Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast that watches all the zombie movies. Today's film is part Heist, part Mad Scientist, part Voodoo, part Revenge and part Zombie Movie.

Let's hear from our first Mad Scientist, John Carradine.

“No point in asking the medical authorities. I knew what their reaction would be. I had to test it, Sergeant. I had to test it. I had to.”

And our second Mad Scientist bent on Revenge.

“As your father experimented on my son, so you shall serve me.”

And did I mention this was a heist movie?

“It seems as though a half a million dollars in jewels that belongs to me accidentally fell into the back of your truck.”

That's right. It's the 1965 film Psycho A-Go-Go matched with 1969's The Fiend With The Electronic Brain to create 1972's Blood of Ghastly Horror.

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

Zombie.

Zombie?

What's a zombie?

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

They are the living dead.

Get me the zombies!

Against an army of zombies, no armies could stand!

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

I’ve seen the dead rise.

Kill the brain, and you kill the ghoul.

Welcome to Zombie Strains. I'm John.

And I'm Andy.

And I'm Brad.

Hey, guys. This is quite a film we have here today. I can't tell how many movies we actually watched this week. It's a little confusing. I'm sure Brad will clear all that up for us.

I'm not sure we saw a complete film.

No, I think, yeah, that's a great point. My first note was it took four people to write this thing, and I'm like, yeah, but they didn't all do it at the same time, is what I realized.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, we'll get into that. At what point did it no longer become workable to mash multiple movies together to make a third movie? Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, like I'm trying to think of other examples.

Like no one's mashing together, like, I don't know, a cliffhanger and The Matrix to make a new movie, right?

That would be pretty great. I'd watch it. There could be something like that happening in the directed DVD world, but even there, I feel like the productions are so slick and their pipeline is so good that they don't have to do this kind of thing. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So anyway, what are we even talking about, producer Brad?

We're talking about the 1972 film Blood Of Ghastly Horror. Should we jump in?

Let's just jump right in.

All right. Let's see if we can untangle the story behind the film and the filmmakers. Blood Of Ghastly Horror was released sometime between 1971 and 73. Different sources have different dates, so I'll drop it in our timeline at 1972. The film was directed by Al Adamson, who directed 40 exploitation and B movies. Hustling to make low-budget films was in his blood. His father was silent film actor and producer Victor Adamson. Victor directed many low-budget Westerns under the name Denver Dixon. He then starred in them under the name Art Mix. And he chose the name Mix to cash in on the fame of Tom Mix, the King of Cowboys and the biggest Western star of the time. Legend has it that when Tom Mix tried to sue Victor for using the name Mix, Victor found an Art Mix in the phone book and either had this man adopt him or show up as proof that a real Art Mix existed and was part of the films. Wow.

That's amazing. Apparently now, like Michael Keaton, like the Batman, his actual name is Michael Douglas. But when he signed his SAG contract, they're like, well, we already have Michael Douglas. You have to pick a new name. So this is like a thing that they avoid now.

Well, and this stems from the Screen Actors Guild. They require actors to have unique names to avoid confusion. So you get Michael J. Fox, because there was already a Michael Fox or Michael B. Jordan instead of Michael Jordan, because the basketball player was in the Union first.

Yeah. Last thing Michael Keaton wants is his Batman money going to Michael Douglas. That's for sure.

All this is to say that Al Adamson was deeply rooted in the low budget side of Hollywood. Al directed his first film, Psycho A-Go-Go, in 1965. The plot revolves around jewelry thieves led by Psycho Joe Corey, who stashed their loot in a family's car and spent the rest of the film trying to catch up with the family and the diamonds.

Can I say Psycho A-Go-Go should make it on our list of films, like Pillow Of Death and the other ones we have? We should watch for the title alone, except I think we've already seen one third of it.

Well, that's the catch. I think we've seen enough of it.

Yeah.

That film didn't make much money.

I'm shocked. Yeah.

So in 1969, Adamson re-edited Psycho A-Go-Go with new scenes featuring John Carradine and then re-titled the film, The Fiend With The Electronic Brain. Repurposing an old film with a few new scenes was a cheap way to make a new movie. In this new version, John Carradine's mad scientist experiments on Joe Corey's brain, hoping to cure him of wounds sustained in Vietnam. Instead of helping Corey, his experiments turn him into a violent psycho. In 1971, Adamson shot new scenes again and re-edited the film now called Blood of Ghastly Horror. The new scenes added the character, Dr. Elton Corey, Joe's father, who seeks revenge on those who harmed his son. This final version was successful at drive-ins and on late night television.

You know, this reminds me of the director of Jacuz working on his Napoleon film for decades. Zach, exact same kind of thing.

What a perfect comparison, John.

Yeah, exactly. Can we talk about the Corey in the room for a second?

Yeah, we have to.

Sure. So, as our listeners know, my name is John Corey. No relation to the fictional character, Joe Corey. Though it is a rare last name, like it's a common first name. I used to actually work with a guy named Corey Jackson, and whenever, and we would always get each other's email, it made him crazy. But more importantly, there's actually several other fictional Cores that I want to bring to your attention. First of all, my first favorite fictional Corey in middle school, actually, I was in junior high because it was junior high back then. I read The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny. At the beginning of the first book, our hero Corwin is taking a fake name, which is Carl Corey, and as a seventh grader, that was so exciting to me to have a fictional character with my last name. I couldn't have been happier. Second, Brad, as you know, there's a Captain John Corey of the Macronesian Alliance in the show Sea Quest. How did that happen?

That would be Pascas Javier Grigio Markswatch doing.

That's right. He wrote that episode and he named the captain who turned it up being a coward and a weasel, but that's okay. I didn't take it personally.

He also wrote a character named Bradley Dumont in one of the episodes too.

He did.

Was that character also a weasel? Just checking.

No, that one, he built an underwater train.

Oh, that's right. I remember the underwater train.

I think Javi likes Brad more than John is what I'm learning.

I think that's the case. But there's another, there's actually a fictional John Corey. I'll tell you who it is and then I'll tell you how I found out. Have either of you heard of the author Nelson DeMille? He writes-

My dad's bookshelf.

Yeah. His tough-as-nails ex-FBI guy is named John Corey. I discovered this because once I was wandering around in, get this, Borders Books and Nelson DeMille was giving a talk.

Hold on. Was it Borders Books, the big franchise or Borders Book, the single store in Ann Arbor before it became a franchise?

The big franchise. It was the other store in Ann Arbor. It was closer to my house, just to be honest and easier to park at. But, so Nelson DeMille was giving a talk. I knew nothing about him. I'd never heard of him. And then he's talking about his character, his main character. And he said, I was thinking about killing him. I was thinking about killing John Corey. And I was like, wait, what's happening? So that was pretty interesting. I've never heard anybody say that to me before. So anyway, let's return to the non-Corey actors and non-Corey characters.

You missed a fictional, well, not a fictional, a pen name, Corey.

Oh, yeah?

James SA.

Corey. Yes.

The two guys used that as their pen name. They wrote the Expanse novels.

That's right. Yeah, it's two TV writers or movie writers who write together under that name, correct?

I don't know. I think they were, weren't they assistants of George RR. Martin?

Or one of them was? There's some connection there, yeah.

That would make sense. All right, so there you go. There's a tour of fictional and living Corey's. So one more when my father was also named John Corey, of, you know, that one's easier to guess.

I don't think there's ever, we're ever on this podcast going to do a tour of fictional rals, but I don't know, maybe I'll be surprised.

Yeah, you never know. We got, we got 600 movies to go, Andy.

There's a good chance. All right, so Adamson made other films during and after these, these films, these versions. You can tell he worked in B-movie, in the B-movie world by the following titles. Satan's Sadist, Horror Of The Blood Monsters, Brain Of Blood, Nurses For Sale, and The Naughty Stewardesses.

Another stewardess connection.

That's right.

The poster for the 1970 film, Horror Of The Blood Monsters, was designed by Neil Adams.

Oh really, of Batman fame.

Of Batman, DC Batman.

Nice.

Adamson also directed Dracula Vs. Frankenstein in 71, which was Lon Chaney Jr.'s last film.

There's several Frankenstein and Dracula movies I want to see. That's one of them. The other one is Dracula Vs. Billy the Kid, which also stars John Carradine. So that's on my list.

Now, Al Adamson's life had a tragic ending. In 1995, he went missing. His brother noticed that at Adamson's home, the hot tub had been tiled over and filled with concrete. Police found Adamson's body inside the concrete. They then arrested the contractor who had been remodeling the home. It turned out the contractor misused Adamson's credit card, which led to an argument and his murder. The killer was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, but he was paroled in 2024.

That is a horrible story. And if you're going to kill somebody, don't try to hide them with air quotes in their own hot tub with concrete. I'm sure that's the first place the police looked.

Well, the brother who called in the missing report said he loved his hot tub. I don't understand why it's gone or why there's concrete and tile there.

That is a weird story. Can we all agree?

That's a very weird story.

All right. Let's get back to your other stuff. So the director of photography for Psycho A-Go-Go was Vilmos Zygmunt. If you don't know his name, you have seen his work. He did a few more movies for Al Adamson in the 60s, then found mainstream success with films like Deliverance, The Long Goodbye, Funny Lady, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Deer Hunter.

Oh, wow.

And that only covers the 70s. In the 80s, he did Real Genius, The Witches of Eastwick and Fat Man and Little Boy.

I like all three of those 80s movies, actually.

And he was nominated for four Oscars and one for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

That deserved win, too.

And this is not Zygmunt's first appearance in Zombie Strains. If you recall, he was a camera operator on The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies.

I absolutely remembered that. Yep.

I was going to say you did?

Well, I was going to say, you listen to me, John, you listen.

No, not really.

All right. The movie poster artwork was done by Gray Morrow. He was a comic book artist who worked at EC, Marvel, DC and Creepy Magazine. And for Heavy Metal, he created the character Orion. I don't know if you guys know that.

No, I don't.

I thought John might be in the comic book guy.

Sorry.

That's all right.

Is that like the... I'm trying to think. Is that like the brother of Darkseid or something? Do you guys...

I think in the DC world, maybe, but this is separate. This was a character created that he wrote and drew for Heavy Metal.

Oh, I'm sorry. So it's not... Okay. Not that... There is a superhero named Orion, I think. Okay.

I think you're right. Yeah.

Though I did have the Heavy Metal soundtrack.

All right. On to the cast. John Carradine is the biggest name of the cast. He played Dr. Vinard. This is Carradine's sixth zombie film. He was a mad scientist in 1943's Revenge of the Zombies. He played henchman to a zombie master in Voodoo Man, and he was a zombie in Invisible Invaders. We last saw him as a mad scientist in the 1968 film, The Astro Zombies.

I'd just like to say it again, 353 acting credits for John Carradine.

Yes.

So I had a question about John Carradine. So he's the father of David Carradine, correct?

And Keith Carradine.

So were his sons, were their careers going strong by the time this movie hit theaters?

When did Kung Fu come out?

So Kung Fu came out in the early 70s and John appeared on it.

Okay.

I was just intrigued by the idea of a parent and child in showbiz at the same time like that.

Yeah, they absolutely were though.

How about this? Since we know John Carradine is going to return several more times. Oh my God. We can feature that topic in one of those films.

John, you're already in our Hall of Fame. Quit showing off.

So after watching this movie, I googled John Carradine because I thought he looked a little rough in this film. So I was thinking, is this near the end of his life, but he lived until 1980 or something?

So it says 95 here.

Yeah, 95.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Now, and from our point of view, he seems to be a B-movie actor. But when you look at his IMDB page and those 300 plus credits, he worked on all types of projects. In the 70s, he appeared in many TV shows, and across all genres like Love American Style, Kung Fu, Starsky and Hutch, Wonder Woman, Fantasy Island. In the 80s, he was in the cast of the films The Howling, The Secret of Nim, and Peggy Sue Got Married. But of course, after Peggy Sue got married, his next credit is The Adventures of Tara, Prison Ship Star Slammer.

I missed that one.

And as we sort of hinted, this isn't the last time we'll see him, he'll be back at least three more times.

Incredible.

Tommy Kirk played Lieutenant Cross in scenes shot in 1971. He is best known for his work at Disney. He played Joe Hardy in the Mickey Mouse Club Hardy Boy Serials. He was the boy in The Shaggy Dog, who turns into a sheep dog. And he was also the teenage boy in Old Yeller.

Oh, wow.

And in later interviews, he regretted working on Blood of Ghastly Horror.

Yeah, he said he got paid $1,000. Was that him?

Yeah, for two days.

To get a low point? Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, $1,000 in 1971, $72 isn't... It might be worth selling your soul.

And he, you know, in the film, he didn't do anything terrible. The movie's not great, but he doesn't look bad in it.

No, he's fine.

Kent Taylor played Dr. Corey, the mad scientist of the film, the second mad scientist of the film. His credits go back to 1931. He had a handful of leading roles in the early to mid 30s. He was a big enough name that Joe Schuster and Jerry Siegel combined his name with Clark Gable to create Clark Kent, Superman's ultra-ego.

You know, he does have a certain... I mean, he clearly is a more experienced actor than the others.

I kind of thought he wasn't that great in this film.

No, maybe not. Maybe I'm just being generous.

I don't think I pegged anyone in this film as noticeably better than anyone else who was in this film.

Well, when he appears with his mustache and his shirt buttoned open, I wrote down, this man's clearly a killer, a lady killer. So, anyway. All right.

Roy Morton played Joe Corey, the psycho killer. He has only four films to his credit.

And three of them are this film.

Yeah.

And the last one is the Burt Reynolds film, Fuzz, in 1972. And he is listed as playing the rapist.

Oh dear. Yikes.

There's a hint of like Ray Liotta about him. Did you get that too?

I thought he looked like Sam Neill, kind of. He had Sam Neill energy at points.

But he's got the crazy eyes. He's got good crazy eyes. I don't know how well he can act, but yeah.

Regina Carroll played Susan Venard. She married Al Adamson in 1972, and almost all of her roles were in his films. The last fact I want to bring up is, in Blood Of Ghastly Horror, we have a zombie named Acro. This is a rare occurrence. Usually the zombies are nameless. Can you name the other zombies we have seen?

Carafour?

Correct.

Bella Lugosi's in... One of his zombies had a name. I cannot remember what it was.

Is Zombies on Broadway with Darby Jones again, and instead of Carafour, he's now Calaga?

That's right.

And this is sort of cheating. Zombies are the stratosphere. The Martians, who were so-called zombies, are Marrakes and Nareb. And then in Teenage Zombies, we had the zombie who they called Ivan. And that's pretty much it. Others, they have names, but it's sort of their names when they were human, not their mystical name or their zombie name. So I didn't count those.

I think Brad might be paying more attention to these movies than you and me do, John.

I think so. So there's one thing I wanted to mention, which is the song. There's this sweet remix of an old song, sung over the credits by a woman named Anne Power, who was an actress in the 80s. I would be curious to hear the song in its entirety. So I'll have to check to see if I can find that.

Well, when we get to that point, I'll just say it pulled me out of the film because it was so highly produced and modern sounding, and then you're watching some crap from 1965.

As soon as I heard it, I was like, this is either a revolutionary moment in film or else somewhat. This is a song from much, many decades later.

These people traveled in time?

Yes.

Or, yeah.

Well, that is what I have. Andy, do you want to add anything?

So this movie, the bad guy of this movie is explicitly described as a Vietnam veteran. And I think that has-

And being wounded in the war as well.

So I think that has a lot of intentional baggage. And so I thought, guys, let's take a minute and let's talk about the Vietnam War. So we had a lot of movies in the 30s and 40s. And each time we had to keep saying, oh yeah, I remember World War II is going on.

Right.

We're probably going to have a lot of films through the 70s here where we'll be saying, oh yeah, I remember that Vietnam is going on. So let's take this treasure of a film to talk about what was happening in the Vietnam War in the early 70s. And then going forward, we'll just refer you back to this episode if you ever need to know. So I looked at what was going on in 1971 because that was when I thought this movie came out. It turns out there's a little doubt about that, but I picked 1971 and I'm sticking to it. So this movie has a wounded veteran returning from the Vietnam War. So I thought I'd talk a little bit about how that might have landed to the audience. So there's kind of four things I picked out that are going on with regards to the Vietnam War in 1971. By the way, you guys should stand ready with your shepherd's crooks to haul me off stage if this goes on too long. So first of all, in the actual Shudi War itself, stuff is happening in 1971. This was the year that fighting spread into the neighboring country of Laos. There was a major South Vietnamese push into Laos and for various important reasons, but that I won't go into the nitty gritty. The US was heavily supporting that, but not leading the way. That ended in failure and retreat. So that was a blow to morale. Secondly, 1971 is the year that the Pentagon Papers are published widely. And it's hard, this would be in like top five political events of American, 20th century America, right? So I'm not going to dwell on this in great detail, but just big picture, the Pentagon Papers reveal that a number of US presidential administrations have been misleading the public and sometimes misleading Congress as well about the American presence and actions in Vietnam. Quick quiz, what is the earliest presidential administration implicated by the Pentagon Papers?

Oh, good question. I'm going to guess. Can I guess?

Yes.

Eisenhower.

Close. Truman.

Oh, wow.

Can you believe that?

I can.

Yes. So it revealed that the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations had all been misleading the public. Now, Nixon was president when this came out, but the study didn't include the Nixon administration. Nevertheless, it panicked Nixon and his administration because Nixon correctly realized that while he wasn't personally implicated in this, if people started pulling on the threads in the Pentagon papers, they were going to uncover a lot of unpleasant stuff about the Nixon administration.

The big thing being that... Yeah, go ahead.

To me, there's a couple of things that might qualify for the big thing. That's the sort of administration it was. But the big thing in my mind is, is it pronounced Chanelt, the Chanelt affair?

I believe so.

This is during the lead up to the 1968 election, Nixon had secretly sabotaged peace talks with North Vietnam in the run up to the election, so that a peace agreement wouldn't be achieved during the Johnson administration. And Nixon was suspicious that there was evidence out there about this.

And there's a pretty good sense that Johnson figured it out.

Yes.

And had it on Nixon and Nixon knew that Johnson knew.

Yes. I think Johnson in uncharacteristically generous action, chose not to make it public, but it does seem that Johnson knew. And Johnson considered it treason, as I think most of the country would have considered it had it come out. But he chose not to reveal it because he thought it would just do too much damage to the politics of the US.

Which were already, so in the 1970s episode we talked about people had lost distrust in institutions. And I don't think you brought up the Pentagon Papers, but this is like a pivotal moment.

Yes. So I'm not going to dwell on it any further. There were other things the Nixon administration had been doing that it didn't want to come out. Like there had been a lot of bombing of North Vietnam that had been hidden from Congress and the public. So anyway, if you were alive in 1971 and paying attention to politics, your world was being rocked. So another big thing that happened in 1971 that you don't hear too much about today, but this is the year that William Calley was convicted of murder. Do you know why he was convicted of murder, John?

I don't remember this event.

He was the lead character in the Me Lai massacre in 1968. Me Lai was an incident in which US troops raped, murdered and mutilated 400 to 500 civilians in Vietnam.

Yeah.

It was a sobering thing. The military quickly realized it had a PR crisis on its hands. And so this happened in 1968, I think. It circled around in the background for a while, but 1971 was the year that he was put on trial and he was sentenced to life in prison. Yeah. For his role. He was sort of the chief person. There is a hero in the Mili massacre story. His name is Hugh Thompson Jr. He was a helicopter pilot who was flying overhead while the massacre was taking place. He thought something seems wrong to him, so he landed the plane and at gunpoint, he protected the surviving civilians. He and his crew reported it up the chain and eventually snowballed into something that broke into the public awareness. Quick quiz. Which of these two characters, William Kelly or Hugh Thompson, was regarded after these revelations as an all-American hero and which was derided as a traitor to America?

I would assume it's the opposite of what I think.

It's the opposite of what you want, right? William Kelly was widely lauded by the media, by the public, by members of Congress as a hero. There were enormous calls to cancel out his sentence, which people thought was way too harsh, and Nixon did end up commuting his sentence after a couple of years.

Oh, wow.

And if you want to make your day a little worse, you can go on YouTube and you can listen to the smash radio hit, The Battle Hymn Of Lieutenant Kelly.

No, thank you.

Which I don't recommend you do, but it is interesting. The reason I bring this up is not to just go down a Vietnam rabbit trail, but it's a confusing time. It is a confusing time. It is a morally confusing time for everyone. And what the Kelly, what the Pentagon Papers and the Kelly revelations are doing is nobody who is paying attention thinks that North, thinks that this is like a clean war. No one, North Vietnam and South Vietnam, both have a long history of human rights violations and of war crimes. So no one is naive about that. But I do think that most Americans up until this point, have an idea that America is holding itself to a higher standard out there. And so when between the Pentagon Papers, where we learn that the leadership is misleading us, and the me lie revelations where we learn that the grunts on the ground are behaving badly, it just deals this really, really uncomfortable blow to our understanding of what we're doing out there. And the tie-in to this movie is about a wounded vet coming back, and he's been damaged by the war. And I'm going to stretch a little bit and say, you know, what these revelations are doing is they are... People have been arguing about whether we're winning the Vietnam War or we're losing it for quite a while. But what these revelations are doing is they are making the country wonder if we are sacrificing not only our soldiers' lives and their health, but if we are degrading their morality and their sense of being by sending them to this war. Does that make sense?

It does.

And so that would be a sobering thing. And so for this trashy movie to drop that, I think, is a really good bit of exploitation.

Yeah, it's exploiting an obvious trope, which is that damaged veterans coming back. Like we didn't talk this way about World War II veterans, even though many of them were damaged as well. You know what I mean?

Exactly. And so my last point, I do want to touch on that. I want to talk a little bit about how veterans were received and understood when they came back from the war. So I want to say, first of all, in 1971, heroin use among US service members in Vietnam reached levels. People used the word epidemic to describe the levels of drug use. And but at this time, public awareness of like the trauma in returning soldiers was pretty low. And in the 19 late 60s, veterans started coming back from the war with things like drug addiction, guilt and anger and trauma over their war experience, and just general feelings of alienation from society. But in the as of the late 60s, this was dealt with mostly kind of behind closed doors. There were private veterans groups that would kind of organize get-togethers to help each other sort through what they what was happening. But in the first half of the 1970s, when this film drops, it was starting to become a more public idea that our veterans were coming back with something serious. Later estimates would say that like 15 to 30% of veterans came back with some kind of trauma. And in the early 70s, you started to see terms like, quote, post-Vietnam syndrome to describe it. By the late 70s, there was a lot of activist movement to take this seriously, and that led to the creation of the PTSD diagnosis in 1980.

Oh, interesting.

And then from there on, it evolved. So, okay, I'm going to stop talking. I just spent a lot of time talking about World War II, or Vietnam, and I don't think that this is like a particularly smart movie, but if we don't get more films like this that notice, hey, there's like an open wound about this topic, and I'm going to poke it, I will be shocked.

Yeah.

All right. Any closing thoughts there?

Yeah, you credit this as 1971, but the scenes with the Vietnam that were done in 69.

Yes, which is remarkable.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, and this is interesting because as a kid, we talked in our 70s episode that we were alive at this point. I don't have any memory of Vietnam as a positive thing for our country. We grew up in a liberal town, and I just from even elementary school, teachers and stuff talking about it in a very negative way, that they wouldn't talk about other wars.

Well, what you and I have, John, what we've learned in reading about the 60s and 70s, is that while we associate this era with things like the anti-war movement and various liberal causes, because we sort of in some senses, take them to have sort of won the day in retrospect, in reality, a lot of America is pretty reactionary at this time. And I don't say this flippantly, and I don't say this judgmentally, because it would have been hard to figure out what was right and what was wrong. But America was more complex than this was the era of hippies, or this was the era of the anti-war movement, right?

Yes.

So, okay, that's all I got on Vietnam, and I am ready to dive into Blood of Ghastly Horror, if you guys are. All right, John, do you dare give us a 30-second overview of this three movies squished into one?

So this movie opens with a zombie killing five people, and we learn that this is a crime spree. The detectives investigating the case have no leads. However, they remember a similar case, and a lot of the film is going back to talk about the case of Joe Corey, this returning Vietnam vet, and the trials and tribulations he went through. What he tried to do was rob a jewelry store. The loot was misplaced, and he spends most of the running time of this film trying to get it back, being a complete psycho along the way. Then in the current time, somebody is taking revenge on everybody involved with the Joe Corey jewelry heist case. And we discovered that his father is also a mad scientist, and he is seeking revenge in the current day for what happened to his son in the flashbacks. It ends with modern day detectives killing his father, the zombie expiring, and a woman who was briefly a zombie being turned back into a person.

How's that? That is, I can't imagine a better summary.

Well, but the police did not kill the second mad scientist, the zombie did.

Oh, that's right.

You're right.

That's right.

Don't give the police too much credit.

Well, no, no. And the thing about this movie is, the reason I was able to do that on the fly, Andy, is because almost all of this movie is people talking about what happened and what's going on.

Yes.

This is definitely a tell-don't-show movie.

So, as Brad said, this is two movies, two or three. This is two movies squished together with maybe three. I didn't know this when I was watching it. So I spent this movie trying to figure out, is this like a complex, like inception, multi-level, like it's just going over my head story, or is this just a really confusing mishmash of scenes?

Yeah, because the flashback, what happened is after 30 minutes, the flashback is 30 minutes of an 88-minute movie, and I was like, what is going on here? So I actually looked it up, which I don't normally do during or before the film, and I'd realized that it was a bunch of movies stitched together. I'm like, oh, that makes sense now. But yeah.

I think the best way to convey it to listeners is, the movie takes place in 71, and they flash back to...

69.

They flash back to Carradine creating or healing, supposedly healing Corey, and then they flash back further. No, it's not further.

Yeah.

No, it's the same.

I think we're making it worse, guys. Yeah.

Well, let's just say that in 71, they use flashbacks to incorporate the previous footage.

Yes. There we go.

Which is two things at once, which is a jewel heist and a mad scientist talking in retrospect about creating Joe Corey who did the jewel heist. So it is like a double inception thing that is completely confusing.

Don't worry, listeners, by the time this episode ends, this will be crystal clear, I promise.

I'll be impressed, Andy.

Well, let's start by talking about the opening credits real quick, because what is playing over the opening credits?

This stunning song that is called Blood of Ghastly Horror. It's like a theme song for the movie.

But it's like a modern song, right?

Yes. It says composed and it says recorded by Ann Power. Then there's a company that cleans up these exploitation films. It says that they redid it a little bit, so I'm not quite sure which parts are Ann Power and which parts are just, they totally redid it. I have no idea.

The reason we're making a big deal of this listeners is, this is like firing up, I Eat Your Skin and the opening credits have an Adele song. Yeah, exactly.

It's so competent. I'm like, wow, how did they get this? Then you realize, oh, they didn't. This was added much later.

We watched this on YouTube. So who knows if this will still be around when people go looking for it. It looks like this just pulled down a lot, but it looks like someone added it to the film for some reason.

Whoever that anonymous person that keeps re-uploading this movie each time it gets taken down, I just got to salute them. They're a hero. Okay. All right, we got to get into this movie though, guys. We open, as every good movie does, with a man hiring a prostitute in a dark alley. And then, right? Is that what's happening?

Well, I think she is actually selling him drugs, but maybe both things are going on.

Okay.

I think it's just to show how depraved America is.

I don't think the film will be offended if you took it either way.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, I've never hired a prostitute or purchased drugs, so I actually don't know what that transaction looks like, but...

Oh, well, let me tell you. No.

Okay. Well, this is all, this charming little scene is interrupted when a green-faced zombie emerges and strangles them and then strangles a bunch of policemen and a bunch of other people as well, leading to one of our highest zombie body counts in all of this podcast in the space of like three minutes. Yeah.

Am I wrong about that?

Five people dead right out of the gate.

And the woman prostitute or drug dealer, she needs some kind of award for her acting upon being strangled. She does these bug eyes while she's being killed. And sticks out her tongue. And sticks out her tongue. And it is like, it is almost worth going on YouTube and watching this part of listeners. Yeah.

And the best part is she dies and her tongue is still sticking out and her eyes are still crossed. That's the, that's the Academy moment.

So, but the good news is we've got our zombie right away at the beginning of this movie. John, this is, is it Acro?

I believe it's Acro.

Acro the zombie. Why didn't you tell us about Acro? Because he is kind of distinctive looking.

He is. So he's wearing a blue button up shirt. So you can only see his hands and his neck and face. And he's covered in green grease paint, which you can see around the edges of several times during the film. But they've also made an effort to make him look sort of decomposed. So they have a prosthetic over one of his eyes that makes it look like it's missing, that it's just a black hole. And then there's just sort of this gloop that's built up on his face as well. So he looks very zombie-like in the Zombie Strains context.

Yeah. I think this is a little tiptoe forward in making zombies look more and more like decayed corpses.

Yes.

So the missing eye is what the escalation is here. So, okay. Well, the next day we meet two police detectives whose names I never figured out, although listeners, I really tried to figure this out. Do you guys know what their names were?

No, but I think the detective in the flashbacks is named Cross, but I don't know these two.

Cross is Tommy Kirk, who's in 71. Right.

Oh, okay. Nevermind then.

Well, at any rate, we have two very, very late 60s, early 70s looking detectives.

Very sweaty detectives who are shot relentlessly in close up. Like their heads fill the screen every time they're talking. I'm like, would you like to do an establishing shot or just capture the room and give us the context? Nope, just right on their sweaty faces the whole time.

So they're discussing the zombie killing spree and they don't have any leads. They're trying to figure out what's going on with all these murders, but they receive a package in the mail and what dread, what ghastly horror is in the box. Yes. It's the head of one of the policemen who is killed by the zombie. With a note. With a note.

From cut out magazine clippings.

A ransom note. Or not even a ransom note, but like... But it looks like a ransom note. Yes. And it says, all will die for Corey.

Correct. And I couldn't approve more of this statement. No.

Yes. Although please note, at this point in the movie, that makes no sense. But yes, go on.

But what's great is, I like, if you were, I mean, I'm sure most of our listeners aren't this young, but like this used to be a thing in movies all the time. Somebody wouldn't want their handwriting to be analyzed, so they'd create this collage of magazine clippings to spell out their demand. I don't think we do this anymore because there's no newspapers and everything's digital. But at the time, it was always kind of hilarious.

If robbers and criminals are doing it now, they're doing it deliberately to be retro cool, I think. Yeah.

One of the early fonts on the Mac was actually a font that lets you do this style of type. So you could print out a...

What was it called?

I don't remember. Newsprint? I can't remember.

Well, at any rate, this triggers a memory in these detectives, and they start to remember a past case that might have some relevance to this new murder spree. So let's hear it straight from the detectives.

That's it.

The Corey case.

Wait a minute, Lieutenant. You don't mean the time that half-dead guy was brought back to life and slaughtered all those people?

Right.

And then strange Dr. Bernard was responsible for the whole thing.

Get the file on him.

Let's see what we've got.

This is so amazing. That's what the whole movie sounds like. Do you mean that thing that lets me say three sentences of exposition out of nowhere? Yes, I do mean that thing. Let me say some more exposition about it. That's how the whole movie works.

Also, the idea that you might have forgotten an incident in which a dead man was brought back to life to go on a killing spree.

He's like, yeah, the Corey case, the one where the dead man was brought back to life and stuff. Oh, the Corey case. That's right.

Yeah. Let me dig through the files to see if we have anything on that. Okay. Well, this triggers a lengthy flashback sequence. Brad and John, I'm relying on you to not let me get lost in the weeds of this flashback. But what we cut back to is the Corey case, where we learned the criminal origin story of Joe Corey. That's right. Now, mind you, we still don't know how a past criminal case is going to relate to the zombie killing spree. But okay, a couple of years ago, there is a jewel store robbery going on. Masked men break in. I think they kill somebody. They're not masked.

Well, they are masked. But how, this is the one scene in the movie where it was like, okay, I kind of want to know how we got to this point in like the movie Two Movies Ago, because they break into the jewelry store dressed as surgeons.

Which is.

Like in full things on their heads, masks, gloves, the whole thing. And I'm like, okay, they must have been doing, they must have snuck into the building as surgeons for some reason. Like I kind of want to know why that happened.

Yes.

That was the only time.

All right. So these immaculately disguised bank robbers are part of this robber crew. It's a pretty classic heist crew. I think there's like five of them total. Four men and they have a getaway driver who's a woman.

Apparently in the actual Jewel heist movie, she was the mastermind and most of her was cut out of this film.

So that makes actually a little bit of sense given how much footage we have of her when she has almost no lines. Okay.

Yeah.

So if you're that actress, are you happy that you're no longer in it when it becomes Blood of Ghastly Horror? Are you disappointed?

I think if there's a paycheck, you know, I was going to say, it depends on the checks you're getting.

Okay. But this robbery goes, it kind of gets messy. So they end up killing one of the bank people. And then they steal $1 million worth of jewelry, or as they're later going to say, a million dollars, a million dollars, a glass as they... So we get some good criminal lingo there. Yeah. But there is a... I would describe this as an attempt to create a suspenseful scene.

This is the least suspenseful scene I've ever seen in my life.

So, you know, in one of the Marvel movies, there's that kind of famous scene where Captain America is in an elevator.

Yeah, great scene.

And it's a good scene. And a fight breaks out in the elevator. This movie, I think this movie inspired that scene.

I would bet a large sum of money that that's correct, Andy.

Yes.

What I wrote down as a note about how thrilling this is, is man, don't you hate it when you get in the elevator and you have to stop at every floor. So this is essentially what happens. The most mundane tension creation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but after they grabbed the ice, they split up. One guy climbs the stairs and goes up, waits for an elevator, and then the tension is going down to get out the building.

Yes.

So why did he go up to go down?

So I mean, not having seen Psycho A-Go-Go, which may not also have been a masterpiece. I have to assume that we are seeing traces of stuff that had meaning in the first film that don't in this one.

I think that makes sense, right?

I think you guys are being very kind.

Yeah, no idea, yeah. Anyway, the guy who goes, who takes the stairs, ends up throwing the glass in the doctor's bag that he had when he was a surgeon into the back of a truck. I think that's the essential part here.

Yep, they're trying to get out before the alarm goes off, but they don't make it. So one of them in kind of a panic chucks the stolen goods and it falls into the back of a pickup truck of basically a random civilian who we're gonna get to know in a minute. There's a lot of incident that I won't go into, but the important thing we learn, one of the robbers gets shot by a guard and this is Joe Corey, who is one of the guys on this heist. He finishes off his wounded comrade with like a gleeful laugh. Like he takes delight in executing his fellow robber. So, and that's a scene, the man, the man, the random civilian. It was a scene. So this, this civilian, his name is... Clark. Clark. Okay. His name is Clark. He doesn't know he has a million dollars of jewels in the back of his pickup truck. So he just drives home and we get a little shot of him pulling in his driveway. We see this is some foreshadowing, but we don't know at the time we see he has a young girl who's maybe like eight years old or something who finds, unbeknownst to Clark, who finds this package of jewels in the back of the pickup and she starts, she thinks it looks like a fun toy, so she grabs it.

Right.

However, a lot of stuff is going on. So help me out here.

The plot of the heist from this point forward is, first of all, Joe Corey is just the henchman. They briefly introduce another villain that we don't need to get into. I just wanted to mention it because he is the worst beard I've ever seen in a movie. It's so bad. It looks like something on Saturday Night Live where they're trying to do a fake beard. You know what I mean? They want it to be obvious. Anyway.

Like a fake evil beard.

It seems to me the plot of the heist movie that is stitched in here is that Clark, from Clark Construction, they think he has the jewels, and so they go to his office, and then they go to his house, and his wife and daughter have left on vacation, so they track them down. The plot is tracking down Clark or his family so they can find out where the jewels are.

Yes. You know what? That is a perfectly servable set up for a movie, I think.

Yeah.

Right? That's pretty fun. You have this innocent guy who doesn't know why these criminals keep coming after him. Yes. So we do get a little bit of that better movie in here.

We get the idea of a better movie in here.

So anyway, the police in investigating this jewel theft, they find Joe Corey's fingerprints, which is funny because they make a point of showing Joe Corey carefully not leaving fingerprints during the actual heist. So they run these prints. So our next scene is in basically a mad science layer. A sexist police detective arrives to see Dr. Venard, played by John Carradine. The detective sexually harasses the receptionist for a while before being led in to talk to Dr. Venard. Dr. Venard is, well, he is John Carradine, just enough said, I think. And he's inside an extremely low rent mad science lab. And what the detective is here to talk about is alarming and disturbing. And let's just hear it straight from the sergeant.

Good evening, Sergeant. Dr. Venard. Well, what's this all about? Have I overlooked some parking tickets? No, no, nothing like that, Doctor. Well, briefly, a man was killed in a robbery today. And when we searched his apartment, we discovered some rather strange fingerprints. The FBI checked them and discovered they belonged to a man who's been dead for two years. Hmm. That's odd, isn't it? How does this concern me? Well, his name was Joseph Corey. Ring a bell, Doctor? Not offhand. Shoot it. You signed the death certificate.

It was a patient of yours.

Hmm.

Busted.

Yep. So at the crime scene, just some of they found the fingerprints of a man who supposedly died a couple years ago. After being confronted, Venard does remember who this guy is. I just want to pause to say, John Carradine, he looked rough in this scene.

He's not acting. He looks like maybe he's drunk or something is happening, but he can barely speak, it seems like. He has no intonation. Can I ask a question also? His receptionist is like, he's done seeing patients for the day, and then you go into the office and it's like a dimly lit mad scientist laboratory with like a thing you put on your head and like these bubbling jars of pink and green and whatever. Like, what does he do for people? Like, what is his doctoring practice? Like, is he a specialist of some kind? I just couldn't figure it out.

I think it's the same experience you would get when you checked into Dr. Satan's, like, yeah, okay. So, Vinard remembers and he goes, oh yeah, that was Joseph Corey. He was described, he was quote, an early casualty of Vietnam.

Can I say one thing here though?

You may say more than one thing if you want.

He pulls out a photo of Joseph Corey and the photo is the actor's headshot. Like it's, yes, very dramatic.

We've seen this before. I think it was maybe Voodoo Man when they're looking for like a missing girl and the police photo that they have is clearly just an actor, like a gorgeous actor shot. Okay, so the police detective says, well, we seem to have a walking dead man on our hands. And so this begins the confusion of who is the zombie in this movie. It's not resolved for quite a while.

Yeah, because there's this zombie we've seen at the beginning. Remember when we first started talking that killed five people? We have no idea what that zombie has to do with anything. And we're 35 minutes into the movie.

It didn't look like John Corey or Joe Corey. It didn't look like you either, John.

Yeah, thank God.

Yes.

It had more hair than I do.

All right, this gets intercut with some different stuff. So let me try and sum things up. So what happened is this wounded Vietnam vet, Joe Corey, was brought to Dr. Venard, and he was brain damaged, basically. He was essentially catatonic. And so Venard implanted an electronic device into his brain that Venard thought would cure the brain damage. Right. Did it work, John?

It didn't. And this is my favorite line from John Carradine, which is, the trauma I have endured keeping my terrible secret.

Yes. Well, let's hear that secret straight from John Carradine himself.

The experiment was at once a success and a failure. Joe Corey was returned to a certain level of normalcy, but his psyche, his personality was destroyed. He was a different person. More importantly, his apparently rational behavior would suddenly give way to bursts of maniacal and homicidal fury. In these periods, he was capable of unspeakable subhuman acts of violence.

I would not describe that as an equally successful end. I feel like that was more a failure than a success, but I am not a scientist. You are not a mad scientist. A mad scientist, that's true. While this has been going on, the criminals, including Joe Corey, who we now know is like a raging psychopath because of this thing that was implanted in his brain years ago, they are trying to track down the jewelry. So they go to Clark, the civilian's house, they beat him around a little bit, and then they get the idea that like, hey, well, I don't, you might need to help me here.

So first they go to the office and the secretary is there, and he killed the secretary. Joe kills the secretary.

Yes.

During this break-in, he is smoking. Like, maybe that's not a great idea. Just to, he kills this woman, and then there's a lingering shot on her murdered body, which isn't that bad, but they like focus on the blood for like 10 seconds.

And we've discussed this at least once or twice. Like, if it doesn't look, if it looks way too bright to be blood, you should just spend another couple minutes getting it right rather than just filming it, but that's just me.

Yeah, I don't quite follow. So yeah, they do that, and then Joe's like, I don't know what you're talking about. He tells them his wife and daughter are gone. I don't know why they don't kill him, but they don't. And then they leave to go pursue his family.

Yeah, I think they think that he knows and just isn't telling them. So they're going to go get leverage by hunting down Clark's wife and young daughter, who there's a whole big thing we won't go into it. They're in Lake Tahoe on like a weekend getaway.

Yes, on a Greyhound bus.

So Joe Quarry, I'm going to skip a lot of details, but he is hunting down the wife and kid, and he's killing several people on the route to find them. And along this way, it becomes clear, he just enjoys hurting and killing people. He might be nominally after those jewels to get them back, but he certainly seems to just enjoy being an agent of chaos, is that right?

Yes.

Okay, at some point, after killing a bunch of people, we do get kind of a climactic scene where Joe Quarry returns to Dr. Vinard, the mad scientist who turned him into a psychopath.

Right.

They have a little chat. He resents Vinard for putting him through the procedure, even though it saved his life. So what is the horrible, ironic death that Dr. Vinard meets?

He's killed, strapped to the same cheap looking mad scientist machine that they tell us was used to create Joe Quarry and his electronic implant, and he overloads the machine and it explodes, killing Dr. Quarry.

Dr. Vinard.

Vinard, sorry.

Killing him in what I would describe as a weird purple cloud.

It was the 60s, man.

Yeah, man.

Purple haze. If they spent more than $23 assembling this mad science lab, I'd be stunned. It's so cheap looking. Okay. That's the end of our flashback, everyone. And we're like halfway through the movie now, so bear with us. So we skip back up to what I think is the present day, back with those police detectives who are like, oh yeah, I remember the case where the guy came back from the dead.

Yeah.

They're still discussing, they're now discussing how almost everyone who was involved or connected to the Corey case is now dead. Yes. When they are visited by who?

Venard's daughter.

His daughter Susan.

Susan, yes.

Susan is having visions related to this case.

At first I thought she was dubbed because though she's as terrible an actor as everyone else in this movie, she has a great speaking voice.

She does. I have the same thing.

She could do like audio books. You know what I mean? And she could do like non-fiction audio books that don't require a lot of emphasis or emotion. But her speaking voice is excellent.

I spent the scene wondering like, is this a secretly really good actress that like stumbled into this film?

And she also uses the word sepulchura, like the sepulcher, like deep sepulchura of voice. Like, what is going on?

Make me sound smart, Mr. Writer.

Well, you know what? She did sound smart to me, you guys. So, okay, well, let's hear it from Susan herself. What is she doing here?

And you believe these disembodied voices?

Lieutenant Cross, it was as though I were in some deep voodoo trance under some deep magic being contacted telepathically from miles and miles away. This voice again, I heard it, there were deep drums deep in a jungle and water, rolling water, roaring waves. This deep, insistent, compelling voice was telling me, was telling me these strains.

I think you know why I chose that audio clip, because it's the return of an old friend.

Yeah, your deep love of voodoo drums.

Voodoo drums, yes. So I should say this is our first appearance of voodoo out of nowhere in this movie. Out of nowhere, yeah. So voodoo drums start playing. And that's, so after she leaves, the police make another connection. You missed something, Andy. Oh, what did I miss?

What is on the wall behind our detective whose name we can't remember?

Oh, I missed this, John.

It's a picture of Abraham Lincoln. Do you remember this from, from, there was another one that had Johnson and and Kennedy on the wall.

Astro zombies.

Astro zombies. Yeah. So, no, this must, it looked like, yeah, it was just a photo of, of Lincoln with like a, like writing, it looked like a postcard that featured Lincoln's face. Anyway.

If you're like a police detective and you don't like the current president, can you put like a classic president up in your office instead? That's a good idea. So, okay. Well, they remember, oh yeah, you know what else I remember about that whole Corey case. His dad, his dad was a mad scientist who vanished in the jungles of Jamaica while researching telepathy and voodoo. Yeah.

They just say it just like Andy just did right there. If you're worried that you're missing some nuance the film gave, Andy just did it exactly the way he did it.

In an all-time great scene transition, one of the detectives says something like, I wonder where Joe Corey's father is now. Then we switch to Joe Corey's father in another mad science lab. This is our second, we got to keep count of the mad science labs. This one I thought was a little cooler than the previous one.

Yeah, it looks more like a meat freezer, but that's a step up from a room with some curtains in it.

Here we learn, Joe Corey's father. For those of you at home, Joe Corey is the psycho, the psycho vet. The vet who came home wounded and was turned into a psycho. His father has just entered this movie out of nowhere.

Do you know his father's name? Did you catch it? It's Elton, like Elton John.

Oh, okay. How did I miss that?

I don't know. You were too distracted by the fact that he either uses a gallon of bronzer every day or plays golf every day. That was the part that was probably confusing.

So his occupation is mad scientist. He spent a long time in the Jamaican jungles researching, like I said, telepathy and voodoo, but now he has come back and he states this, like just matter of factly, right at the camera. He wants revenge on the people who tormented his son because he feels that if he had been able to treat his son, he could have used like native voodoo medicine to have cured him, but instead his son was turned into the Skinny Pig by Dr. Vinard.

Right.

So he is, I mean, he's just trying to get revenge now on anyone who's left, who is connected to his son's case. And so now he's trying to kill Vinard's daughter, Susan, who we just saw.

Well, no, he wants to turn her into a zombie slave.

Right. He has even worse plans for her, but they're sinister.

Yeah. He's got to replace his other zombie, he explains later, because that one's kind of wearing out.

That's exactly correct, yes. We don't know this yet, but so that was Susan, remember? So that was his disembodied voice that called her back. She was in Europe and she like flew back out here for this. Anyway, so he contacts Susan with a half-baked story about some info he needs to give her. I have never heard a more suspicious, like a delivery of like a more suspicious invite to meet up than this. Have you, John?

I have not, and she's like, I suppose it'll be okay. Like in the seventies.

So during this scene and many others, so you mentioned that Joe Corey was smoking, and Susan is smoking in this and a lot of other scenes. And I just realized this is the first movie where it really hit me, like everyone is smoking in this movie. Everyone smokes. Everyone smokes. So, okay, she agrees she's going to meet him up in some like shady alley back of town. But she has the presence of mind to call the police and say, hey, I was just contacted by this guy who says he's an old friend of my dad's, and we're going to meet up at this place. So, I'm trying to just deliver the important information here. The police send a police guy goes out there, like a no-name policeman goes out there.

He leaves a note before he leaves.

Yes. So, she goes out there and, let's see, Elton is there, and he injects her with something that like knocks her out. We learn later it's like a part of the zombification process. He injects her, she faints or something. He's brought a zombie for some reason, which seems like a risk, doesn't it? Like-

It does, but he can't possibly do that kind of dirty work himself.

I guess so. So, a policeman tries to stop them, but the zombie kills the policeman.

After being shot six times.

After being shot. So, we do see that the, we see a number of things. We see the zombie is like impervious to bullets, and this is also a return of another one of our old friends, and that is throwing bullets. Yes. Because when this policeman shoots with each, each time he presses the trigger, he thrusts his hand and the gun forward. Yes.

So, there are no squibs. There's no realistic gun noises. Like, I know we're not at the point where you have super realistic gunfire and stuff, but we have seen squibs. We have seen bullet holes by this point. So, I feel like this movie that's supposed to be an exploitation movie is going real cheap on the, on the gunshot wounds.

Yes, there is one person later who is shot. I think he's wearing, he's wearing, he's wearing like a t-shirt and he's wearing like a, a second shirt on top of it. He's shot and he clutches the wound, but the wound is underneath the top shirt, but there's no bullet hole in the top shirt. Like, so I don't know if that made sense, but okay. The just, the long and the short of it is, Elton has kidnapped Susan. And believe it or not, this is setting up the final act of this film, which is another like 90 degree turn. Yes. So Elton escapes with Susan and his plan is to turn into a zombie. We'll get to that in just a second, but just to set up how he's gonna get caught in the end, before he died, the policeman wrote in blood the license plate number of Elton. This did, I should have done some research on when like license plate, national license plate, Like the registry. Like registries where they do say like, let's get a computer on this case or something at one point. So the police throughout the rest of the movie are like doing background research and they're gonna be closing in on the mad scientist.

But it is interesting. They don't recognize it as a license plate number first. It doesn't jump out to them as that's what the clue is. That's right.

You know what else is kind of annoying is the zombie strangled him bloodlessly to death, but then they're like, well, he has to, it would be cool if you wrote the license plate in blood. So then all of a sudden there's a lot of blood. Okay. Let's hear what Elton sinister plans are for the lovely Susan.

Espenard, you're about to become one of my priceless creatures, like Acro there. You see that blue potion? That's the one that transforms you into my strong, mechanical, completely subservient slave. It's a delightful metamorphosis to watch. It's like changing a beautiful butterfly back into a caterpillar. Now, that's something I learned in the jungles of Jamaica. Then I command you to kill someone, and after you kill, you get the red liquid. And then, then you become my beautiful butterfly again.

Yeah, this is like three liquids too complex. Like, I don't even know. Like, there are injections, there's two, there's two or three kinds of liquid that he gives at different times to different people.

Yes.

I think trying to figure it out was maybe a mistake on my part, and I should have just moved on, but I couldn't.

This movie's closing scene requires you to have paid attention to all of the liquid logistics, like which colors go with which, which colors affect which zombie in which way, and they try to build a suspenseful scene out of it.

And we've got to remember this for another 30-minute flashback from The Heist movie, right? Like, there's just, like, I don't know how much you want to go into it, but just like Clark's, you remember Clark? Clark from 30 minutes ago?

Yeah.

Like, his wife and daughter get kidnapped by Joe Corey. Do you even want to do this whole thing?

I do want to touch on it, because I do have some...

Well, we should touch on it, but, like...

I have some broader points to make. Okay, so first, before we leave our zombie, there are a couple interesting things here. First, this is a zombie that very explicitly, the zombie state can be reversed.

Yes. Well, I don't know how this is going to work out for ACOR.

It doesn't look so good. Well, yes.

Acro.

And acro, right.

Oh, excuse me.

And so, we learn a couple things about the zombies in this movie, which are not unique, but they're at least a little uncommon. One is, in her zombie state, Susan retains a little bit of her will, and she can speak.

Yes.

And she has... And it's possible that this is only the case as in the early stages of being a zombie, but she's aware of her situation, and she's aware enough that the mad scientist Elton can promise her basically, you'll get the liquid that turns you back if you do my bidding.

Right.

So, yes, he has control over her as if she's a slave, but also he seems to need to bribe these zombies with the promise of becoming human again. I wouldn't say that was interesting exactly, but I was looking for stuff to be interested in in this movie and I wrote that down. I might have had something else to say, but I've forgotten it. So let's move on to this movie's final act. We do now go to another flashback, right?

Yes.

So the last 30 minutes of this movie is, this is where it's like most evident that like, oh, we're watching a different movie now because this is a 30-minute chase outdoor chase scene, like straight out of like a Hitchcock thriller.

Except it's not thrilling.

Except it's not good, but like-

And not Hitchcock. And yeah.

Let me get into it. And then I have a few points about this. So we switch back and Joe Corey, if you remember, he's chasing down the wife and kid who are in Lake Tahoe.

Right.

Blah-de-blah.

I have to apologize. There are many cars in this film, some of which are interesting. And I just completely like, I'm like, I should look up these cars. And then I just drop it.

Do you wanna pick one to talk about?

I don't have, I mean, I meant, I'm like, oh, that's a cool looking car.

I should look that up. What's this red car that she's driving? I don't know.

I should look.

So what this is, basically, Joe Corey kidnaps the wife and daughter. He takes them out to the desert, but they don't have any idea what he's talking about, about these stolen jewels. It doesn't help that instead of saying, where are the jewels, he's using criminal lingo. Like, where's the glass? After a while, the wife escapes with the daughter. And this triggers a big chase that is the rest of this movie. So she and her daughter get into a car. They take off and Joe Corey gets into a car and he starts chasing after them. And they, long story short, they wind up, the chase leads them up into the mountains. I assume this is like the Sierra Nevadas or something. So some snowy mountains, actually very beautiful location. And there's this extended scene where Joe is chasing them on foot through the mountains. The police arrive and at the last minute, they manage to kill Joe after he's cornered the wife and kid like at the very top of the mountain. I have a number of things I want to say about this, but do you want to go first, John?

The only thing I want to say is that this chase through the snow is the, like the movie's been pretty mind numbingly boring up until this point. And this is like boringer. It feels like 15 minutes of just running through the snow, cutting between the two groups. Like, it's stunning how long this takes.

Yes. So here is, I have a hot take, you guys.

Uh-oh.

Yeah, I have a hot take. Here it comes. I was, I thought positively of this final act, chase through the wilderness.

Oh, God.

Here is why. So.

Pitch me, pitch me.

How many of these movies filmed in Southern California or Central California, one of the most beautiful locations in the continental US.? How many of these movies had exactly three sets? Like a police station interior, a mad science lab, and maybe like a fake looking graveyard.

Right.

This is a movie where somebody said, we are in this gorgeous place. Let's take our cameras outside to some of these iconic locations and just have our dumb movie play out in a cool location. And like just all by itself, this movie is a slog, but like at least it was a slog and the background scenery was like visually interesting. What do you think about that hot take?

Maybe I'm too used to snow being from Michigan. I just didn't, it didn't grab me. But to make a good point is that very few of our movies are shot outside or shot outside well. Yeah.

This just made me think like, again, and I don't know which of the multiple movies that were mashed together this was from, but whoever did this had clearly watched like a good suspense thriller or a Hitchcock movie, and had said, oh, that's kind of cool.

Yeah.

They tried to bring it into this movie. It doesn't make the movie better, but this movie would have been worse if the same sequence had taken place in the city locations of the first two-thirds of the movie.

Or even wherever they shoot all the science fiction movies that are another planet near LA. Like it could have been more boring.

Well, don't forget, the cinematographer was Vilma Zygman.

That's true.

This heist part was from the first film Psycho A-Go-Go. So you have beautiful geography and you have a world-class cinematographer with you.

Right. That doesn't mean your editor is any good.

No, but the other thing I notice is usually in cheap films or even in big budget films, when they're at a location like a beach or sand, you can see they've done the scene multiple times because you see footprints and you see them going over the same steps over and over.

Yeah.

They were in fresh snow every time. So maybe it's so cheap they only did it once.

Yeah, one take. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know, but I appreciated that.

Well, I do have one last observation about this, Chasen. And the late 60s, early 70s is the worst decade to be fleeing, during which to find yourself fleeing up a snowy mountain from a psychopathic killer. Because Linda, the wife, is wearing a really bright pink jacket and really bright green pants. Like she's visible from like 30 miles away.

Yes, against the white snow. Yeah.

Yes.

Real quick, just so you know, the red car that they flee in is a 64 Pontiac Tempest Le Mans.

Whoa.

Okay. That was, I mean, it looked like it was a kind of cool car. It gets my seal of approval.

It looked like a giant American convertible.

All right. All that said, this is like a 25, 30 minute sequence. So, but I'll wrap it up now just by saying, at the top of the mountain, the police close in and Joe Quarry is shot. He goes tumbling off the mountain with a scream. And right before he died, he made the connection. John, where were those jewels that he's been looking for, for the last hour and a half?

They were inside that little girl's doll.

Yes.

Yes.

Wah, wah, wah, wah. Okay. So we do have a tiny bit of business to take care of. That's the end of the flashback. So we flashback to the present day. Yes. Where we're in the mad science lab, the mad scientist. So he actually transforms Susan into a zombie. So John, you want to tell us about this zombification process?

So it's more like she gets older. It looks like she becomes an old woman and her skin gets really scaly, like something in Star Trek, like the salt monster in Star Trek or something. But they just progressively shoot, they go out of focus for a second and then she's a little more gnarly. Then finally, she's super gnarly and her nice voice is gone, and she cackles like a 900-year-old woman.

Yeah. So this is the scene where The Mad Scientist meets an ironic end. It's also the scene where we were expected to have kept track of all those different colored test tubes and which zombie needs which one. Because Elton is cackling about how Susan's his new zombie because Acro, his old zombie, after a while, I guess these chemicals lose like they stop working and your zombie just wears out.

Yes.

Acro, this is news to Acro. So he's in a cage. Various stuff happens like he kills a police officer and stuff, but Acro becomes enraged when he hears that he's about to be discarded by his mad scientist master.

I know. The scientist taunts him. He's like, oh, only if you had this blue stuff over here, but you're in your cage, loser.

Yeah. I mean, just asking for trouble. Yeah.

Then he smashes it on the wall and yeah. Also that cage when he's strangling the policeman, it's clearly not fixed to anything.

Did you see that? It actually swings open. Yeah. So Acro grabs the mad scientist and kills him. The police burst in. Let's see. Zombie Susan has enough presence of mind left that she gets the correct color vial of liquid and she drinks it and she turns back into her usual normal human self.

With great complexion. Great.

How can you tell under the makeup, Brad? Like she has, what do you call them?

Eyeliner.

Not eyeliner, but the fake lashes.

She has giant eyelashes.

They stick out like, she's like Gandalf, but with eyelashes. Like they stick out beyond her eyebrow.

I don't want to comment about the physical characteristics of these actors, but we are in that decade where, like Susan has so much 60s, late 60s makeup on, it's like pretty jarring.

Yes.

So, okay. Anyway, that's the end. At road, the zombie dies after having killed his master, the policemen break in and everyone's dead except Susan, the end.

The end.

Okay.

There you go.

All right. What did we learn from this show?

We learned that if you own IP, you can make three different movies out of it and eventually make money even though all of them are terrible.

That's what we learned.

All right. John, in, let's see, Blood of Ghastly Horror, which, I mean, we haven't even gotten into this silliness of... There's very little blood. Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway. Is there a hero party in Blood of Ghastly Horror?

There is. It's the policemen and Susan. And then when they need somebody else, they randomly pull in somebody to die. But it's these two cops plus Susan. Though there's also a hero party in the past, which is another cop and the husband. So there's like two hero parties?

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

Yeah. I didn't... I lost track of the different cops and the different timelines. Yeah.

To be clear, Joe Corey is in none of the hero parties.

Right. There you go. How does that party or set of parties do? How many survive?

Susan and two of the cops, but not the cops in the same timeline, one cop in each timeline, as one of the cops dies in the present timeline. Okay. Aren't you glad I made that distinction?

Yeah. I didn't follow that, but I'll accept it. Okay. What kind of zombie are we dealing with? What is the zombie strain in this movie?

Okay. So there's two, right? We've got what appears to be a voodoo. It's one of those movies. It's almost like Woman Eater, right? Where there's the voodoo magic, but the scientist guy has figured out how to extract its essence, and turn it into a chemical he can use to create the zombie on his own. So it's like scientizing Haitian voodoo, which is in Jamaica. We had a movie with Jamaican voodoo, and they call it something else, and I've forgotten. But in any case, he's using science to recreate the zombie creation process, with his little blue vials, and red vials, and injections, and everything.

That's right. I forget what that other, it's another strain, it's like a sister religion to voodoo. Yes.

It was in the delightful movie.

Ritual? Ritual, starring Jennifer Grey. That's right. That's right. Okay. All right. How are zombies destroyed or killed in this movie?

So one of them, Acro, is unkillable. The only thing that can kill him is he doesn't get his rejuvenating medicine, so he just kind of expires, but he gets shots multiple times. Now, Joe Corey, who's the other zombie, he has an electronic thing in his brain. I don't think he's really a zombie. I think he's just a psychopath. So I'm torn on that. So I think that's just the one zombie.

Because he has control. There's no one controlling him.

No. So I think it's just the one zombie, and it's very zombie-like. It kills people. There is a scene early on where they show it like tearing at a body, but they only show the zombie. They don't show what he's doing. So they're suggesting like he's incredibly brutal.

Right.

But anyway.

Joe Corey is saved from death. He isn't brought back from death.

There you go. Okay.

He did remind me a little bit of our zombie from Maniac way back in the 30s. Yeah. Okay. All right. Is there a zombie horde in this movie?

No. No horde.

Can zombies return to being human?

Yes. We see Susan do it.

This is a rare time when we answer yes to this question.

Yeah.

Are there any new strains or zombie firsts?

I don't think so. I don't know if you want to make a pitch here, but I don't think so.

I don't think there's anything significantly new. I will say as confusing as it is, the idea of zombies being able to enter and leave their zombie state as the zombie master needs is interesting.

That does kind of remind me of the Mad Ghoul, which kind of had that going on.

That's true. What is the purpose of bringing them back to being human, do you think, from the mad scientist perspective?

Well, they only brought it up for the woman, so I think it was just salacious on Dr. Corey's part.

Okay.

Well, I think what it means is the Jamaican voodoo is a controlling substance, not a killing substance.

Yes.

So if you can administer it, you can detoxify it.

He's more interested in having control over them, so that's why it's important.

Okay. I skipped a question. Do we have slow, normal, or fast zombies here?

Slow. He walks very slowly. He moves normal speed when he's strangling you, but he doesn't move quickly. And in fact, I made a note early in the film, like they just shoot his face when he's walking and creeping up on somebody. We don't create any context or location for him, so he can just pop out of nowhere because he moves so slowly that he sneaks up on everybody, but he's so obvious and slow that that couldn't happen.

If anyone wanted to escape from him, they could, is how I read it. So, okay. All right. How many? All right. Early in this podcast, John, you identified four pillars of the zombie film. Let's find out how many are in Blood of Ghastly Horror.

All right.

John, in this movie, is there an apocalypse?

No, no apocalypse. We're back to old-fashioned voodoo here again. We are.

Is there contagion?

Nope. You gotta make zombies.

Are there tough moral choices?

No.

To make this movie, there was.

That was a tough, that was the wrong moral choice to cut this movie a third time. So, yeah.

So, while it did not happen on screen exactly, I mean, I think Vennard's decision to do a risky, a risky procedure that he did truly intend to save Joe Corey. He didn't intend for it to be psychopath, to make him a psychopath. That has a slight echo of a difficult moral choice.

Yes. I'll give you that.

Okay. And lastly, does this movie feature loved ones turning against you?

I don't think so because even when Susan turns into a zombie, she doesn't really want to be a zombie and she doesn't want to kill anybody.

And she doesn't love any of these losers, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, maybe if this movie kept going, she would have been turned against one of her allies, but we didn't get that far.

Well, yes, but as threatened, Andy, we have our 1970s questions finally.

All new questions. Here's my caveat. So you're about to ask me these questions. Because this movie is a mismatch of movies from different time periods, I don't know how we're going to fare with these questions, but ask away.

Well, let's give it a shot. So does this film evoke the terror of crime, lawlessness and anarchy?

To some extent, yes. I do think we see taking shape here and in a few other films, like I Drink Your Blood, I do think we are seeing a somewhat new kind of villain. And that is the villain who just wants to kill for its own sake. He takes joy in it. Yes. And so Joe Corey, he is ostensibly motivated by getting back the tools and stuff like that. But as the movie goes on, you see he just likes being bad. And I do think that that is a when done well, that is a special kind of scary because it takes away some of the tools you might use to stop this or mitigate the threat. He can't be reasoned with. He doesn't have motivations that you can manipulate. He can't be persuaded.

Andy, some men just want to watch the world burn.

Exactly. So I'm going to say yes on this one.

All right. Does it push boundaries of on-screen violence and sexuality?

So not really. As far as violence, not really. There's some blood, but actually it's mostly a bloodless film. There are at least two depictions of like a sexual assault. They get stopped before the assault takes place, but it drags on longer than you want. So I don't know enough about this era of film. We saw this in the last episode, a recent movie, I Drink Your Blood Again. I just have a feeling that that's a thing we're going to see in these 70s movies that I'm not used to seeing because it's not usually in modern horror movies.

Right. So I don't think this movie does it, but I think you're right that we're going to see it. Yeah. Is there a divide between the characters from the old generation and the characters from the new generation in this movie?

I don't think so. This movie does tap into that old trope of the beautiful daughter of a scientist. I don't really think it's trying to make a point though about one generation not understanding the other. Right.

Okay. What about a lack of trust in institutions and authority figures?

I don't think so. Our institutions and authorities here are the police and they're not doing the greatest job, but they are trying to bring justice about and they do do it in the end.

They're sweaty.

Yeah, they're very sweaty, yes.

All right. How about this one? Does it evoke anxieties about the Vietnam War?

It does, definitely. It's no accident that Joe Corey is identified as a Vietnam villain. He's come back and now he's different than he was when he was younger, right?

Yeah. Now, does it evoke anxieties about either women's bodies or sexuality, reproduction or bodily autonomy?

Well, there are two almost sexual assaults and one sexual harassment. So basically, every woman in this movie is preyed on by men. I don't think there was much behind that other than just the shock value of it, and I didn't read too much into it.

All right. How about anxiety over consumerism gone amok?

I don't think so. I do think the opening with the scene of these priceless jewels being stolen suggests that we might be about to watch a movie that taps into that theme, but I don't think this movie really does anything with it.

Yeah. Yeah. And lastly, does it evoke tensions between urban and rural life?

So I was going to say no to this, but this, like I said, it genuinely was a change that this movie takes place both in the city or it's like first half and out in the wilderness country for its second half. Yeah.

That's a good point.

So I don't think it's really trying to evoke that scary wilderness or versus inner city crime vibe.

It's a deliverance here.

There's little bits of seeds of that just because the wife drives around forever. I found it very implausible that she couldn't find anyone to help her in a chase that appeared from the lighting in the sky. It appeared to take like five to seven days. Yes. But at any rate, okay.

All right. Well, Andy, bring us home. Yeah.

That leaves us with our final traditional three closing questions. John, would you and I survive in the zombie world of Blood Of Ghastly Horror?

I think so. I mean, if that zombie were to come across me in an alley at night while I was buying drugs, I'd be in trouble. Good news is that I don't go into alleys at night to buy drugs, so I think I would be okay.

When you see trouble in an alley, do you stop and stare and wait to see what happens or do you flee? Because everyone in this movie just pauses and waits to see what happens.

I'm like, Lady, just stop looking at him.

He run.

No, I think I could make it.

How would you do in an alpine chase scene with a mad killer is chasing you through the Sierra Nevadas? How would you do?

I'm pretty out of shape.

I kept critiquing the mom and daughters. How hard can it be to lose someone in the mountains?

In the mountains, in a forest.

Yeah.

Covered in snow.

Covered in snow. Don't forget.

I will say that I'm pretty out of shape. So if Joe Corey, my namesake, is able to keep going, he could probably catch up to me. So I'll say in that kind, and he is a psychopath, so he could get me.

Yeah, he's not going to stop, and he's not going to get tired before you or me do. That's correct. Yeah. All right, John, is Blood of Ghastly Horror a zombie movie or is it a movie with zombies?

It's a movie with a zombie. Yeah, it's not really a zombie movie.

It's just being cut together from multiple films just really hurts the zombie part of this. Yes. There's like a different version of this where the zombies, I think, are a little more central. As it is, they're just the weapon that the mad scientist happens to be using to get his revenge.

Yeah, it's an awfully convoluted revenge plot. I'm going to be a zombie to kill people rather than just killing them.

You could just shoot them or something. Yes. Lastly, John, do you recommend this movie, first, as a general recommendation to just people that like good movies that are looking for their next date night viewing, and secondly, do you recommend it specifically to the zombie-loving listeners of this podcast?

Yeah, I'm going to say yes to both. Just kidding. No, those are two hard nos.

Here is where I have another hot take. Uh-oh. I didn't hate this movie.

Interesting.

I did not hate this movie. I don't think it's a good movie, and I can't bring myself to recommend it on either of these bases. Definitely not to a general audience. I do think there's just enough stuff about the zombies that is different than the movies we've seen before. There's no evolutionary steps forward here, but it is something different. If you've watched 20 movies where the zombies are pretty much the same.

Yeah. If you're like us and we're so jaded about zombies so far that we're looking for anything.

Yeah. I also am going to say no on both, but I think I have a softer no than you do.

Good. Fair point. All right.

I will say that in terms of bad movies, it's a yes. Because if you remember the last movie, I talked about the William Shatner film, Impulse, that was directed by a guy who was involved in the film, I Eat Your Skin. I tracked down the Shatner film from 1974.

Of course you did. I started watching it.

It is horrible. Nothing happens. There's nothing, at least in this film, there's something happening in every scene. It may not make sense.

Yeah.

I mean, but it moves forward in a way.

Yes. They're explaining the whole thing, but it does. I could untangle for you what's happening generally.

And they're throwing a lot of things at the screen, too. Not everything sticks.

I'm curious to see, like Shatner in the 70s is so interesting. He was lost in the wilderness between the end of Star Trek and Star Trek The Motion Picture. Movies with giant spiders that he just did to pay for some hair plugs. Like, it was bad news for Shatner.

Are we going to get William Shatner on this podcast?

I don't think so.

Well, we'll find out. Stay tuned to find out because it's time for the scariest part of the episode and that's when producer Brad reveals to me and John what zombie movie we'll be watching next.

Our next film is from Spain. It's The Tombs Of The Blind Dead, directed by Armando de Osorio, and it's the first film in a tetralogy.

All right, everybody. Thank you for listening to our coverage of Blood of Ghastly Horror. There's so many different movies here. I've forgotten the name. That's the one, Blood of Ghastly Horror. We'll see you next week. Please rate us in your podcast app of choice. Leave us a good review. Tell all your friends. We have a blast doing this and we want more people to listen to it. Thank you to everyone who does listen and we really appreciate you. We'll 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 app of choice. Tell a friend. Follow us on Instagram at Zombie Strains. All of this helps like-minded people find the show. See you next time.