welcome to zombie strains where we watch all the zombie movies in chronological order. The year is 1961. The movie is Dr. Blood's coffin. What do you call them? Zambi's or something? Zambi? What does Zambi? Just what is a Zambi? Well, a Zambi? There's a... The bill is... The living dead. There's a living dead. There's a living dead. Here's the Zambi's. The Zambi of Zambi's. No, I mean it's the same. Because a Zambi has no will of his own. He's wrong. What is the Zambi? Hey, everybody. I'm John. I'm Andy. I'm Brad. How are you guys doing today? It's cited to discuss Dr. Blood's coffin. That's what I'm doing. Are you energized by a completely made film starring professional actors? Yeah. It was like ice water in the desert for God's sake. Professor Brad can be generous. I mean, he made us walk through the valley of plan nine from outer space and teenage zombies, but he rewards persistence, I think, because we got a good one this time. I feel like she's just rewarding us enough to keep us from from Rebelling, and then it's back to the gear he dangles in front of us. Yes, exactly. All right, I have one thing, so produce a bread. You may cut this, but it's stuck in my head, and if I don't do it, it's going to be there forever. So I'm just like to apologize ahead of time. Here's the dead joke I came up with about this movie. Hey, Andy, what are we watching today? We're watching Dr. Blood's Coffee and John. I'm sorry to hear that, I maybe he should go to the doctor, but what are we watching? Okay, that's it. You can cut that Brad if you think that is so like your expression was so blank Brad that like I was trying to figure out how to go to commercial in the middle of that I just couldn't do it. I told it to my wife she goes, Oh, no, I'm like, I can't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it. I'm sorry. I went. No, that's right because he's coughing like like cough. Oh, you know, I I botched my response. You, you should have queued me up. You're prepped me in advance. Yeah, I should have that was a debacle. That's what that was, just an absolute debacle. So anyways, like the flying fortress that crashed and invisible neighbors, that's what they joke was. Yes. The one aiming for the giant X on the mountain side if I recall correctly. Yes. Yeah, all right, absolutely. So hey, you know, I always throughout some content warnings as appropriate before we talk about movies. You know, there's, There's not really too much here. There's some kind of era familiar for the era sexism. I'm sure we're going to talk about because it manifests in a couple of plot points. And this is kind of a gory or movie than the last ones we've talked about, although it's still 1961. So I don't think any of us are too shocked. Yeah, this is nothing to concerning. But I'll add to that in England, it received an extra certificate, meaning you had to be 16 or over to see it. And it only got that after a couple of cuts to it, and no one knows what the cuts were. Yeah, I was reading some contemporary reviews of this, and they were all kind of bagging on it for being like, they described as like non-stop gore, and Boy, have times changed if this movie was nonstop. I mean, there's, yeah, for real, a little gore every 30 minutes, but yes, those got some pretty tasty stuff. Yes, it does, yeah, for sure. Okay, so Brad, you want to talk to us about what was going on in the world of film when this thing came out and tell us about the people behind it? Dr. Blood's coffin was released in 1961, it's a British horror film and was released in England first in January 31st. It was released in the US in April of 1961, and that's the same month that the guns have never owned and the Japanese film Yojimbo were released. I loved the guns have never owned. I loved Force 10 from never owned. Yeah, I went through a phase where I read all that guys books as an Alistair McLean. Uh, yeah, my grandma read all this books. I don't know how you might take that Andy, but yeah, okay. Thanks, John. Thanks. Do you wait a throw me under the bus? Alright, I'm old. Okay, I'm old. Sydney Fury directed Dr. Blood's coffin. He has directed over 50 movies and episodes of television. He is Canadian, but moved to England to better his film career. He didn't focus solely on horror films. When he got to England, he made a comedy and a musical the same year as Dr. Blood's coffin, but his breakout film was at 1965's The Epicrist File, starring Michael Kane. You guys heard of it? Yeah. I had not. It's produced by Harry Sultzman, who was one of the two guys who produced the Bond films, and this was to be another Bond-like franchise. The film won the BAFTA Award for the British Film and Color, for 1965, and it was In 1966, he directed the Western film, the Appalusa starring Marlon Brando and John Saxon. In 1972, he directed Lady sings the blues, the biopic and Billy Holiday starring Diana Ross. Yeah. He directed three of the Iron Eagle movies, if you recall those with Lou Gassad Jr in the 80s. No, for sure. Including the first one. Now, those are a few of his successes. Yuri had some misses as well, and he acknowledges those in a quote that's attributed to him on the Internet, which is, filmmakers are like gunslingers. He don't win every duel. So let's hit some of the duel that he lost. I see a big one. Superman 4, the quest for peace. Well, before that, he did the jazz singer with Neil Diamond. And he was nominated for a razzy for the worst director, even though he was fired from that movie and didn't finish it. but he also directed Superman for the Quest for Peace. He directed a movie as late as 2023. Yeah, he's still alive. Brad, you didn't get him to come on the podcast. Come on. Yeah, Sydney, if you're out there, we were open. Nicholas Rogue was the camera operator. He went on to a very successful directing career. He's best known for the films, walk about the man who fell to earth, starring David Bowie and the witches, starring Angelica Houston. I've seen all of those. Yeah, he's a pretty good director. I'm still, this is the whiplash from the dead one to this, is just killing me. Right? Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. And we have two people coming up who want Academy Awards, too. And we haven't hit them yet. Nathan Duran wrote this original script, which was rewritten by James Kelly and Peter Martin, who adapted it to better fit England. Duran started his film career as an art director, anyone in Academy Award for his work on the 1942 film, How Green, was my Valley. Oh well. He moved on to directing in the 50s and he was known for sci-fi and fantasy films, including the deadly mantis, the seventh voyage of Sinbad, and the tack of the 50 foot woman. Hey, his last film was in 1973, the boy who cried werewolf. I'm not familiar, but it's a great title. Less Bowie is credited for special facts. He was a well-known Matt Painter and Model Maker. His Matt Paintings can be seen in the Hammer Films, a quarter-mass experiment in the Curse of Frankenstein. He won an Academy Award with a special fact team for Superman in 1978. And the memorable PC did was a fortress of solitude that you see from the outside. That's his Matt Paintings. It's cool. You know, the quarter mass experiment and there's a sequel to it or maybe that's the sequel I can't remember is on my radar is an interesting old hammer film to watch when in my, you know, spare time when I look at the credits for the people this era so many of them, especially when we're in England, these English films, they were hammered on I bet is yeah now the cast all the cast are over 35 including three born in the 1800s. Oh wow. Here and more, plays Dr. Peter Bledd. He had both lead in supporting roles in many British movies like Man Trapp and Satellite in the Sky. He was also in the cast of Day of the Triphids. Hazel Court plays Nurse Linda Parker. Her breakout role was in the Hammerfilm the Curse of Frankenstein. Reather films include the Raven and the Mask of the Red Death. She was also in the penultimate, violates own episode called Fear. She wrote an autobiography called Hor Queen, and her book claims she is the only actress of worked with all the major horror leading men. Peter Cushing, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee. Nice. Also in her book I was reading a review of it, it said that they were topless photos over and there from film she had done and it looks like some of them for your PN releases had nudity which were not present in American films. Well, this is surprising like where the people are happy to show you, you know, people getting mutilated and horribly tortured. Yeah. She stopped acting in the 70s and became a sculptor Penn State even commissioned a piece from her. The last tidbit I have is that she said they really did shoot in the Cornish caves, which are abandoned tin mines. I don't know how much of what we saw was a set or was in caves, but she said they were there. And to tease a few trappers, so this won't be the last zombie film set in the corners. 10 minds. Ooh. All right. Sorry. The corner. 10 minds. That's what I got for this one. I want to call out one thing, not because it has anything to do with everything. So first of all, this film, unlike the last two we've watched, has a cinematographer. I think that's important. But the cinematographer worked on a movie called Bob's Your Uncle. Now, can I just, can I just take a moment? I had never heard that expression until like two years ago. I'm working, I'm contracting, like, Southern Ohio, and we were talking about how to solve a problem. And a developer said to me, well, we do this in this, and then Bob's your uncle. I was like, what, what are you saying? And he was like, it just means that's easy. Like after that, it's easy. And I've never heard that expression my entire life. So I just wanted to throw that. It's a British idiom. It is. All right. You ready to give us historical context and then I'll do a quick summary, Andy. Yeah, absolutely. You know, guys. Well, thinking about historical context for this one, it occurred to me. I think we're kind of entering an era when we could just pick like a stanza from we didn't start the fire and just play that for our historical context action. So I took a look at what was going on in the UK in 1961. That might be relevant to this film. And if there was a theme, I picked up it was that, uh, what we're kind of seeing the early, the dawn of what you might eventually call the swinging 60s. There's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of shifts going on. The, uh, the pill was made available through the UK's The pill had actually been developed in the fifties in the UK at least it became widely available, although it could only be prescribed to married women in 61. The couple of British films came out that sort of, um, we're sort of starting to push a little bit at sort of the moral boundaries put around art at the time. There's a 1961 film called Victim that it's the first British film to explicitly mention homosexuality and to present it somewhat sympathetically. And then there's another movie called a Taste of Honey, another British film that includes unmarried pregnancy and unmarried women's sexuality as an element in the film, as well as a gay man who is evicted from his apartment due to his sexuality. So I don't know what was happening in the U.S. that feels like something that couldn't have been happening quite yet in the U.S., but at least in British film. There's some boundary poking at least. I think as Americans were so used to exporting our own culture to the rest of the world these days. This is the time when it was the reverse. We were importing British culture. So a lot of the fashions you think of when you think of the 60s, which we're not at yet, but like you know, paisley and crazy colors and stuff that's all that all went came here from England. Along those lines, Andy, our director, Sidney Fury, did a film in 1964 called The Leather Boys. And it has a lot of subtext to gay culture, but it's somewhat positive. Interesting. That is really interesting. Well, a couple of things hit on 1961 was also the year that the first warnings about the litamide came out. This is the drug it was prescribed to women pregnant women for morning sickness. Oh, this was a disaster. We don't talk about this one anymore, but this was horrible. Yeah, it was a big horrible, it's horrible. It's actually what made me think of the Billy Joel song because it gets named checked in the, in that song. Yeah, just to not keep people in the dark, it caused a lot of, a lot of miscarriages and a lot of birth defects, you know, I feel a connection. We've talked about in the 50s if there was going to be the kind of idea of a kind of a dark side of the technological boom, the scientific and technological boom taking place in the mid-century. And I think this, you know, would have had a pretty profound and upsetting effect on how you looked at, you know, this medical science, which was otherwise charging forward really rapidly. And that's the other thing I wanted to mention is this. This film came out just a few years after the first fully successful organ transplant. It was a kidney transplant in the late 50s and in the coming up in the next year to in the early 60s, they're going to be more, I think there's a lung transplant and some other organ transplants. So, That has some plot relevance to this movie that must have felt again like so much of this stuff I have to imagine when you were reading about these developments it felt like you were living, you know, in the sci-fi future Yeah, sure and that's all I got for history unless you guys had anything you wanted to add or comment on that's a lot though I think one thing I'm excited about for the 60s in particular is There's so much stuff in the popular imagination. I mean, there's so much that happens in the 50s, 60s, 70s. It's not like one decade's better than the other, but the 60s are so just so famous that we're gonna have all kinds of fascinating stuff every week. Yeah, well, you know guys, I'm especially excited for the 60s because you know what movie was recommended to me on 2B after I finished watching this movie? No. a movie called, let me find it, the blood-beast terror starring Peter Cushing, and here's the description to be had, a fright fest about a scientist whose new creation, a beautiful woman who feeds on her victim's blood as a giant moth, pretends she is his daughter, and that amaze. It makes me think that maybe the 60s is just kind of freaking rule as far as these Yeah, if Dr. Blood's cough and is any indication that we're headed in the right direction. How about that? Yes, for sure. Yeah. All right. That's all I got. All right. So let me give a summary of the film. So the film opens in an operating room where a man is about to conduct an experiment. His supervisor, Bursin and tells him he's a monster. He's immortal and fires him on the spot. Then we cut to a small rural town in England where people have been disappearing. And the town's doctor, Dr. Robert Blood, his son, comes home to visit him, Peter. And we find out that Peter is in fact behind all of these disappearances. He is in fact the doctor conducting wild experiments. And as he sort of unravels and descends into madness, his crimes become more and more sloppy and unhinged as he's trying to reach his goal of showing that his experiment works. He's falling in love with Linda, the nurse at his doctor's surgery, but it all comes to an end when he revives a man from Linda's past and that facilitates his own destruction. That was perfect. And he got me excited about this movie all over again with that description. Yeah, so I want to get into it and I actually, this is probably the earliest clip I've ever cut because it comes at 47 seconds in and I do want to get to it. But first I want to say the most interesting thing about this movie to me. is that our protagonist, Peter Blood, is not the villain, but he's a villain. and he it is definitely his movie you know what I mean if we think about like a woman eater right the the protagonist was really that that young couple of the mechanic and the woman who worked at the carnival right that was those were the protagonists of the film and the doctor was there but he was villain this is Peter's movie and he's a villain and I just I think that was cool like we do that kind of thing now but it seems revelatory in 1961 I don't know if that makes any sense. Yeah, there's like, M-Night channel and good of remade this movie, it's like that kind of a like a twisty sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, and they do try to have it so that like it's a mystery, but you know pretty early on that that mystery doctor at the beginning, which were about to play a clip from is Peter blood. I haven't noted about names in this movie, but let's just get to it. So we open on an operating room and there's a mask doctor about who's drawing some something into a syringe and first of all, I'd like to say metal syringes. Even normal looking ones are terrifying compared to today syringe like right. Yes, yes, yes, they just look evil. It looks like something Freddie Kruger invented so metal and glass framed syringe. He's looks like he's putting some sort of blood in it and a young or excuse me an old. German, we actually found out he's Austrian because we later find out this is in Vienna, burst in on him and tells him to stop his experiments. So this is this is this is the interaction. I've been a fool. I should have realized that even if we are the most brilliant of my pupils, you have vanity, we trust you to go on. I should have sent you away from here. Here But you needed someone to give you courage, and I supplied it for you. Be very experimenting with animals, not with human beings, no one has a right to take a human life, for any reason but forever. Then man, I'm experimenting with is already doomed to die. So there it is. I love just the hysterical line delivery. This is like the first 60 seconds of a movie. Yeah. It's fantastic. I absolutely love it. So this scene plays out before the credits roll and that felt like kind of a modern thing, right? Yeah, to like a teaser scene right before the credits go. I don't think that's like our first movie this done it, but it just felt kind of interesting and it felt a little more modern. In fact, I feel like the last movie, the Dead One, did that a little bit. We had the Voodoo ceremony right before the opening crack. They did. Yeah, I think you're probably right. It also feels very English 1960s to me, because all the bond films did this. Oh, yeah. They always had their teaser. So I don't know enough about British cinnamon, the 60s to say, if it was regular. But yeah, and then we get the credits big music. And my note here says, this sounds more like a... a real movie. Yes, it does so. I noticed the soundtrack as well. And then we're immediately going to cut to a small English town. And it's a doctor's office. We meet our one of our other main characters, Linda. Parker, who is a nurse in the village. And the town's focus sort of meeting in the town's square. Somebody's gone missing meanwhile. Somebody is creeping around inside the doctor's office stealing things. And it seems very odd. And then we cut back outside George, one of the town's focus agrees to lead the search. And then we immediately we sort of follow, you don't see the face of this figure who's been sneaking around in this office. We assume it's connected to the missing townsfolk, but we keep following this person. And where do they go Andy? They sort of go on a secret route. Yeah, so he's still something something from the fridge. We later, or going to learn it's glucose. And then he goes out to what seems to be sort of a, I mean, it's an underground layer out in the British countryside, which is dotted with different ruined structures, right? Yeah, exactly. It's in an old mind tunnel we're going to find out. So we actually spend a lot of the first part of this movie sort of following this faceless person around, So he goes into this cave, he's got someone there and he hooks up the glue coast to them and then he heads to, he heads back into town. And the town's folk are discussing how they're gonna search for the missing villagers and George Beale, his name turns out to be says, I know the mines better than everybody, anybody, I will lead the search in the morning. Let's all go home and get a good night's rest and then we'll get started first thing in the morning. What then happens is, again, our faceless thief sneaks into George's room, drugs him with chloroform, and injects him with something, and carries him out of the room back into that secret cave. And I don't know, at this point I'm loving it. There's this mystery. What is this person doing? Why is he doing it? George Awakens and starts to try to escape. So Andy so far, how are you feeling about this movie? I feels like a movie. There's a moving camera. There's a mystery. There's something I want to know more about. It's, uh, I don't know. It's, it's good, right? I noticed, I mean, it, this is what this podcast has done for me. The fact that their, the camera moves was like, I almost jotted that down on my notes as like, oh my gosh, like their, the camera's moving. It's, there's, there's, there's, Yeah, you know, moving cameras setting the scene. It's it's crazy. So there's a couple things I want to unpack here first. I went down a couple of rabbit trails for this episode and so I got to ask you guys. How long do you think it takes to chloroform somebody. uh well in this case it took a while so i think maybe this they thought this was gory because it seems like he's mashing this this cloth in Georgia's face now if it were like Charlie's Angels in the 70s it takes about five seconds so Well, that's what I thought. So when we're watching this, it he probably struggles for like 15 or 20 seconds on screen to chlor to knock this guy out with a chloroform soaked rag. So I thought, oh wow, like I wonder if this is like more realistic as most movies, it's like you just hold it up to someone's and they instantly collapse. Right. Uh, you want to take a guess of how long it takes to chloroform someone like this? I have no idea. Over five minutes of continual inhalation. Well, that's movies for you. And if interrupted, like you don't, you aren't continually inhaling it, it wrecks the whole thing. So it'd be virtually impossible to knock someone out like this with chloroform if they were, oh, restructuring them. So it makes you wonder where the trope came from. What was the first film that did this that planted the seed? That's a great question and then I just wonder if the times just kept shrinking, you know, to our modern era, where one second of a chlorophone thing, and you just instantly faint. Okay. Yeah, I think that's just a very sort of movie kind of thing like, you know, the way that guns and movies, a lot of guns, I actually say, silences don't really sound like that, like there's all kinds of things that are just I actually I had an auto audio engineer teacher. that used to go nuts because every movie starts with somebody grabbing a mic and they're being feedback for something like that's not how that works. Like when you touch a mic, it just doesn't instantly do feedback. So they're just all these little short-hand things. I always figured that mics know when you're nervous. And then they just do that burst of feedback, right? Yeah. I would bet though that if the director of teenage zombies would do the scene with chloroform, it would be five minutes. it for sure would be. And I think what one thing that's different in this movie from teenage zombies is like we joke about the movie, the moving camera. There are many times during this video where people are walking around searching for lost people or trying to find them or running and There's like cuts and moving cameras. It's not like those scenes are so much shorter It's like they're kept interesting by you know direction and cinematography in a way that that these other cheaper films haven't been they tell a story So yeah, there are some long stretches where you're watching people walk around But you know just with good editing you can tell a story with a scene like that and it seems kind of interesting Yeah, so the film sort of jumps here, right? So we've seen this mystery person walking around. He's clearly holding some people in a cave to do experiments on. There's clearly a lab in here, but it's very rustic. And then we cut to a car driving up into town and out gets a very handsome young man. He goes into the doctor's office. And the first thing he does is awkwardly ogles the nurse's butt for like, talk about five minutes. Yeah, they just have to see them are lingers, the camera lingers. And they set up a special camera angle to angle the nurses. But yeah, it says PLD, it's like an 86 comedy. It's a kind of shot you would've seen that. Absolutely. And he introduces himself as Dr. Blood. And we find out that his father Robert Blood, runs the the only doctor's office in town which is charmingly in his house his own house which is charmingly in his own house and and Peter has come for a visit they've been expecting him and then another person enters this scene it's Mr. Morton who we find out is the is the town undertaker but I'd just like to say like one of the other things I love about genre fiction is it doesn't mind being completely ham-fisted with the points that's trying to make? So the doctors are named blood. The mortician's name is Morton. Like the whole thing is just like, let's just be obvious in ham-fisted and that, you know, like Star Wars, light saber, like let's just, you know, these super obvious, I kind of love it. And of course, then he smokes, which I also love. And we also found out the name, the town of the name is Port Karen, It's like an extra H in there or something. I don't know if it's a real town. So it's made up. Yeah, I did note at this point. The movie has been, it made us watch a lot of footage where of the villain with his head concealed. And I did note that first of all, after 10 minutes of that, I just, my put in my notes that this had better pay. This is better pay off, yes. And secondly, I wondered, like, How long does the movie expect us to not realize that Peter is the villain and because and his name is Dr. Blood and the movie. Yes, and I and I feel like like we know it right away. There's some mystery So part of me is like, why do we go to trouble? But I think what it did is it kept me interested in the early part of the movie. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, for sure. I have. Yeah. Yeah. Now pay. I mean, it did pay off. Not in the sense that it was a shocking reveal. But the way it is revealed is done real is executed really well. We're going to get to it in a minute. But before we do that, John, I have one other name-related thing. So what was the name of the nurse in this movie? It is Linda Parker's, Linda, what was the name of the bride in the last movie we watched the dead one? It was Linda. Linda. So, two linders in the same year, I had to figure out what was going on, so I did a little bit of digging. Oh, here we go. And so here's what happens if you look up a chart of baby name popularity in the mid-century mid-century America. You notice that the name of Linda is like nobody is named Linda until like 1930 and then Linda does this incredible spike in popularity. Uh, and it peaks in the late 40s when one in every 20 girls was named Linda, including my aunt and well women's name do you think it displaced briefly as the number one name. Mm, Monica. I'll guess Barbara. Mary. Mary, of course. So we've seen a number of Mary's in this podcast, of course. And then Linda kind of precipitously drops off until by like the 70s, you know, it's pretty low there. So we are in peak, Linda. It's peint Linda. And so when Linda was at, it's absolutely height of popularity. It was because of a piece of, uh, I think, 1947, Linda peaked as one of the most popular names. And it was because of a piece of entertainment released the year before. And if I were to write an incredibly popular song to popularize the name Linda, I think it might go a little something like this, uh, uh, when I go to sleep, I've never counted, I count all the times about Linda And lately it's seen, in all of my dreams I walk with my arms about Linda But what good does it feel? Fall in but I don't know I exist No idea who this is. That is Buddy Clark, singing a song by Jack Lawrence called Linda, written in 1947. It is written about a one-year-old girl named Linda, who grew up to become which famous Linda John. Oh no, I don't know. Linda McCartney. Oh! So anyway, so that was my one of my other little that's amazing. What was her maiden? Eastman. Okay. We just need John caretting to fit into this story in some way and in some way. Yeah. All right, John, I apologize for that big big diversion, but first of all, I've had no it was a long stuck in my head for about 24 hours now and secondly, I hope we get so many more linders coming up. So. for real. Okay. So we're in the doctor's office. Oh, either what else is in the doctor's office. I'm really sorry. Yeah. I'll have an Andy grammar moment. All right. Welcome to Andy's grammar. Cool. I will love that forever. What's your camera? All right. Did you notice the poster that's hanging on the wall? Yes, I did. I was wondering if this was going to be a, yeah, would you like to tell them what it says? The poster. You never see the top of the poster. I like went frame by frame through this, like 10 times, right now, get the top of this poster. It's a poster about blood donation. And you only see the phrase, thanks to thanks to, and then the font changes to a big red, you blood donor and uh, so there needs to be a comment in there without the comma, uh, you blood donor has kind of a passive aggressive like thanks to you blood donor, uh, blood donor. The words, the words blood and donor are like on a line below the words, thanks to you. But the word you has the same font as blood donor. So I don't know if that really counts as grammar, but there needed to be a comma in there. And also, I really needed to see the top of that poster to see what was going on. Okay. I promise I'm done with my diversions for a little while, John. No, this is amazing. So just going back for a second, when our villain here Peter, We don't know this yet, but when he abducted George, he left his syringe behind. So this is the first time I'm going to point out Peter is clearly not a professional criminal. He's really sloppy. So what happens is when they discover George's missing, it happens while Peter and Linda are meeting, meeting, meeting, the inspector runs in with a syringe, and it is the syringe he found. And Peter acting like adult picks it up and the inspectors like, oh, you've ruined it. Now I can't get Prince off and he's like, oh, I'm sorry. But we know now that Peter was the one who handled it first. So he is slightly creating an excuse for his Prince to be on it in case they are found. And at this point, the doctor, Robert, the father, says he, there's a substance inside of it and he's going to go to, I believe it's cork? No, it's plimmeth. He's going to drive to Plymouth, which is the only place that's a lab that can help him analyze what's going on here. So that sort of sets us up for the next part of the movie. More people are being abducted, there's some strange serum that they have to figure out. Anything you want to say before I move on to George the world's lowest escape attempt? Just that I genuinely love Peter's villainy. How it's portrayed. Yes. He's portrayed as sloppy, but it's not because I think in previous movies this would have been really clumsy filmmaking. No, but here it's because he is a person who I mean, he's, this is this movie is the story of him committing these audacious crimes kind of he's flying by the seat of his pants with these these are he's making impulsive decisions to do these crimes and he's like, and he's right in the middle of the investigation of those crimes too. And so yes, the effect is just a really compelling viewing experience. Yeah, he's constantly committing a crime and trying to cover it up at the same time as he's at risk of people. So so this is the first sort of taste we get of that because what is happening is George, uh... was injected with something we're about to find out what that is which is very exciting to be honest yes but he's not completely paralyzed who has been slowly trying to crawl his we've been cutting back and forth with him slowly trying to crawl out of this mine it's incredibly slow however it is kind of compelling because what's happening is they're going to organize a search well Peter knows where George is because he put him there So Peter is trying to search that part and capture George before he's found out. So there's a lot of driving back and forth. Trying to catch him, there's a long sequence while Peter is trying to find George and George escapes and manage to fall to the bottom of this hill, right? And he's trying to catch him. And the doctor, Robert, has gone to Plymouth to get this test done. So they're like Peter, your doctor, come help us. So he grabs his doctor's bag in it. He puts his syringe of whatever this toxic chemical he's been injecting in people is. And he goes out to the injury site. He checks him out and he says, oh, bring some adrenaline. So he's miming that he's giving him adrenaline. When he's really giving him this serum, He gives a to him and George seems to die though we find out George has not died, but I thought this is the one part where I go okay guys he just injected it with something and then he like died so like maybe we could start suspecting Peter. Yeah, I wonder about that too. So this is one of several scenes in this movie that I think is like kind of effective. I think I would call it like a medical horror. where Peter is, you know, doing some medical procedure, later they're going to be extremely gruesome painful procedures on people who are like paralyzed or helpless, but yes. And yeah, I can actually cut back because I had a clip here and I forgot to play. Yeah, go ahead. So when they find George and Peter, they say Peter, you've got to come take a look at George. Here's the following clip. Peter, can you come right away? What's the matter? George Bill. They found them in the ravine below the old water journey, the mine. See you, Lion? Yeah, the boys are bringing them up right now. I'm going to the car, that's all not to get right over. I'll be out in a minute. Then the fizz that. Thanks. They get me some adrenaline. So what I want to clip this is, is Peter is clearly playing his sinister game, but acting like the good guy here and it's really great. You can't see it from the clip, but it's perfect. when they tell him he's found George, when he says, is he alive? The actor does a great job of being simultaneously worried and concerned. It's actually very convincing. And it's a close-up. It's a pretty tight close-up. So you see the tension in his face as he's saying that. Yeah, yeah, I was impressed. So then he goes, they go to George. he has his own serum, but let's I have to take another step back. So just before this happens. Sorry, there's so much good stuff here. I'm sorry. Linda and Peter are talking in the doctor's office. He's left his serum, which is inside like a bamboo container lying around and Linda asks about it. Andy, what is the serum? It is nothing other than Kurare. Yes, right from woman eater. I don't know, I didn't know this is a real thing, but this is our second film with this paralytic poison called Kurare, making its return appearance from South America, they mentioned South America as well. Is it, I thought it was four skulls of Jonathan Drake. Four skulls, you're right, I'm sorry. Yeah. They had the zombies that blood was one third Kurare. Yes. Yes. I had never heard of Karara until I started this podcast, but now I feel like it's an intimate part of my life. Yeah, it's absolutely essential. So he carries, again, he's sloppy, like Linda discovers he's got this weird thing called Karara. And he happily tells her about it, because I think he's not only sloppy, but incredibly arrogant. yeah well he's got he does a great trick he uh he tells her it's honey and he takes he he takes uh like he puts his finger in it and and licks his finger he eats a little bit of it and even even offers it to her yes uh this is obviously um you know you wouldn't you wouldn't ingest poison right later we're going to find out this was actually a play that will wait In case you forgot, this was a British film, the first thing that I think of is to offer George some brandy, so there is a terrifying moment where they almost paralyzed and mute George realizes that Peter is his abductor and he's about to inject him with something and he's staring at Peter and then George appears to die. This is actually kind of a delicious terrifying moment where you realize George knows what's happening to him and can't articulate it. Yeah, I, uh, this is one of a couple scenes in this movie that are basically medical horror, where somebody who is paralyzed or otherwise helpless is being, you know, medically worked on. In this case, injected later, people are going to be cut open. with scalples while they're paralyzed, but still conscious. And that's, that is just pure nightmare fuel stuff. And like, I mean, Stephen King has, has wrote a whole story that's just entirely about a person who's conscious in, in the, in the hospital, and the doctors are about to operate him on him, not realizing he's conscious and aware. I mean, it's just a great horror trope. And so the, well, they do show some gnarly stuff, but I think maybe the accentuating is more because the idea of somebody getting cut open without anesthetic, well, they're aware. That's what I'm doing terrifying. Because I mean, there's some grossness a little later. We're going to see some bloody organs, but the, this is, this is an upsetting scene because it's just really intense. Yes. And so now George has been put into Dr. Morton's on Dr. Morton's slab, basically. So somebody can do a postmortem, but George isn't dead. And Peter offers to do the postmortem, and they're talking for why we find out a couple things like Mr. Morton mixes his own embalming fluid. But when Mr. Morton is also a drunk, which is made very obvious. But when Morton leaves, he injects George again, Um, and then we've got some time, you know, we sort of cut away from this for a while. He should have leaves George. to sort of be unconscious on this slab, while he's waiting for his poison to take a factor or something. I think he's trying to, I think he wants to come back and do his work at night after the funeral director has gone to sleep. I think it's a, it's a rules so he can come back and make sure. He said, he said, leave it for me. That's right. He says to Morton, leave it for me. I'll do the postmortem. And then it goes to take Linda for a walk and there's this sort of meat cute romance scene between Peter and Linda, it turns out we find out that Linda is a widow that her husband, um, I believe it's Steven, yeah died in a car accident a couple of years ago, tragically and they just sort of chat about how you became a doctor and the time he spent in Vienna, they're they're They're cute and chatting, but then Peter, this is, I think, the scene where we're sure Peter is that Dr. from the beginning. We knew it before, but then he lays this on Linda, and I actually love this, but yes, this is so good. When you become really interested in something as fascinating as biology and chemistry and the relationship between them, you know, we had a professor in the He saw the possibilities of going on, but he held back. He held me back. He would progress so fine, then stop. One day we were in the middle of an experiment. We were working on a skin graft, and the rejection reaction of the body. We stood in that laboratory, suddenly. The whole world was open to us. There were no barriers. Nor restrictions, no limitations. We were on the brink of a discovery. I wanted to go on. But I was stopped by ignorance and superstition. So at parity, shadana and my ideas, they will call upon any excuse to avoid going further than their minds can conceive. Those nature rambles, certainly inspired you. I just hate people standing over me. I must be free to go my own way. No one's going to hold me back. So is there something about English people that their monomenical quest for scientific knowledge overrides the health and livelihood of all other human beings. This is the same speech we get in women eater. I mean, is this how you start an empire across the world? Is you're like, well, whatever I'm doing is the most important thing. I don't care what you got going on. You know, I was wondering more if is there something wrong with British women that like after this little scene? Linda goes on to kind of quasi date Peter. I, this is something you go home and you, you tell all of your friends for the rest of your life about this weird guy you went on a date with and he started breathing about how know the morality and regulations won't get in his way. Yes, now that, this is the other thing I love about good John Refiction is, we're, this is not our last metaphysical morality conversation. Um, however, Peter's got to go back because he has to cut George open. Well, he's still alive. Um, before he does that, though, I think there's a moment that I think I like where Peter's like, well, maybe I could just move here and be with Linda. Maybe I don't have to be a mad scientist. Like, I get that sense from the actors. That align so much as just uh, just a connection that I feel between the two. Yeah, there is, there actually was a little bit of a line in the middle of his rant. He said something that he's, he's going on his mad scientist rant. Then he says something along lines of like, but I didn't count on you on, uh, yes. So, and you, and maybe I'm being too generous to the film, but it did feel like you could see him briefly seeing a different path, uh, but he could take, you know. for sure. I got to ask one other question. I couldn't figure out his accent. I can either made the same note like he is Irish. Okay. Okay. All right. Now he's trying to mute it because he's supposed to be in. Yes. It's not a full on Irish accent. So yeah, I think yeah. Okay. That makes sense. But in addition to that, I don't know if this sounds this way to you. He sounds a lot like Bert Lancaster. You're right. The classic actor. Yes, especially in that speech there. And he are like, he's a good actor and Linda's good. Everybody in this movie is actually good, which is so nice. But now I want to talk about the next scene, because it's great. So this is sort of the big, so I realized after watching it, because it's English, and everybody's a little flat, I didn't realize until after the movie that, that it really is about Peter unraveling in his own monomania. And this is the first time where he really sort of starts to go nuts. So he goes back to the mortuary, He makes sure that Dr. or Mr. Morton is asleep. Now, we clearly see that George can move his eyes and his conscious. But we watch slowly as George, like, preps him for surgery and grabs a scalpel. And this scene is really well done. And it's shot really tensely. There's great tension music, like Peter's sweaty face is like presented in as an angle. Is he tries to work quickly? And he's cutting into George's chest and then you cut to George's panic face. it's amazing. And then Peter, the sloppiest criminal, what does he do, Andy? He kicks something over that wakes up the sleeping funeral doctor. Yeah, he just kicks over like a giant can while he's conducting his surgery. So he's left behind his syringe one time, he's told Linda all about curare and now he's kicked over a can like he's in a barn and his woken up Mr. Morton. Yeah, and we post for a sec. So yeah, there's there is gross blood. There's gore in this scene. It's not like a ton of it, but we do see like bloody surgery incisions. Yeah, and we and we see a bloody heart. Like we have actually seen quite a few hearts in these movies going all the way back to Maniacs. torso sized heart yes but this is the first one that's been I think this is the first time we've seen like a bloody human organ I think yes I think it's right and it's even still beating like like like India like the Temple of Doom heart yes and as this scene progresses we start to hear, it's like, um, we start to hear the tell-tale heart. Yeah. As the scene goes on, you start to hear the heart and becomes part of the tension music. So what happens is, Mr. Morton finds him and he says, Peter, what are you doing? He's alive. You can't do this and they struggle and what happens to Mr. Morton. He gets killed in the struggle. He's Yeah, and Peter doesn't pause for a moment. He said because his experiment is ruined. So what we find out is his plan was to take a dead body, which he's got back in the mind. He's going to take the living heart out of George and revive that dead body. And this is his experiment. He's going to bring life to the dead through the use of the organs of the living and his Churare mixture. So there's our zombie right there, bring the dead back to life with human organs. And specifically, his motives are to take organs out of people he considers like just trash or worthless, and use them to immortalize the great thinkers and scientists, like great people like himself. Yeah, that sounds like a British attitude if I've ever heard one. Sorry, British people might be listening. But he says to Mr. Morton, like, what did George do? He just went to the pub every afternoon. Like, he was a waste of life. I'm going to use his heart to revolutionize the world, you know, and, and he keeps sounding like, crazier and crazier as he goes. But his experiment has been ruined by Morton's intervention. So one of the things that works so well and and good movies where you're following like a bad guy as the central character will do this and and that is as his plans like get complicated like like the like having to kill the funeral director. you're like worried for him. I mean you obviously are you want him to fail in the end. But in the moment you are caught up in like sort of this panicky like oh no what is he gonna do now? How is he gonna get out of this one? Yeah so this piece he does get out of it though so go ahead. Yeah he does here's how he gets away with it. His experiment is ruined so he takes George's now useless dead body that is inside the mortuary cold room. And then he takes poor Mr. Morton and throws him in the coffin too. And now he's hiding these bodies together. And then he has a false report on how George dies, which he files. He says it's a heart condition, which he will get caught in later. And his first is next thought after he hides two bodies, is I've got to find another subject for my experiment. Yeah. So who could that be, Andy? Well, the scene then switches very ominously to one of this movie's most tense and uncomfortable scenes because it switches to Peter taking Linda on a date to where else the mind tunnels. Yes, she's out running errands. Peter picks her up. By the way, just as an aside, there's a lot of cars in this movie. They're all English except for one forward, We don't need to go over them in detail and there's no planes, so I did have a car observation from earlier uh... when they were all going out to uh... check on George who they just found uh... imperialized uh... did you know that when they drove back to town they three of them got into the police chiefs are but yeah but they all three of them these three men fit squeeze into the front seat of the car even though there's like an empty backseat just yeah maybe it's just you know uh... embarrassing to be in the back seat of the car as the guy who's in the back but anyway, yes, it's very strange. All right, but yeah, so he's taking Linda out to the mines on their date. Yes. So, so they head to the mines and they walk in the mines, Linda is starting to think this is weird. And he talks about how when he was a kid, he always used to come out here by himself. and all of the things that he would think of and fantasize about and so Linda asked him like weren't your parents worried about you so this this exchange is a little long but it's really it's really Peter starting to unravel and it's kind of great you sure it's safe in here nothing to worry about here you hold the like I just to come down here often when I was a kid when your parents worried about you My mother died when I was five years old. My father was far too busy to keep an eye on me. I used to go all the way down the tunnel to my secret palace. When you afraid, it don't be dark in here. I got to my palace. I'd lie in the ground with my hands folded across my chest. And think how it felt to be buried inside a big mountain. Sounds weird to me. One day, I... I'd be lucky, God of the Norsemen, buried inside my great hall in the mountain of Delhalla. Another day I'd be an Egyptian fero, sealed away in my tomb and a great pyramid. Then I'd come to life. Rise out of my coffin and come back into the world, and nobody ever guessed the secrets locked away in my ancient brain. I don't know where it's you or the fero's been. I've got goosebumps. I don't know that the worry about the fear was I get instructions to stay out of sight today. Well, just to say, I think we want to go. No, you're going to stay here hot the way we are. Wow. Fortunately for her, some random minor who's actually been working these minds comes in and interrupts them just in time. Yeah. So this is a, I don't know if it quite comes across the audio clip, but it's a really unnerving and menacing scene. Yes. It ends with a real uncomfortable element of like sexual menace as he's finishing that tirade he's like shoving or against a wall. Yeah, it's intense. So they go back to town. Peter can't have this mind or running around. So again, and just to completely In bold and fashion, he goes out to chat with him. Then we see Peter get out his trusty syringe and down the minor goes. Yes. In between this, we have seen him and Linda doing more countryside drives. And like, how many red flags does Linda need to be presented with? Yes, at this point I'm like Linda. In a minute, she's going to start putting the pieces together. and they meet in the bar. So they're having a pint. They say something sexist Alinda when she turns down a pint. We'll skip past that. However, they ask about how the analysis went. And what is Robert reveal about the chemical they found in the syringe way back in the beginning of the movie? He reveals that that syringe was full of Kurare. That's right, which Peter has arrogantly told Linda all about. Yes. And so I, in my notes, it says the jig is up for Peter and Linda starts to suspect him. Finally, I don't know what, I don't know what about that scary conversation in the mind didn't make her, but she's starting to put the pieces together. She and the sheriff go do some research on the Karare and they, we get a little exquisition about how Karare works, but here's where we learn that Karare isn't poisonous, according to this film, if you ingest it through your mouth. right and so Peter was actually, you know, lick the corare telling it was honey. So Linda is starting to figure it out. Yes. So now Peter has another body. He's got this minor. He's going to try it again, but he gets interrupted again. This time it's his father coming to point out that he is falsified as report about George Bill. It couldn't possibly have been a heart attack. His father was George's doctor and he knows that that's not how he died and they have a fight about it. Dad storms off, Peter storms off. And then we've cut to, um, you know, Robert, the father just sort of brooding. Yeah. Um, and just he feels like he's failed. Like where did I go wrong with Peter? Yes, yeah, again, another interesting performance and as a sick person, they just get a random call about a sick child. He says, I'll go. She says, no, you haven't slept in days. I'll go get Peter at the mortuary and I'll make him go. There's this wonderful harp music as she walks and she flees as Peter tries to chase her down. But I put a note in here, which was something they've been doing in this film that they haven't done in all the in the pretty, you know, last three movies, which is they showed us something. There's whole scene with Linda seeing the living minor and the curary and the syringe and all of this unfolds just with visual storytelling like you're doing a movie. It's amazing. Yeah, they don't tell you what they saw. They show you. It's so good. And this scene has some fantastic close-ups of Linda and Peter's faces. Yes. And it's also three minutes of like metaphysical moral argument between these two. Peter pulls the mask away and says, I am super important. What I'm trying to do here, that old minor, he's worthless, but his heart can help me change the world. There's like three minutes of these sort of philosophical exchanges. I wanted to cut the whole thing, but I couldn't. So here's the part I did, Flip. You sought to get out of the mind. A useless camp. What good was he to himself or to anybody else? You can't at a man die so that you can discover something. It doesn't matter how important it is. That is murder. Well, everywhere men are dying. Great men, philosophers, artists, scientists, but if they could live on, look how they could contribute to the advancement of men. Drogate is going to help me prove, but I can give life where there was death. They go on forever here, and there's so much we could call out here. Some of my favorite lines that I love as he compares himself to God. And she said, you know, you have the pride of Lucifer. Yeah, it's delightful. This is the most Christian dialogue we've heard in any of these movies. We talked a little earlier that Judeo Christianity has not really been leveraged against zombies, the way that it is leveraged against like vampires or werewolves or demons or something. But here this is like calling it a theological discussion is maybe going a little too far, but this is like a very explicit like this is evil, it's satanic. He rejects God, you know, It reminded me of cousin Monica in the dead one, you know, a sneering at like stupid religion. That's the exact same thing I thought of. Well, this is happening. The minor wakes up enough to knock over the rest of the corari. But I feel like I believe what Peter does here is he takes the minor to the mine. He's going to finish his experiment there. Linda makes a run for it. In the meantime, and they've raised back to the mortuary, but it's too late, but they do find the empty carara jar. Now, what is Peter's plan to show Linda that he was correct? He had experiments or worthwhile. Tell us. I did not see this coming. I was so delighted at this because we cut to, we cut to briefly to Peter digging up the corpse Yes, and I wondered how this is happening going to happen because I saw in the cast that there is a cast member listed as Stephen whatever his name is or husband and as a parker but he died a couple years ago. So I was waiting for them to somehow bring him out. So he digs up with the corpse of Linda's husband. And I think we'll get to it maybe in more detail in a second, but it is like a a really nicely decayed gross rotting corpse like it's yeah it's kind of like green fungus and mold on its face and like kind of puffy Yeah, mold has grown on it. It's, I guess a little goofy looking, but it's, I mean, it's the best corpse zombie we have seen. I think this is the best zombie bit in this movie, which is we get a zombie that looks like a zombie, we recognize from a modern, yes. Phil. So his plan is he takes her husband's corpse back into his layer and he's going to put the fresh heart from the minor into it. Correct. And this is a body that's been dead for years. It's decayed. It looks gnarly and this scene is amazing. I don't I don't have any clips or anything from this, but he is conducting surgery. They they just silently show him doing this. with the tension music, and there's these cracking sounds, it's these breaking breast bones, and he's sweating, and the beating heart effect is back here. So it's like the telltale heart in the background, and he's sweating. And then as he finishes, he smiles and turns the light out, and it feels like a symbol of his final descent into darkness and madness. Yeah. Peter blood has become completely unraveled. But what happens does it work? Yeah, so having turned out the light, he turns and he addresses the corpse. Yeah, here's what he says to Stephen Barker the corpse. You're Steve, Buck. You're Steve, Buck. Steve, Buck. Speak. Speak. Speak. And that last voice is that is the corpse's voice. Oh, it's so good. Oh, it is so good. Well, mix it up with Andy's song later. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, this would be a great place to take you up that song again for sure. So Linda goes home. They haven't had any like finding him. The inspector can't get more cops from the big city to come. He's very frustrated. Then there's a great jump scare. Linda goes home and then like Peter reaches out and grabs her and it's probably the best jump scare we've had on this podcast so far except for go with all the gifts or something but she don't want to mean like it's genuine. Yeah um I don't even know that we've had very many things that we call jump scares in this spot. No. We've, this reminded me of the walking dead with Boris Carlov. Yeah. I think the figure outside the window where they were trying to scare the guy to death. Yeah, what was the one where, well, there is a movie where, like, earlier movies would do this by showing a somewhat really melodramatically like reaching out slowly towards the woman from behind. Yes. But this one is like a very modern horror movie. It's a jump scare. Yeah, he's right behind all of a sudden. I was expecting it. They got me. Yes. So he takes her to the cave. And there is her husband. I just love this so much because like, what is he thinking? Like, you know, what is, what is he think is going to happen? Yeah, he's like, I mean, he's shown you that I can do this. But you've ruined it. He gives it this lecture about how she's ruined his great discovery because he had to do it on her husband to show her how powerful this could be. Look what you made me do. Yes. And as she looks in horror at her reanimated dead husband, You know, Peter, this is Peter's last moment, and he absolutely falls to pieces. Yes, I've done it. But I wanted to create something with why. You made me do this. This is what you rejected me for. I could forgive you if you were insane, but you're not your evil. This is the result of your evil. you haven't brought Steve Parker back to life. This is something from hell. Heck yeah. Yeah. Did you think of a night of the living dead when you heard that? Oh, for sure. And then Steve attacks. He attacks Linda. Yeah. So I was really surprised by this. Steve like jump zombie Steve jumps at Linda. Yeah. He was quickly. So let's pause here. We're at the end of the film, but I just want to say like, Like what happens here is he attacks Linda, Peter wrestles him off and Steve fights Peter, you know, they knock over some chemicals in the lab, Peter gets killed, but this scene is our, you know, up until this point like I'm thinking this is a good horror movie that I am enjoying, but this is the zombie bit that I think merits inclusion on this podcast because is not exactly, we haven't seen that exact thing before, you know what I mean? Like, yes, like, Steve, I mean, I guess we might have, but this just seems like the the most complete version of that. He's gnarly, he's decayed, it's clearly an animated corpse. It's not like in, um, what was the one with, uh, where he accidentally killed his housekeeper and then reanimated her woman eater woman eater right where where she's reanimated because like this thing is nasty and it just feels like a modern zombie rushing and trying to kill somebody in a way we haven't quite seen before. This is his first zombie he's created, I think. Yeah, and so I mean, he's not expecting it to be homicidal like it. I this the whole thing, the whole zombie element of this is just for the small amount of time it is in this movie. It's so interesting. Yes. And then the cavalry arrives. They spirit This is great. I love the zombie bit we got here, and this is an engaging and interesting movie. Like do you have any of the thoughts before we get into our questions, Andy? No, I don't think so. Let's just jump right in and we'll share thoughts as I ask your question. For sure. Yeah. Okay. So, John, Ian. Dr. Blood's coffin, which by the way, the coffin is a relatively minor plot point in this move. So the title is maybe, I think it's a poster point, that a plot point. Yes. All right, is there a hero party in Dr. Blood's coffin? I'll say yes, but it's not our protagonist. It is Linda and the Inspector and perhaps Peter's father. how do they do? How many survive? They all survive, however, other people do die, including Peter. Yeah, let's get a, let's get a kill count on this one because I think we've got a good number here. Yeah, so we've got Peter, George Beale. Mr. Morton that's three and I think the minor dies because he takes that as hard so that's four and there was one that they didn't really go into but the first person abducted that they're talking about at the beginning Yes, who's in the cave who's in the cave. Yeah, the guy in the cave. Yeah, so that's that five so that's pretty serious Yeah. And I will say like Linda is convincingly threatened. Yeah. Unlike, I mean, this is fight scenes are just better now in movies. Yep. And it's scary. It's actually a little scary when her zombie husband lunches at her. Yeah. Okay, uh, in this movie, so what kind of zombie strain are we dealing with in this movie? So we're dealing with scientifically reanimated corpses. Yes. How are they destroyed or killed? In this case, like they seem fairly unkillable, I think it's suggested that they knock over some chemicals in the lab, which create a smoke, which causes them to collapse, but it's not really super clear. Yeah, either that or it like it, it's just ran out of action is just doesn't last long, similar to again, woman eater, I think. Yeah. I got the sense that whatever chemicals fell and broke, desombified, desombie. Okay. Okay. That's my interpretation. But it wasn't clear. Yeah. I could well be. Yeah. Is there a zombie hoard in this movie? No, just the one. Okay. Any new strains or zombie firsts that we need to call out? I really feel like this attack by the crazed, reanimated corpse. I feel like we've had a lot of near misses on this, but like this is this is the this is what we've been looking for this agreed. I've said in many past episodes almost there. They haven't yet that they haven't made zombie scary yet. I think this was a scary zombie. I think you're right. There is horror in the people that were still alive when he's being operated on. So that sort of your horror of being a zombie in a sense. But this was the horror of a zombie killing a person. And I feel like this is the first time it was scary, agreed. I also want to say, so I feel like zombie, you know, makeup, technology and stuff is getting better and better. So we keep, and these movies, we keep saying this is the best zombie yet. Right. But this is the best zombie yet, I think. For sure. And it's not quite scary yet, but it is. I mean, it's, it's scary enough, you know? it's a little hokey, but it's generous care. Yeah, that's what I'll say. Yeah, for sure. At yeah, I don't want to overstate it because it does still look like a zombie from 1961. Right. But it's the best we've seen so far. For sure. All right. How many of your pillars are we going to find in this one, John? I'm pretty excited about this. So we got four pillars. The first is there an apocalypse in this. There is not. Is there contagion in this movie? No, you have to follow a complex process to make a zombie. It's a lot of work. Are there tough moral choices in this movie? There are. Everyone is making them. Peters all about them. Linda has to decide what's important to her. Peter makes a bunch of bad tough moral choices. Yeah, so I think so. Maybe not our best example of it, but they're here. Yeah. And lastly, doesn't spooky feature loved one's turning against you. Hell, yes, Linda's dead husband reanimates and tries to kill her. This is probably our most clear loved one's turning against you. Yeah, it's exactly what I had in mind when we came up with this. Yeah, for sure. It's still in some. Did the movie poster sell this accurately? The movie poster is terrible and the film is good. So no. Yeah. The poster is really bad. Really bad. The camera is just like teenage zombies is amateurish and they're vastly different films. We almost need, I mean, there needs to be a little disclaimer, like, this is actually a good one. On these posters, right? It's like the marketing team and the filmmakers are two different entities. They didn't talk. Yes. They just had a title. You go make your poster. We'll go make a movie and then we'll ship it out together and see what happens. Yeah. Maybe this movie spent all its budget on, like, making a good movie. It didn't have any movie left for the, for the books. Remember it said we dare you to look into the coffin. Yeah, there's no coffin. We never look at them. No. And that's okay. So how about I ask you a couple of things is paranoia a major theme in this. So I think that it is, although not quite in the Your neighbors might be secret communists way that we've discussed in the fifth of the varieties, but Peter is, you know, there's an Aura of paranoia as Peter sinks into madness and he starts he starts making mistakes and this, I mean, just this idea that this very, you know, this handsome young professional man in your town in your cute town is a monster. Yeah, I think very much fits the paranoia. Yeah, and he has a lot of dark secrets, so his whole life is a dark secret. Yep. dark side of medical science for sure vibe, you know, so I think that we've got a lot of those themes in this one. Yeah. Um, have our heroes changed from those 50 year old middle-aged dudes in the 50s. So not really in the sense that these are middle-aged people. I think Brad said all these actors were in their 30s and they, you know, they look the part. They're not playing teenagers or anything like that. though I'd bet you a nickel Robert blood who looks like he's like 65 or 70 does is like 58. Yes, he was 61. Okay. There you go. And this is a movie by the way where we're even like sometimes the 30 something year old actors look 40 something is just something around the way they dress or they're here or something. But um, That said, this was I think one of the movies with like the strongest romance subplot. So unlike other most other movies we've watched that have featured two people in love. They start the film in love already or engaged or even married. Yeah. Uh, and this one, this is a very, you know, modern love story they meet at the beginning. I mean, Peter is this, is this monstrous serial killer. So that's a problem. You know, they, it plays out with the beats of like a more romantic movie where they are slowly falling for each other of the course of. you know, different dates and stuff like that. So I want to say that feels, you know, that feels like a sign of the time. And they both have kind of messy backgrounds, right? She's a young widow. He got kicked out of school in Vienna. So there's a bit of a mess. You know, people have become a little more multi-dimensional. Yeah. I think that's a good point. Yeah. Um, hey, will science and sci-fi take on a new role in zombie movies? Well, there's tons of science in this one. Yeah, medical science specifically. And I don't know if it's a new role exactly because we've seen medical science zombies in the past. But this one was like the most detailed about the medicine part of that, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does. I was trying to think while watching this, if we've ever, I mean, the most suggestive about medical horror that our past movies have done is like maybe to show someone like reaching for a scalpel or something. Yeah. But it would always cut away. I, I mean, the most suggestive about medical horror that our past movies have done is like maybe to show someone like reaching for a scalpel or something. Yeah. But it would always cut away. I, There was one that got close, which was the four skills of Jonathan Drake, but this one Drake. Yes. Yep. But this one, I mean, we see him clamping open, adjust cavity, and add effects of surgery. Yeah. This is definitely a science-heavy movie. I would add that as this lab, unlike past Mad scientist labs with beakers and strains, equipment, you don't know what it's for. Everything here is medical. It's like IV stands. Yeah, you don't have to question what it's for. You know from Madison what it is. That's a good point. Yeah, at no point there's a user tool or Yeah, there's no like twisting tubes or those like Tesla. Correct. Exactly. And lastly, do we leave our local routes, the sort of Voodoo routes, and transfer a tour of broader world stage in this? So we definitely do so this has nothing to do with Haitian Voodoo or Haitian zombies. It's not said in America is said in rural England. Yeah. And it has interestingly the ties to sort of. Indigenous. Like need like a tribal magic. are there in the, in that Kurare comes from South America and made its way to Dr. Blood through some friends that brought it back from South America, I think. So yeah, but it's treated like like they've chemically solved to the problem. you know, and there's there's nothing like a mystical about it. There's no legend of the headhunters who used corara, you know, it's like this is a chemical and it has this effect on the human body when we inject it. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I think it has it has left those roots behind for the most part. And yeah, no, I wasn't expecting a good British zombie movie. No, 1961 to be. I was happy. So yeah, let's do the last few questions. And then, well, yeah, last couple questions for you, John. All right, would you and I survive this zombie world? I don't know. Peter's pretty ruthless. Like if I were just living in this sleepy British town, I wouldn't suspect him. He could get me. Yeah. Yeah. He's uh, if he can get George Bill, he can get me. George is the town tough guy. Do you hang out at the pub in an appear to be a useless person to society? I might be that anyway. So like he would definitely get what he flagged us. If he met us wandering around on the other countryside, would he flag us as as as as trash to be harvested? Yeah. Yeah, well, I don't know podcaster. I mean, we're podcasters. That's a pretty, I mean, that puts us in the top of echelons, right? Yeah, for sure. For sure. Is this a zombie movie or a movie with zombies? I have to say it's a movie with zombies, but it's a really good zombie. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah, you could you could do this movie without the zombie you'd be missing a really delightful final scene, but you know 98% of this movie does not have zombie in it right right and lastly john do you recommend this movie first Just generally as a movie that's worth watching and secondly do you recommend it specifically to our zombie loving listeners. For sure, I'm going to give, we've had a couple of back to back double nose. This is a, this is a double, yes, get to double. It's moving and zombie fans would like it even if it's just the end. Yeah, definitely, absolutely check this one out. So. Well, how about you, Andy? What, you're a double-yes? Yeah, I'm double-yes on this one. Oh, okay. Yeah, definitely go watch it. And that means it's now time for the scariest part of our episode, which is when we find out from Producer Brad, what we're watching next. And I'll Brad has a shaky track record here at this point because our last three movies were planned nine teenage zombies and the dead one. And I think those were all double don't watch thems. You don't think we could go on a good movie streak here. I don't know. So we've had one good movie. So is this the start of a good movie streak? Or was this just Brad Twain with us? And the our next zombie film is from April 1961. And here is your poster to dissect. Please be good. Please be good. Oh my gosh. uh... all right this one when they push in for knowledge set me in the translate uh... that means the evil dead the english title is curse of the doll people oh okay is that would be is minacos doll like so infernal doll helped make a wish doll this is a Mexican film yes And we'll be doing some research on what this we have we'll have to translate this. I do see the word that looks awfully like voodoo and Spanish. Yes, so anyway, it's it's a there seems to be some sort of zombie master at the top started by flames and there are various dolls and sort of scary looking people one in the bottom right hand corner is grabbing. uh... a woman and there's somebody looks like he's got a sword um... till yeah i mean i mean oh yeah he's uh... the zombie master is like has is is uh... mehrian edding uh... that guy uh... uh... uh... okay alright i'm interested in this movie monacos infamales okay yeah there's still the interesting i wish we could i i have to imagine that some really lurid text there i wish we could read it for our listeners but i know i know All right, everybody. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Remember to rate us in your podcast app of choice that really helps us out. We all also have other podcasts. Andy, what's your other podcast? My other podcast is Roll for Topic, where me and my co-host Chris talk about topics related to running role playing games, like Dungeons and the Dragons. Yes, and I have a similar podcast called The Splatbook and the last episode of describe the game I ran. at Andy's gaming convention. It was a game about being dwarves in Moria from Lord of the Rings. It was delightful. How do you say that again? Moria. You just had like a little flair. You did say that kind of weird. Yeah. That's how you say it if you're cool. Yeah, I have to. I just ran a Moria campaign. But, but I do have what's in Moria. Anyway, what's your podcast producer friend? I produce multiplex over thruster and Harvey and Paul are the hosts and we watch movies from the 80s and we're just finishing the summer of 83. Alright, thank you everybody. See you next time. 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 Apple Choice. Tell a friend, follow us on Instagram at zombie strains. all of this helps like my did people find the show. 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