Welcome to zombie strains, the podcast that watches all the zombie movies. Today, zombies finally crash into the groovy 60s. In a film about a creepy organ. but don't worry, the cops are following the musical clues. It's the deadly organ from 1967.

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 um... ...Mr. Bill there’s... ...the living dead.

They are the living dead.

Get me the zombies!

Against an army of zombies, no armies could stand.

Because a Zombie has no will on his own.

What is wrong, what is wrong.

Hey everybody, I'm John.

And I'm Andy.

And I'm Brad.

Well, how did you enjoy our trip into the swing in the 60s guys? Woo!

The difference in tone between this one and the last one we watched, which was a very straight forward bloodless toothless EMG was quite the trip. Well, you know what's interesting is, I think two things you're happening. One is, I think horror movies were, although transgressive were way more conservative than I thought they would be. Like I made an assumption that they were sort of on the edge of counterculture, but in a lot of ways. they were these conservative backward-looking things. Well, here, we have one that is like finally set in the time that it was filmed, and it has a totally different feel from all these Victorian throwbacks we've been watching. Yeah, I've been waiting for this. I mean, one of the things I've learned is that sometimes the stuff we associate with the decade doesn't really seem to be present in the workday art until the end of the decade, right? Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. And this is exciting because we're only three films away from the granddaddy of them all, Night of the Living Dead, which is definitely a counterculture movie, right? We sort of, I think we had an expectation that we'd be doing counterculture all along, but that's not been the case. But we know that's a counterculture movie, so anyway, I'm excited to just start seeing this filter into the movies we're watching. Me too. Well, without further ado, do I don't think anybody has any zombie related phenomena today? All right. No, not the time. So anyway, yes, the deadly organ, 1967. Do you want to tell us how this film came about? Where it's from? It's got a pretty interesting history, as my guess. Well, unfortunately, there isn't a lot out there on this film. but I'll give you what I did find. The deadly organ was released in October, 1967. It's an Argentine film making it the first film from South America we have watched. We have now seen films from North America, Europe and South America. As a tease, we're just as few short years from the first zombie film from Asia. This film was a little hard to research. It's a little budget film. I don't think it had a wide release, and there isn't much on the internet. But Emilio, they are directed. He directed 34 films in his career. He directed both action and horror films. And as you can see in this film, Y often had gratuitous sex, sexual assault, and nudity. Yeah, I wonder if we're also, as we barreled down towards the 70s, I think there's going to be a blur of the line between horror and pornography for a decade that I'm not looking forward to and I feel like we're getting started here. It's going to be a learning experience. Yes, it is. Yeah, a few of his other titles are blood of the virgins, the curious Dr. Hump, and women reformatly. Alright, I did look at the Curious Doctor Hump is about a man who kidnaps couples who have sex. He forces them to have sex, and then he extracts fluid from them, that he injects him side himself to keep himself in turning into a monster. Okay, so it's still got to do. You do what you got to do. So it's kind of like the mad ghoul, but instead of heart issue, it's, it's sex something. Yes. Anyway, carry on. Hopefully we get to skip that one. We get to skip that one. Antonio Rosso wrote the screenplay. Rosso has only three writing credits and two or a shot. They're locked. Sorry. Jack Curtis wrote the He has two writing credits and both were writing the English dialogue for foreign films. He directed one low budget film in 1964 called The Flesh Eaters. It is not a zombie film, but it's another film about a scientist who creates human flesh-eating microbes. interesting. And the title card on this movie actually said flash eaters for what we were watching. It often gets called the deadly organ and I don't speak Spanish, but the translation is the bloody pleasure from the Spanish. Okay. Mine, I don't know what one you guys watched. Mine had at the title card was Feast of Flush. That's right. That's what mine was. Yes, you're right. Curtis, who wrote the English version, was also an actor and he voiced Pop's Racer in the original Speed Racer. Interesting. And his daughter, Leanne Curtis, was in 16 candles and she played Molly Ringwald's best friend. I think there's a car tie in this Speed Racer here too there. I was going to mention, but now that you say that, now I really want to mention it. For the most part, the actors in the cast have few credits, and most were on Amelia Viera films. and that's the limited amount that I have. All right, fair enough. Fortunately, I mean, yeah, sorry, that's not a critical producer, Brad. Excellent work on a difficult job, sorry. In any case, I think there's some interesting stuff going on. Andy, you said you had some historical context you wanted to give us on this one. That's right. So it has been a while. It's funny at the beginning of the 1960s decade in this podcast. We took a whole episode to talk about all the cool counter culture stuff we were looking forward to. And then there's an area trace of it. But here we are. So I think we should take a second to just remind ourselves what the counter culture looked like in film in the 60s. Yeah. And then there is some kind of interesting historical context about Argentina that is relevant to this film. So let me start with a quick rehash of the counterculture. I'll try to move through this quickly. So in film in the 60s, when you think counterculture films, I think movies that spring to mind are probably like the graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, easy writer. Yep. Interestingly, those are all from the late 60s. The earliest of those was 1967. Um, so I do think it is maybe a thing where we have backported some of the stuff into the early 60s when it actually didn't really start to manifest until the late 60s. You know, it's interesting that we have had one other counterculture movie. It was about beach parties and it was, um, What was the one about the creeps, the horror party peach, the horror party beach, the horror party beach, the horror of the party beach. Yes, that one. This is somehow a better film, but it has that same vibe. It's about a bunch of irresponsible teenagers and scantly clad going dancing and getting murdered. Yeah. So let me just run down through what counter-culture looked like in film at the time. So it was characterized by a lot of anti-heroes and outsiders. These were people living in some sort of state of rebellion against middle-class careerism and values in general. There's a lot of moral ambiguity to them, and sometimes they were losers who didn't necessarily win by the end of the movie. Yeah. There's also a lot of stylistic experimentation going on. I didn't thought of this a ton, but it's very true if you look back at the last decade or two of films we've watched John. There's a change in the 60s where up to this point, the goal of like the film making the filmmaker and the editor was to remain invisible, right, and let the story tell it There's a sort of rejection of invisible editing where the filmmaking of the film becomes part of the experience. So you start to see stuff like jump cuts and wobbly cams and weird non-linear storytelling. Um, just stuff that it's kind of in the way that like Gonso journalism makes the, you know, the writer a part of the story, the filmmakers a little bit more part of the experience here. And part of that is I think, you know, with technology, you know, have a camera that is not like handheld, but is somewhat portable so you can do things with it. that you couldn't do before from a technology standpoint. And also, you start getting people, it becomes easier to make a movie, you know? Like, like 1950s, a lot of them were just sound stages and sets and it was just sort of a, it was like a film factory. And now you have people from all walks of life, not even necessarily in Hollywood making movies. I mean, we'll see this again very soon in Night of the Living Dead, where George Romero from Pittsburgh found out portable camera is making his own independent film, like we're starting to see that here. Yeah, you're not using the exact same machines and devices and sets that the last 30 movies made in this location where, right? Exactly. So you also see, I don't think this needs much elaboration, but psychedelia and surrealism with weird effects, kind of dreaming narratives, all of which is present in this film. Kind of like the credit sequence in this film, which is boggers. Yes. We move away from, we move away from orchestral music as the only soundtrack. So that's certainly present in this film. I'm sure we'll talk about that. And lastly, you see a lot of explicit social critiques. Yes. You have stories that are starting to break down kind of sacred myths like the noble cowboy or the virtuous soldier or other kind of Yeah, I mean, let's talk about this now, but this movie has several things that are like a leap forward culturally. First of all, has a lot of nudity. They will get a woman naked. There's a strip tease in this movie, which is not explicit, but they show a lot. Also, there are two openly gay characters in this movie. There's an openly gay woman and an openly openly gay man. And they are not presented in some sort of horrible, more realistic way. They're not the ones who get killed. They're just presented as, hey, here's their counterculture. These things exist, you know, and yeah, exactly. And the next thing I was going to say is you get open engagement with taboo topics like drug use. There's a lot of that here. Casual sex. There's a lot of that here and race, not as present in this movie. But then lastly, the last thing I want to say is you do have this sort of general anti-authoritarian spirit often hypocritical or incompetent or occasionally even their villains. So yeah. So that's my quick recap of counter culture and film in the sixties and he thought to anything big I missed, John. Now, I think you nailed it, and it's really interesting what I'm curious about, and I, let me, I hope you're about to tell me why this is happening in Argentina at the time, because with one exception, you know, this is not happening in major studios yet, certainly not in the cheap ones we're watching. So I'm curious why this emerged so sort of fully formed from Argentina when we've been dealing with hammer films and stuff. Well, you might be really surprised by the environment that this trashy exploitation movie came out of. Here's my caveat. This is based on an hour of internet research. So I am not an expert in our Juneteenth history. Please write in, we'd love to be corrected if we get something wrong if we miss any once. But. So, John, would you guess that Argentina in the late 60s was an avant-garde playground of the arts or a repressive, oppressive, militaristic state? See, I would guess the latter, that it's an oppressive, actually you're right. The year before this movie came out, one Carlos Onganya, hope I'm pronouncing that right, became dictator through a coup d'état. He was dictator through 1970. Like a lot of these people at this time of the Cold War, he was a right-wing dictator, and his goal was to bring the Franco model of government from Spain and apply it to Argentina. Yeah, and just for those who don't know, Franco was basically a fascist at the same time as Hitler and Mussolini accepted and started war with anybody. So he stayed in power from the late 30s all the way through the early 70s. Yes. So on Ganya's goal was to, he was obsessed with what was called Western Christian values. His goal was to restore conservative social values. and by restore, I mean mandate. So he took over universities, he had students and professors beaten and jailed. He made immorality legal. So there were literal morality police roaming the streets. They could arrest you for wearing a mini skirt for having good hair too long. And you could be arrested for being involved in any kind of avant-garde art. avant-garde art. Can I interject a strange parallel here? Yeah. There was an extra military force like this in the United States of America in the early 1900s through about 1920. Do you know what they were called? Uh, no, tell me. They were called the Clube-Clux land. Like we remember them as a horribly racist organization, which they were. But they were also of the temperance movement. They would literally break into people's houses if somebody was having their fair or something and drag them out into the street to humiliate them. Wow. So interesting that this is interesting parallel. But anyway, sorry, it's not relevant and it's 40 years before this. So go ahead. Well, I mean, it is a little relevant. The last thing is that Ongania instituted on top of all that, he instituted extreme censorship of all the arts. So which makes it really remarkable. And I want to take a minute to talk about this, it makes it really remarkable that a trashy, exploitative film like this. And I don't say that entirely dismissively. I think there's, I think there's some artistic merit in this one. Amazing that it came out of this environment. So I have some thoughts about how that happened, but first, any reactions from you, John. Well, I think that's absolutely fascinating and I want to hear your thoughts, but I think it's a lesson in, we often think of trashy movies as just trashy, right? where as they actually in a cultural level can serve an important purpose that may be hidden if you don't know the context, which is why we like to talk about historical context, right? We could dismiss this as a piece of trash, but when you frame it as the exact same movie against a authoritarian moral regime, it takes on a whole new, It fast it. Yeah, absolutely. So like Brad said, there's not a lot about this film or even about this director online that I could find. But I did do some digging into how you make an exploitation film in a repressive regime like this. Yeah. And here are some of the things I found. Like the basically, the way you do it is, and I'm skipping over the fact that it's just very interesting that something like this is born amidst an incredibly sensurious environment, right? But to make kind of forbidden art in an oppressive system, you have to find the loopholes, and I have to imagine this director found the loopholes. Here are some of the ways you find loopholes. First of all, you make films that are fast and cheap to make. so that they're done and they're out almost before they fly under the radar until they're already out there on the market, right? Secondly, you use a genre like horror or sci-fi that isn't taken as seriously and that you can use to piggyback a subversive message onto it without being noticed as much as if you did something that was more explicitly political, for example. By the way, pop in if you have any comments Well, just what you're making me think of is how sort of subversive messages came into our own countercultural around the same time, right? Comic books were a big one, right? Yeah. Crumb, that kind of thing, Mr. Natural, all that was very provocative at the time, and also, yeah, stand up comedians, court of low art, right, is where this, it was where the counterculture started in a lot of ways here. in Argentina specifically, although this probably is true elsewhere as well, the government sensors were more concerned about what the locals were watching. They were not really concerned as much as what they were exporting to other places, and also exports bring your country money. So you have a little incentive to not fuss too much about what you're selling to other countries. So for example, if there were a country that was very moralistic ruled by an incredibly authoritarian moralistic regime, but they extorted a bunch of opium or heroin, as is happening or happened in the 80s and 90s in the Middle East, yes, that would be a perfectly parallel. Precisely. And when you have something like a film, you also have the option of releasing an edited version for locals and the more, the more, the more, um, exploitative and worried version for other markets that are like a little less a little less strict, right? Yeah, but if you take all the exploitation out of this movie, what is it? I don't know if it would be possible to do that with this particular film. That's um. I would like to, I would love to see that cut, it would be about seven minutes long. Yeah. And lastly, you can also to get through a sensor regime. You can tack just enough moral elements onto your film that it kind of technically meets the standards like in this one. it's all exploitation and then in the last 30 minutes, the bad guy is defeated by the police, you know, like that's not that's not the purpose of the story. It's not why you're watching, but by doing that, you can say, look, it's a good old-fashioned tale of the authorities trying Yeah, it's got this sort of temperance message, right? Like like the villain it turns out is obsessed with a drug users who betrayed him kind of thing. So yes, exactly. So that's what I got any comments Brad or John on any of that or follow up thoughts. No, I just to say, though, I missed these longer historical context. We've been in the 60s for so long and our movies haven't been what we expected. So I'm really glad we're you're able to sync your teeth into this one, this is great. Well, I think it's interesting you mentioned the exporting of the movie because this film had someone who did the English language version, who had worked in US films, one of his other films, the the writer of the English version also wrote the first Paul Bartell film with Paul Bartell. I don't know who Paul Bartell is. He wrote and directed eating raw wool. Okay. So he was like an indie writer director. So somehow Emilia was connected or someone involved with him was connected to get these things out to interesting people in the US. I would be fascinated about the sort of underground connections of counterculture filmmakers in the It's one of those dark histories that's hard to find out about as we noticed. So awesome. All right. Well, that's all I got. And, you know, if we want to jump into the movie, I think I'm ready for it. Yeah. You know, I'm ready to. And I, so I'm warning to folks about this movie. This is a murder mystery, a who done it with at least five different red herrings and misdirections in order to try to keep you guessing right up until the end. There are so many characters in like couples coming together and coming apart and and just there's so much going on I am not going to name all the characters nor am I going to try to explain all those plot threads so let me give you the high level summary. And then, well, we're not going to skip the plot. We're going to go through the murder mystery, but we are not going to talk about every clue. We're not going to talk about every character, every misdirection. I think that would take us three hours. And I, you know, I couldn't even probably do it. It's so complicated at points. So. All right. So. This is, as I said, it's a who-done-it. It's about a masked man who seduces local teenage girls using hypnotic music to turn them into zombie slaves and then murders them. The plot involves a handsome, out-of-town detective named Inspector Ernesto Loria. And he comes to town to help the local police solve the murders. As he investigates, there are more murders in a million misdirections. And ultimately, it's a race against time to save one of the main characters. It leads to a cliffside confrontation with the killer, where their mask is literally ripped off, and they are revealed. So Is that covered enough for us to get started? It is, but you could not overstate, I, I, I didn't know probably 80% of the characters names. No. I was frantically. They're so little information about this movie. I was searching IMDB everywhere else tried to figure out who these people were. Yeah. There was a lot in this movie. Yeah, so one of the challenges I'm going to start with right away is normally I And I I hate to burst anyone's bubble, but normally I do my research on the cars and these things that the internet car movie database Which did not have an entry for this film. So I might become an editor of the internet car movie database because it between me and Claude and some sleuth thing. I actually found Three or four of the cars. Oh, so Yeah, I thought so ashamed of not doing them from the man from uncle episode, like I had to double down this time. Well, my list to ask you about the cars. So yeah, I'm excited you did your homework. Well, we get right into the action. It starts with a couple sneaking off from a party on the beach to make out. And as they're doing that, they see a car drive up. Somebody takes what looks like a body out of the car and leaves it and then races away. So let's get the important stuff out of the way. The car is a Porsche. It's a spider and it looks to be silver, even though it's a black and white film. It is a black and white film. It's silver. It's A. Hold on. Well, while you look it up, I'm just going to say that shot from the point of view of the couple looking at the beach. There's like dunes and either side and creating a valley and the car pulls up right in the middle. And it's night, it was really well done. I thought it was really a lot of it. Like Andy said, there is some arc to this film as trashy as it is, right? No, so it's a Porsche Spider probably a 718 that they made from like 57 to 60. And it's an interesting car. I'll say two things about it. One is it was a racecar. Like they sold it to people, and there are there are ones in circulation, but it actually started as a racecar. It's not like a 911 that was made for consumers. The second thing is, if you want to see what was the inspiration for early Japanese racing shows, like say Speed Racer, this is one of the cars, right? It has that single head bump behind the driver. It's long and low with the big wheel covers that like, like flow, like it's like it's a sculpture. It's not exactly like the Mach 5, but it's definitely like that in kind of inspiration. So, sorry to get so much into the car right away, but I kind of loved it. Was that the car of a famous, like action hero or something? It just sounds familiar. The Mach 5? Yeah, the speed racer. No, I mean the spider. Oh, probably. Okay. That's pretty cool. Well, James Dean died in a car crash driving a Porsche. Let me see what the car was. Yes, James Dean died while driving a Porsche 550 spider. Oh, that could be this car. It's not the car. This doesn't have the head bump. This one does have the head bump. The James Dean card did not. Okay. All right. Um, okay. So, um, so this is definitely then a 17 and James Dean's was a 550. I'm glad we could, well, slew thing here as we record some listeners, you're welcome. Yeah. Um, okay. Anyway, but what we learn right off the bat is you get a glimpse of this killer and you see his victim who's left lying there. She's half naked and she has a syringe sticking out of her chest. And that is our first victim and we sort of immediately know what's going on. Anything you want to add up to that before we sort of follow the killer home, so to speak. Just that in the opening three minutes, we have pushed past all way past the boundaries that all movies we've watched today have shown us. We've had sex and they're not just kissing, they're like taking clothes off. not seeing recreational drugs like this in our movies at all. And here we have someone with the hyperdermic needle impaled in their chest. So we've got we've got it all in this first couple minutes. I know it's fascinating compared this to like hercules in the haunted world, like in any case the killer then drives off in his sweet sports car and he goes home and the next and the beginning of the film is really a montage of him going into his house. He wears this bizarre mask and he has these gloves on his hands that make his hands look like leporous or something. Yeah, they're like wolf or monster gloves. Yeah, they like monster hairy monster gloves or something. Anyway, and then we hold on the mask is very similar to the Halloween mask. It looks a lot. The short hair, the short cross like it's a distorted kind of rubbery mask. Like they did something to it. So it is creepy. It's very creepy. And as he enters his house, they're like focusing on his hands multiple times. And then we cut to this absolutely trippy. credit sequence, like zoom in, zoom out, still shots, half naked women, like all this crazy stuff. This was, again, and one of the artful parts of this movie was this crazy sequence. Yeah. This opening couple minutes, it was pretty compelling. We should talk about how this movie looks. It's, large chunks of this movie are shot at night and you wouldn't think that the beach at night would be a very interesting place except there are just enough dunes that you get that you can use shadows. So there's a ton shot on the beach at night, but it looks really stark and interesting, I would say. And they use a lot of extreme lighting almost in the noir kind of way in this film, so when it at one point the killer is in the woods in his mask and you can tell there's just like Like at his feet shining up at him. Yeah, and you know it's kind of hokey. It also totally works So there's a lot of that in this In any case, we start to, I'm not going to go into super detail. We start to meet some of our characters. There's, and we start to see some potential killers. For example, the piano player at the local club walks in, he's got mud on his shoes, and he's come to work late. And I just want it, this is, this is Silvio. And again, we won't go through every character. But I just wanted to play like a clip of Silvio telling to his boss. It also gives you that counter-cultural language Look Silvio, the boss told me to keep tabs on you. I'd hate to tell him you started working one in the morning, amen? These squares would notice if the piano was gone. feel like these squares like it's just that's the vibe of the movie that's how people talk they're all wearing 1960 suits. There's cool people. There's not cool people. And this is suspect number one now. And this is suspect number one. And again, I'm not going to do every suspect, but we'll talk about a couple. Also in this scene is a strip tease that takes place in the middle of the bar and I'm extended sequence. So again, we're getting into that sort of lurid kind of stuff. But again, she's also under the influence of the drugs, right? Yes. So she's either being controlled or has lost control. Yes. And then we start to cut to a police investigation. There's a local inspector. There's a forensic doctor, Dr. Bermuda's who will talk about a little bit later. And then there's the new and then coming to town is the new inspector. Let's call him Inspector Loria. So so we'll keep on those three. So there's the local the local detective will just call them the local detective. There's Inspector Loria and then there's Dr. Bermuda's who are who is doing the autopsy. And In any case, they do their investigation. They pick up a body. They pick up the body. There's police cars here. Excuse me, will I mention these police cars? Because there's a couple of them. So as they go to pick up the body, there is the police or Dr. Bermuda's drives this really old cars, like a 1950 Ford custom. We've seen them before in other movies, but it's really old for this movie. It'd be like 15 years old. and then also the police are driving these gigantic Ford galaxies, Ford Galaxy 500s, that are amazing. These things are like tanks on wheels. It's delightful. And so there's a couple of cop cars like that. But anyway, So we get to do the autopsy. Do you want to say anything before the autopsy? And there's a lot of incident, but not a lot of plot. No, I don't want to say anything right now. Again, I am like you. I'm trying to think like what's important here and what is just needless complexity. So well, let's talk to you. Let's talk to you. Let's talk about Inspector Loria for a second, because he's clearly the cool guy, right? He comes to town, everybody thinks he is handsome. He reminded me of Adam West before he became Batman, right? He's tall, square jawed, great hair, very handsome, you know. He's got that vibe, wearing a suit all the time, the local people start to float with him immediately, you know, so he is the, he is the outsider who's come here to be the expert. He's not a very deep character, but he sort of sets off against the dopey police inspector. Yeah, and he's young enough that he can plausibly become romantically linked to some of the young women on the beach, right? Yeah, he's the cool young guy. But in any case, we're thrown right into the investigation. They do an autopsy and Dr. Bermuda's concludes that this woman died of a heroin overdose. And that's what was in the needle. However, Dr. Bermuda's assistant is skeptical, and we learned this about Dr. Bermuda's Don't listen to him. Everything has drugs with him. He's obsessed. Completely haunted by his first wife's memory. Do you know the story? A long time ago, I tear a lot of accidents and his wife and her lover. Yes, that's right, and they were high on drugs. Now we've got sort of our framework, our plot. There are two women have gone missing, but returned. One woman was killed and now the inspector has to find out what's going on. So after this sort of tower autopsy, the inspector meets everybody, including like the couple that was making out at the very beginning, they come in to give a statement. And the girlfriend, in front of her boyfriend, starts flirting immediately with Hansen Inspector Loria. And then there's, there's a bunch of investigations, the big thing here I think is setting up a bunch of relationships at a beach party, right? Where the kids play volleyball, they run around, they dive into the water and take their tops off. We learn a little bit more about like the interrelations between some different suspects and stuff that is like way more than I want to go into Andy, but should you want to say anything about this, the beach party? So it's a beach scene we've seen them in movies before like at horror of party beach and some others But this whole scene and to something sent this whole movie is just drenched in this like this unease about young people and especially young people's sexuality. Yes, there is there are a couple of older characters who are at the beach and kind of kind of watching all of the youngsters pairing off and conneudling and splashing around in such and in there's this this movie to me and it This generation is like almost alien to the one that came before it. Yeah, they're behaving strangely. They're doing things that they're doing things that their parents generation wouldn't. It's not stated exactly, but I got that by very strongly from the way that some of the older characters were talking about the young people on the beach. Do you have any thoughts? Yeah, because that sort of represented by the fiancee of one of these or the boyfriend of one of these young girls. He is like an adult. He's got a job. He's a square. But all the rest of these teenagers Don't have you don't know they don't all they apparently do is go to the beach all day on the go to the club all night Like there's nothing about them be on that, you know what I mean? Yeah, whereas the parents are sitting with the square boy friend saying I don't know what's going on with her You know, so yes, they find them incomprehensible even the square young person So I think that that theme just is shot through this entire film. Yeah, absolutely So here we've sort of got the set up though. We see there's an interview we know the plot, we know our criminal at one point he summons one of the girls using his creepy music and there's a sort of extended sexual encounter scene while she's hypnotized and on drugs. So when we're talking about the sexual assault, this is the kind of thing we're talking about. Could we talk about the killer's methods here? Yeah, because we talked about his layer because it's fascinating. Yeah, I got what his methods and then I'll describe the layer. Well, sure. I actually was going to ask you for help because I had kind of hard time understanding what the, what was actually happening. So is it correct? Is this correct? He has an organ that he plays in his layer, which you can describe in a minute. Yeah. And the sound of it drifts out onto the beach and women who hear it kind of go into a trans-like, you might say, zombie state and then they wander off back to his lair where he has sex with them shoots them full of drugs and then kills them? Well, at first he sets them free and then he summons them back again. Okay. So he's like trying to hook them. on not only the music but on him and his drugs. Okay. And there's an extended scene where like one of the girls who had been inducted before sort of sitting on the beach screaming like he won't come for me. He's forgotten about me. She wants him to summon her back. That was a cool scene. That was. But the music, the whole tempting with the music thing is bizarre because it's not really, it's like magic, but there's no magic in this movie. That part. Can I just say how disappointed I am when I saw the title? I hope that the deadly organ was not a musical organ being a potential zombie film. I thought it was something else. And then it all it is is an organ. It's an organ, but it's not deadly. The drugs are deadly. Anyway, it's what lures the the young women in. So. So the investigation begins, there's a lot of John, did you want to talk about his layer? Oh, so his layer looks like a 1960s like it's dark, but it's like one of those flat roof houses with stone walls and big glass windows and then sensory modern. Mid-century modern and he's in there, he's got a mirror that is cracked that he looks at himself in. It's pretty much designed to seem like a psychos layer. You know what I mean? Yes. Right on the beach and it's right on the beach. Someone with money. That didn't occur to me because I was really good. It didn't occur to me, either. Can I get out of here? So we, I pegged the murderer almost instantly when they released. Yes, did you guys, I did not because, you know what, I'll be honest, one of the reasons I think this is why I like thrillers and murder mysteries, I'm terrible at figuring out the only murder I've murdered, I've ever figured out in my whole life was Twin Peaks. That was like my one success and everything else like I almost never guess. All right, well, I usually am pretty bad at it, but this time it was the person I thought, but we'll leave you in suspense listeners. Yeah, so in any case, the investigation is ongoing, the handsome detective is flirting with one of the girls. There's a chase where they see the killer's car, but let's move on. So they're at the club, the club is going on. We pause on the car for a second. Yeah. That becomes a clue because the cops say, Right, and it's a Porsche spider and it turns out it's more common than we thought I know at least two people have Porsche spiders So then when they're looking up they're like, oh, he's got a car like mine like I don't think that was a very common car But I think it's kind of hilarious also the the police inspectors are driving this giant Buickless saber like that It's 1960-Buicla Saber. It's got a Delta Wing front grill. It's like a monster with white walls and everything. It's glorious. So anyway, we've been making this movie sound more coherent than it is to watch out to say, I like looked away or I got up to get something for like 45 seconds. And I came back and there was a car chase going on. Yeah, I had a very hard time figuring out what's going on. And I think it takes three of us to figure this thing out. It's becoming clear to me as we talk. Yeah, well, let's, let's move on to Act 2 and just in hand wave a bunch of this. But what's important is the music. So now they finally make the connection with the music. They hear the eerie music. One of the women walks away, followed by the square boyfriend, who then gets knocked on the head. He comes stumbling back to the club where he's found by the inspector in the Inspector Loria and the local detective, and they ask him what happened. And that's, that's this clip here. I was out with Sarah, just behind her, and somebody got me. Did you get a good look at him? Oh, ah. I'm almost sure I heard music. It wasn't music, I guess. But more like whaling, maybe it was from a club? No. It's different. It wasn't natural. And you hear that wailing right at the end of that clip. So that's where the young woman is saying, he didn't come for me, and she's so upset. And that's a really great scene, actually, in this movie. So the inspector and the detective catch a glimpse of the killer as he's sort of disappearing here, but they can't pursue him. They find this girl, and that's sort of it for the night. But the next day, Square Boyfriend in this girl are having a fight. She is like four Lauren. Um, and. She's playing music on the piano, and I don't want to go into all the ins and outs here, because there's a few threads that start to come together here, but what we discover with the inspector discovers, and this is his sort of big clue, is that the music they heard and the music the girl was playing in the piano, and this record that the inspector found are all the same music, and it's our creepy summoning the girl's music, and I thought this would be a good time to just give you a sample of that. It's kind of great. I don't know what that is. We not do one more off from the beach to go investigate that if it if you heard it Honestly, yes, but I wouldn't be hypnotized just because I'd be like, what the heck is that? So John, I can send a clip of that to your wife so she can play it when she needs you to call it. There you go. What we're hand waving here is that like they've got these like little record players and stuff like on a windy beach that would travel about 10 feet. Yeah, the record player looked like the size of a walkmaker CD Walkman. Yeah, it's sort of hand-way beyond the science of sound there. Yeah. Well, I think it's real. I'd like to look that up and see what kind of device works. Yeah, they have like a portable record player that is looks kind of hilarious. It's got like this lid that closes down, but it's narrower than the record. Anyway, you know there was at least like one couple months stretch where people took some sort of ungodly portable record player with them around town. Yes. I remember in the 80s actually when Cassette boomboxes became big then we tried to market in manufacture a vertical playing record player that you could do the same thing with did not work. So our plot moves forward so the one girl who was killed the undertaker at the graveyard calls the inspector we don't know what about exactly. but the inspector and the detective come in and they notice one of our suspects who is the fiance of the murdered girl again, we will not go into details. They find him walking away and they get to the graveyard and the undertaker is dead. Uh, how has he been killed, Andy? Well, he's been stabbed with a hyperdermic needle, but he's sprawled out on the grave of the first woman who was killed at the beginning of the movie. Yes. And the grave is disturbed enough that I was trying to figure out if we were meant to think that she had, remember, I'm watching this looking for zombies, right? Yeah, I was trying to figure out if she had come out of the grave, but I don't think that she had. No, I don't think so. I think, Yeah, we'll get to it at the end, but the only zombies I can see so far are these women who get zombified by this music, to come under this, this, where does control? So there's a lot of, the rest of this act is really about, like oh is it the fiance is it this piano player who is it a bunch of misdirection we don't need to go to it in detail but the big thing that happens sort of at the beginning of the last act is the inspector is finally put together the record the music on the piano the another set of music, it all comes together. They figure out that's what it's for. And then they have a great plan and to use the music to lure the killer. Do you, how does this plan describe the plan and tell us how it works out? So I might not be able to describe it because by this point in the movie, I will just tell you, I couldn't tell any of the characters apart and I have only the vaguest idea of what was happening. My sense is, is this correct? one of the girls as like bait, right? Yes. They're going to play the music and see where she goes. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. I sounded like a dumb plan. So I wasn't sure when I started saying it. It's that's dumb. And then she gets killed by the killer because they don't get there soon enough. Yeah. Good. Good job. There's the paperwork on that one's going to be a little ugly. I think for the police. Yes. It's a total They do a bunch more investigation. There's like 10 more minutes of investigation. And then they try it again with a different girl. So that's smart. And they almost lose her, too. And she gets captured. She just happens to escape on her own. you know, like she hits the guy in his house with like some big statue or something and escapes she's convinced it's the she's convinced is the fiance yeah that's the film's strongest misdirection as they really throughout the film they really want you to suspect that the killer is the bitter fiance of the first murder victim see i thought it was the singer because he came to the show late after a murder was committed. And he had sand on his shoes. And they made a point of showing his shoes covered in sand. I feel like there was such a cheat misdirection, because they didn't explain it. Like when they were really wasn't the killer, I was going like, so why did he have dirt all over his nice shoes? Like any reason? I, so they show you dirt. But I'm like, they're on a beach. They'd all have dirt on their shoes. Right. I know. I love all these people wearing loafers and suits on the beach. It's pretty big. in any case she thinks it's it's this this guy so they go to find him right at his hotel uh... and find him murdered yeah some ways everybody else so the music happens again in the girl leaves again though I do want there's one great bit I want to do here so the monster in his mask with his fake hands and everything after she escapes he looks in his already cracked mirror and he punches it like a psychopath it's kind of great so she's the first victim that tries that fights him off correct like i thought i didn't know I didn't know why the other one's head. Yeah, I didn't either, but I didn't either. So they could be sexually exploited by this movie. I didn't. But I don't know why the characters are sitting right. So they find him murdered, but then it happens again. The music comes on, the girl leaves, and the villain captures her, and he's going to take her, he takes her to a cliff overlooking the sea. and he's going to kill her, um, and he has some dialogue and stuff this time. He actually has some dialogue. He's been quite, yeah, he's been silent, a silent killer through the whole movie so far, except for this last assault, and now in this cliff face. So yeah, let's see what he says, producer bread. You can't fool me. You can't turn me in, but you're just my partners. You're a stupid for that idiot. I kill you and all. It's your turn. I think I should have been fair of a deal. Thank you for having the brilliant of knowing who I am. Just before you die. Yeah, so so he that scene he is wrestling the girl first this so many bad things here So at first all he says if you didn't quite as a little hard to hear in the clip You have the pleasure of knowing who I am just before I die and he tears off half his mask and at that point the police is Well not before I die before you die before you die, that's right. The police inspector shoots him twice which does kill him But the girls right there, like he could easily have killed the girl, or the bullet kind of gone through him and killed the girl, or there's so many ways this could have gone wrong. He's taking a shot at a distant figure in the dark with a handgun who is grappling with an innocent victim, you know? I think we're going to conclude this isn't a very zombie-like movie, but can I call this a first? The first absurdly accurate handgun user that we will later see in like done of the dead, making crack headshots from 30 feet away. So yeah. Well, we had the sniper in, um, Dr. Orlov. Yeah, well that was a rifle like that. That's what rifle you're supposed to do. Like in a fight, the average person with a handgun will tell you over 15 yards or so, like, forget it. Like it's a, it's a complete crap shoot because they're short barrels and everything like that. So anyway, they roll the body over, pull the mask off and who is it, Andy? It is Dr. Bermuda's, yes, the man who has obsessed with the drugs who thought everything was drugs, who then was using drugs to molest and enslave teenage girls and then the movie ends. anything you want to add to the ending here. There's a bunch of plot we missed and trust me, you're all happy about that. Just that this was, I guess we'll get into it with our questions, but yeah, yeah, this was a trip to watch. This was a trippy movie. It was. I didn't expect it to be so transgressive and I didn't, I didn't expect to who done it. Like I wasn't super interested in the who done it, but I have to give them credit for like making the effort. Yeah, I agree. You know, so yeah, why don't we just get into it? I don't have anything to say. Yeah, and more stuff will come out as we ask our questions, I think. Yeah, I think shall we do it. Let's do it. All right, John, in the deadly organ, is there a hero party? Well, yes and no, in the sense that there's any heroes, I guess it's the inspector, the detective, and the girl who survives until the end, they're sort of the hero party. You think Dr. Permutus is part of it too, but clearly he was not. What was the name of the girl who's arrived to the end, by the way, it wasn't Sarah and I couldn't catch it to be and there's no cast listing on I am deep in there's no casting she was the first girl we saw that was making out of the beach and she's the one at the end so she's like the most significant one and that I couldn't tell you her name. I'm sorry. Yeah, by the end, she was kind of coupled up with the inspector, right? Do I read that message? Yes, during the car chase we talked about it was I think her car and the inspector was like, he saw the Porsche and he was like, let me drive. I'm gonna drive your car directly and a car race. Well, how does that hero party do John, how many survive? Well, several girls get killed, but in our hero party they all survive. It's a close one for the girl though. They all get traumatized except for the local detective, but they all survive. All right, John, this is a big question for this movie. Yeah, what kind of a zombie, first of all, are there zombies in this movie? And if so, what kind of zombie are we dealing with? I don't think we are. I think what they're trying to suggest is this man is using music as a zombie master would to zombify somebody? But it most, they seem hypnotized. Yeah, like they don't seem like zombies. Like they sort of lose their will and are sad, but that is all due to the drug addiction and the addiction to this music. And I don't think these are zombies. They walk slowly for brief periods of time and then are active again and have sex and do all these other things that zombies don't normally do. Yeah, I'm gonna agree with you. I mean, I can see why someone would want to try and shoehorn this into the zombie genre. It's a zombie adjacent, but the zombies aren't really the point here, and they're certainly not like undead or, yeah, I don't know, it's, they're quite different from anything else we've seen. Yeah, what's interesting about this movie is it's sort of a precursor to the moralistic slant. It has morely high-handed about drugs and loose teens while showing you all the things that loose teens like to do while they're on drugs, you know? Yeah, exactly. You've taken our showing all sorts of titillating stuff and then you're like, remember, kids, but don't do any of this. Yeah, exactly. There is, I think it's a book and article about this director and it's locked up under an academic website but the titles called sex drugs and mental control Oh, interesting. Do we need a pro quest account? What's the, I don't know. All right. Well, they look it up. All right. So I don't know what we weird across here. This is our versus zombie master who is zombifying like people to victimize them. Yeah, he doesn't have some master plan. Yeah, most zombie masters we've seen. they are using the zombies to carry out a plan, even if it's just enriched themselves. Right. And like in white zombie are very first, right? Like that was to get people to work at his sugar mill. Yeah, but but this one there, people he wants to victimize. So he zombifies them in order to put them in a state where he can victimize them. Yeah, that's the only reason he does it. He has no master plan. He's just crazy. And so I guess we don't really have zombies here, no, if they, I mean, it is a quasi mystical, I mean, these are sort of mystical zombies, like a hypnotism or a mesmerism zombie, if it were a zombie. Yeah, and they can come back out of the zombie state. Yes. Although it might leave you sort of traumatized and wanting to go back into that state. Right. It makes you wonder once we hit night-a-living dead, if these kind of films with the mesmerism, hypnotism that are classified as zombies, if light-a-living dead, codifies everything differently and these don't happen anymore. I'm curious to see that too, because they're only under his influence while they're in the drugs in the music, they can leave his influence and sort of come back to themselves and then get zombified again. So that's why they don't feel like zombie because it's such a temporary state. Yes. So are there any zombie movie first here that we need to call out? I was joking about the handgun shot. I don't think so. I think this is so, I mean, the first is the thing that's interesting about this movie is we've been expecting, we've been waiting for transgressive movies to hit us. And except for maniac, early on, we haven't seen a lot of it. So this feels like a door is about to open into the 70s. But I would add that monstrosity has some similarities to that. That's true because the underlying commentary was about how women have to make themselves looking young and perfect when you get old, you lose your value. Yes, it's wrapped up in a horror film. Yeah, that could be true. I like that. But in that, I think there's some depth to this film. I just don't think it adds anything to our zombie education. Yeah, fair enough. So at the beginning of the podcast, John, you identified four pillars of the zombie film. Let's find out how many of them are present in the deadly organ. John, in this movie, is there an apocalypse? Nope. Is there contagion? No, one zombie cannot give it to another zombie. You can only get it through hearing an organ. Very indirectly, you know, you could say heroin is yes, that heroin he's using is a, you know, on some level. It is sort of a contagion, I suppose. Right. But are there tough moral choices? not really everyone's just kind of bad. There's a lot of, you know, she's the immoral choices. Yes, they're easy immoral choices. Yes. Are there loved ones turning against you? If you squint really hard, you could say that the first girl, the girl who screams about the zombie master, not wanting her, is turning on her square boyfriend. But when we said this, we mean, are they killing them? And the answer is no. Yeah. All right, well, then those are your pillars and then I think we'll have more discussion when you ask me some 1960s question. Absolutely, let's start right off the bat here. Is there an increase in violence and grittiness in this film over our previous film, Sandy? Absolutely. Yes, this is what I meant. What we meant with this question. Yeah, and further to the characters in this film, question authority is sort of a default behavior. So this movie does have traditional authority figures and they are not shown to be like incompetent in fact one of them is kind of the protagonist yeah, but he's kind of hip like he's one of the kids really that yeah exactly that said this movie just has a strong feel of adults are are dumb their squares um they don't get it Yeah. The villain is the oldest character in the movie. Yes, exactly. And he is, he can't, you know, part of his angst is like that. I mean, he's victimizing the young women of the next generation. Yes. So yeah. So yeah. We'll say questions authority. Yeah. Curious about this one. Focus on the hero's inner life or more personalized or So there's focus on, so this movie has kind of a psycho-like psychological motivation for the killer. which this killer has a more like psychological motive than most of the quote zombie masters in movies we watched. He was traumatized by a lossy had he associated that he kind of transferred his helplessness and frustration with that experience onto the easy target of of drugs and young people in general. So it is the villains in our life here. It is a personalized horror, but it is the villains personalized horror. Yeah, our heroes are pretty, you know, there's not a lot of depth to any of the hero characters. No, it's not really. They're just good looking and cool or not. And again, they suggest they're very superficial. So like, we do have openly gay characters that is interesting. But again, it's the most, we just see the most superficial aspects of them. It's still brazen, I think, to show open home of sexuality in a 1967 film, but it is, I did a double take, at least twice, when it was showing that. And I will say, the young characters are portrayed as incredibly cool for them, yes. Like, they look incredibly cool. They are cooler than you. Yeah. Right. The coolest one is the lesbian, everybody's like, she's so cool. Yeah, like you know what I mean? And don't forget what we are watching was the English stop, so an American wrote the script. So who knows what the original in Spanish was? Yeah, I don't know, but like she makes out with other women and stuff. So that's very clear. Um, yeah, so anyway, it's interesting. I'd be curious to hear with the original Spanish was or at least a direct translation, but yeah, I don't think that'll ever happen, unfortunately. Um, how about an increased fear of crimes, societal chaos, or anarchy? And so yeah, that's what this movie is all about. And... the villain, the representative of kind of the older generation, is so obsessed with this that he is gone to these horrible that he is using it to like, well, I don't know, it's all twisted up, but yes. this whole movie is about what are these kids doing? Why are they behaving in this way? It's strange. It's weird. I don't understand why they're acting the way they're acting. Trogs are ruining society. Yeah, and I wonder to us in the modern age, the kids all seem a little bit harmless though. They're pretty transgressive. But I wonder just how it would play to an older audience 40 years ago. Yeah, or 60 years ago. So I mean, I see the villain as you say, the oldest person in the movie. I mean, I feel like this, he is kind of snapped at this younger generation that he doesn't understand. Speaking of, how about a looming sense of apocalypse or psychological stress for our characters? Hmm, apocalypse not so much right. I mean, there is this is kind of a tense uneasy movie. Yeah, like this movie has a great Just a vibe of unease about it. So yeah, but kind of a stressful it is a little bit of a stressful movie to watch and I don't know. That's a little tough, though, because the so many of the characters are just kind of gorgeous faces that you don't really learn much about them. It's hard to know. Yeah. And even when the killings have started, no, but none of them change their behavior. Like, yes, you know, they don't stop going out or anything. You know, they still make out with strange men on the beach to in the morning. Yeah, even though like a huge number of murders are taking place on this little stretch of BGN. Yes, it's like remember a horror of party beach when they're like 40 people are killed and they're all partying at the beach where it took place. Yes, I do. Lastly, horrors without solutions are lack of clear villains to defeat. I'm interested to your answer to this one, actually. So I think that So I want to say, yes, this has horse without solutions and lack of clear villains with the caveat, the defeat of the villain feels very tacked on to me, yes, this isn't really. I mean, he's the bad guy. He's causing this immediate problem. But whatever this like whatever is going on with the kids and their drugs and their sex is beyond the ability of anyone in this movie to fix or to stop. I think or beyond any of the authority figures can fix or stop. So yes, they shoot the guy who's murdering these women, but they're still drugs out there and these kids are all still doing drugs and having sex and sneaking out and loitering and all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Yep. All right, Andy. Well, that leaves us with our traditional closing questions. John, would you and I survive in the not very zombie world of the deadly organ? I don't know. If we got wrapped up in this thing, maybe not, because though he mostly kills women, he does kill two men, right? So he's perfectly willing to kill innocent bystanders, anybody who gets in his way. So I think this guy could take us. There's kind of a nastiness about this villain. Yeah, that I think might be able to get me. Yeah. I think you guys are safe, because it's very clearly early on saying that the squares don't pay attention. Oh, nice. Oh, that's brilliant. We wouldn't be at this beach, John. We know home reading books. We wouldn't even know about this beach, right? We'd be wearing short sleeve Oxford shirts and working in our engineering jobs, but the look is right at the beach. Yeah. So, John, is this a zombie movie, or a movie with zombies? Or is this a movie without zombies? This is a movie without zombies. It is neither a zombie movie or a movie with zombies. It is a, it was a detour, let's say. So I'm very interested in how you'll answer this one though, John. John, do you recommend the deadly organ? First, do you recommend it just generally as a film that is worth watching? And secondly, do you think a special value and interest to our zombie-loving listeners? Well I'll answer the second one first because it's easy. No, there's no special zombie interest here. Like I can't recommend it. As a zombie movie, do I recommend it as a regular movie? Not for just a casual watch. There's too much sort of exploitation and it's sort of too poor in quality to recommend. It is an interesting cultural artifact, though, as you can tell by our discussion of everything going on around the movie rather than the movie itself, you know what I mean? So, so I'm going to say no to both, but I am curious to learn more about the history and the atmosphere in which this film was created. Yeah, I'm going to agree with you no on both, but if this sounds interesting to you, you're probably someone who should give this a watch, like it's an as an artifact, you won't, it's not a very enjoyable movie. There's not much in the way of like great scenes. There's no great acting. It's exploitative. There's some growth stuff that we kind of skipped over, but that was kind of unpleasant. Some of the exploitation was not real fun to watch. So, right. So, that's a no, except it does make for a pretty fascinating artifact, not just an early calendar culture film, but one from a non-US context and made in a very different cultural context. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, that means a time for the scariest part of the show and that is when producer Brad reveals to me and John what zombie movie we're going to watch next and producer Brad it is going to have a zombie in it, right? Whatever it is. So we are closing in on our second season. And I just want to say, if anyone thinks we missed a movie, any listeners think we missed a movie that we need to address by the zombie strains team, send us an email, zombie strains podcast at Gmail. So our countdown to night living dead is holding at four. Oh, man. And that is because Emilio Vera has one other film we should watch. and I couldn't find a trailer so I'm going to show you the poster. Okay, so we've got what, uh, forgive my pronunciation, extraña invasión. Okay. I'm very curious, it's a poster on like any other. I don't know, I'd even sure what's, it's like an abstract Picasso in the center of this thing, like, like a, like the Predator's heat vision. Yeah, it's like a cubist zombie or something with a big blood splurge in the middle of it. I'm very curious about this film. What made you pick this one, producer Brad? Well, when I was looking up the director for this film, I was looking at his other films and the description of the plot Okay. All right. So does this just mean alien invasion? Who hears speak Spanish? Not me. It probably translates. Well, the English translation is strange invasion. Strange invasion. Okay. Okay. All right. Well, hey, I'm curious to watch. Again, the film we just watched was a very curious artifact. And I am here for that. So I'm curious to see another curious article. Do you know Brad, if this is I don't know. I know that there are children in this film, so I'm hoping not. Okay. I'm hoping not to. I would like to say the producer Brad just throughout the email address is on bestrinspodcast at gmail.com. Even if you don't have a movie, recommend just have a question or want us to give you a shout out or anything. Send us any mail. We'll see what we can do. Tell us about a car we missed. Tell us about a car we missed. Correct. We say the word we mean chan. Alright, thanks everybody, we'll see you next time on ZombieStrains. You've been listening to ZombieStrains. 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 ZombieStrains. All of this helps like-minded people find the show. See you next time.