Welcome to Zombies Trains, the podcast where we watch all of the zombie movies in order. This episode, the first adaptation of Richard Matheson's I am legend, Vincent Price stars in 1964's The Last Man On Earth.

No, I see people I play that in pictures. What do you call them? Zombie's or something? Sorry. What’s a zombie? Just what is a zombie? Well, a zombie? There's a... Mr. Bill there is... The living dead. There's a living dead. There's even a zombie. He's a zombie. Because a zombie has no will on his own. The zombie is a zombie's. No, I mean, it's good to stay. For the zombie, What is wrong? WAAAAIIIIILLLL

I’m John.

I’m Andy.

And I’m Brad

Welcome to zombie strains. We are watching a stone cold classic today, Vincent prices the last man on earth. Unless either of you disagree, in which case, we can just quit this podcast right now. No, okay.

No, you know, I have a comment. I do love our intro music, but I think we need to start taking note of like clips in these movies that might make for good season three, yeah on top of sound montage. We get we had a really good. quote from Roman soldier in last the last episode where he was like there in principle, they can't be killed.

Yes, I suspect producer Brad has tagged a few quotes. I suspect he has as well. Yeah, Morgan. Come out Morgan. Yes, so I'm excited about this movie, but before we get there, is anybody got any sort of zombie related or cinema related stuff there in to right now?

Well, I need to follow up on last week. We were talking about David Bern and Haitian Voodoo and the influence on the talking heads. Well, I did some more research. And I was able to find the bibliography that he talked about. Oh, wow. It's part of the 1980 press release for the album, Remain and Light, a Reddit user posted, and there's copies of it. I'll put a link in the show notes. And there are three books listed, African rhythm and African sensibilities, African art in motion and the divine horsemen. Now the last book was written by Maya Darin, who also made a documentary with the same name that filmed the dances of a Voodoo ceremony in Haiti between 1947 and 1954. That's cool. How? And there are clips of it online, and it looks like someone tried to post a full thing and to get pulled down, but there are, you can see some segments up there. Then in 1988, Robert Ferris Thompson, who wrote the second book, African Art and Motion, interviewed Bern for Rolling Stone Magazine, and Thompson describes going at Bern to a Haitian, they call it Vowdown ceremony, and to see Ayazin, a Haitian jazz band in New York City. I don't know. So I read the whole article. It's it's for free at really stone. Again, I'll put it in the show notes.

Very cool. I watched. I watched a video early today, earlier today, you can just find it on YouTube on the history of the jump scare. And it just found a thing that one from entity fair that you posted. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I just got me thinking that I don't think the zombie genre is generally known as a jump scare genre, but it might be fun if we take note of good scares. Yes, and I think we're starting to get some. I feel like we had sort of our first jump scares pretty recently. Yes. Yeah. All right. Well, um, there's a lot we could say, but I think, you know, like unlike last week when we were kind of trying to avoid it a little bit, um, I think we should just get into it. However, before we, we unleash producer Brad, um, do you have any, you have a warning? I think for our folks, Yeah, not a warning exactly, but you know, this is, I think this movie, because it's been adapted many times, the book is quite famous, you're quite likely to know the story of this movie, if however you've made it to the year of our Lord 2025 and don't. know the plot and the twists of I am legend last man on earth, et cetera. This is a movie I think you'd enjoy watching before we just spoil it all for you. So, that's my only warning. All right, that's a smart warning. However, if you read the book or seen any version of the movie, feel free to proceed. So, here we go. Well, Brad, there's a lot going on here, so why don't you get started? The last man on Earth was released on May 6, 1964. It is based on Richard Matheson's 1954 novel, I am Legend. This is the first of three adaptations of the novel. Omega Man starring Charlton Heston was released in 1971. And I am Legend starring Will Smith came out in 2007. And can I interject for just a second, of course, assuming everybody hasn't listened and memorized every episode of our podcast for a second. So this novel, I am legend, we talked about it at length in previous episodes, but basically our position is that it's a hugely influential novel on horror in general, and genre fiction broadly, and we both adore it. So I just wanted to, it's an important book in, in genre fiction. Can I ask you John what your experience with Richard Matheson is? Mine is, you know, I've read, I am legend many years ago. And but the thing I really fell in love with were his short stories, several of which were adapted into very famous highlight zone episodes. Yes. So to me, he is, I know he wrote a lot and did a lot beyond that. But I've always linked him in my mind to that. Yes, that, that reveal that floor drop reveal at the end of the episode or the story that turns the whole thing on its head. Yes, absolutely. Do you, did you read him beyond I am legend? I did not, and now I want to read some of the short stories after hearing you talk about them because just like I am legend, even though there's 60 years old, there's still great. So, yeah, all right, sorry, producer Brad, just wanted to revisit that. No, it's worth it. The film writes to the novel, where originally option by Hammer Films, but the British Board of Film classification thought the script was too disturbing, so Hammer ended up not producing it. Robert Lippert acquired the script. Lippert was a prolific little budget movie producer. He started out owning a chain of theaters mostly Northern California and Southern Oregon. In the 1940s, he became frustrated with the quality of films that he could show in the expense to rent them. So he decided he would start producing his own movies. Wow. Nice. That's a reaction. Well, his quote was, you know, all theater owners complained about the movies they're getting. He decided to take action. He rented sound stages and filmed at Corganville movie ranch. Does that name ring a bell? No. Andy? Uh... No, I'm sorry. Corgan movie ranch was owned by Ray Crash Corgan, the man who owned the Corgan gorilla. Oh, yes. The Corgan ape suit. Yes. Is there like a memoir that that guy wrote or something? Can you read is the story of his apsu somewhere in a book? I don't know, it's a good question, but we did talk about it in our episode on the Zombies of More Tao, if anyone's interested. Yes. In 1951, Lippert got into a beef with a screen actor's guild, as a producer of Union movies, he signed the Screen Actors Guild contract that forbids selling any movie made after August 1, 1948 to television for broadcast. Saig wanted actors to participate in the profits of movie sold to TV. Lippert ignored the contract and sold 26 of his movies to the Los Angeles TV station, KTLA. SAG then canceled his contract which meant no union actor could work on Lippert movies. This forced Lippert to end his production company. He then went to work for Hammer Films for four years distributing the British films in the US. In 1956, 20th Century Fox quietly hired Lippert and his new company Regal Films to be Fox's low budget film division. He made over 20 films a year for $100,000 each. Wow. Wow. That's a pace. The Vincent Price movie, The Fly, is a regal film. Okay. Now, regal ended when Lipper got into another showdown with another guild. He again sold movies to TV and while he included the actors and directors and on the profits, he didn't include the writers. So the screen writers guild then banned union writers from working at Regal. So Lipper created another new company Again, with the distribution deal with 20 century fox, the last man on earth was initially part of the steel, but was ultimately distributed by American international pictures the distributor for many of Roger Corman's movies. Fox was not doing well and didn't need as many B movies since they weren't making as many A movies. For a good history and Fox at this time, I recommend listening to the Turner Classic podcast, The Plot Thick and Season 6, which covers the troubles at Fox before and after the infamous movie, Cleopatra. Now I want to listen to that podcast, but don't, you all don't go listen to it. You stay here, but we're going to listen to it and we'll report back. The last man on earth was filmed in Rome in 1963. Libert was frustrated with the expense of production in Hollywood, so we saw cheaper locations. And this is something that's going on right now in Hollywood. Yes. Sydney South Khaled directed. South Khaled was primarily a television director with credits on Lassie, Tails of Wells Fargo, and the Count of Monte Cristo. Originally Fritz Lang, the director of the classic silent film, Metropolis, was considered to direct, but when that didn't happen, and Salca was hired, Matheson was quoted as saying, well, there's a bit of a drop. That is funny because it's true. Logan Swanson and William Lester are credited on screen as the writers of the film. Mathison did colorate the script with Lester, but was unhappy with a final film and wanted his name removed. The pseudonym Logan Swanson was used instead. It's pretty close to his book Thornite Identical, so I'm curious about what he objected to. He thought Vincent Price was miscast, I think was one of his issues, and he loves Vincent Price. He just didn't like him in this world. Well, he wrote a bunch for Vincent Price, right? He wrote, he didn't. A lot of the poet options for him. I'm going to have questions for you guys about what you make of prices per pharmacy. It's one of my first notes. So yeah, we'll get to that Franco Delicali is the cinematographer. This is his fourth film. He will return to zombie strains where we get to 1983 with his 43rd movie revenge of the dead. Nice. The score was composed by Paul Sattel and Bert Shefter. they were a team and together they scored the classic B movies it the terror from beyond space return of the fly the lost world and voyage to the bottom of the sea. They also compose music for two russmire movies faster pussycat kill kill and motor psycho the last man under my whole life I thought faster pussycat kill kill was Roger Corman, but it's not it's Russ Myers. Then I just had a confused in my head. Sorry. I shouldn't have said that out loud. I'm I'm trying to decide if Motorcycle should go on my list. Motorcycle is pretty good. Is it a good movie? Is it a good movie? I don't think so. I feel like it is. I don't think good movies can go on this other podcast idea. When you say it's good, do you mean the title is good? Or that you've seen the movie and the movie is good? No, I mean the title. Okay. Yeah. Oh, okay. I miss it. I miss it. No, no. I think I thought a guess that is not a good movie. But this is for our title's podcast, right, with Missile Monsters and pillow of death. The last manner Earth soundtrack is the second soundtrack we have encountered. That was remastered and released by wax work records and Rob Zombie. The first was the soundtrack to Carnival of Souls. This soundtrack is pretty strong. There's a certain point that I noted that I was very impressed with it. Yeah, we're starting to get into an era where you notice the music as being an effective part of the film rather than like a forgettable just element in the background. Yes, now we've already talked about Vincent prices career and previous episodes so I won't go into any details this time I'll share an interesting tidbit I stumbled on while looking for a New York Times review of the last man on earth and it's a great insight into how popular Vincent price was and what the public thought of them at the time. In 1962, Sears and Robuk announced that they would begin selling art. They commissioned Vincent Price a well-known art collector to select art from around the world that will be sold at Sears stores and from the Sears catalog. Sears did this because, and I'm quoting George Strother's Vice President in charge of merchandising, that good art is not readily available in all towns and cities throughout the country. This creates a need we plan to fill. That is such a strange. We could spend the rest of the episode unpacking white sears, was selling art prints and how different the world is now, but let's just keep going. Oh, they weren't art prints there original. Oh, get out of here. That's crazy. So for example, it would be like a small drawing done by Goya. So it wasn't like the famous ridges, but like the, let me keep going. I'll get in the details of that. This is crazy. The first Vincent Price Collection opened an October 6th, 1962 in Denver, Colorado. Prices range from $10 to $3,000, and included famous artists like Rembrandt, Chagal, Whistler, Picasso, Wyeth, and a Salvador Dalipi's Price Head Commission for the Collection. Is this true? This is weird. Oh, yeah. I'll put a link in the show notes to several things. One in article by Observer that includes an instructional film shot with Vincent Price describing the art for years salespeople to help them in selling it and several New York Times articles at the time, both announcing it that it's coming and then announcing the opening of the Brooklyn store where pieces went up to $8800 at that store. That is bananas. And if we have questions about the casting of him here, how about an instructional industrial film to train workers? I feel as an even worse casting decision. But I think what it shows is that his name had the cache of class of culture and putting his name onto a collection like this, which we see now all the time at stores, like the so-and-so collection, the so-and-so collaboration. Yes. Wow, this is crazy. OK, sorry. That's right. I only get a little bit more to go. Except for Christy Cortland, who plays Morgan Stoller, daughter, Kathy, the rest of the cast are all Italian actors with no appearances in any other American film. But we will see Roberto Rao, who plays Dr. Mercer again. He is in the cast of the 1972 Jollofilm Baron Blood. So I have a question. So this was, unlike our spaghetti westerns in our sort of sandals film, this was never released in Italy and then dubbed to the US. This was always intended to be a US film, just to clarify. Do you say that all of the other cast was Italian? Except for the daughter, I believe. Wow. Okay. But hold on, John, if you go to IMDB, they list two directors. They list Salco and then they, what's his name? There's an Italian director because he did the Italian version. And he helped write the script for the Italian version. So it was released in Italy as an Italian version, as an Italian film. Okay. And again, like Italian films, it was dubbed later. Okay. Even the American version, too. Okay. I was just curious. Yeah, you know what tipped me off that this was made in Italy is I at the very beginning I went to look up what car he was driving on the internet car movie database like I do Which is a 1956 believe it's well it's in my notes when we get to the car all this but anyway all the rest of the cars they talk about our fiat's I'm like out so we're in Italy I was I was hoping that we would see a reuse of that amazing Roman forum miniature set. I know, or at least the chairs, right? Yes, yeah. No, he he draw the his car and this is a 1956 Chevrolet 210 townsman station wagon. So anyway. Well, I didn't realize this was filmed in Italy and so I actually spent a fair amount of this movie's runtime trying to figure out where they were just from the scenery and the city skate. I could I did not figure it out. So I did a a smattering of research that I want to throw in here whenever you're done producer. I am I'm finished. Go ahead. So one thing I looked up because the, and we'll get to the 60 second description here in a minute. But one of the things I did a little digging into was movies that also sort of featured a plague or an apocalyptic plague. And, and the fact is, This is one of the first, there's an early movie and there's a silent film called The Last Man on Earth, which is a comedy about a man who survives what happens is he gets rejected by a woman and he goes to live as a hermit in the woods, the apocalypse happens and he ends up being The Last Man on Earth and all the countries are fighting over him, it's a comedy. The next one is in 1936 in a direction of H.J. Wells story things to come, which is the sort of decades spanning, sort of description of what the future of Earth looks like after an apocalypse. And then this was sort of listed as like the next one, which I, it's 1964, and this is our first Maybe it's just because it was a book first. It's so mature, conceptually, that shocked me. I thought, oh, there must have been other apocalypse plague movies. And no, not really. So I thought that was interesting. This is such a strong portrayal of an apocalypse. It is startlingly similar to modern, what you would see in a modern movie. It's got almost, we'll get into it. But it's got, it's got all the beats. It's got the ideas that you This is a one and so. Yeah, the reanimated corpse coming back to its house, like all this stuff that is sort of staples now is in this movie. So there was a 1959 movie called The World, The Flash and the Devil. Okay, and it's about a mine inspector who gets trapped in a cave in and when he climbs out everyone else in the world is dead and he finds newspapers that say you and retaliates for use of atomic poisoning. Yes, and and there was like there's a twice doing episode right the Burgess Meredith one where he. uh... the world ends well he's in a bank fault and he's so happy because he gets to read all the time and he breaks his glasses like that's in a apocalypse too so there's some out there but this is an early one and it's certainly the first one or a very singular idea where it's not a time of callacost it's a plague so we'll get into that too All right, I'm going to do a 60 second rundown of this thing and then Andy, you're going to take it away. So sounds good. So the film opens with our main character Robert Morgan played by Vincent Price and it goes it's almost like a day in the life. of the sole survivor of an apocalypse, and as the movie plays out, we see him doing the chores of an apocalypse while surrounded by vampires, like he's refreshing the garlic on his door and buying new mirrors to scare the vampires away. And it's almost mundane. It's fascinating. But then in act two, we go back in time. to before the plague where we meet not only Robert's daughter, we also meet his wife Verge, which I think is probably short for Virginia, but I couldn't swear to it. I never, I assume that too. I've never heard the nickname Verge. Yeah, I have an either, but then also we run into his friend Ben and his daughter Kathy. So, so we go through the apocalypse, how the apocalypse unfolds and how Robert becomes the last man on earth. After revisiting that, we jump back to the current time where he runs into first a dog that he thinks is another survivor like him that turns out to actually be an infected dog and then a woman named Ruth and as this progresses it turns out this is the spoiler part that many people have survived they are infected but they take a medication that prevents them from becoming vampires and in the world of this new society. Robert is a monster who's been going around stabbing perfectly healthy, uninfected, or a student non- Vampiric humans during the day, this new society collects collapses on him, kills him, and then the end. So did I leave anything huge out there? It's a little, it was a little bumbling, but it's a No, that's great. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot in this movie. There's a lot to unpack. So yes. All right. I'm going to jump in then with our more detailed walkthrough. Thanks for that, John. Do we want to start with the casting of price since we taste it? Yes, let's just do that now. Yep. So Vincent Price is the average Joe feels really weird and out of place to me. Yes, agreed. But he's good enough to pull it off. like strangely like we love Vincent Price because he does these big characters who are like romantic and doomed and there's very little of that from him here, though there is one scene where he's watching home movies where he really gets to sort of a vote strongly, which is devastating. Yes. But other than that, he's like, he's not an ordinary, he's not like a car mechanic, he's a scientist who was fighting the plague, but he lives in a suburban home, he has a family, he's not like some weird Gothic whatever, like you normally would expect. And he's not melodramatic. I'm trying to think of other stuff I've seen price in, like we saw him in a movie, a Roger Corman film, a couple of episodes ago. And in that one, he was a terror. Yeah, he was getting a little bit more over the top. And this movie, he plays it a pretty kind of I guess steady, almost flat, almost unemotional with a few exceptions. Rule, and I couldn't decide if that was a kind of bad acting or a bad combination of this actor and this script, or if you was doing a pretty interesting portrayal of somebody just kind of I mean, I want to think it's the latter because this opening sequence, and I'll let you get back to it, but it just has this feeling, this strange feeling of mundaneity or the mundane, it's he's going through his life where he sort of sleepily talks through all the things he has to do to survive. And the drama I think is not there in the script. I think he's playing it straight and kind of flat because that's how they want to portray it. But anyway, yes, let's let's get started here. I just wanted to bring that up. Yeah, so I have a feeling we're going to be pausing a lot in this discussion to point out first yes my guess because this movie this movie has a lot if you're in the zombie genre I'll even though this movie technically does not have things that are called zombies it is incredibly zombie movie. Yeah, at the end I one of my notes is like we are so close. Yes to the modern conception of the zombie film with this movie we are and so we open with what I think is a first and that is a global apocalypse that is a done deal. It's not a threatened thing that might happen. And we've had a number of films tiptoe up to kind of having some kind of an apocalypse, but this is the real deal. The world has been human civilization has collapsed. The cities are empty and filled with, you know, roaming, you know, monstrous creatures. Yes. There's dead bodies lying everywhere, crashed cars. Yes, from a cinematography standpoint, or from a thematic standpoint, there's a lot of like, it's a montage with like a lot of sunsets and buildings in shadow. It's very sort of doom laden the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, so the first the opening segment of this movie is a lot of what are now. I would say kind of iconic types of shots in a zombie or apocalypse movie that set the scene. You know, we see lots of shots of empty buildings, empty streets. There's a church with a sign that says they're little church marquee as says the end has come. There are bodies lying all over the place and I did want to note this is this is we see women bodies slash zombies in this movie. Yes, our last movie where we got like something like a full blown apocalypse was invisible invaders invisible invaders and I remember us commenting that although the earth was being overrun with the reanimated corpses of the dead, they were all men. Yes. And, yeah, so do you have any thoughts about this opening in a minute? We're going to meet our main character, but what do you think about this opening couple minutes of apocalypse montage? I thought it was astounding, and then in fact there's a shot from above of like a square or like a central meeting place kind of thing. That's abandoned. And I just was pulled right to that same shot in 28 days later. We're silly and Murphy's wandering around downtown London. It had that same vibe. So yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so there is not a ton of dialogue in this movie. I did grab a good number of audio clips. I didn't get this one, but it opens with a good line. I think the opening generation is another day to live through. Better get started. Yeah. And that's when we start the first maybe third of this movie is basically like John said, a day in the life of the last living man who is not a vampire zombie. And interesting. So this movie does not have like an opening scroll or a narrator that tells you what happened. And we know what has happened is a plague turned, you know, most humans into quote, vampires. We're going to talk about vampires versus zombies in a few minutes. I'm quite honest. Yeah. But obviously, the three of us knew the concept going in. But if you don't, there's some interesting, they kind of build you up to what is going on more by with like littleicides and little actions that that Vincent Price, Mr. Morgan takes. Unlike the vast majority of our movies, Andy, this is a show-down tell movie. It was very refreshing. Yeah, so we see him. He wakes up in the morning. He steps outside and the first thing you notice is he has a long string of garlic hanging on his door. And crosses. Yeah. And there's crosses. And there's mirrors that he's set up in various places. And so he goes out. He goes out to his garage. He's got a car. He's got a generator. He's kind of getting ready for a run into talent or something like that. Yeah, and we get kind of our first like great moment and for me was he opens the garage door and right outside. There's just a corksling. Yeah, in front of it. And he's unspaced by this. He's like, Oh, I'll have to take care of that. Yes. So he's going through a little bit of kind of maintenance on his house. We're going to learn later why every day he has to go kind of do some repair work. And here's where we get a little bit of a clue of the sort of creature we're dealing with. So let's hear this this hear this audio clip of him going about his morning routine. They can't bear to see their image. It repels and need more and these garlics lost its punches. There was a time when eating was pleasurable. Now it boils. Just fuel for survival. I'll settle for coffee and orange juice this morning. the first there's my life that better replace that garlic. So there we just get, by the way, that is kind of the emotional level that he maintains throughout most of the movie. So you can maybe see why John and I are wrestling a little bit about how well this fits or not. Yeah, I think, so my position currently is that he actually does a great job acting in this film but because of what we're so used it from him, it seems so out of place. Yes. So he goes about his routine and I've got another audio clip here in just a second. It's already due to right smack in a row. Yeah, but he does have a he does have sort of a self appointed mission that he gives himself beyond just surviving. And so as he's getting ready to do his little foray into town, which we still don't exactly know what that's going to evolve. He takes a look at a map on his wall and we hear this bit of narration. You can't afford the luxury of anger. Anger can make me vulnerable. You can destroy my reason and reasons the only advantage I have over them. I've got to find where they hide during the day. Uncover every one of them. I wear the life in the shelf yesterday. Madison Street 2, 31st Avenue. 11 kills. and there's more than half the city I haven't searched. I want to just posit that that is in a couple of lines of dialogue. That is some fantastic world building and seeing setting. Yeah, and what you can't see from the dialogue is he's looking at this map. He's pin on the wall where he's meticulously written like he's meticulously xed off every building and block he's been to. And like half of the map is covered with like black exes and crossouts. and half isn't. And there's another similar thing where he had a calendar on his wall, but like the calendar ran out because it's been three years. So he's just marking up the wall and he does it. And it seems like like very very like handwritten or very sort of sloppy, but he's very meticulous about all of it. Yeah, and this idea, I don't know if this counts as a first or not, but this idea of quote clearing an area of zombies, something that is all over modern shows like the Walking Dead, you know, any zombie movie where the humans have lived long enough to set up a base or a home. This is one of the things the survivors do. So yes. So while he's doing this, I think we have all If you're like me, you're thinking, you know, what sort of vampire are we dealing with, right? This can't be your Bellagosi style, you know, Transylvanian superhero, super powered creature. It's not that. Yeah, so, but while he's doing this, he's marking off sections in the city cleared like John said he's using a machine, you got a machine, this is a lathe lathe to make spikes to make, yeah, big stakes yes, so he picks up a big he packs of aga stakes. He picks up a mallet and he heads out he loads some bodies that are laying around his property into his car and drives out and so this kind of raised the question of you know If he's Where where where did these bodies come from right that they they must have come in the last 24 hours because he does this so and you get a little bit of kind of survival needy gritty like he's out of gas so he's got to go siphons and gas from a gas truck that's on the side of the road and yeah the whole idea is he's got this routine he follows every single day and part of it is this montage of him discovering these vampires and staking them and it's it's I don't know I found that absolutely haunting I would like to interject one thing here there is no humor in No, there's some joy like he's a parent at one point and he loves his daughter, but there's like not one joke. This is a very sort of a film that takes itself very seriously, which can go horribly wrong if it doesn't work, but it works here. agreed. I wanted to call out in a minute, John. I want to get to our first scene where we see him methodically staking a bunch of vampires that he finds. Yes, but I just want to mention we do have an iconic zombie movie scene where he visits the grocery store to a loot it basically for supplies, which is in what like 70% of modern zombie films. That is totally iconic and in fact what he's done with this one he's got a generator running that's keeping the deep freeze going and he's set it up so like he has he's frozen the extra garlic so he can go pick it up as part of his daily routine. It's it's it's so iconic and so reminiscent of a modern movie where people are sort of making do in this new reality that it was just kind of amazing. Yeah, so then we get to our first, well, I will say, I wish I didn't know the premise of this movie going in because I would like to, I would, I tried to imagine if I if I just went into this blind, I think this would be a pretty powerful opening, so I feel like it is, it definitely has that what is going on here feel as as you are being shown the pieces and it all sort of gets put together, yeah. Oh, yeah. So I have one more detail for where we get to the zombies, he part of his routine as he drives to this giant pit and he dumps the bodies he's collected into the pit and burns them. Yes, this pit is going to be a central location later in the movie. I do want to say, you know, not to get not to make an inappropriate comparison. but there are numerous scenes in this movie of, you know, soldiers and stuff roll bodies into things. I mean, it just evokes the Holocaust. I don't want to over, I don't want to overstate it, but that's a grim Grim thing to have in a movie, and I think it's part of this movie being very serious and humorless because you can't have a body burning scene like this and not have it this seriousness level go up quite a bit. Yeah, and it evokes sort of like these sort of mass grave operations. You get in plague movies and zombie movies, like I was drawn to contagion where, you know, poor Kate Winslet's character, sorry, spoiler for contagion. Poor Kate Winslet's character gets dumped in this mass grave. And it had that same vibe of like all these nameless people ending up, you know, having their identity and humanity stripped away in this sort of terrifying ritual of burning them so they can infect other people. Yes, and I think there's something going on here with the portrayal of authority, but we're going to get to that in the flashback scene. Yes. So, all right, John, but the moment we've been waiting for is upon us because we see we've been calling them Well, so the first one is him coming across all of these sleeping zombies as Montage, I mentioned, and staking them. And the first thing I noticed is they're very sort of mindless and weak, right? Like we're used to vampires. Like if you try to stake a vampire, like you better get them on the first try or they're gonna rip you in half, right? These creatures, not like that at all. One point, he just throws his bags of stakes, like over the shoulders of one to hold it down and then stakes it, like they're not strong. They're not powerful and they very mindless. So, but they look like zombies. They look like they've got slightly routing faces in their pale and torn clothes. Even though they only come out at night and they are affected by the sun, the rest of their traits are very modern zombieish. Yes, so they don't have like fangs or anything like that and and the one thing I do want to note though is like one or two of them wake up while he's attacking them and they React not entirely in a mindless zombie way right how would they describe it well they're afraid of him right they fear him they try to sort of throw up their arms to defend themselves and he just shoves them their arms aside and stakes them anyway. Yes. So, all right. So, that was a day in the life of Mr. Morgan. And so, at night, what does he do at night? What does night routine, John? And what happens at night that would just make that would really wear on you? I think after a few days of it. Well, every night, he'd, so when we first saw his house, all the windows are boarded up, he's got garlic and mirror and crosses on the doors. And so we see why he's done this, a bunch of sort of wandering vampires, these vampires zombies come to his house. And one of them, Schouts' name and just says, over and over, Morgan, come out, Morgan, Morgan. And he competes this by smoking cigarettes, drinking And you have to imagine everybody that there's a bunch of corpse people wandering around and they look like zombies from a zombie movie, milling about his house. this looks very night of a living dead. It's an attack on a house like we like I you know we got a glimpse of that. I think it was in zombies of Moritz hour and everybody was trapped in the cabin of the ship and the zombies are around it outside I didn't think we're going to get something this explicit until night of a living dead. But here it is right here. It's a house he's trapped in it and the zombies are pounding on the windows and the doors. I have an alternate theory just so this stuff there. Maybe they just hate jazz. That's it. So he puts on loud jazz so we can't hear them, but obviously his nights are unsettled and difficult as this is going on. And so as you can see, these vampires slash zombies, they can speak, they have a rudimentary intelligence, but they're not smart enough to get into the house. No. There's they can swing around two by fours and kind of bash it up a little bit, but that's the extent of it. So he's safe, as long as he's got his house secure, he can kind of sit in there and they really can't. They're not going to get to him. right. I have this recollection in the book and this may be wrong that the the one who knows his name and keep sharing it is like a neighbor that he doesn't care for too much and in this movie it's a it's his best friend from before the plague which is even more haunting. Yes, yes, exactly. So we're almost to the end of this sort of opening third of the film establishing his routine. So the next day he gets up, his, oh, I want to say he has a dream in which he hears a woman or girl screaming for help. So yes. And then he, he doesn't get up. I think it's at night, isn't when he watches the home movies, which is our transition to So what he does is he watches a bunch of home movies about his family and it says one big emotional scene where he starts this big laugh that turns into just weeping as he's watching these movies and then it transitions back to pre-play where he knows all of these people that we're in the films. It's kind of great actually. I agree. It is kind of great. There's one scene sequence before that where we get a glimpse of like the next day where he drives out to a cemetery. He's visiting a crypt we don't get. We don't yet have the backstory behind this, but we can kind of make some guesses at this point. But he falls asleep and the sun has set and so he's in trouble. So this kind of establishes. If he's not back in safety when the sun sets, it's bad news. And so we get a scene of him getting swarmed essentially. He escapes and he makes it back to his house. But it's dangerous to be out of night. And what's interesting is he comes in specifically like individually they're not that powerful and you can push them around yes, which is not like a vampire, but is like a son of the dead style zombie right like slow moving zombies I think the whole threat is the mob not the individual zombie and that's very clear he says he just explicitly says that so he gets mob several times, but just shoves them away and like gets in his car and fights his way into his house. Yes. And then we get the home movies. So I apologize for jumping ahead. No, that's fine. Then you watches this home movie. And like John says, that transitions us to the second act of this film, which is an extended flashback to the days before the end of the world when things were starting to go bad. So we switch back, it's suggested this is three years ago, because we know these three years into the apocalypse. And we see newspapers and news reports of a plague that is spreading around the world. It hasn't yet, it seems like this plague is just making the, is just upgrading itself from like scary mystery to apocalyptic events. Yeah, we're right in that transition area period. I do have a little grammar note here. Oh, well, no, what I'm going to bring up. No, but hang on a second. Welcome to Andy's grammar school. All right, hit us. one of we see some newspaper headlines uh you know a common common way of quickly conveying the state of the world yes and they mention uh europe's plague but the apostrophe in europe is placed after the us so it looks like europe's plague or something That's bad. Yeah. It was bad and it's right up there on the screen and it and it's also a newspaper. Yeah Maybe think that things are getting sloppy in the apocalypse. Is there another Europe somewhere that we don't know It's whole Europe's yeah, it came from the Europe's all the Europe's yeah Yes, and also the other big part of this is his daughter's birthday party, right? Oh, yes. So I wanted to say something about this plague. Yeah. So we do this plague is not suggested that this was visited on us by aliens or anything like that. It started in a real place on earth and it has spread I don't know if that's a first exactly or not, but it this is the template for you know contagion movies. Yeah, and it's interesting here that Robert, who sort of has sort of stoically accepted his fate post plague, also plays the role of the sort of denier pre-play. He's like, don't worry about it. We'll be fine. It's not, we'll get it. Because he is, what does he do for living any that makes him act? He's a scientist. He's a doctor, a medical scientist. I don't, I don't know. He works in a lab. Yeah. So he's like a virologist, basically. So we meet a couple other characters here that are going to be we learned that he has a daughter and we know we learned that he has kind of a best friend slash co-worker named Ben or Ben right? Yes and I I didn't realize so like I know the plot of the movie but there was that one one zombie who we we clicked earlier who was saying come out Morgan and and then we cut to his friend Ben and I was honestly like oh it's his best friend like I didn't realize that in the first part of the movie so that was kind of fun. I didn't realize this until later than the movie two, but yeah, one of the zombies that shows up at his house every night, and calls into him is his best friend, and imagine this has been happening for three years. That's pretty grim. Yeah. So I have an audio clip of him discussing with others, basically, people are starting to freak out about the plague, but Robert's take on this is calm down. It's going to be fine. So let's hear a little audio clip. Robert, is it possible this germ or virus could be airborne? Anything is possible, Verge. The best brains in the world have been running through this thing with a fine tooth comb. The germ is visible under a microscope, but it's not like any basil I ever known. In what way? It can't be destroyed by any process we've been able to uncover. but with a whole world trying, there must be a solution. Hey mommy, when are you gonna cut the cake? Right now our problem is to cut that cake. So he is, you know, he's this voice of like, don't worry it's gonna be fine, but there's a lot of tension behind it because he has some problems. He heads back to his house and we learned that his wife is showing some signs of sickness and she's kind of trying to hide it and downplay it. Yes. And more terrifyingly, who else is sick, John? His daughter. Yes. Who is what? Six or seven, is? Yes. That sounds about right. I have to say like, I mean, you can describe it in detail, but just as a setup, I actually found the scenes of his daughter like being sick and dying. Got wrenching. I agree. like I just want to pause here because I think we've been watching like you know war of the zombies and invisible invaders and there's been some wonderful interesting stuff in here but we've only watched a handful of movies like I walked with a zombie and maybe a couple of others where I was emotionally drawn into the movie in a way that I am with modern movies you know what I mean like like in war of the zombies I'm sort of watching it in a sort of analytical way, but here multiple times I found myself like, oh, I should be taking notes, like I'm so, because I was so drawn into it. So this is the scenes of his daughter who is infected and is dying. Yes. Our genuinely rough to watch, and that's not, and yeah, that effect of this is not faded during the decades since this movie came out. So I want to talk about this a little bit more, but I do have another audio clip I want to get to. We spend a day or two watching, Robert go kind of to the lab and then come back home to check on his family and repeat that. And so he does head into the lab and this is an audio clip I grabbed of him talking to his best friend, Ben, who also works at the lab. And Ben is taking this a little bit more seriously than Robert is. So let's hear that. Ben, it's as simple as this. An unknown and you don't believe some of the dead have come back. And let's get to work. And why are they burning the bodies? Why don't they bury them? Because it's the best known way to control the contagion to keep the germ from spreading. That's what we've always believed at any rate. You prefer this to believe in vampires? If they exist, yes. Their stories being told Bob, by people who were out of their minds with fear, Maybe. But there are too many to be just coincidental. Stories about people who have died and have come back. They are stories being stories. And why are the infected people always so tired in the daytime? Why can't they stand the sunlight? Why are they only seen at night? So yeah, a little bit of a long clip there, but that's our build up here of what's going on, and we can see already that Ben believes that something really unpleasant is going on with this plague beyond simple sickness and Robert's trying to talk him down Robert heads back home to check on his family where his daughter is quite sick and one of the symptoms that happens to you before you die when you're infected as you go blind. And so there's these heart wrenching scenes of the daughter crying out to her mother that she can't see. And Robert forbids his wife from leaving the house or letting anyone into the house, but most of all he forbids her. He from recalling the doctor to less to let them know that their daughter is sick because if they call the doctor. her daughter will be noted as infected and we are about to learn what happens to infected people and what is that done. So this is another super iconic first. There are soldiers with a truck going around to people's houses and collecting the bodies of the dead infected and putting them in a truck. And you see this harrowing scene of a woman who presumably it's her husband. He's wrapped up and being taken away and she's screaming at the soldiers to stop. and they're like, sorry, man, we have to do it and you know you're taking the spotty to go burn it. Yes. And so we get a little bit more Robert heads back to the lab one last time and he finds that almost nobody has showed up. Everybody's at home. He has a little interaction with the one remaining employee there who says some things he says, It's kind of interesting. He was, he, they're talking about the nature of the plague and whether it was going to wipe out humanity and this other doctor said, I don't think it's going to wipe out humanity. I think it's some sort of evolutionary process that humanity is going through. Right. And that becomes important. It does. So, but the key thing is here, Robert head back home for the last time. And when he gets there, an army truck is pulling out of their driveway, basically. Right. He heads inside his wife is in a stupor. His daughter is gone. And we learned that she called the doctor because he just felt like she had to reported that the daughter was sick. But now the daughter is dead and shortly after his wife is going to die too because her infections got in quite worse. He does drive to the pit where they're dumping bodies to try and so let me just pause here like you we were saying he wasn't melodramatic this is where he goes big right he's fighting the soldiers he's grasping it is daughter's body he's like he's he's pouring it all on and he fails and he goes home like right before that we had a scene where his daughter is blind and sort of calling out to them like this whole thing is just harrowing and also really good it is And so we're to the final scene before we're going to move to Act 3. We're going to flash back to the kind of current a podcast apocalyptic setting, but the final segment here is he goes back home his wife dies. It's it's also horrifying thing. She screams out that she can't see. Yeah, and then she dies, but he promises that he's not going to let them the soldiers just dump her in the pit and burn her body. So he drives her out and buries her out in a field someplace. Yes. And then in a fantastic iconic zombie scene, he goes back to his house and that night John what happens. his wife has come back and it's amazing. So he's I think he's watching the TV news and he shuts it off and then he just quietly hears somebody saying, let me in and it's his wife and there's this amazing moment where that's happened a million times since his movie came out but again, this I feel like this is kind of an iconic first time. He's like, who's there? And that the doorknob is jiggled or not jiggles and like he's just staring at it for a minute and then he turns it and opens it and his wife the zombie comes through the door though she's a vampire she looks like a zombie she's dead pasty and her arms are out reaching for him and he screams and then we cut back to current reality. you know, it post-played reality. This is one of those scenes where I was like, oh right, I'm supposed to be taking notes. Like I had paused, which is glued to the screen. I loved this segment. It's so creepy when she's saying, let me in. It's so creepy. I got honest against chills at this part. So we are back for Act 3 of this movie. And this is all of what we've seen so far. This we've seen has probably covered 45 or 50 minutes of the film. It's all just basically the backstory to tell the real story, which is here in this movie's final act. And a lot happens in the final 30-ish minutes of this film. So he's back. It's in the post-apocalyptic time. He wakes up. The zombies last night got a little bit overzealous and they've wrecked his car. So he goes and finds a new car. Yep. And while he's out, what does he stumble across, John? He stumbles across a dog who appears to be alive. He says it's alive. And he tries to capture the dog. Yeah. He does a big he chases all over it through the city. He's done to see a living animal. And while he is chasing the dog around, he comes across some corpses that have been staked but not by him. That's right with iron stakes. Yes, iron stakes have been plunged through them. So that somebody else is out there. Yeah, that night the dog returns comes to his house. But it's been injured. So he takes it inside. He tries to patch it up, but he realizes that the dog is infected. There this is one of the moments where Vincent Price let's himself e-mote a bit because there is this touching scene where he desperately wants to This dog to to live so that he can just have so that he and this dog can be together and And he's so excited he's like a dog. He's like it's like he literally got a new puppy and he's so excited. But he examines the dog on dog's blood under a microscope and he the next morning we just cut to a scene of him burying the dog so vampire dog yep so I mean the idea here is you know he had this This flash of hope and it was taken away from him almost immediately so but while he's out bearing the dog he sees something else out there John and what is this something else in the sunlight he sees a woman walking around She looks wild and disheveled and she acts really scared of him. So he runs away from him, he tries to call out like I'm not going to hurt you. I just want to talk to you. He chases after her and she runs in a panic from him. She doesn't say anything at this point, but he does eventually catch up to her and he says, look, you come back. You got to come back with me. It's not going to be safe out here, blah, blah, blah. So she does follow him back to his house. Right. Back at the house. We, we see a shot of her examining herself in a mirror with with interest. and a little like she's clearly doesn't like it. Yes, the camera lingers on this which it's meant to be suggestive. So we she does talk though her name is Ruth Collins and she says she used to be married but she lost her husband and then Richard, Robert, sorry, he they're having a little conversation telling each other about themselves and about their routine that their survival routine but he seems to suddenly get pretty nervous. Yes. So he rushes out over He grabs a string of garlic and shoves it in her face. Yes, and then we pick. And then here is the audio clip of that happening. As this clip starts, he is shoving it in her face. What are you doing? Please stop, please. Stop it, please. You're making me sick. Why do you turn away? Why do you turn away? You are infected. No. Infected systems are allergic to garlic. You think I'm one of them? You will be. So you can see the same kind of disappointment like because once again, he's been handed this possibility of companionship, but it looks like it's gonna be statched away from him just like the dog was. And she denies that she's infected and she kind of tries to pass it off as, you know, she's got a weak stomach. She's just physically traumatized from her life of hiding and running and stuff. He doesn't really believe her. They do have things kind of calm down now that he's kind of accepted that she's doomed basically right and we we get a little bit more kind of lower explanation of how the vampires work. It's reiterated that they're individually weak and that they're unintelligent. And they kind of talk about each other's backstories and Robert speculates that the reason he is still alive is that he was bitten by a bat during one earlier in his career right and he speculates that that inoculated him against this vampire plague later. Yes, he wants to do a blood test on her and she freaks out she looks like she's starting to get really sick. So she runs and locks herself in the bedroom and she starts to, she's really, she's screening around like she's really ill. And he breaks in and sees her trying, she has pulled a syringe out and is trying to inject herself with something. And she reveals that she's infected, but with regular injections of this medicine, she doesn't turn, she won't turn into one of the ferole vampires. Right. And so we get this confrontation between the two of them. Now, I want the truth. I want all of it. Why are you here? to find out if you know any more than we do, you know, forless we're alive. Infected years, but alive, we're going to be organized society. Do a way with all those wretched creatures who are neither alive nor dead. So do everything all over again. And you want me to join. You can't join us. You're a monster to them. What do you think I ran when I saw you? Even though I was assigned a spy on you, because I was so terrified what I heard about you. You're a legend in the city, moving by day instead of night, leaving his evidence of your existence bloodless corpses. Many of the people you destroyed was still alive. So that's a brutal scene. It is a brutal scene. And what I took from the book and I feel about the movie, too, is she's essentially saying like you're like a serial killer to us. Yes. You know what I mean? Like you're a horrible, cruel monster. And you thought you were doing humanity a favor. And I just, that's the twist of this movie that is so good that I love it. So she's from this group of survivors that has put together a quasi vaccine that prevents them from turning ferole. She's been sent to spy on them because they are coming to kill him tonight. Yes. At one point, she pulls out a gun on him. She can't quite bring herself to kill him, and she collapses. I don't exactly know why. I guess she did get her injection. So she's While she's unconscious, he does some, there's a lot of, like, there's some science. It's easy looking like a vials of vials and test tubes and stuff. But he does some science on her, while she's unconscious. Right. And what he's done is he injects her with some of his blood. and when she wakes up he tells her that by doing that he has cured her and he has so she tests it out by holding garlic and looking in the mirror and she and he insists that you know I permanently cured you. You don't need the medicine anymore. So she wants to go out and tell the others from her infected society to spare him because he's got the cure right I don't really know why he holds her back from doing that and I didn't really know why I didn't know why either and it's like one of us here doesn't grasp the seriousness of his predicament. Yes, yes, so yeah, I'm not quite sure but and it kind of doesn't matter. Yeah. So we have another great iconic zombie movie thing that happens at this point because if you watch a modern zombie movie, there's a point in always a point in the movie towards the end where the impregnable fortress or wherever the survivors of hold up, right, it's breached by some sort of a bad luck or carelessness or something. And I think what happened was when he wanted to put the garlic in her face, he actually grabbed it off his front door and then forgot about it and Ben the dumb zombie is at least able to figure that out. Yes, so zombie Ben, well, he's been distracted. Well, he and Ruth are distracted talking in size. Zombie Ben has managed to get into the house. He grabs Ruth and from here on out, the movie just really accelerates to its finale. Outside, a truck pulls up full of guys with guns. All dressed in black, these are not zombies. These are the infected, these are the vaccinated infected, so to speak, they're an organized paramilitary force, like they're not playing around. And so we see them do interestingly is they clear out the feroals. They kill, they stake all the feroals. Yeah, super efficiently. They're like a hit squad. Yes, a hit squad is exactly what they are actually. Zombie Ben is gunned down. It's kind of a touching, you know, it's kind of a tragic moment. Yes. and they spot Robert and he makes a run for it and they pursue him shooting. They chase him all around town. They chase him. There's this big sequence where he goes into a police building. He shoots several of them. At some point, someone should have shouted out like, hey, I've got the cure or something. I feel like some of this might have been avoided. Yeah, now she does say several times before that like in the heat in the moment they're not going to listen to me. So I think yes, it does at least try to set that up even if it doesn't. Yeah, it's not a serious work. It's not a serious flaw. Yeah. So there's a kind of an action sequence here. He uses smoke bombs. This movie really thought smoke bombs are cool because he's a whole bunch of throwing them all over or tear gas maybe whatever it is. Yeah, well, being chased, he goes to the police precinct. Goes to the armory, opens, he breaks the glass to get to the cabinet of the weapons. There's all these like Tommy guns, like literally a dozen of them. And all he grabs are the smoke bombs. Yes. I don't know. I think he's trying to escape. It's very strange. But also, I think, I think this is the other casting problem with Vincent Price. I'm actually done with him trying to play Joe average. He is not an action star. There's another sequence earlier in the movie where he's like fighting off the zombies like throwing punches and stuff and I'm like yeah, this is why Vincent didn't become an action movie star because he's really not good at it. So anyway, we get to the final sequence of this movie because he finally takes refuge in a church and at some point in the chase he I think he got shot he gets shot on the steps of the church. Yes, so they he runs in the church they chase him inside. Interestingly so that the hit squad follows him in and they're kind of chasing him around the building. following the hit squad a group of like regular people come into the church. These are the like zombie moms carrying these are vaccinated infected and we see that they've got children with them. Yes, they're a new society I think is what this is trying to say. Exactly. So they're gathering at church at this church where Robert happens to have decided to make his final stand. They corner him and he screams at them all that they're freaks that their mutations. Again, I feel like he could have put a little bit more effort into saving his life here. Yeah, you need to insult the people about to shoot him. And somebody throws one of those iron stakes at him and like the many vampires he has his last words, uh, he, other some kind of tragic last words, they were afraid of me, uh, and then he dies. The book at the end of the book, it's a different ending, where she gives him poison so he avoids the public execution because they're going to like make a show out of it. Yes. Um, and he in the last line of the book is, You know, I have I'm like a found founding myth of their society. I am legend and then the book ends. So I just want to throw them there because it's so good. Yes, in the last little scene is Ruth, who is made away to the church. And she seems sad that he's killed, but on her way out of the church, there's a bunch of kids and they're being held by their moms and they're crying. And she goes up to a crying child and she comforts it. She says, don't cry. We're all safe now. Yes. So they've killed the monster that comes for you while you're sleeping, so then that's the end of the movie. Yeah, amazing. I am. It's so good. There's another iconic, the refuge in the church thing is another iconic. Yes, you know, zombie thing like there's so much here. This is what 28 years later, this is what the little boy in the flashback tries to do. He runs to the church, right? And that doesn't work out in that way for him. However, but yeah. Okay, so hey, John, let's jump into a wrap up question. Yes. Okay, John, in the last man on earth, oh, there's so much to talk about. There's so much to talk about. Is there a hero party? Yes. It's mostly just Vincent Price. Yes. Though you could consider his whole family and Ben like the hero party in a sense because when you flashback there like the four heroes of the movie also. Yes. How does the party do? How many survive? Yeah, they all eat it. Jeff or Ruth, but I don't really consider Ruth part of the hero parties. No, I don't think so. Yeah. So what kind of zombies are we doing? OK, so this is the first interesting part. No mysticism at all. These aren't science-created zombies, but their viral zombies, or bacterial zombies, like same difference in my opinion, in terms of the context of a horror movie. Yes. And that feels like a first for us, like a virus. Now I said it really like we're almost there. So one zombie does not turn another person into a zombie. You have to catch it like you catch a cold. And that's what this plague is. But that's what they are. It's a play. It's a viral plague that turns people into zombies. And this is like the walk, this is the type of zombie in the walking dead. Yes. Yeah, they don't, they don't turn you into a zombie by biting you like there's just this contagion that is blanket of the earth right that has that will resurrect you when you die. All right, so, okay, how are these zombies destroyed or killed? Actually, they're pretty easy to kill. You can just shoot them or beat them up like, or stake them, to finish them off, you have to stake them, but they do shoot some at the end. Yeah, it's a little unclear if you have to stake them, or if he's just doing that, because it's a good way to kill them. Yes, and then he burns them. So yes, yeah, that's a little different. Oh, I want to say the way that the zombie plague works is it kills you and then you rise again, right, which is also feel like kind of a first, right, like, yeah, so how fast are these zombies, John, there's slow zombies, yep. And is there a zombie hoard in this movie? Yes, for sure. Yeah, not only a hoard, but a hoard behaving like your stereotypical modern zombie hoard where they surround your house at night and bang try to get in. Yeah, you could go all the way up to like 2004's Dawn of the Dead and see the zombies sort of mindlessly wandering around trying to get in and it's the same as that type of word. So, are there any new zombie strains that this movie is introducing into the genre? I feel like there's so much, I'm not thinking of another plague movie that we've seen, but a viral zombie plague, A, and I think also that lone survivor, which is another trope. Those are the two big ones. What about you? What do you think? What are my missing? I mean, the huge one is that is the viral contagion, yes, that's huge. We've been waiting for this for dozens of movies now and here it is. Yeah, I am curious. If this immediately becomes a common feature of most zombie movies, right? Or if it sits out here is kind of a weird one off for a while before night a living dead and others. Yeah, like in visual invaders, which again was another and we're like, wow, we're really close here and then we backed off it. Yeah, and we took a, yeah, we stepped back for a while. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. All right. Let's, let's go into your four pillars of the zombie genre. Yeah. So, John, in last man on earth, is there an apocalypse? Hell, yes, there is. Finally, an exactly the kind we meant. The world ends and is populated by the walking dead. Like, they say their vampires, they look like zombies, but anyway, it's a zombie apocalypse. And John, I think this is the first time we're going to be able to say to hardly say yes to this, is there contagion in this movie? There is. It's not you get bitten and you become a zombie, but I don't think that's required. No, for contagion. I think it is, it is something you catch. You die and then you come back as a zombie. So 100% yes. Yeah, no one doing makes you a zombie. It's just a brutal inevitability. Yes. John, in the last man on earth are their tough moral choices. They're absolutely are. The whole business with him like deciding to bury his wife and like doing essentially the wrong thing for the right reasons out of love is the perfect example of a tough moral choice like yeah yeah it's text book zombie moral choice and does this movie have loved one's turning against you. Yeah, following, doing the wrong thing by bearing his wife, his wife reanimates crawls out of her grave and attacks him in her, his own house. Yeah. So that's a solid yes. This is the exact scene, you know, that I had in mind when we first made, when we first talked about these four pillars. Yeah. So this is our first movie, I think, setting aside some of the modern ones we watched. That has all of these things. Yes, it is the first one invisible invaders had three. Yes, because there was no contagion, I think, okay, congrats. I think last man on earth needs a zombie strains award. I think so. Yeah. Yeah, this is gotten us so close to to the modern time, be movie. It's it's almost there. Yeah, it's amazing. All right, so John, I'm going to turn it over to you to ask me a couple of 1960s zombie questions. Well, the nice thing is we both win and because I think you're going to respond positively to a lot of these as well. So let me get started. Is there an increase in violence and grittiness? So I think that there is. I think the casual routine way he dispatches the zombies. is chilling in a way that violence has not been in movies zombie movies to date. What do you think about that? I agree with that and also I'll throw in the sort of brutality of the burn pit. Yeah. That is gritty as heck and it feels gritty. Yeah. Yes, it's not a, you know, like there's no romance in this so it's it's violent. It's not gross. It's it's like a, it's not a gruesome thing. That's where that's where it may be differs from a we've seen a trended gruesomeness in some of our films clinical in a way. It is yes. And in a way that adds I think to some of the effectiveness of it. Yeah, I agree. Our characters questioning authority. Yes, the authority figures like represented here by the armies and I guess sort of the medical establishment, they don't they don't help no at all, they they are, and Robert doesn't trust, I mean, it's not that he doesn't trust them, but I mean, Robert actively does not want the authorities involved in his family's drama. No, and he breaks the law by not taking his wife to the burn pit and by burying her himself. Exactly. Like there's absolutely no suggestion that the government was able to stop this in any way. No, so and and even their efforts here, you know, to clear out the infected bodies, it clearly didn't work. Right. Do we focus on a hero's inner life? Is this a more personalized horror? It is yes. He's haunted by past trauma, the loss of his family. Three years later, he is still, it's still the defining element of his life. He torments himself by watching home movies of his family and collapses sobbing. Yes, he is desperately lonely and, you know, the most, you know, the dog dying is one of the more wrenching parts of the film. Yeah, because for a minute, he thought he might be able to find some measure of joy and it's taken away from immediately and he's back to this routine of just killing every day with no hope. Yes. Speaking of which, is there a sort of fear of crimes, So crime, no, but the zombies are kind of like, you know, delinquents in your house. They are trying to break into his house and they smash up his car. Which, actually, I would argue like that could be, that could be a stand-in for like sort of random crime in the 60s. I'd actually maybe make that case. But. I think that that you could make that case. So this movie kind of skips the part where you see society truly collapsing into anarchy. Yes. We certainly see the build up to society's collapse. But we don't see it on the screen. So there's no scenes of mass looting or soldiers, you know, gunning down civilians or infected or anything like that. Right. That I think you would find. So I am going to say kind of a soft no on this one. Okay. How about a sense of looming apocalypse or psychological stress? You know what? I'm going to change myself. No to a soft. Yes, because okay. We do see with people like not showing up to work and stuff. That's true. That's in the office. Again, I go back to the soldiers in the burn pit that feels. Yeah, that feels like societal chaos in a way. And you can see the gears of society kind of grinding to a halt. Yes. So. All right. Sorry, repeat your next question. Sorry, series of looming a sense of looming apocalypse or psychological stress. Yes, absolutely. The middle sequence of flashbacks scene is very tense because you know what's happening and Robert is partly in denial about it, but it hangs over every interaction he has. Yeah, absolutely. And the stress he has, you know, again, I don't know if it's brilliant acting or bad acting or what. But Robert gives the impression of someone trying very hard to guess to kind of be the authority like the the the man of the house who can make keep everyone else calm like by force of will. And I thought that was kind of effective. Yeah, and even after the, even when he's alone, he shuts down emotionally. Right. So yeah. And last but not least, horrors without solutions or a lack of clear villains to defeat. So yes, though this movie, he does find a kind of a cure for this his own blood. Right. So in that sense, you know, is that a little improbable, I guess it is? But he doesn't actually end up solving the problem. No. He, he, he cure his roof, but he, his cure doesn't go anywhere because he dies. Yep. And, and the new society has already risen like he's, he's too late to save or resurrect humanity that was. Yeah. And he's not welcome in the new society, even with his cure. I mean, the lack of clear villains to defeat. The villains are so unclear. We find out he's the villain. Yes. Yes. So, so I'm going to give this one a solid. Yes. So, wow. This hits all our zombie bits and hits all our 1960s bits. I feel like we should run a victory lap or must open a bottle of champagne or something. This is so much here. All right. Let's go through the last few. Yes, all right, a last couple of questions that we always close every episode with John. Would you and I survive in this zombie world? I've never been bitten by a bat, so the answer is no. And I'm heavy sleeper, so Vincent Price would probably stake me. And more generally, this is such a modern style zombie survivor scenario. Yeah. And, you know, it's very hard to imagine myself surviving in this world, so just too many dangers, too many ways to die, I would, you know, you'll slip up eventually and the zombies will get into your house or whatever, right? Yeah, and I think the one thing that's missing here from a modern zombie film is, um, that sent that is the chaos and the human turning against human that's not here the walking dead style human against human which is I think a staple and again that's why we're not quite there yet. So yes I think that's a very good point. So John is this a zombie movie or is this a movie with zombies? I mean, I'm going to say it's a zombie movie, even though it says it's a vampire movie. You know, it is a heck of a zombie movie. Yeah, I'm not going to like, yeah. It is like a template for a zombie movie. I mean, I feel like I feel like almost people took the vampire concept from this movie, merged it with, I mean, we'll see what happens. But merged it with a zombie concept, and that's how we get the modern zombie movie. Well, the vampires here are almost zombies except for trying to drink blood and coming out at night. Yeah, I don't know why the vampire motif was used really, except that it gives him a few bans he can use to kind of award them off. And it gives him time to operate the story so centered around the sort of mundane life of the of the vampire killer. It gives him daylight to operate that way. Otherwise, he'd have to make zombies that are afraid of the sun or something. Alright, and then our last question, John, would you recommend this movie first, generally, as just a movie that it's worth people's time to watch? And secondly, do you recommend it specifically as a movie that zombie loving listeners should watch? Yeah. So the answer is absolutely yes and absolutely yes with the one caveat that it does lack humor. It's not fun in a way, but it is gripping and compelling. And it's just a good. I mean, there's some cheesy stuff in it. Like we said, there's Vincent Price seems very odd in this role. There's there are issues. Yeah. But it's a classic and it's a classic to the zombie genre and a classic to horror movies in general. So you should watch if you haven't watched this movie already, just go watch it. Yep, I got nothing to add. It's a yes and a yes from me for those exact reasons. So All right. That means it's time for the scariest part of the episode. And that's where pretty subred tells me and John what we're going to be watching next is there any chance this is an I mean, there's no way this can't be a let down like yeah unless there's some missing masterpiece like kind of role souls I was completely unaware of coming next. I also predict it's going to be just a trash lock fest about what's switched by the way. I don't mind. No doubt. Yeah. All right. I'm ready. I'm going to throw you a curve because we have to do a little bit of cleanup. Oh, no back to the 1940s. Oh, what did we miss? There's a movie we miss as partly because of the title, and if you're ready, here is the poster. All right. Don't mad Google a new sensation in horror. Wow. That certainly looks like a zombie, though. It sure does. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. John, will you describe what this poster has on it? Well, it says new sensation in horror across the top. It says the mad Google in large yellow horror movies, zombie movie letters. Yeah, that's the white zombie font. Yeah, yep. And there's a face, a man's face that looks green and sort of decomposing. You see that same person in profile. And then you see a couple sort of clinging onto each other and looking sideways at this goal creature and there's a graveyard across the bottom. Yeah, that certainly looks has zombies stamped all over this poster. Yeah, and can we also say George Romero in Night of the Living Dead did not call them zombies. He called them ghouls as well. Yeah, okay. So I have a bit of the trailer if you'd like to hear what I'm saying. Oh, please. Yes. Here you go. Must be poetic. Kill. Very good. Bill, eh... Miss Lewis, I want you to tell me everything you know about your accompanist. Oh, not. Eric couldn't be mixed up, and that's why. Well, he's...well, we're engaged. Suppose he's two people. The man you love and the ghoul. I mean, Melodrama is back. I'm in. I am all for this. Okay. I can't wait. This will be actually delightful. I was I did really. I think one thing I've got out of this podcast is really enjoying older films, particularly 40s and 50s. So I'm happy to jump back into the 40s for another movie. I agree. All right. Well, I look forward to it. And I'll see you guys in a week. All right. So hey, everybody, if you haven't already, Please give us a five-star review in Apple Podcast or on Spotify, it really does help us out. Please subscribe if you aren't already and we welcome all our new fans. We've seen a uptickin' downloads and we're happy to have you. And we hope you enjoyed this episode and come back next time for the Mad Goal. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed our podcast, please take a moment to rate us in your podcast Apple choice. Tell a friend, follow us on Instagram at ZombieStrange. All of this helps like my did people find this show. See you next time.