Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast where we watch all the zombie movies in order. This week, 1964, the incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and became mixed up zombies. 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 is...

The living dead.

They are the living dead.

Get the zombies!

Is a zombie.

Because a zombie has no will of his own. Against an army of zombies. No armies could stand.

What is wrong, what is wrong.

Welcome to Zombie Strains. Hi, everybody, I'm John.

I'm Andy.

And I'm Brad.

Sorry, I didn't have a quip for the intro there, but the title of the movie was so long, I didn't feel like I could fit one in.

We're going to have to find a way to shorthand reference that title, because I sure ain't saying that every time.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it got shortened for publicity and promotional reasons to The Incredibly Strange Creatures.

I also have a feeling that, not that this movie is false advertising, in a sense, because it's, it wasn't advertised as good, but I don't think the title matches the story. I guess I'll say that, which is too bad, because the title is amazing.

I mean, it's not Missile Monsters level of misdirection, but-

No, that's true, that's true. Or The Pillow of Death, but we don't need to go there right now. Well, we got a doozy here, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies. That title is amazing. The film may be less so, though I managed to find some delight in watching this movie. So we'll have to talk about how everybody else felt. Any zombie or horror-related stuff that people are into right now?

I have been rereading Stephen King's novel, It, for the first time since I first read it back in the 90s. I'm also watching the much less good It miniseries that's coming out on TV as we speak. But I love that novel. It's a wonderful experience. It has me thinking, I was doing some date checking. We are at the point where we are watching the kind of schlock that young Stephen King was watching, that I have to imagine fed his interest in horror, because by the late 60s, he's starting to write and publish short stories.

I agree. I'll have a hot take that nobody cares about because we're not a Stephen King podcast, but that is a candidate for his like uber novel, like his best work. I mean, The Stand, The Dark Tower, maybe Salem's Lot and that are in the conversation.

Those are the ones I throw into them.

Yeah, but I think it is just the culmination of all his early work and it's amazing.

I've often thought that it contains everything Stephen King really has to say about the world and people, and good and evil and God and everything.

Yeah, it's got the Losers Club, which is like The Boys in Stand By Me. It's got all the pieces and all the framing and I think it's amazing.

So I've been enjoying that. How about you guys?

I have not been doing much horror related. I'm still rereading as a comfort thing. I'm rereading these dark fantasy books about the character Kane. I just finished Bloodstone and now I'm going to read Dark Crusade. You can make whatever judgment you want about me, that my comfort reading is about an anti-hero from the 70s, who often is the villain of his own books, and that's fine, but I do enjoy them.

Remind me the author on that one, John?

Carl Edward Wagner.

Okay.

You got to say it like that.

What's he best known for?

Well, he actually is probably best known. He wrote a Conan novel called The Road of Kings. He's not that well known.

I've heard of that.

Yeah. He had a couple of great horror short story collections. And then for about 14 years in the 80s and 90s, he edited the Year's Best Horror Stories anthologies.

Oh, yeah.

That was like his job. So he, in a way, shaped a lot of horror, the conversation around what is good horror.

The horror genre is one in particular in which editors have had as much power, I think, as the actual authors, in getting interesting stuff out there into the mainstream.

I think so, because I think that even still, horror and fiction, horror anthologies are something that matters a little bit, but like, that doesn't really happen anywhere else. Back when the short story was like, is how you would build a career, that's when he was doing it, you know what I mean?

Yep, yep. Absolutely.

How about you, Brad? Producer Brad, sorry.

I answer to both. While researching this episode, I stumbled on Stephen King being interviewed by David Letterman on a morning show in the early 80s.

Oh, wow.

It's right when Firestarter is coming out. He doesn't talk about Firestarter, but he talks about the shining and he talks about what scares people and why people like to be scared. It was just really interesting. I don't think I've ever seen him interviewed that young.

Wow.

It's David Letterman and he was a really good interviewer.

Yeah. I think David Letterman was so silly and he was doing anti-comedy at late night. We forget that he's actually very good at interviewing people.

Yeah.

Stephen King, he's a witty, charismatic guy, I think.

He is. He's a dork, but at the end of the day, he's funny.

Well, the zombie thing I stumbled on too, and again, last week, I can't say too much because of spoilers, but I know you guys are watching Alien Earth.

Yes, we just got picked up.

Well, I hope so because there's a moment there where I go, oh, my zombie radar went up and I won't say anything more.

Fair.

Sure enough, I know what you mean.

Yes, I agree. There is, we should discuss that at some point.

It's funny how doing this podcast has changed my view on things. I'm now on the lookout for things I would not have been looking for.

You know what, and as we talked about Stephen King, but there one thing about him is no zombies, not really. There's Cell. He did write a zombie short story as part of a George Romero short story collection, but that's it. He's not a zombie person. In fact, I've heard him make cracks about The Walking Dead. How long is it going to take for these bodies to decompose and stuff?

Even his zombie novel Cell, he is taking a different tack on zombies than your Romero style, I'd say.

Yes. We love Stephen King, but we're not going to spend a lot of time on him here, except for just now.

No, but if he does want to come on the show and co-host for a while, I'll gladly kick John out and welcome Mr. King.

Steve, anytime.

I do believe Creepshow is on our list.

Oh, yeah. That's right. All right. I take it all back. Brad, I think we're ready to go. I do have a trigger warning and something I want to ask about before you do the rundown here, Brad. In this movie, there are several gypsies. We don't really like that word anymore. I think people prefer Romani, but in the movie they use that term. It's 1964. Did Dr. No come out in 1964?

It came out before, I think in 1962. Well, there's two dates. There's a release date in England, and then there's a release date in the US, and they're in different years.

But just to say in the early 60s, that's another movie that features gypsies in a negative light.

You mean From Russia with Love.

From Russia with Love. Sorry about that. Hope nobody that loves James Bond movies is listening besides producer Brad. But there is this in the air, there's this sort of gypsy, like gypsies are scary thing going on. Not unlike our Voodoo of the early 1930s. And I just, I couldn't figure out what was happening in the world where that was suddenly a thing in the early 60s. So anyway, just want to throw that out there.

Put it on the list of other podcasts we'll do.

Other podcasts ideas. Yeah, absolutely. But no, it just seems strange. They're portrayed in a negative light, which, you know, we don't, we don't, you know, that's racism, but it's, you know, it's the movie we watched. If we're watching highbrow movies, we'd have to worry about that stuff less, but we're not, and we never will.

So for sure.

All right. Take it away, Brad. Producer Brad.

All right. I'm only going to say the title once. I think we've all agreed on that. The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed Up Zombies, also known as The Incredibly Strange Creatures, was released on February 10th, 1964. The big movies from 1964 are Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady, both musicals, which is interesting as it contrasted this one, Goldfinger, Dr. Strangelove and Viva Las Vegas. Yes.

You forgot The Unsinkable Molly Brown, but that's another story.

Well, there are a lot of good movies. I don't want to take up too much time.

Wait, Goldfinger and For Much With Love both came out in 64. I forgot that.

Weren't there multiple Bond movie branches, or am I imagining that?

It did. Twice. It was briefly.

So this wasn't the case where like two different companies put out Bond movies in the same time?

No. In the late 60s, there was a comedy spoof that had Woody Allen, David Niven and Peter Sellers all playing a version of James Bond or Jimmy Bond. It was called Casino Royale. And then in 1983, Never Say Never Again came out with Sean Connery as James Bond. And it was done by a producer who had made a screenplay with Ian Fleming before the original movies came out. So he had rights to the Thunderball story and he got to remake it in the 80s. But those are the only two. Everything else has been in the canon.

Okay. Right. Yep. Now, just to warn everybody, that version of Casino Royale, you think Woody Allen, David Niven, Peter Sellers? It's not good. So don't like. It's tempting, I know, but don't.

I was thinking that sounded kind of interesting.

Sorry, but we're talking about zombie movies here. I apologize for the digression.

That's right. 1964 is the year 2000 Maniacs was released, and other horror films include Castle of Blood, The Curse of the Living Corpse, Cave of the Living Dead, and The Earth Dies Screaming.

Can I just mention, this is a little niche, but a couple of big Japanese horror films came out this year.

Oh, yeah.

They are famous.

Tell us.

More in retrospect. Well, I don't know them real well myself, but Onibaba and Kuidon are two that are very well regarded in retrospect. They're both Japanese ghost story folk tale, folk horror type stuff.

Sounds like just my kind of thing.

So, I do not know if those gravitated over into the US at all, or if at this time they were staying in Japan.

You know what happens when you tell me something like that, Andy? Like, I wish for extra time because there's so many movies I want to watch. Like, I would love to go watch those movies tomorrow, and I just don't have time.

Anyway, carry on, Producer Brad. We'll see how long we can make Producer Brad have to take on this section.

Well, I painted myself in the quarter at the end in terms of how long it will take, and you'll see. Ray Dennis Steckler is the writer, director, producer, and star. He was a Union cameraman, and legend has it that while working on an Alfred Hitchcock movie, he nearly hit Hitchcock while moving set pieces. The legend goes that he was fired or quit. He then moved on to work in low-budget movies. His first film as director was The Wild Guitar in 1962. It was a rock and roll movie with musical numbers. The Danish filmmaker, Niklas Winding Reffen, lists The Wild Guitar as a favorite film, and in fact, you can stream it on his website. So after watching this, if you question whether there's any merit to these films, people do like watching them.

What character is he in this? He's Jerry.

He's Jerry, he's the lead.

Well, I have some unkind things to say about him in that case.

You are confused because the credits list, Jerry is being played by Cash Flag. And Steckler used many aliases.

Yeah, Cash Flag is subtle too.

Exactly. So Steckler's second film was The Incredibly Strange Creatures. He made four more movies in the 60s in different genres. He made The Thrill Killers in 1964 about escape killers committing violent crimes who was influenced by Psycho. He made Rat Fink a Boo Boo released in 1966, which was a slapstick superhero spoof.

Okay, see, that could go on the list for three different of our secondary podcasts. First of all, the title Rat Fink a Boo Boo.

Yeah, put it on there with Pillow of Death and a few others.

And Missile Monsters, yeah, for sure.

Well, it looks like it's about two idiots who decide to be crime fighters and piece together homemade costumes, so it's that kind of story.

See, that still sounds great, but anyway, carry on.

Oh, I tried. I tried to warn you away. He also did the Lemon Grove Kids Meet the Monsters, which is a tribute to the Bowery Boy movies, Bowery Boy comedies. And in 69, he directed Body Fever, which is another movie that riffs on Batman characters, this time Catwoman. Carolyn Brandt, who is in The Incredibly Strange Creatures, she plays a burglar who dresses like Catwoman, and Steckler is a private investigator hired to catch her. So this makes three movies we have encountered in the late 60s that are Batman ripoffs. We had Catherine Victor from Teenage Zombies was Batwoman in The Wild World of Batwoman. We had Alfredo Salazar, the writer of The Curse of the Doll People, who wrote the 1968 Mexican film The Batwoman, which was a rich heiress who's a wrestler and wears a bat suit.

With the amazing trailer that we've shared previously.

With the amazing trailer, which is probably all we need to watch.

Can you call what she was wearing a suit, really? I think that's stretching.

I think of it as a bathing suit. Yes.

True. Steckler is credited with directing the 1967 promotional film short for Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit. His wife, Caroline Brandt, from the cast of Incredibly Strange Creatures is in the video. And you've seen this video. I'm probably on VH1.

Oh, I'm sure.

In the 1970s, Steckler transitioned to hardcore pornography, often using the alias Cindy Lou Sutter's. And over the course of his career, he used many aliases. Some of his other directing pseudonyms were Sergio Leonardo, Wolfgang Schmidt, and Henri-Pierre Duval. And as an actor, we mentioned he was often credited as cash flag.

Guys, raise your hand if on the basis of this movie, you are shocked at the direction that his career ultimately took.

I am not. I'm also explains, I was sitting here going, how did this person get cast as the lead in this film? And now I know, because he was the director.

Yes. Yes, he was. There are three writers credited, Gene Pollock, Robert Sillifant and EM. Kevkey. They all have only two to four credits, and most of their work was in the low budget world with Steckler. There are two composers credited, Libby Quinn and Andre Brummer. This is Quinn's only feature film. Brummer has 26 credits from 1938 to 1990. All of his films are in the low budget world, and Andy, we'll see if this one ends up in your podcast titles to watch. His last composing credit is for the 1990 film Fertilize the Blasphemy Blombshell, which stars the original death stalker, Rick Hill.

Oh boy. That might be too much for my podcast.

Joseph E. Maskelli is the cinematographer. He directed the last film we watched, Monstrosity. We talked about how he was influential in cinematography as the writer of the 1965 book, The Five Seas of Cinematography. In The Incredibly Strange Creatures, he has two young cameramen who went on to great success. Vilma Zygman was a camera operator. He was a cinematographer on 100 movies, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Deer Hunter, Deliverance, Heaven's Gate, and The Witches of Eastwick.

Wow.

And Laszlo Kovacs was the assistant camera operator. He went on to be the cinematographer on 82 films. Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Ghostbusters, Say Anything, and Miss Congeniality are just a few.

Wow. You know, it always warms my heart when a couple of people escape from these films or use them as that sort of hard-won experience that they need to get a foothold on better projects.

Yeah. I do enjoy that. I also enjoy that this is the version, producer Brad says, I didn't get a chance to prepare that much, and he's telling us stuff about both cameramen. So, yeah.

Well, they jump out at you. I mean, I recognize their names, so it was kind of easy.

The one thing I'll say about this movie is, it does take advantage of a lot of first-person shooting, including on a roller coaster, but also just sort of in general in a way that is at least creative, if not successful.

I think the lighting and the camera work is pretty interesting throughout.

Yeah. It's wild, actually. I made a note of, it's just kind of crazy.

I think time was an issue. I don't think execution or vision was an issue. Right. The cast. Well, I couldn't find much about the cast. Most have few credits, like Brett O'Hara, who plays Madame Estrella. This is one of her two film roles. She was also known as the stand-in for Academy Award nominee Susan Hayward. If you've seen a picture of Hayward, they do look very similar. Carolyn Brandt, who was Steckler's wife in the 60s, plays Marge Nielsen. She has 37 credits, but most are on Steckler films. Even after they divorced, they continued to work together. In 1994, a documentary was made about Brandt called Carolyn Brandt, Queen of Cult. I put a link in the show notes to a description about it, but I couldn't find a link to view it.

If I were to pick one character from this film that crept towards having a sort of iconic presence on the screen, it would be her, I would say. It doesn't surprise me, even if she's in mostly low-budget stuff, that she got more roles.

Sherilyn Walsh plays Angela. She was originally cast as one of the showgirls, but the original actress hired to play Angela Flake. So Steckler gave the part to Walsh. But since Walsh had already been filmed as a showgirl, they had to put a big beehive wig on her to make her look different.

That's how she got that hair. That was my first note of the movie. I'm like, what is up with that hair?

Like, why?

She looks like she should be in the B-52s.

So like that level, though, of commitment to detail seems like at odds with every other choice about this movie. Like, do they really think someone watching this film was going to get upset that the same actress appeared in two roles? I don't know, but I guess I'm pleased to hear it.

You know, they made an effort to give them that. Carol Kay, the bass player famous for being part of the Studio Musicians, known as the Wrecking Crew, is in the IMDB credits as the entertainer. But I don't think it's the same Kay. It doesn't look like her and Kay's own website makes no mention of this. I found other online credits questioning it too. If you don't know Kay, the bass player, you know her work. She was, that's her bass on Sonny and Cher's, The Beat Goes On, and Nancy Sinatra's hit These Boots Were Made For Walking. Wow. So I was excited when I saw her listed, but then I started looking and I looked at the film. I go, that's, it's not her. I don't think it's her.

Interesting.

All right. So now we'll get to the end of my section. This is where it might take a while. The original title for this film was The Incredibly Strange Creatures or Why I Stopped Living and Became a Mixed Up Zombie. But Columbia Pictures threatened to sue since it was similar to Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which made me wonder, what other movies with long titles are there?

Yeah, because Dr. Strangelove came out this year as well.

Yeah. Now there are movies that are franchised, so they had the franchise branding up in front, like Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Documentaries have long titles, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, How the Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll Generations Saved Hollywood, or The Fog of War, 11 Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. But then we have action and dramas that have long titles. Roger Corman makes an entrance with The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent. Personal favorite, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension.

That's also my personal favorite of these.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

I've never seen that movie.

I haven't either. And Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Murat is performed by the inmates of the Asylum of Cheraton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade.

Okay.

Which was a play then made into a film.

That sounds like a play.

Now, there are comedies, everything you always wanted to know about sex, but were afraid to ask by Woody Allen. We mentioned Dr. Strangelove. The Dustin Hoffman film, Who is Harry Kellerman? And Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?

Yeah.

Come Back to the Five and Dine, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. The Englishman Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain. And Borat, Cultural Leadings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. I know the sequel is longer, but my mouth is getting dry.

Yes.

There's also from the 60s, Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines, or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours and 11 Minutes. And the last one I'm going to mention is, because it relates to ours, our podcast. In 1991, there's a director and I'll have to look up his name. He took Night of the Living Dead, and he stripped out all the dialogue and he re-dubbed it to make it a comedy. And he titled this, Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Sun of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil Mutant Alien, Flesh-Eating Hellbound, Zombified Living Dead, Part 2 in Shocking 2D.

I would watch that movie.

I'm afraid we're going to have to.

Yeah.

There is no part one, but there are parts three, four and five. Of course. One of them, he took episodes from Bonanza and Andy Griffith and re-dubbed them.

Oh my gosh. This sounds like another podcast.

And that's what I have for this film.

Well, that's a lot.

Wow. That is a lot.

All right. Well, shall I summarize this for us, Andy?

Let me take a minute and talk about what was going on in the world in 1964. I'll only take a quick second. I hope that you all had a chance to listen to our 1960s episode. I hope it informed you or maybe infuriated you, and you're sending us angry e-mails about what we got wrong. But the year of our Lord, 1964, I think if there was one thing that stood out about this year, it would be civil rights. This was a big year in civil rights. This is the year that LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and this was the beginning of the end of Jim Crow basically. This was also the year of the Freedom Summer, where there was a huge campaign to register black people to vote in the South. And this thousands and thousands of people, mostly white students from around the country, went to the South to help register black voters. They ran into a lot of violence and resistance, and those images being broadcast on TV for everyone to see, made a big difference in the move towards civil rights. So some other civil rights stuff went on as well. Martin Luther King got the Nobel Peace Prize. But I guess if there was one other thing you might mention about 1964, you would say that this is the year of the Beatles, because this is the year that the British invasion sort of officially gets underway, because the Beatles debut on the Ed Sullivan show.

Oh, right.

So Beatlemania in the US starts to pick up in 1964. So there's plenty of other stuff that happened, but one thing that is at least tangentially related to our podcast. This year, we got a couple of supernatural themed comedies on the air, Bewitched and The Addams Family. And both of those feel like a move away from 1950s style sitcoms to something new and a little bit more adventurous.

Do you know how The Addams Family started? It wasn't a TV show, actually.

No, please share.

It was New Yorker cartoons.

Was it really?

Yeah, it was single panel New Yorker. It was a cartoon in the New Yorker for years.

We talked about that in Plan 9 because Elvira patterned herself after Morticia from the New Yorker.

That's right. Yeah.

Okay, that's what I got for the year 1964, which means we cannot delay any longer. We have to actually start talking about this cursed movie. So John, give us a 60 second or thereabouts overview of the incredibly strange creatures, et cetera, et cetera.

Yes. Well, the incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and became mixed up zombies. So this movie, it has two groups of people that end up coming together, and this is where the conflict is created. So we start with a group of evil fortune tellers who are randomly killing people. That's Madame Estrella, her sidekick Ortega, and her sister Carmelita. Then we have our quote unquote heroes, which are Jerry, Angela, and Harold. As the movie opens, Madame Estrella is luring a man into her fortune telling parlor. She kidnaps him and essentially turns him into a zombie, we find out later. Meanwhile, Jerry is trying to get Angela to go to the Amusement Park with him where the tarot readings are held. They go to the Amusement Park, a series of bad choices and misdirections, and Jerry gets hypnotized by Madame Estrella and becomes a killer controlled by Madame Estrella, whereas Harold and Angie are trying to track him down before it's too late. However, they aren't able to, and the tragedy of Jerry's death brings an end to this film.

What an emotionally brutal experience it was when Jerry passed away, wasn't it?

Yeah. I left a lot of plot out of that summary because I don't know why any of that plot was here, and I'm happy to go through it with you. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I'll be walking us through this film in more detail. There is a huge amount of filler content in this, so please, my usual plea to Brad and John, both of you, if I start going down an unproductive side trail, please let me know.

Well, I tell you what, one huge thing I left out is, at every opportunity, there are musical numbers inserted in the film that have almost nothing to do with the film.

Like 60 percent of this movie is a burlesque dance routine.

Yes, and a terrible stand-up comedian.

Yes. Yeah. All right. Well, hey, let's jump right in. We start out with a prologue in an amusement park.

This is like a stinger. It's like a teaser, like a Bond film, Andy. Don't undersell it.

It is. I wanted to say, so I think this is the first movie we've watched where we hear music that sounds like it's from the 60s, the soundtrack. Whatever's playing in the background as the prologue in the credits role is a little bit more upbeat and rock and roll-ish than past movies.

Yeah. This movie really feels like, unlike other movies, it feels like set in the time it came out. Like Jerry and Harold are greasers, and Angie has that crazy big hairdo, and this feels like the 1960s man, like pre-hippie, but like the 1960s.

Yeah. As you mentioned, our prologue scene here is this sinister fortune teller, Madame Estrella, is entertaining, kind of a drunk businessman looking guy. He spurns her advances or something like that. She summons her Ortega, who's like the sort of Igor-like assistant, who's always lurking around her, who pins the businessman down while she splashes some kind of poison or acid or some substance onto his face. We're going to later learn that this is how she turns her captives into zombies, which she then imprisons elsewhere in her little lair. But we don't know that quite yet.

Yeah. I have two thoughts about this. First of all, we never really find out what her plot, like what her plan is, even a little.

So that did occur to me as well while watching it. There is a kind of horror that is more effective when there isn't a clear reason that the evil thing is happening.

Some people just want to watch the world burn.

Exactly. Like a lot of Stephen King stories are kind of like this. And there's a thrill of terror, I think, at the idea that there's just bad people out there and there isn't any reason why they might choose to target you or to spare you. It's just some sort of horrible cosmic game. That said, I would have appreciated a tiny bit of motivation for Madame Australia.

So I'd like to describe Madame Australia here as, and I, it's Estrella. I keep saying it's like in Spanish. She's supposed to be a gypsy, so it's not Spanish.

Oh yeah, is it? Is it Estrella or Estrella? I said Estrella because that's what it would be in Spanish.

Yes.

All right, Estrella.

Well, I have a multiple choice question and this will use it to describe her. What is less believable? Her mole, her bronzer, or her accent?

Yeah, that's D, all of the above. She has been hosed down in some bronzer agent to make her look, I guess, I don't know.

More ethnic, I think. Yeah.

Her accent, though, is something else.

Yeah. That mole, every time she was on the screen, I'm like, this is a lovely woman and there's like this fake looking mole on her cheek that is gigantic.

And hairy.

All right. Then we get credits roll and we do get a cool, slowly decaying animated zombie face in the background of the credits, which is kind of neat.

The credits are kind of avant-garde, like they're all in blue, they're all lowercase, this psychedelic weird music plays. It's great, actually.

It's promising.

Yeah. So far, I'm feeling good. I'm like, okay, this could be good.

But we're off to a good start. And I'm not going to belabor this every time it happens, but it's worth noting, the camera work is pretty wild throughout this movie.

Yes.

There is a lot, the camera is incredibly active, and there are a lot of scenes where to convey the chaos of what is happening, or the chaos of what somebody is experiencing in their mind, the camera will just sort of spin and loop and jump around in a very crazy way. I personally found it really frustrating to watch, but it was interesting, and it was clearly a choice with a capital C. I always appreciate some sign of artistic choice in these terrible movies.

There's a couple of places where it really stuck up the place that we get to when we get there. But there are other times where I was like, well, at least I appreciated the effort.

Yeah, there you go. Let's keep moving here because we're about to meet one of our main characters. After the credits roll, we watch an entire burlesque dance routine with a scantily clad woman dancer. I will try really hard not to mention this, but 20 times throughout this movie, the movie pauses for four minutes to show you a whole musical routine, and once or twice a whole stand up comedy routine. We've seen this once or twice. What was the movie where on their honeymoon, they went to a bunch of nightclubs and we got entire performances?

We had musical numbers in Scared Stiff. We had it in Zombies on Broadway.

No, it was the one where the guy, it was like a throwback to older movies where he inherited part of a plantation and he was in Louisiana and he went to a jazz club and they played for a long time.

The Dead One.

That's right.

The Dead One.

Yes. All that to say, movies that appear to be partly an excuse to show you a musical routine are not new to this podcast.

I'm assuming that these burlesque dances were very racy in 1964.

We can talk about it now. We keep saying this with each of our movies. This movie is racier than the ones that have come before. You can see them pushing the boundaries with each new film that comes out. Yes, I think so.

Don't forget, they build themselves as the first monster musical.

Yes.

On the poster in big letters. This was a big deal for them.

Yeah. I think they missed the part of the musical concept where the songs are related to the narrative in some way.

Even Scared Stiff, as not great as I found that movie to be, had one or two songs that had something to do with the story. This is like what they mean by musical is they just stuck some music videos in throughout this movie.

Correct.

All right, I'll try not to belabor that, but just bear in mind, if you're tempted to go watch this, just understand that every seven minutes, you will pause for a long time to watch a bunch of scantily clad women dance to music.

Yes.

Okay.

We should talk, their dancing is like, if you go to a community theater and see a big Broadway musical, but done very small scale with people who aren't trained, that's what this feels like.

A hundred percent.

They can't dance. I don't want to say something so negative, but can any of them dance?

There's one number late in the show where one of the women is out of sync with the rest and she keeps looking at the woman to her right, who's clearly the better dancer. I'm like, that's what happens in elementary school when you know you don't want to dance and they make you and then you do that.

That also happens when you do exactly one take per scene. Okay, we got to get this show rolling though.

Let's get this show on the road.

All right, so we're about to meet our first person. The dancer we have just watched for several minutes, Dance, is going to be a main character for a while, although she's destined for a grim death about halfway through the film. This is Marge, and when we first meet Marge, we learn a couple of things about her. One is she has a drinking problem that's starting to get in the way of her job, and the other is that she's scared by a certain something. So I have an audio clip here. Just listen, as we warned, this opens with a pretty good scream, scream, queen, scream. So, yes.

What's wrong? That cat, get it out of here. All right, but why get all shook up about a cat? I can't stand them.

Every time I get near, when something strange happens to me.

Well, why don't you lay off that stuff?

Why don't you lay off the father routine?

Look, honey, I'm just trying to give you a friendly bit of advice.

I'm just trying to give you a friendly bit of advice.

Those mistakes in your routine last night almost cost you your job.

Okay. Okay, I'll give it a try, just for you. Look, I'd rather you did this just for yourself. So, yes, so Marge is scared by cats. I thought that would be a theme throughout the movie, but that was actually the last time we see a cat.

I know, I was a little disappointed. I'm like, we're in a cat role. We had Xerxes, and I was kind of hoping that we'd get like... Did anybody check the cat database? Cat movie database?

I forgot, no.

I forgot, sorry.

I shall do so now.

All right.

This is Marge. She's one of our dancers. She's got a drinking problem, and it's gonna be relevant that she's drinking too much. And then we skip over and we meet our...

And I think it's gonna be relevant in exactly the way that this guy says. Is that actually technically foreshadowing, other than just telling us the plot?

I think that's just stating. Okay, all right. So then we skip over and we meet our main group of protagonists whose lives are about to tragically intertwine with Marge's.

Yes.

And this is, we shift over to a dumpy little apartment where a couple of young men are handing out. This is Jerry, the lead, and his friend Harold. Jerry, I mean, for lack of a better term, is a loser. He's not in college. He doesn't have a job. He's lamenting that he might have to one day get a job.

Right.

And we, well, I'll save some of this for a wrap up discussion at the end. I think this is an interesting, this is, I think, the first time we have been given protagonists who are so unlikeable that you are here mostly to see what bad thing befalls them, serial killer movie style. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I think you're right. That's how I felt about them. But I think that we're supposed to think they're cool.

That, no.

I think so. I think like, like specifically Harold, who has, I think a Russian accent, is supposed to invoke like James Dean from Rebel Without a Cause, except for his jacket's blue instead of red. But he's got the blonde pompadour and he's like, he's always working on his car and like, yeah.

Okay. Well, to a modern viewer, Jerry seems like a huge loser. It is possible. He seems like a huge loser. This read differently in 1964. Yeah, that's, I mean, I can see that. Jerry, you know, he does have this attitude that I don't think we would have seen in any of our like 1950s protagonists. At one point, he is like, life is, you know, life isn't about getting a job. It's about just having fun and experiencing things. And that is not something anyone, any of our heroes from the 40s or 50s would have said.

Right. And these look like characters out of Happy Days. Yeah, like they're clearly in the 1960s. Yeah, a hundred percent.

So they head out for some fun.

Yeah, can I just say my next note was, these hep cats drive away in a 1953 Plymouth Suburban Station wagon. Okay. And they go to meet a girl who has gigantic hair. That's my next note.

Giant hair. Do you know what this hairstyle is called?

I don't.

It's something else. Google it, dear listeners. They go to pick up Jerry's quasi-girlfriend, Angela or Angie. And Angie also is, I mean, a loser is maybe a strong word, but she also isn't like a wonderful heroic protagonist, I don't think. We quickly learn that Angela has kind of multiple guys interested in her. She doesn't, she's kind of dating Jerry, but she doesn't really, isn't taking it seriously. She's just here to have fun, which causes her mom a lot of angst.

The mother is played by Nancy Reagan. Not really.

Yes, it is uncanny, yes. Jerry and Harold show up, they pick her up, and they all head over to this fateful amusement park, where they go on a bunch of rides, they can cavort on the beach, they do all sorts of stuff. The camera flies all over the place, showing us different roller coasters and rides. And it's a pretty sketchy carnival, I guess. It's...

Yeah, their version of the Ferris wheel is like just a giant crane that takes you up in a pod really high in the air. And where you swing there, this is where the boys get sick on this one.

It was filmed at a amusement park in Long Beach, California.

I was going to ask if you knew the name of this place.

So guys, a quick history quiz for you. What decade do you think was the first roller coaster built? And by roller coaster, I mean like a modern roller coaster, discount like weird one-off contraptions made by like Da Vinci or people in the ancient world.

You know what? I just listened to a podcast. The rest of this history just did a bit on Disney and they talked about the development of the roller coaster. However, I don't know the exact answer to your question. Russian czars used to build giant ice mountains and ride them in the way that we ride roller coasters, but that's probably not what you're thinking of.

No, those are definitely proto roller coasters. What I have in mind though is the first one was built in 1894 on Coney Island.

All right.

It was called the Switchback Railway. And how much do you think it cost to go on a ride?

A penny.

A nickel.

It cost a nickel.

All right.

Okay. So we have a bunch of, I wrote down with lots of footage of them going on roller coasters and behaving like idiots, which I guess is how kids behave when they go unsupervised to the carnival. Meanwhile, we go switch back to Marge. And Marge goes on stage for another show, but she's drunk and she's screwing up the routine. So she wrecks the act. She collapses, the act is ruined, the manager threatens to fire her, and in a state of a real glum depression, she notices an ad for a fortune teller.

In the astrology guide. Now, can I tell you the note I took here?

Yeah.

I wrote and I quote myself, is anything going to happen in this movie? So we had this strong beginning with somebody getting turned into a zombie. And so it's taken all this time just to get us back to the fortune teller.

Yeah. So the note I have in my notes, John, is this film is very irritating to watch. And that was mostly inspired by the camera, which we said, I appreciate that there's some directorial choice going on here. But it's like shaky cam before they figured out how to do shaky cam in a normal way. It's just literally flailing the camera all over the place.

And on that note, a mutual friend and friend of the show, Chris, asked the following question of you. Now, you just made a statement, which is, Zombie Strains is starting to feel like a dare that went wrong.

No, no, no, no, no. I mean, it was, but yes.

Yes. We're all having a great time, so we don't know.

I'm having a great time, so all right. So, but Marge heads over to the fortune teller, who is the sinister Madame Estrella?

Yes.

Now, Estrella warns her, I don't think fortune tellers normally are quite so ominous. I mean, I've actually never been to one. So maybe this is part of the theatrical nature of it, but Madame Estrella warns Marge, don't look, don't ask for your future unless you're really serious about it because it's dangerous to mess with these powers. And Marge says, well, I am afraid that my life is actually in danger.

This is because of the cat, by the way.

Madame Estrella breaks out a bunch of tarot cards. And John, what is weird about these tarot cards?

Well, they're round.

They are round.

They're circles. And they're not, I mean, they're just playing cards.

So I went down a history rabbit trail here on this one. So I have not seen round tarot cards before. Tarot cards have generally been rectangular since they were invented in like the 15th century.

And today they have a size like, like you back a Kickstarter and there's cards in it, they say tarot sized cards. Like it's a very specific thing.

So from what I was able to find, I tried to identify the exact tarot deck being used here because it being round, it just seemed like there might, it might be kind of interesting. There was only one round tarot deck that was in mainstream publication in 1964. It was the Circle of Life Tarot by a German named Lothar Oswald. Okay, stop right there.

Lothar?

Yes.

Okay, carry on.

Yes. That said, I stared at a lot of pictures. I do not think this is the Circle of Life Tarot. However, I will just note, so the 60s saw a big rise in psychedelic art and just kind of creative art pushing boundaries. And so, that did lead to a lot of niche and novelty tarot decks being published during the 60s. So, I think we're looking at like a weird one-off deck that they found somewhere, so.

Yeah, they also could be playing cards because when she turns over a card, it's the Ace of Spades.

Okay, I couldn't see the version I was seeing. I couldn't make any details out on the face of the card.

It looks like just a regular playing card.

Now, I have to ask real quick what cards has John contributed to on Kickstarter.

Well, the Monstrous Kickstarter had tarot-sized cards, which is an RPG game. We did have a friend who did tarot cards that were chicken-themed.

Yes.

Yeah, which were pretty great. Claire Donaldson.

Those were amazing. Yes. All right. So, hey, let's hear an audio clip of this fortune telling. This is Madame Estrella telling Marge's fortune by flipping over cards.

The cards will tell us if we are in danger.

There's that accent for you.

What did you see?

I'll look for myself.

It's the death card, isn't it? It is. I knew it.

I knew it.

I knew it.

Which is amazing. So what happens is she flees when she sees the death card, and she runs right into a room full of zombies.

Yes. It's great. We do not actually fully see the zombies yet. We hear them and we see their grasping hands, but we haven't seen their hideous faces. That's going to be a treat saved for the end of the film. I also want to say it is funny in all these movies, like the death tarot card doesn't mean you're going to die, like it does in all these horror movies. Like it sounds cool, but it's actually kind of bland if you're actually reading your tarot.

Yeah, Brad is discovering he's on a podcast with two people who kind of know how tarot works and he is now questioning his choices. That's shoes on the head of foot for once.

What happened in there is that when the death card was flipped over, Marge jumps up in fright, opens a random door or something and then she's almost grabbed by a bunch of zombies that are being kept in Madame Estrella's lair. Then she sprints out of the place, but she drops her purse on the way out and Madame Estrella picks it up, and that doesn't seem like it's going to bode well for Marge. No. Meanwhile, I wrote the three idiots decide to go get their fortune stole. This is Jerry, Harold, and Angela. They also head into Madame Estrella's, and I like this scene. This is a pretty good one. Madame Estrella does a normal fortune on Angela. She says she's going to be lucky in love. She's going to be rich. She says, you'll only have one husband, which is rare in these times, which is kind of an interesting little cultural aside there, a little editorializing by Madame Estrella. But when it comes time to tell Jerry's fortune, Madame Estrella tells him that she won't. He's obsessed with this crystal ball, and he wants her to look into it and tell his future. She says that the crystal predicts that somebody near Angela is going to die in the very near future. But then she refuses to read Jerry's future. She says that there's some people that just can't be read. I think the clear suggestion is that he doesn't have enough of a future to even read, right? Right. All right. So at this point, a lot of fillery stuff happens. So help me as I try to move us along. What's going to happen next is that Jerry... I don't want to confuse people. Well, Madame Estrella has a sister named Carmelita. He's one of the exotic dancers. Jerry's obsessed with Carmelita.

Because of a spell that Madame Estrella puts on.

That's right. So Jerry is supernaturally obsessed. He really wants to go in to see this strip show, basically. Angela won't go in with him because she doesn't want to, quite understandably. They get into an argument. Angela ultimately huffs off. A number of funny things come up in this argument between them. One, Jerry at one point says something to Angela. He's like, well, I feel like you're giving me a choice between going into the strip show or staying with you. And yeah, you're being given that choice. And that's not going to make our Tough Moral Choices section at the end of this podcast. But he decides he just needs to go in and see these women. And so Angela kind of huffs off. The other thing I want to mention is, while arguing with her, Jerry says, I thought we agreed that what I say goes.

Yeah, that went over big.

Yeah, how did you come to that agreement? And does Harold just have the deciding vote in all of these discussions? I felt for Angela in this scene. She huffs off, Harold goes after her to make sure she gets home safe. And Jerry goes into the show. Then there's about 300 minutes of dance routines.

Including Carmelita doing potentially the least sexy striptease ever seen.

It's uncomfortable in every way that something can be uncomfortable to watch. But the point of it is that during the show, that you remember Ortega, he was Madame Estrella's sinister sidekick. He creeps over and hands Jerry a note saying, hey, Carmelita wants to meet you in her private room after the show.

Ortega, and also Ortega has like a prosthetic face.

Yeah.

What was going on there?

It's bizarre.

Is it paper mache?

It's like a paper mache. He looks like El Monstruo Recessitado.

He does.

Yeah, but like worse. Yes. But it doesn't work because the movie is terrible or something. Yeah, I don't know why he's here. Anyway.

Whatever they're going for, it just looks kind of weird enough putting, I would say. Yes. After the show, Jerry goes looking for Carmelita. He finds her in the back in there. Madame Estrella and Carmelita do not light their chambers or dressing rooms. It's all dark back here. Yes. He follows her through a curtain, but when the curtain opens, what do we get, John?

We get Madame Estrella, and she has one of those spinning discs that have, it's like a pinwheel with black and white, and when you spin it, it's like something from the opening of The Twilight Zone.

Right.

Yes. She puts Jerry under a hypnotic spell, and I have in my notes, the scene never ends.

Oh, my gosh.

Yes. The most hilarious thing is that she's hypnotizing him. The camera zooms in and out and in and out on Jerry's face. It's amazing. It's like some of that crazy camera quirk where we appreciate the effort and yet it's interminable and horrible at the same time.

I have an audio clip of Jerry being hypnotized. This is a long audio clip, but please believe me when I say it's a fraction of the entire length of this scene, which is interminable.

By the way, at this point, we're 40 minutes into the movie.

Yes. If you are driving a car, you might want to pull over lest you fall into a trance while hearing the dulcet tones of Madame Estrella's hypnosis. Let's see. Yes. Okay, listeners, snap out of it, snap out of it.

Yeah. What is that accent supposed to be? I mean, I know it's supposed to be a gypsy, but I have no idea.

So what is that noise? What is that sound effect? It's like an organ, off-tune organ or something that is in the backdrop of not just scary scenes in this movie, but in others we've watched. Do you guys know what that is?

I don't.

Okay, we have some research to do before the next movie because I promise we have not heard the last of that.

You know what? I thought we were going to get a ton of theremin for decades and I've been a little disappointed with the amount of theremin we've been getting. We've been getting this other instrument that I don't understand at all.

What's happened here, and again, I'm going to try to sum up a lot of stuff here. What's happened is Jerry is now a zombie under the control of Madame Estrella.

He's not dead.

No, he's alive.

We'll discuss that later.

Yes. We'll get into the zombie details in a minute. Basically, the next significant thing that happens is we shift to Marge, our dancer friend from the beginning of this movie, and real-life wife of Jerry, doing a dance routine when Jerry bursts onto the stage and stabs her and her dance partner to death.

May I describe Jerry?

Tell me about this scene.

Jerry, this is the part I laughed at the most. So Jerry's costume as a zombie when he's a killing machine is, the whole time he's been wearing a blue hoodie, and he pulls the hoodie up and cinches it around his face, and then he opens his eyes as wide as possible and flails around stabbing people but like he's a robot. It's hilariously bad and he kills both of them. I'm sorry that I laughed so hard at people being killed. It won't be the last time that happens on this podcast.

It will not.

But he kills them while they're doing their dance routine in front of everybody.

Yes. It's a little gruesome, I would say. We see Marge getting lots of knife slash wounds to her face, which is more blood and gruesomeness than we've seen. I would say this movie in general is just more gratuitous in most respects than anything we've seen to date. Still pretty tamed by modern standards. Then immediately after this though, Jerry, we shift over to Jerry, he's in bed again and he's having a dream.

Can we talk about this dream?

Please, because it's about 10 minutes long. Yeah, please.

It's absolutely bizarre.

Yes.

It's women doing a dance routine, but he has a bunch of face paint on and some of the women have face paint on. It's like he's running around in between the women, like they're amazed or something and something's chasing him. It's got a lot of that crazy zoom in, zoom out camera work and funky music. It's like a bizarre acid trip fantasy that I don't even know what it's supposed to mean, but I think it's supposed to be like what happens when he zones out and kills people or something. I don't even know.

Yeah, I think this is supposed to represent when he's in his fugue state. He's just trapped in a nightmare, essentially. Yes. I will say, it is effectively-

It might be the best part of the movie.

Yeah, it is effectively nightmarish. Like there's some genuinely creepy images and stuff in this. It goes on too long like everything else in this movie, but credit where it's due. Yes. But the next day, Jerry wakes up at home. He doesn't remember anything that's happened. He checks in with Harold.

Harold, who is working on his car, which is a 1951 Nash Rambler. Sorry.

Jerry can't remember anything that happened. The Rambo. This is a different car. Does Jerry have the station wagon?

Jerry has the station wagon. Harold has the Nash Rambler.

Well, they go over to see Angie. Remember, that's the girlfriend that huffed off because she didn't want to go to the strip show. While Jerry is talking to Angie, Angie starts spinning her umbrella and Jerry flashes back to that whirling hypnotic spiral. When the umbrella drops, he doesn't see his girlfriend Angie. He sees Marge, the woman he stabbed to death.

Yes.

So he attacks her. He starts to strangle her. Her family fights him off just in time and confused, he just runs off into the city aimlessly. Any thoughts about this scene, John?

Yeah. It's a parasol she's wearing. The camera zooms in as it's spinning. I thought he also tried to kill the mother, Nancy Reagan.

He may have. Yeah.

Then he leaves and he just wanders around Los Angeles or whatever city this is for a while, reflecting on how strange the world is and is he losing his mind or whatever. I don't even know what's happening now.

Yes. He does hear a radio broadcast describing the murder of Marge and her dance partner. He puts a few things together and he's drawn back to the carnival. He knows that he doesn't remember any of this, but he has the sense that Madame Estrella did something to him. While this is happening though, we have another murder being set up because one of Marge's friends goes to confront Madame Estrella. Yes. The friend, her name is Stella, not just to add some confusion to the words here, but she knows that Marge was at Madame Estrella's right before she was murdered. And Madame Estrella doesn't look too pleased at this. And so when Jerry returns to Madame Estrella to get answers, she hypnotizes him again and sends him off to do another murder.

Yeah, but are you going to skip over the amazing musical number that Jerry sees before he sees Madame Estrella?

Well, which one would that be?

Let me play a little bit of it for you, Andy. What is Choo Choo Chiboochee? I don't even know what that is, and it's amazing.

I won't lie. This is about the part of the movie where I started thinking, like, could I watch this at like 1.25 speed and still get the full experience?

Probably.

There is a famous song called Choo Choo Chiboogee.

Yeah, and that's not what she says.

That's not what she says.

This is the serial numbers filed off version of that.

Now, while you guys were talking, I discovered that there in 1985, Rhino Records released an album called The Golden Turkey Album, The Best Songs from the Worst Movies. And one of the songs is from The Incredibly Strange Creatures, and the song they picked is Shook Out of Shape by Carole Kay and the Stone Tones, which is not what we listen to.

That's not a bad song. I didn't think it was original to the movie, though. I just assumed it was a cover, but it sounds like it is.

Well, and that's credited to Libby Quinn, who I mentioned earlier, so that was her contribution was that song.

All right, there you go.

There's another song, While He's Roaming the City Aimlessly. A song is playing in the background that I believe it was covered by Dire Straits, but I couldn't find the original song, so I Googled the lyrics. Anyway, just a weird thing. Anyway, all right, we're almost done. So now we're in the final act of this movie, guys. What's happening is that Angela and her family in Harold are discussing whether they need to call the cops on Jerry, who, as you remember, just tried to strangle Angela. But Angela and Harold-

And the mom is like, yeah, okay, we'll give you a couple of hours.

Yeah. Harold and Angela are like, they'll please let us go find Jerry. We bet he went back to the carnival. Yeah. So the mom is like, okay, sure. Go and try and go after the murderer yourself. Just be back in a few hours.

Yeah.

Don't be out late.

Yeah. Don't be out late. Have fun trying to catch the murderer.

So they're racing back to the carnival to see if Jerry is there, which he is. Meanwhile, Jerry kills another woman. It's the dancer who had threatened Madame Estrella. When the dancer's boyfriend checks in on her, he also is stabbed to death by a zombie, Jerry.

Yes. With his hood up again.

Yes. That's how you know he's about to kill you when he cinches that hood. Yes. Jerry returns to Madame Estrella and this is the end of Jerry's usefulness for Madame Estrella.

Yes.

Because she takes out the same vial of acid or poison that she used in the prologue of this movie, and she splashes it on Jerry, and she's laughing and she tells Ortega to put him in there with the rest of the little pets. She's been controlling, I think mostly men, maybe all men, and zombifying them and keeping them imprisoned after they've stopped being useful to her for quite some time. Jerry is about to join them, but through some chaos, when they're trying to shove Jerry who's clutching his face and stuff and it's in the process of being deformed, I think, when they try to shove him back in there, the zombies which are quite feral, fast-moving, these are not slow shuffling ones, these are feral bloodthirsty ones, they stage a breakout. They burst out, they attack Estrella in Ortega, Carmelita comes in to see what's going on, they attack her too, the camera starts spinning all around. It's this, I don't think it quite works, but I appreciated that the camera going wild really did convey the chaos of a general melee, I would say.

Yeah, and they try to do this bit which would be chilling in a better movie where their screams are drawn out by the screams of the roller coaster riders.

Yes. So there's a bunch of zombies in here. I didn't get an exact count, but it's at least three, and it's probably more like four or five. Does that sound right?

Yeah, not counting Jerry, yes.

Yeah. So Estrella, Ortega, and Carmen Lida are all strangled to death by the zombies, which then rush off into the carnival to cause chaos.

Interrupting a dance number.

Yeah, we shift over to a dance, the zombies barge onto the stage and start killing the dancers.

It's absolute mayhem.

It's like, this is kind of what I'm here for in this podcast.

Yeah.

Can I just say, it's this chaos of like, zombies lurching into a crowded room and just everything goes crazy. The police arrive, they start shooting at some of the zombies, and we learn that the zombies can just be shot and killed normally.

Yes, but let's describe the zombies for a second.

Okay. Yeah, let's pause. Let's talk about them. You tell us about them, John.

Well, first of all, their clothes are all torn up and gross and they look disgusting. But let's talk about what do their faces look like, Andy? They're like-

Well, it's like their faces have been melted or disfigured.

Yes. Yeah. There's ugly makeup on top of them, they've got patchy hair. I think these zombies are dead even though Jerry isn't dead. It could be. I couldn't swear to it. But they look like three fast moving crazed zombies running around like something out of Danny Boyle. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So this is pretty cool. This is good stuff right here. Angela and Harold arrive and Jerry staggers out. He wasn't in the group of rampaging zombies. I think he's still in the process of becoming zombified.

Right.

And Jerry staggers out. He has this moment of realization and he runs out of the building out to the beach. There is an interminable chase scene where Jerry runs down the beach being pursued by Angela, Harold, and the police.

There's this bizarre inspirational music like he's running to be free or something.

Yes.

It's absolutely bizarre.

So he's running through these tide pools and stuff like that. It's a really long scene.

Which, by the way, is similar to the White Rabbit video. It looks like this in the same type of location.

Oh, really? Okay. That's kind of curious. I need to go watch that now. Well, it ends when Jerry climbs onto this really tall rock, and he's begging Angela and the others to go back and to leave him. But a policeman shoots him. He falls into the water far below, onto the rocks. He isn't quite dead because he staggers out of the surf for just a minute. But then he dies surrounded by his friends and the cop who shot him.

The cop with the 44 Magnum, that thing's like a hand cannon. I don't know what he's carrying there.

That's the end of this movie, you guys.

That's the end.

I think everybody got what they deserved in this one.

Yes.

Andy, did you get what you deserve?

Yeah.

If you say yes, what did you do?

I've lived a bad life, so I accept this as my just punishment. Yeah. All right. Yes. Hey, John, we always wrap up with a series of questions. I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions about this movie, then you're going to ask me some, for the first time, new questions about 1960s zombie movies. You're going to ask me.

Yeah. These are the questions Andy came up with during our 1960s history episode. You can listen to that, but I'll summarize them, and we'll go through them here.

For sure. Hey, John, in The Incredibly Strange Creatures, is there a hero party?

There is. It's Harold, Angela, and Jerry.

Yes. How do they do? How many survive?

Angela and Harold survive. Jerry dies as a zombie, which I think is important.

Yes. A member of the hero party being zombified, I think, is a pretty important thing to call out. Yes. What kind of zombie strain are we dealing with here?

We have mystically, I'm not sure. I assume there's some mystical component combined with this acid, scientific component, that together are making them zombies.

I think it's mostly mystical. These don't feel like science zombies, even if technically there is a chemical substance being used. Yes. Then let's see. How are the zombies destroyed or killed?

You can just shoot them.

Is there a zombie horde?

I'm going to say yes.

I think so.

It's a very small horde. But it is a horde and they act like a horde. It's three zombies running around killing people. I think the reason it's not a larger horde is the budget, not the vision.

Agreed. How fast are they?

They are fast zombies.

They are at least as fast as a human running, I would say. I wouldn't say there's any sign that they're superhuman in strength or agility, but for sure they're scary fast. Right. Is the world threatened?

I'm going to say no.

What's our kill count and how's that compared to past zombie movies we've watched?

We got Jerry, Marge, Carmelita, Stella, Ortega, and then there's a couple other people.

The businessman at the beginning.

Seven, at least.

It's a pretty hefty kill count.

This is one of our higher kill counts.

Yeah.

We'll say seven plus.

Seven plus.

I think this might be our highest.

I think you're right.

All right. Let's talk about your pillars of the zombie genre. All right. John, how many of these pillars are found in The Incredibly Strange Creatures? First, is there an apocalypse or the threat of one in this movie?

No, there is not an apocalypse.

Yeah, it's a pretty localized terror here. Is there contagion?

No, I don't think so. I think you have to be turned into a zombie by Madame Estrella.

Are there tough moral choices?

I don't think so. Like, no, not really in the way we mean that.

I think that, well, I have a thought on this, but I'll get to it when you ask the 60s questions. All right. Lastly, does this movie have loved ones turning against you?

Well, Jerry is a jerk and we hate him, but I think Angela loves him.

Yes, she does.

So I'm going to say yes.

Yeah, I think this is pretty textbook, loved ones turning against you. Even though Jerry, you and I would not choose to date Jerry, I don't think. But all right, so John.

We didn't spend any time with him.

So you have some questions for me on that.

Yeah. So let's talk about those for a second. So first off, is the sort of grittiness and the, I don't want to say salaciousness, but the violence and grittiness of our movie, are we seeing an increase in these movies?

We are. This is definitely a more brutal, more gritty movie. It's a, it is, the kills in this movie are strangulation and knifings. And those are both, I think, uncomfortably visceral ways to kill someone on screen, compared to like gunshots or, you know, falling from a building. Does that make sense?

Yes. And having Harold with his, excuse me, having Jerry with his googly eyes, trying to do the killing is supposed to be scary, doesn't work, but it's supposed to be, right?

And when they show him knifing, there are a lot of ripped straight out of psycho shots of him absolutely raising and lowering the knife.

The mechanical arm and yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So, all right.

So next, are we focusing on our hero's inner life? Are the horrors more personalized?

So, I think so, yes. This movie, it does spend a lot of time trying to put us in the head of the characters, especially Jerry.

Yeah, he has that whole dream.

Yeah, we live through his confused state of mind. And that, I don't think that's something we would have ever seen in the 50s.

Yeah, I agree. How about, is there a larger fear of like crime, chaos, anarchy kind of stuff?

I think so, yes. I think part of the fear of crime, right, is that, you know, you can't predict it. It can come out of nowhere. It's not done to you because someone is your enemy and they have a grudge against you. It's done because someone has the opportunity and the inclination to just to kill you or to rob you or whatever. I think the idea of a, you know, critic of these, this little pocket of murderous criminals that just choose the occasional random victim, I think that's pretty scary and that feels pretty 1960s to me.

Yeah, and I think Jerry and Harold are anti-authoritarians as well.

For sure. Yeah, you can see that, you know, they feel like a 1960s, like slightly more evolved versions of the heroes from, oh, not scared stiff, what was the one with the plant? Woman Eater. Woman Eater. Because that was our other movie we've had with kind of similarly loser protagonists, right? We had the main character in that one was like, he's kind of a mechanic, he lived in his mom's house. The love interest in that one was a dancing girl going from crap job to crap job. That is the Jerry and the other kids in this movie feel like a more intensified version of those characters. They're listless, they're directionless, they don't have jobs or prospects, and I think that's just kind of new and interesting.

Yeah, I agree. Is there a sense of looming apocalypse in this film, or in the psychological stress that creates?

I don't think so.

No, I don't think so either. Are there horrors without an obvious solution, like a lack of clear villain here?

So, I think no, but it feels a little bit like that.

Yeah, it does. I think sort of the pointlessness of Madame Estrella's plot sort of feeds into this, right? Like, why is she doing this? Who cares? Doesn't matter.

Exactly. Yeah, it's just like this random cruelty and violence. Are villains in the past, even when they have done serial killing style murders and stuff, they always have some, you know, they often have some almost noble motivation, right? They're trying to restore their dead wife, or they're trying to bring about some new scientific achievement that will benefit mankind.

Right.

And there's no, there's nothing noble about Madame Estrella's little murder coven here. They're just mean jerks.

Yeah, I agree.

So that leaves us with the last couple of questions, right? Yep. John, would you and I survive in this zombie world?

I don't think so. I think we would get hypnotized by Madame Estrella, and then we would murder people and get killed. That's what I think.

Or we'd be in the audience when those zombies burst in, and there's no way I'm getting to the exit if those things are chasing me.

I'd be in the audience, yeah.

Yeah. John, is this a zombie movie or is this a movie with zombies?

I still think it's a movie with zombies because I have a question. Who are the incredibly strange creatures? Does she just mean people? I thought we were going to get aliens who came to earth and then died and then got... I thought it was going to be something completely different, but anyway.

Is this a really clever title or is this a really stupid one?

I thought it was clever and now I think it's stupid.

Humans are incredibly strange creatures. Is this making a statement about people, the people who became zombies of which there's maybe a half dozen in this movie?

Yes. I don't know that I would describe these people as incredibly strange, just a little strange.

I also vote a movie with zombies. You could have the murders be carried out by some non-zombie means and the plot would not really change all that much.

Correct.

Yeah. Lastly, do you recommend this movie first generally to someone looking to spend a fun hour and 20 minutes of movie viewing time? Secondly, do you recommend it specifically to our Legion of Zombie-loving listeners?

Okay. Hear me out.

Oh, boy. Oh, boy.

I can't recommend it, but I did find it more delightful than you did, I think. If you're the sort of person who loves, you know it's just a kitschy crap movie and that's what you want. I think this works in that way. I'm going to give a tentative yes to the right person on people watching in general and a definite yes for the zombie stuff, because I think there's good zombie stuff here, even though it's all crammed at the end.

Yeah, that's the hard part. I'm going to give this a no generally, but I do have that caveat. The last 15 minutes are pretty wild. It's a pretty entertaining 15 minutes. I mean, I found this to be a genuine slug to get to that point. So I guess what is your tolerance level for-

Yeah, like I just looked on and wonder as weird thing after weird thing after musical number came at me from the screen and I was like, okay, I'm here for this. So yeah.

I will recommend it also though to Zombie fans. I do like our little horde of fast moving, genuinely these are, we've been wondering for many movies when zombies are going to start feeling like they're an actual threat. And these feel like these would be scary if they were coming after you for sure.

Absolutely.

All right. So this is, that means that it's time for the scariest part of the episode. And that is when producer Brad reveals to us what we'll be watching next.

Well, I have a treat.

Oh, do you?

No, see that can mean anything coming from Brad.

Is it a treat for Brad? Is he torments us?

No, no, it's a treat for all of us. We have crisscrossed the US. We've dipped into Mexico. We've gone to England. So next up, let's go here to Italy.

Oh, hey. War of the Zombies, directed by John Drew Barrymore. Is that?

Starring.

Starring? Is that real?

Yeah. This is my favorite poster we've had.

This poster is extraordinary. Would you describe it, Andy?

Yes. All right. There's big letters across the top that says, Unconquerable Warriors of the Damned Sea. Oh, hey, The Blood Dance of the Zombies. This is the second movie whose poster has boasted that we'll learn the blood dance. The Undead Cross Swords with the Living. That is new.

I am here for any sword fighting they wish to offer.

The Goddess of the Night star, whose gaze mummifies men, and a living beauty turned into a zombie. This is all against this amazing fantasy illustration of a- Can you describe what's happening here, John?

It's almost like there's a gigantic Buddha's head with a third eye that is projecting like a laser beam down. Also, I think the attire of the warriors who cross swords are Roman.

They look Roman, yes.

Yes.

Okay.

If you went this week without thinking about the Roman Empire, we've got you covered.

Exactly. And there's like a wizard, there's like a scannily clad, there's two scannily clad women.

Yeah.

There's like zombie looking guys. There's like a Roman legion. And we didn't mention the name of it. It's War of the Zombies. Yeah.

Now that's the American name. It is Italian and the Italian translation is Rome Against Rome.

Oh, all right.

Guys, I'm really excited about this one. I am here for this. This is great. Okay. Famous last words, right? Like ask me in a week if I still feel the same.

And I see some zombies on the left here.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay. I think we might be looking at a gem. I'm just going to go out on a limb and predict it, guys.

It does have an epic feel to it like a James Bond film. There's lots of different action sequences on this poster.

Yeah. It might remind me of Deathstalker a little bit.

Well, I'm excited at the possibility we might have our first historical movie, like a movie that is not set at contemporaneously with the filming of it.

Yes.

All right. Wrap us up, John.

Thank you, everyone, for listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode with War of the Zombies, and remember, choo-choo-choo-boo-choo. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed our podcast, please take a moment to rate us in your podcast app of choice. Tell a friend, follow us on Instagram at Zombiestrains. All of this helps like-minded people find the show. See you next time!