Orleans, which changed hands to a couple of different European powers over the years. And so New Orleans Voodoo, yes, it is a unique and separate thing from Haitian Voodoo. And John, I was so excited that I can't believe this is our first zombie movie set in New Orleans. I can't believe it.

Yeah, it's really interesting, actually. And I think part of the reason is New Orleans, with the premise that New Orleans was sort of a lawless place in the 50s, it makes sense that now is the time, especially if somebody who's into more salacious filmmaking, later pornography and stuff, wants to make a film, this is actually an attractive location.

Yeah, I'm interested because, you know, as long time listeners of this podcast know, you know, the first decade or so of zombie movies was mostly set in Haiti or the Caribbean.

Right.

And once we got in the 40s and 50s, we started to see the genre pull away from its Haitian roots.

Yeah.

With some, I mean, not 100%, but it started to pull away. And it just surprises me because if you were looking to take the idea of voodoo zombies and transplant that into the United States to maybe have more mainstream appeal for American movie viewers, I feel like New Orleans is a really obvious choice. It's an American city, but it's one that has a clear cultural connection to Haiti. So I'm surprised we're already up to 1961, and this is the first time New Orleans has been mentioned in a movie on this podcast. What do you think about that?

I think that's really interesting and it didn't occur to me. I sort of like, in my mind, it was like, oh, New Orleans, that's the logical next step from Haitian voodoo, right? But you're right, we became interested in Haiti as an occupier in the early 20th century, but that was a long time ago. But there's clearly this, and we've been making zombie movies this whole time, but not setting them in New Orleans, the one place where voodoo is clearly practiced in the United States. So that is surprising when you frame it like that, for sure.

We did have Revenge of the Zombies, which was set in Louisiana.

Oh, that's true. They didn't...

But they didn't really play that up much, but it was there.

They didn't, yeah, they didn't name a city. It was clearly in a swamp, but they didn't say anything behind that.

That is a good catch, Brad, though, because obviously New Orleans would have been on your mind while you were watching it.

I think the purpose of that film was the swamp, a place you could find a plant that no one would know about that would have this serum.

A mysterious swamp, and yeah, for sure. There's swamp here, too, though. I think it looks like it's actually shot in New Orleans, actually, and not-

I was going to ask you guys, I didn't Google, but are the restaurants and the bars and the nightclubs they go to, are those real places in New Orleans?

I don't know. I know the jazz trio they watch is a real jazz trio.

Okay. Well, hey, how about we just get into it since we've already started doing that, right?

Yeah. Do we want to describe the poster really quick?

Why not, John? Why don't you tell us what you see when you pull open the poster for The Dead One?

Well, it's a pretty provocative poster for a cheap movie. Maybe it's a cheap poster, but I thought it was exciting. It's all read with an ink drawing of a tuxedo-wearing zombie holding the arm of a woman in a negligee, and it says, The Dead One, and it promises exotic voodoo rituals. So, I don't know, I found it very evocative.

So what strikes me about this poster is that for the most part, posters of zombie movies we've seen are kind of packed with content.

Yes.

Like most of them try to fit like four or more scenes into the poster.

For sure.

Whereas this one feels, minimalist is not the right word here, but it feels kind of stark.

Yeah, it's spared.

Menacing, kind of in a way. I would go so far as to say it has sort of an edgy, uncomfortable vibe to it. Yeah.

I think the perspective of the person doing the illustration is one, as if they're on the ground looking up at this enormous zombie. So that adds to that a little bit for sure.

Yeah.

All right. Let's do it.

Pretty terrifying.

Yeah.

Okay. But shall we jump into the film itself, John?

Yeah. There's something I love about this. So you get us started, and then I immediately have a couple of things I want to say.

Okay. Well, the first thing I have on my notes is the phrase, it's in color. Do you have any? So this, just for listeners, is our first color zombie film. We have skipped ahead and watched some color films from the future, I guess. But chronologically speaking, this is the first zombie film we've seen that's in color. With maybe the interesting exception of Jacque's way back in the 19-teens, which was not in color, but it used color filters to create effects. So John, do you have, or Brad, do you have any thoughts on the presence of color in this film?

Does it make it look more, I mean, it's a slightly better, I mean, it's a better quality film than Teenage Zombies, and certainly better than Plan 9. I don't know how much of that feeling is also transferred because it's in color, too. You know what I mean? Which makes it a little more vibrant.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, the thing that occurred to me is the zombie we're gonna see in this movie, we can see that it's kind of got a greenish tint.

Yeah.

And I just wondered, I think our stereotype of zombies is that they're kind of greenish, right?

Right.

I mean, the logo for this podcast is green.

Yeah.

And I think our idea of the zombie is a sort of greenish, huge corpse. And this is the first movie where we see a green, huge corpse.

You're right.

I'm like curious, I mean, is that what we have been supposed to have been imagining? How's that for some Andy, Andy Grammer sentence, by the way? Are we supposed to have been imagining green through all of these black and white movies to date?

For me, we all grew up post the black and white era. So black and white were old film and TV shows we saw on TV. And to me, they weren't reality. So once you hit color, it becomes something that could be real.

Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah. But what's interesting about this is it's clearly shot very naturalistically. There's not a lot of special lighting or anything like that. The sound is very poor.

I think they have A light.

Yeah. They have A light. And the sound feels very much like they're not canceling out any echo by padding the space or anything.

I think in the jazz clubs, they put a mic up and they filmed while real people were there. There's conversation that's not mixed in.

Yeah. So it feels real, but it also feels mundane. In some places, it doesn't feel like a movie. It just feels like, yeah, for sure.

All right. Well, let me actually get into it. And John, pop in with your observations.

Sure.

Because this movie opens up very dramatically with a white woman. We are going to soon learn this is cousin Monica, and she is standing amidst a crowd of black people. She is conducting some sort of voodoo ritual while our old friends, the voodoo drums have returned at last. And she is commanding a corpse named Jonas to rise from his grave. And that is what he does. We see as the credits play, we see a coffin slowly being opened from inside, and a hand appears in a way that reminded me a lot of that comic scene from Abbott and Costello vs. Frankenstein, where Dracula keeps repeatedly opening his own coffin. Yeah. And we, I don't know, 30 seconds into this movie, we have seen our zombie, because a figure with ghoul-like claws with a green issue and dressed in black pulls itself out of the coffin. So I would say that's kind of a, as far as opening 30 second credit intros go, this one kind of cranks it up to 60 miles an hour pretty quick. Do you have any thoughts, John?

I love everything about this. I love starting in Media Res, a movie that starts, I was like, did I miss a bit? Like it just goes right for it. Raising the zombie and Monica here, Monica is not a very good actress and there's spots where she has to deliver dialogue, it's not very good. But when she is going full on crazy shouting, like she's amazing and her eyes, I said she's coming, she had crazy eyes, I'm like, dang, I'm scared of Monica. Like she really, this is the thing that she was hired for because she's good at this thing.

At her best, she has a genuinely pretty terrifying screen charisma, I would say.

Yes, for sure.

So this is our zombie for the film, we're seeing it right here at the beginning. So do we want to pause and talk about what does this zombie look like? Is it different? Is it better? Is it new in any way? This is Jonas, we're going to learn a little later. This is the brother of Monica and she's resurrecting him as a zombie in order to commit murder and other heinous acts. John, will you describe zombie Jonas to us?

So he looks like he's still wearing the clothes he was buried in, which in this case is a tuxedo. But he looks like a corpse. His hair is long and wild. He's this sort of yellow green and he's clearly got like a ton of facial makeup on to make him look deformed. His hands have these long claws on them. So we always said when we were kids to scare each other, like after you die, your hair and your fingernails grow suddenly very long, and that is the first thing I thought of when I saw him.

Yeah, absolutely. I think Invisible Invaders was the first movie where we really noted that they were really putting some effort into the zombie face makeup. Yes. Clearly that trend has continued here because they have put all their special effects budget, I think, into the makeup on his face.

Too bad it wasn't a better actor, but that's okay.

It's pretty dire when you're criticizing the zombie acting.

I think that's actually important because other zombies just move slow. He moves awkwardly, like what zombies do later, how they lurch a little bit. He's lurching and he stumbles on stairs, like his feet keep hitting stuff. I think that's new.

I think it's new and I think he's more like the zombies we're used to, but I think he is not served by the fact that if he's moving slowly through the scene, they just let him walk from one edge of the frame to the other edge of the frame. If he's walking up the stairs, he starts at the bottom of the stairs and he walks all the way to the top of the stairs. This movie suffers from that in spades, so we can't pin it on him. But it's just bad directing. He would have been scarier if you shot him coming at you and then him moving slowly and then cut away, but I guess they needed to fill time. So he could be scary if shot better, I think is my feeling of this zombie.

I think so too. I mean, we're in 1961, they still have not really figured out how to make zombies scary.

No, not yet. Close, this is closer.

It is a step forward, but yeah. Okay, the other thing I want to call out from this is that, John, what is the item that Monica is using to command Zombie Jonas to rise from his grave and kill?

It's a voodoo doll.

Yes.

Yes.

And as we noted, I believe in voodoo island, for all of this zombie genre's connection to voodoo, we have seen relatively few voodoo dolls.

I think there was, I walked with a zombie.

Yeah. And in the, what was the one with Boris Karloff? The voodoo, was it voodoo island? They had those weird looking ones that looked like.

Voodoo island had the ones that looked like they were mass produced plastic dolls.

Yeah. They looked like marionettes from the Thunderbirds or something. Yeah. Yeah. Those are the two that jump out at me. Though, I guess there was one in the, in that Jennifer Grey flash forward when we did too.

There was a voodoo doll there. That's true. Yes. All right. So let's hear an audio clip of wild-eyed sister Monica giving instructions to- Cousin Monica. Cousin Monica.

Giving instructions- No, she's sister of Jonas. You're right. Sister Monica. I take it-

Yes. Let's be sure to keep those family relations direct in this detailed layered movie. Let's hear Monica issuing instructions to her zombie brother.

My brother, a woman is coming to Kenilworth. Do you hear me? Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.

Yeah, like when she goes unhinged, she is unhinged.

She is, she does one thing, but she does it really well.

Yes, I would like to say one thing about the drummer here. First of all, he can actually play the drum.

He can, he goes to town in this movie.

Yeah, and he's very good. Also, he's-

We should explain. This is one camera, one shot. The drummer is in frame, so it's one mic picking up the drummer and her voice.

Yes, for sure.

It's all live in the room.

Yeah, later in later scenes, they cut to him. The other thing I want to say about the drummer is he is absolutely ripped. I wouldn't be surprised if he told me they got a defensive, they got like a cornerback from the New Orleans Saints to be in this movie or something. He literally looks like he could be a professional football player. I mean, football players didn't even look that good in 1961.

I mean, is there a less efficient way to kill someone in these movies than to raise these slow moving ineffective zombies? Have your drummer go strangler to death. Good heavens.

Now, what movie does this plot remind you of that we've seen?

The Devil's Daughter.

The Devil's Daughter. It's almost the same thing.

Yeah, similar plot, for sure.

Yeah, we'll get to it in a minute, but what Brad's referring to is the plot of this movie is that Monica has been running this family plantation for all her life basically, and due to their grandfather's will, her cousin John upon getting married. What a weird stipulation to put in your will, by the way.

Don't put weird stuff in your will.

That sounds very 18th century.

It just causes this kind of problem, right? Due to stipulation in the grandfather's will, John, now that he is married, now has assumed legal ownership of Kenilworth.

Right.

And just like in The Devil's Daughter, where we had a sibling who was resentful that her sister was coming back to the plantation to take it over, and she felt disrespected and cast aside by that. That is, I think... I mean, there is a different world in which Monica was a slightly less, like, satanic presence and a little bit more sympathetic. Yes. Which I think this movie maybe was reaching for in a few scenes, but Monica is resentful that her cousin, having not had anything to do with the plantation his whole life, suddenly gets to come over and take it over. Right.

Exactly.

And that's right out of Devil's Daughter, as Brad pointed out.

Yeah.

Okay. So unless there's anything else to say there, we then switch and we meet our protagonists. We switch to a wedding scene where a happy bride and groom are leaving in their car. This is John and Linda, who are going to be, I guess, our hero party for this movie, John, would you say?

I would. I would also throw in...

They are going to meet someone else who joins the hero party.

Yes, they are our hero party.

They are in New Orleans. Again, it is truly remarkable to me. This is the first time the words New Orleans have appeared in one of these zombie films, but here we are.

Yeah, for sure.

Also, we have seen a trend in the 50s of moving away from the Haiti Voodoo connection and now we're right back to it. The last couple movies we have watched have either had nothing, have had presented zombies without any sort of cultural connection to Haiti, or they have reassigned zombies as sort of an alien plot. So this is kind of interesting and I don't know where we're going in the 60s, so we'll just have to see if this is just a little dead end or if this is a revival of a theme we saw all over the 1930s. So they're in New Orleans. So the next 15 or 20 minutes of this film is funny and weird and boring all at the same time.

Yes.

Because before they head out on their honeymoon, John takes his bride Linda to a bunch of basically salacious nightclubs in New Orleans.

Where they just sit there and let us watch a jazz trio play for like three minutes straight.

Yes. This is a movie. We have talked before about movies that like don't know how to truncate scenes. They don't know how to give you the idea of a scene and then move on. This is a movie that when like a band steps onto the stage, we watch its four minute performance of its song in its entirety.

And either they don't know how or they go, hey, this is an easy way to fill five minutes of the movie.

Well, it's got to be that because one of the first shows we see is basically like a burlesque like sexy dance scene that has to be here just to be edgy and provocative. Am I right?

I think so. This is our third member. It's Bella Bella, right? Yes. She is a... I can't think of anything.

She's like a belly dancer.

Yeah.

She just dances and dances.

Yeah.

We see the entirety of her performance from start to finish. I wanted to pause here. We've mentioned it already, but this is, in my opinion, the most salacious and sexy film we've seen so far. Does anyone disagree?

Maniac featured actual nudity at one point, but that was brief and in a terrifying context.

Yeah. Setting aside Maniac, which was pure exploitation, this movie has more skin in it than anything we've seen to date. For sure. We've gone from everybody wearing, a couple of years ago, people were still buttoning their collars all the way up to their chins. Here we see someone basically in a slave Princess Leia outfit, gyrating on stage.

The only thing that comes close, but it's not close, is Woman Eater, where there is a stage dance that is similar, and we do see that heroine get her sweater torn, but this has more of it and is more like, hey, let's just lean. In fact, they make no apologies and lean into the idea that this is a couple who's gotten married and talk repeatedly about their wedding night, and there's constantly subtle allusions to the fact that they now have sex together. At one point, Bella Bella asked Linda, do you read Before Bed? She says, oh, well, I used to. So it's really trying to lean into the salacious nature without crossing a line. It's nothing compared to even a sitcom on TV today. Don't get me wrong. But in 1961, for sure, they're pushing the boundaries here.

Yeah. By modern standards, this is G-rated innuendo. But it is innuendo. John, I would only disagree with one word in your little recap there, and that is the word, you used the word subtle, and I don't think that subtle is a word that this does.

Yeah, sorry. I have a note here. I wrote, our heroine Linda has her first line at 16 minutes and 25 seconds into the movie.

And to get it out of the way, there's more public display of affection in this movie, and they make you watch Linda and John just cuddle each other. It gets pretty excruciating. My notes for this section are, so John brought his new bride to this burlesque belly dance show, and I just wrote, he brought his wife here? What is he doing? The lead dancer calls him Lover Boy, suggesting he's been there long enough to establish a relationship with the dancers. Like, what are you doing? So that said, so there's this, I mean, this is like 15 minutes of the film, just of a one hour and 10 minute film, is watching shows at this trashy theater. But the plot is that they are heading, John has decided that their honeymoon is going to be at Kenilworth Plantation. This is the plantation he has now inherited ownership of. And he figures like somewhat, somewhat implausibly, I think he might actually say something on the lines of like, we can kill two birds with one stone. I can have my honeymoon and get these legal contracts like sorted out at the same time, which is maybe the least romantic honeymoon I've ever heard of. And I made my wife watch Alex Poirier's Dark City on our honeymoon, so.

That's right. My wife and I went to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto and played bubble hockey on my honeymoon.

Okay. So, all right, we've already covered that he's married now and his grandfather, for some reason, put in the clause that, like, you can't assume ownership of Kenilworth unless you're married. This is going to be an important plot point, which is why I mention it again. Right. More belly dance routines than a jazz act or a band.

It was the second jazz act, yep.

Another band comes on and, all right, blah, blah, blah. But on the way out, after like 20 minutes of this, they actually get in the car and they drive up to Kenilworth. And on the way, they come across a person whose car has broken down on the side of the road. And John, who is this?

It's Bella Bella. She was just driving along, somehow got out of there before they did, and then her car broke down. So to be clear, they are now inviting a belly dancer who clearly is an ex-girlfriend of the husband to stay with them at the plantation for their honeymoon.

I don't think she's an ex-girlfriend though.

You don't think so?

No.

This was such a stunning moment in the film that I grabbed the audio clip. So, let's hear how John and Linda react to the idea of Bella Bella being invited to spend the night with them on their honeymoon.

Hi. Hello.

Well, honey, there's not much we can do with that car tonight. So, I've asked Bella to spend the night with us. She can get a hold of the garage man in the morning. You don't mind, do you?

Oh, of course I don't mind. Oh, gee, thanks. Very nice of you. I know I'm not exactly one of those things a blushing bride needs to take along on her honeymoon, but... Oh, don't be silly. Come on. Get in.

That's very nice of Linda. But can I also say, like, you don't mind, do you? And my response would be, well, I can't say I mind because we're standing here in front of Bella Bella.

Exactly. So, we're all married guys. How would your wives have behaved in this situation?

Well, first of all, we wouldn't have taken our wives to a strip club. Second of all, if we'd run into the strip or broken down, I don't think they'd be crazy about it.

I would have kept driving. I'll be just totally. I like to think of myself as a nice guy, but I would have kept driving. So, okay. All right. That said, we have met the third member of our hero party. That's Bella Bella, the belly dancer.

Yeah.

And John, do you want to describe kind of her personality here?

She's sort of bubbly. She's tall with red hair and she's just sort of flighty, I guess I would say, you know. There's not a lot of there there.

Yeah. I wrote down like kind of ditzy is the word that springs to mind. Yeah. So, they arrive at Kenilworth that night and they're greeted by a black servant named Ben, who it's suggested he's kind of been in, he's been working on this plantation for a long time or maybe all of his life. Right. My next note is so now that they're at Kenilworth, there's a lot of scenes that are shot inside big rooms in the Kenilworth plantation.

With bare walls that produce lots of echo.

Yeah. So, there's so much echo. I do not know about filmmaking, I don't know about how you stop echo, but clearly, they did not have access to whatever technology it is, prevents your voice from echoing off of a bunch of bare walls because the audio is horrific. And it's not just a matter of preservation of an old film. I think that this would have been bad if you saw it.

Actually, the print is good, actually.

Yeah.

It's not a great movie, but the print, there's not a lot of artifacts or pops or clicks or anything. It feels like, which is kind of ironic given that it's really a bad movie.

But anyway, we meet our antagonist here for the first time for real. This is cousin Monica. John, you want to tell us what's cousin Monica's deal and how does she come across here?

She just always comes across as irritated and wants to be in control, and she's just sort of dictating to everybody. She's just not nice. She just doesn't like anybody. She's resentful. Yeah. It's just she's frustrated all the time about everything.

There's no secret to why she's resentful. Like right out the gate, she's basically saying, I am outraged that you are coming here to take over Kenilworth. This is not acceptable.

Yep.

So, but anyway, they're all staying the night. John and Linda are staying the night, and Bella Bella is there too. So she's staying in this plantation as well. This is where, John, you mentioned earlier, they're getting a little bit of G-rated innuendo out of like their wedding night banter. We see John pull like a sexy nightgown out of the suitcase, and I wrote in all caps that we have to watch them unpack the entire process. So like, any sexy titillation you got out of him pulling a nightgown out of the suitcase are murdered by the next two minutes of him unpacking the rest of their clothes.

Yeah, for sure.

This is not a film that knows how to shoot tight scenes.

Yeah, same with Teenage Zombies. Like, we're just putting the camera up and just letting people walk up the stairs, and down the stairs, and unpack, and yeah, it's a set up a camera, shoot a scene, there's no cuts or anything for the most part.

Yeah, so we do then get a little side. So Cousin Monica is talking to Ben, the housekeeper, and this is where we learn that Cousin Monica has a zombie-related plan, but she is aware of the zombie's weakness. So let's hear her talk about how this zombie might be ultimately defeated.

No, it's much too late, because it's almost dawn. And you know that Jonas can't exist in the sunlight.

Right, so yeah, it feels like Jonas is an amalgam of Frankenstein, a zombie, and Dracula, in terms of how he comes about, what he's like, and what affects him, you know what I mean?

Yes. So is this the first zombie that has been described as having its weakness be sunlight?

I feel like yes.

Okay. I think it is. Certainly no other zombies have been like destroyed by sunlight, which is what would happen to Jonas if he were caught by the sunlight.

No, there were a set of zombies, I think it was on the Zombies of Mauritania that were afraid of fire, but they also were not afraid of daylight.

Yeah. So blah, blah, blah, some other stuff happens for various reasons. Bella Bella is going to be staying with them for another day or two while her car gets fixed. John shows Linda around and this is the backstory exposition part of the film, where we learn there's not a lot of depth to this story that we don't already know.

But I do have to bring up something really important here because we've just seen the cars again. So we actually missed this at the wedding. Fans won't know this because every time I try to do this, Brad cuts it out because I'm wrong. So first off, I was obsessed with the idea, especially in our 50s movies, that one of these cars with the same car featured in Christine. So I have four things on this. One, I went on this tirade that Brad cut from an earlier episode about a 1957 Plymouth Fury and how that's the same car in Christine, and Brad's like, nope, that's wrong. So A, the car in Christine is a 1958 Plymouth Fury. So let me say that first. The car I thought was a Plymouth Fury is a Ford Custom 300. So I can now tell the difference between a Plymouth Fury and a Custom 300.

That was the Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.

That was the film. That was the Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake. Now, at this wedding, we finally have a Plymouth Fury. But it's a 1959 Plymouth Fury Sport. So it's not the exact same car. But it's the closest we've come. Just wanted to mention it.

What happens when we do find the same car?

I don't know. How many chances are we going to have? As the 60s progressed, by 1970s, we won't see any of them at all. So I don't know. I'm hoping. We live in hope and I'm not looking up the movies in the future.

I'm feeling nervous about this, guys.

Anyway, moving on.

The next day, John is showing Linda around the plantation. And so he points out the old slave quarters on the plantation. And we realize that this is the same location where at the beginning of the film, Cousin Monica was in there raising the zombie in the old slave quarters. So I do think it is worth mentioning when these films do acknowledge the slavery element. We had way back in the 30s, I walked with a zombie, had the kind of recognized the legacy of slavery in the shenanigans of that plot.

And I would argue in a much more sensitive way than this film. Like right after they acknowledge that, like one of the workers comes up and says, Mr. John, you don't want to go in there. And he's basically like, he says, look, this is going to be run professionally and you're not going to talk to me like that. He's like he's the overseer or something, you know?

Yeah, John is super sneery throughout this whole movie about voodoo. And at some point, at one point he says, you know, like no intelligent person would ever believe in voodoo. I mean, it's a bunch of that stuff. So, yeah, so they, John and Linda, after being, he rebukes this local who's like, don't go into the slave quarters, please. They do go in there and they, Linda notices that the slave quarters appears to have been used or occupied recently when they're supposed to have been abandoned. But John just kind of jokingly dismisses this. And then he takes her on to the family crypt and he gives her a little tour. Yes, like you do on your honeymoon.

Talk about a romantic honeymoon.

Do you think this is Linda's childhood dream of how her wedding was going to be?

I put in my notes like a general note about this movie. It has a whiff of a gothic story in it, right?

It does, yes.

This old-time station for sure.

And this is where it all comes out, right? So he's basically giving Linda a tour of deceased ancestors. Yep. And Linda, and this is where we kind of learn that Linda had a brother named Jonas who died and it upset her greatly. And let's hear an audio clip of John and Linda talking about that.

Johnny, what about Monica's brother?

Well, his remains are over there.

That silences them walking to the other.

About ten years ago, he and Monica got involved with some Creoles who claimed to have gotten the voodoo secrets from the original slaves. Monica and Jonas, his name for the captain over there, they took more than an average interest in it. In fact, they became deeply involved. One of the Creole girls fell in love with Jonas, but he brushed her off in favor of a beautiful girl from an old Louisiana family. They lived nearby her, but before the wedding, Jonas took ill and just started wasting away. Not even the best doctors in the city could find out what was wrong with him. Finally became a helpless invalid. They had to call off the wedding, but his fiance stayed right there at his bedside up until the day he died in his sleep.

Well, what did he die of?

Nobody knows.

Yeah, so there's your gothic plot, right? Yes. The curse, something happened. It also feeds back into Monica's, but the stupid rule, right? That it was going to be Jonas plantation because he was going to get married. That was the terms of the inheritance.

Yeah.

But then he died before that could happen. Yeah. So I just think that points out that plot, right?

Yeah.

Jonas was in the original John role.

Agreed. So I have another clip here that comes right in Fast Succession from this one. But while they're doing this, they're basically interrupted by cousin Monica, who is angry as always and who suggests that maybe the story of Jonas is not entirely over despite his death. So let's hear that clip.

I know why he died.

That's Monica.

He died from a power that's stronger than anything your stupid religions have ever known. He died of a voodoo spell cast by that woman. Oh, I know you don't believe it, but I know they exist. They killed my brother, Jonas, and they can bring him back to life again.

Okay. So, I just want to say here, I don't want to give this movie credit for being sort of too intellectually interesting. I think this is actually part of its salaciousness, but non-Christian, pagan religion as a scary thing.

Yeah.

Like, we haven't, I mean, the Voodoo has always kind of been that, but here we have a white character explicitly saying, I no longer believe in God, Christianity, or Jesus. I found something more powerful. And as pokey as it is coming from Monica, A, I think it's really interesting, and B, culturally, it feels like there's something there.

Yeah. So, we've had white characters, like kind of get involved with voodoo religion in past movies. But it has tended to be a sort of cynical involvement. Like think of the mother-in-law in I Walked with a Zombie, who is cynically exploiting the voodoo religion to engage with the locals in Haiti, right? And to manipulate them. But here, I think Monica is a true believer. Is that your understanding?

Yeah. And I think she sort of, I think culturally in the 1960s, is representing this movement away from, quote unquote, family values and the traditional family. And I think she's really pushing a narrative that people are starting to get scared of here in the early 60s.

Yeah, I agree.

I think it's also interesting the use of stupid. Because for us, it sounds like a jokey kind of word to use, but this movie and Plant Nine use it as a pejorative. And it must have been more serious back then than it is now.

Yes.

Yeah, you're stupid religions, like maybe they had-

Stupid people from Plant Nine.

Stupid, stupid.

Sorry. My mind always goes to UHF when I get that word. Okay. So Monica ends this with sort of a menacing thing that suggests that Voodoo might be able to bring Jonas back to life again. And in fact, throughout the film, she kind of sometimes refers to Jonas as if he's still alive and not dead at all. And we of course know that's because he's come back as a zombie. But John thinks that's very silly. And so Monica reminds John about their business. They need to sort out who owns Kenilworth, right? So they have a really, really testy meeting.

Before the testy meeting, can I call out one thing?

Please.

As they leave the crypt, they run across a bunch of kids running around and they're playing zombies. And so these two little girls come running through and then the little brother comes through like stomping around like a zombie. And he is hilarious. He's got like his arms out, and like his head cocked to the side with like his tongue hanging out. I don't know. This is the one thing in this movie that made me laugh. It seems so genuine.

Is he a better zombie than Jonas?

I think so, actually.

We actually clipped to those kids a couple of times in this film. Yeah. And it's kind of suggested that they live in this world where zombies are just a reality.

Yes.

When one is walking around at night, you stay in your house for your safety. It's not a crazy thing. But back at the plantation, John and Linda have a super testy meeting where they argue. He says, hey, be reasonable. I own the plantation now, but I still want to work with you. You can still live here. You can still help run it, but she's having none of this.

He actually says, he'll still own 50 percent of the plantation. She says, I do own 50 percent of it. I own half and Jonah owns half. Jonas, excuse me.

Yeah, I have an audio clip of her ranting about this. Let's hear her going at it.

You have no legal right to take possession of Kenilworth. It's not yours.

But you know very well what the will states.

What if your wife should die before you get possession of the deed?

Stop talking nonsense.

Nonsense? Stranger things than that have happened to the Carltons.

That sounds like some of that voodoo nonsense of yours again.

I'm glad you still remember the voodoo, Cousin John.

There we have him dismissing the voodoo, but also the stakes have just been escalated here because Monica is clear is suggesting that if Linda can be killed, the marriage will be what? Like, I guess, a nulled or rendered void as far as the will is concerned. That sounds really legally implausible to me, but what do I know?

They explain it, or she explains it, that if she dies before he receives the deed, yes, then he doesn't get the full possession, which is what happened to Jonas. He married, but he died before he got the deed. Therefore, he doesn't get his share.

OK, OK. That is nuance that went right past me. So, I got to salute this film.

Because it doesn't make sense. Seems like the legality is you get married, that should be enough. Why do you have to wait for a deed?

Yeah. And one thing I love here is that John is like willfully, like there's being skeptical, and then there's being like an idiot. Like he refuses to believe in voodoo or zombies literally until the moment he sees a zombie himself. Like his wife claims to him, no, I saw a zombie, I shot it and nothing happened. He's like, nah, you missed. Until he runs into it, he just won't believe it.

Are you seeing what Linda saw in John? Spent the rest of her life with that.

Well, they do say he's right to catch, but he's a good catch.

Monica is all but threatened to murder Linda at this point. So immediately after this meeting, she consults with Ben, the housekeeper, and she says, get the voodoo ceremony started. We've got work to do. This is actually where we are explicitly told that the voodoo practitioners here are the descendants of the slaves who once lived and worked on the plantation, and they still share the voodoo beliefs of those slaves. So I wrote John Super Sneery about how no intelligent person could ever believe in voodoo. There's more kissing at this point. There's a lot of kissing in this movie. John and Linda can't keep their hands off each other, and we have to watch every second of it.

I know it's horrible.

But then everyone goes to bed, and the voodoo ceremony begins. John, do you want to tell us about this, or what do you got?

Well, so first of all, they have coffee together, because you have coffee before bed. Like, that's so weird to me. It's so old school. First of all, they get dressed up for dinner, which also feels very old school and gothic. But at this point, as they get ready for bed and the voodoo ceremony is about to start, I was like, wait, do we have a soundtrack? We just like we suddenly get music. There's tension music playing under this and under the ritual and I'm like, wait, this is our first music since the opening. We've been going for half an hour here and there's no music in this movie. So it really jumped out at me. But yes, the ritual takes place. It's similar. It's the same as the one that opened the movie. It's in the slave quarters. But this time we focus more in on that drummer. When I said he was really ripped, this is the scene where I noticed that he's fit and he's playing.

He's the star of this scene. So they raise Zombie Jonas again.

But how does she frame what they're doing when they raise Zombie Jonas?

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I wrote down that she's saying she's ordering him to kill her.

Yes, but she says, tonight we're going to save Kennelworth, which is the name of the plantation. So it seems like there's this weird assumption that the black people here are in on the voodoo and want to do what she's doing because they like the situation at Kennelworth or something. And really, she comes across as like their master or their overseer. It's a very strange relationship.

I had that note down too here. What is in it for these people?

Exactly.

Presumably these are sort of like the help on the plantation. It's not like they're going to get fired or something.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah. So I think there's a relationship that they don't really talk about. But I think this is, we're also like, we've been talking about civil rights and everything for a long time. Civil rights is actually starting to happen here. The Montgomery Best Boycott, late 50s. And then Eisenhower enforces integration in the late 50s. And so in 61 here, race is, I think, a much bigger topic than it was in the 50s. So I just wanted to make that point.

Yeah. Is there a, I'm trying to think. So I think Ben is the only person of color who has a speaking role in this movie.

Yeah, except for the mom of the little kids who's like, don't worry about it. They're just playing.

That's right.

No, the husband, the father of those little children has a speaking part where he talks to Mr. So it's, yeah. So there are a couple, yeah.

So obviously we're going to be watching that topic, that theme as the 60s play out. But anyway, the raised zombie, Jonas, he slowly moves around and I can't overstate how slowly and how interested the camera is in watching him cross.

Would you say just as slow as before, as in the same footage from before?

Perhaps. But what they do is they have him walk from one end of the screen to another and then they set the frame again and then they have him do it again and then he's inside the house and they have him walk up the stairs and have him walk up all the stairs. It's just not great.

So there's this little choreographed sequence of events. So John and Linda are complaining about the voodoo drums that are getting in the way of their honeymoon bliss, I guess. So they head down to stop the voodoo drums at the same time that Jonas is heading up to their room to kill Linda. And we actually see a little bit of guile on zombie Jonas' part because he ducks to the side and hides while John and Linda walk past.

I noticed that too. He's not quite mindless. He has some agency in guile. That's where I've said it feels like he's kind of part Frankenstein. Like, he clearly is almost mindless, but he can make choices and decisions in a simple way.

I think that's a good insight because it does feel more Frankenstein than like Night of the Living Dead. So he goes up, he doesn't, he can't find Linda. So he goes into the next room and he finds who?

Bella, poor Bella, who's just dancing around. She's doing her hair. She's practicing her dancing and her negligee like you do.

Yeah. I jotted down that she is flouncing about. She's flouncing about.

She is for sure flouncing about.

So the zombie goes into a room. She faints as you do and then he hauls her off. I didn't realize she was dead at this point, but he has strangled her.

Yeah. They bury the lead on that. They find her later and say she's dead, but we don't actually see her killed. Like whether she just has a heart attack. I was really hoping for a blood-curdling scream here, but she just faints.

I was a little disappointed. For a film that I think is trying to be a little boundary pushing, this is a really bloodless kill, I guess.

Yes, for sure.

So they discover that Bella is gone and John and Linda come across Bella's dead body. Yes.

Why does the zombie drop Bella though?

I don't know.

Because they think they've finished the ceremony and they stop the music and as soon as the drum stops, he returns to his ground. So he just drops her and returns to the crib.

There's more subtleties, rich subtleties of this film that I missed.

Yes, the depth that you've missed.

Which means all the voodoo drumming, it's just wallpaper for you now, Andy. You didn't notice.

Yeah, I know.

Yes. Well, I did note that the drumming has reached this like insane fever pitch while the kill is happening. Yes. But cousin Monica is angry because Zombie Jonas killed the wrong woman, so she demands that they restart the ritual.

Right. She's like, get everybody back, we got to do it again.

That's right, we got to do this again. Again, I just got to ask if this is the most efficient way to murder somebody. I know. Various stuff happens. John leaves Linda, he gives her a gun and tells her to shoot anyone that comes in and threatens her. And then he heads off to disrupt the drums again or something.

Yeah. I want to say one thing about this gun is what's interesting about it, is it's a real gun. Like it looks like a gun. Like our pistol's up to this point in like 50s movies to click starter pistols.

Yes.

This is an actual gun. The gun effect is terrible, but the gun itself is a real gun, so.

Was it? Because it looked like when she shot it, I thought I saw like a squirt of water come out or something.

Yeah. No, I think it's a-

I didn't see anything.

I think it's just a blank. I think they just, there's no muzzle flare, and I think just like a piece of cardboard comes out. I think it's a cheap blank or a, I mean, maybe it's not a real gun, but it's designed to look like one, more than the other guns we've seen.

Well, now that you've spoiled us on what's happening, because what is she shooting at? She is shooting at Zombie Jonas who has gone back up the stairs laboriously, I guess, and gone and is now menacing Linda. She shoots him a couple of times, doesn't do anything.

There's one great, okay, great is a strong word. There's one special effect that for the time is pretty good. She shoots and to illustrate it misses him, they crack the mirror behind him. So they synchronize this shot and the mirror breaking, which I could see being really cool in 1961.

Yeah, that's a good point. This part went by me in a blur, but basically John goes down and he breaks into the slave quarters to disrupt the ritual again, but he's captured.

But he breaks free.

He breaks free the drums falter, and that seems to kind of disrupt Monica's control of Jonas. So he staggers out of the room without killing Linda.

Yes, and this happens because John takes the drum from the drummer. But let's just be clear, if the drummer wanted to hang on to that drum, like John could not get it from him.

It's like, sure, help yourself to the drum here, my friend.

And he throws it out the window, and Monica screams, you've got to get the drums back, because it's clear that the drums are like the engine, or like the fuel for, yeah.

So John and Linda go into the crypt. I don't remember why they go into the crypt.

I think Linda ran in there, and John finds her in there still shooting at Jonas.

Okay, so Jonas is in there, gunshots aren't affecting him. Monica comes in there and pleads with Jonas to get into the coffin, because it's dawn, and sunlight is about to hit him. The police show up, the worst police since our much-referenced voodoo man, and they start shooting at Jonas, but Monica shields him with her body and is killed.

Yes.

I think that's what's supposed to happen.

It is. Again, the effect, there's no squib, the gunshot is terrible, there's no blood. She just grabs her back and slumps to the ground.

Then the sunlight hits Jonas, or at least we're left to imagine that the sunlight is hitting Jonas, because it's not like a good movie where you would see a ray of sunlight creeping across the ground or something like that. But Jonas disappears in a puff of smoke and then that's it. That's basically our movie, right?

Yeah. Really quickly, John explains the whole thing to the cops, and the cop has a great line to end the movie. He says to John, how would you explain this if we had not gotten here in time to see it? So, that's sort of the... Yeah, I kind of love that bit. But yes, that's our movie.

Yeah, it closes with them driving off, and I think one of our final shots is of John putting the estate up for sale.

Yes, correct. With sinister music playing.

That's right. And the end. I am waiting, by the way, to see when we get that horror trope where like in the final seconds of the movie, you see that the monster is still alive or the hand bursts out of the ground or something. Right, exactly. But that is not this film. So and that's a wrap on The Dead One.

Yeah. So there's a couple of things about this. I want to say there's a scary movie in here somewhere. This is actually, this could be a tight short plot movie, right? Where they go to this room, there's a voodoo ceremony, they try to kill them and they have to escape. Like this is not a terrible idea. I mean, it's just a cheaply executed take on this idea. You know what I mean? But I think all the pieces are here for a good zombie movie and for a good scary movie.

It's simple in a good way. I mean, we have really clear motivations, a really obvious point of tension. There's not really a lot of depth to it, and that can make for a compelling horror story. But we'll get to it. There's just so much filler and just, yeah. All right, John, let's go through our wrap up questions here. John and The Dead One, is there a hero party?

There is. We have a hero party. It's John, Linda and Bella, Bella Bella.

Bella Bella. How do they do? How many survive?

John and Linda survive. Bella is killed by a zombie.

Indeed. All right. What kind of zombie strain are we dealing with in this movie?

For the first time in a while, a classic zombie master reanimated zombie.

Yeah. There's no zombie horde because there's just one zombie.

There's no coming back from it either. Sometimes you can get turned into a zombie by a zombie master and come back. That is not the case here. The movie falls clearly on the side of zombies are reanimated corpses. Exactly.

They are dead people, not living people that are robbed of their will.

Correct.

All right. Well, this is interesting. How are zombies destroyed or killed?

Sunlight, which is either clever or it's just grabbing something from another monster and throwing it in here.

Either way, it's new in the world of zombie films.

Yes, for sure. I wonder again, we're still on those clearly that we think we've been telling about it is like the Tree of Evolution and there's one branch that clearly exploded, right? But we were seeing all these other little branches that didn't come to dominate, and this feels like one of those too.

Exactly. Is there any zombie firsts in this movie?

Have we seen a zombie? It's so clearly a corpse, but we've had other corpses. I'm struggling beyond the sunlight thing to say what is brand new here.

I don't think there's anything new here, but we are seeing, I think, a cementing of the movement towards putting makeup and stuff on zombies to make them look like gross dead people, basically.

Now that we have color, you really have to do a little bit more of that.

That's not new. We first saw it a couple of movies ago, I think, In Invisible Invaders, but this is clearly where zombie movies are going, right? Yeah. So John, how many of your four pillars of the zombie movie are we going to find here? Is there an apocalypse in this movie?

No, no apocalypse.

This is a change because the last couple of movies have had apocalypse.

Yeah, this movie really feels like a throwback. There's no contagion either, right? Yeah.

How about tough moral choices?

Again, I don't think so. It's Monica making bad moral choices, not tough ones. She's not struggling.

Yeah, and there's the obvious one, which is when you're going for your honeymoon night, do you pick up a belly dancer on the side of the road? And for John, the answer is yes.

Or do you take your wife to a strip club? Yeah. I mean, there's a number of choices being made that I would say are questionable, but maybe not very tough ones. Are there loved ones turning against you in this movie, John?

No. I was hoping for it. I was hoping Monica had been, or excuse me, Bella had been turned into a zombie instead of just dead, in which case it would have been, but no, that doesn't happen.

They did miss an opportunity with that.

Yeah, for sure.

That would have made the movie at least 20 percent better if it was a second zombie.

Even though they're cousins, there doesn't appear to ever have been love between them.

No, for sure not.

Because they're family. That could have been a loved one turning, but no.

Right. Yeah. If Jonah had maybe turned on Monica, but they stay, like theirs is a very dysfunctional brother-sister relationship where he's dead and she's alive, but she still treats him like she's the mom. It's a little, we could get into that. It's a little weird, but let's move on.

Yeah, there's, I mean, and the setup of this movie, if this movie is not really willing to add any nuance to John and Monica's cousin relationship. He's just like the nicest guy in the world and she is just this twisted by hate, like evil caricature.

For sure.

All right, John, did you feel like the poster of this movie sold it accurately?

I think so. I actually like the poster and it depicts a scene from the movie, so I'll say yes. It's really about this one zombie and the terror it could theoretically reek on scantily clad women if the movie were shot better.

Which it does.

Well, let me ask you some questions, sir.

Oh, boy.

Yeah. Paranoia, conformity, hypocrisy, are these things here?

I don't think so.

I don't think so. I think the only way you could say conformity is here is they're clearly trying to be salacious by showing strip clubs and jazz clubs and all that kind of stuff. Seedy bars in New Orleans.

They don't present it as really being seedy. No, they don't. Linda is there having a great time with John.

Yeah. But here's an interesting one. However, movie heroes change, are they younger from more diverse class backgrounds, less professional?

They're pretty young. They're not teenagers like we saw in Teenage Zombies. I would say this is a halfway point between dumb teenagers and young professionals, which defined the 30s and the 40s. Yes, I agree. This is another movie where the two love interests are like a couple already at the beginning of the movie. There is no plot where they are pursuing each other or romancing each other, which we have rarely seen that actually in zombie movies to date. So I would say that this is, I guess, a trend towards the heroes skewing younger, but it doesn't feel like exactly what I meant by this.

Yeah, for sure. How about science and sci-fi?

There's no science or sci-fi in this film at all. I guess John sort of represents what you might say is sort of haughty Western scientific attitude and its condescension.

A skeptical scientist.

Yeah. But I don't, but other than that these are mystical zombies, 100 percent.

I'm curious about your answer to this question because I think this movie is what you were thinking of when you posed it, but does the genre leave its local roots and moved on to the broader American or world stage?

This is what I was thinking we would see in like 1949. Yeah. And it is, this feels like it should have been the step between hyper localized zombie stories set in the Caribbean and a more internationalized, Americanized horror. I mean, this is a logical step, right? You move from Haiti into New Orleans, which is a big American city. Yeah. But it's hard to, so that's here. I feel like the rest of the genre has moved past this. So I doubt, I think this is a little bit of a too late dead end, if that makes sense.

It does. I think it's interesting because we moved through the 40s where the movies were hit or miss, but all movies were still good. In the 50s, we went with a lot of just Cookie Cutter, those Middle-Age White Guy movies. Now we're sliding into, I think what we think of horror movies is just gnarly, salacious bad movies for a while. I think we're getting into that here in the 60s.

I think so too.

It started at the end of the 50s.

All right, John, we have a couple of wrap-up questions before we find out what we're watching next. Would you and I survive in this zombie world?

I think so because no one would invite us to this party, other than the fact that both our real first names are John and the main characters named John. Well, he survives too though.

Yeah, I mean, this is another three white people have beat with each other plot. So as long as you're not one of those three people, you're really going to be fine.

Yes, for sure.

Is this a zombie movie or is this a movie with zombies?

Here's the thing. It is a movie about a zombie, but I think it's a movie with a zombie, not a zombie movie.

What do you think? I think I'm with you there, yes.

Just because there's only the one, and it's really just sort of a MacGuffin more than anything else.

I mean, it could be anything else, and the plot would not change at all, right?

Yeah, for sure.

All right, and so John, lastly, do you recommend this movie to our listeners? First, do you recommend it generally as a movie that everyone should watch? Secondly, do you recommend it, I can't speak today, do you recommend it to our legion of zombie-loving freak listeners?

Well, this is our first back-to-back, but it's no and no again. So that's two double no's in a row. It's a throwback around the zombie genre, so it does some cool stuff. It has a couple of cool ideas in it, and like I said, there's a good scary movie in here that's half an hour shorter. There's a good scary episode of TV in here somewhere, right?

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's a definite no on, don't take your spouse to see this on date night. As far as zombie stuff, it does have interesting stuff, but the interesting stuff, and when I say interesting stuff, I mean the connection to slavery, the interaction of wealthy white plantation owners with indigenous religion, that's interesting to me, but it's been done way better in other movies. Yeah. Specifically, all the way back in the 30s, if you go watch it, I walked with a zombie. Yeah, for sure. This movie doesn't add anything to those topics, and so I can't recommend it to our zombie fans.

I am curious about the throwback, and I'm curious about what's coming next.

Yes.

We had the science 50s, are we going back to, I mean, mysticism would fit in with the end of the 60s, but we're still early in the 60s, so I'm curious.

So, Brad, give us the good or bad news, but I'm hoping for good, about what zombie movie are we watching next?

We are staying in 1961 for our second movie in color with zombies, and the movie is, here's your poster.

We dare you to look into Dr. Blood's coffin. So, Andy, is that the correct use of the word into? We're going to be in Space 2, we dare you to look in. Don't we dare you to look in Dr. Blood's coffin?

I think you could go either way, so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Wait, Andy, are you about to do some grammar?

I'm about to give this grammar my seal of approval, believe it or not.

Then hold on, before you do grammar, we have to do.

Welcome to Andy's Grammar Corner.

Did you ever watch your own jingle, Andy? You now have one.

I have not. So John, I'm sorry. I'm going to give the seal of approval to this genre, to this grammar because I think you can indeed look into a coffin of blood.

Yes. All right.

All right. So what do we got here on this poster? John, you want to describe it?

It is a black and white drawing of something happening. There's like surgery. So in one corner, we have these silhouetted figures running into or out of a cave. Then there's some horrifying scene of somebody being killed and a screaming woman and a doctor, and then in the middle, there's this coffin with a hand sticking out, and then there's this sort of laughably bad drawing of a monster behind that, and then underneath it says, Dr. Blood's coffin. So Dr. Blood, it's his coffin, apostrophe S. Then at the bottom, it says, Can you stand the terror, the awful secret it contains? And I'd also like to say, this is another two-tone poster. It's black and white drawings, and a sort of a magenta, it's not magenta, it's not that bright, but it's blue, like a light blue.

Although it boasts that the movie is in color, unlike this poster.

Yes.

What kind of color?

I don't know.

It says, in goriest Eastman color.

In goriest Eastman color.

My question was, I mean, let's be honest, what are we gonna find when we look into Dr. Blood's coffin? Here I'm gonna go on record. We either find nothing because he's a zombie and he's left the coffin, or we'll find a terrifying corpse. Is there anything else that you imagine we're gonna find when we look in there?

No, but are we man enough to look now that we know? I think that's the question.

I don't know. I guess we'll find out.

All right. Well, hey, it's a good time to note. We all have another podcast. Brad, what's your other podcast?

Multiplex Overthruster, watching the summer movies of 1983.

And I think you're about to watch something real good, aren't you? Or do you want to spoil it?

We're watching Deathstalker, which a reboot is being released. We just haven't edited it yet, so it'll be coming soon.

Awesome.

What do you guys watch? Good movies in your podcast?

Have you seen Deathstalker?

I've seen Deathstalker 2, which I would not describe as a good movie.

All right, Andy, what you got going on?

My other podcast is Role for Topic, where my co-host Chris and I discuss topics related to running role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.

I'm also the host of the Splatbook, where our last three episodes that centered on, they're all about RPGs, but Andy and his partner Chris on their podcast, we're in a small gaming convention every year. It just happened and we talk about the game I ran there.

Hey, I'm excited to hear that, John.

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