Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast that watches all the zombie movies. Today, we have our first super spy.

He's not one of ours. We gave up that kind of kindergarten stuff ages ago.

With a sassy partner.

It couldn't possibly be that you overestimated the effects of your charms on the young lady.

And Sheriff Lobo as the zombie master El Supremo.

Did you hear that? That's funny.

Why don't you laugh?

That's enough.

It's A Very Important Zombie Affair on THE MAN FROM UNCLE.

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

Zombie. What's a zombie?

Just what is a zombie?

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

They are the living dead.

Get me the zombies!

Against an army of zombies, no armies could stand.

Because a Zombie has no will on his own.

What is wrong, what is wrong.

Wow, this is quite an interesting one. Folks, today we are not watching a movie. We're watching an episode of the 1960s TV show THE MAN FROM UNCLE entitled A Very Important Zombie Affair. Wow, there's so much to get into this. This thing is crazy. So before we get there, anybody have any good movie or zombie movie stuff?

I have been reading a Clive Barker novel called Cabal. One of his early works. Have you read that one, John?

I haven't.

It's got a protagonist who I think meets most of our standards for being a zombie in it. I'm not loving it. I do like Clive Barker a whole ton. This isn't one of my favorites, but it's got a little zombie action in there, I think.

All right. You got anything, producer Brad?

I've just been preparing our next season and looking into a lot of Spanish and Italian zombie films coming our way.

Yeah, I'm going to have to work on my Italian. It's going to be interesting.

And some Canadian ones too.

I'll, hey, I can speak Canadian.

Yeah.

It's a process to learn how to speak Canadian. So I have an interesting upcoming one and I will, in a month or so, I will watch this and review it for you. At the State Theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which is one of our cool little theaters. So the University of Michigan has a Korean arts society and they often bring Korean films to the university and they often show them at the State Theater and the Michigan Theater. So on April 18th, I think a couple of people we know, including friend of the show Matt and friend of the show Aaron, are going to go see My Daughter is a Zombie, which is a Korean film from last year. It's a comedy. I know nothing about it, but I will be watching it and I will bring you a review once I do that.

You know, I'm looking forward to the first Korean zombie movie we watch. It might be a couple of decades from now.

Yes.

But they have a different spin on zombies than the West does. So, yeah.

So anyway, I'm very curious about this movie.

That film is about 600 movies from where we are now, just this.

All right.

We're coming right up, Bart.

Yeah.

Don't hit the brakes. Keep going. You got to keep going. So, producer Brad, tell everybody about the television show, THE MAN FROM UNCLE.

THE MAN FROM UNCLE was originally developed in 1963 by TV producer Norman Felton and Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond.

Oh, interesting.

Together, they created the show's concept and the name Napoleon Solo. The working title of the show was Ian Fleming Solo. This wasn't a new character name for Fleming. In his 1961 book, Goldfinger, there's a mobster named Mr. Solo, and Mr. Solo is also a character in the 1964 film, Goldfinger.

Oh, all right.

The James Bond producers weren't happy that Fleming was working on another spy project, so he was pressured to stop.

That's so funny, because today you would hire the guy who did the last spy project to do your new spy project, and nobody would bet an eye, right?

Well, it kind of tells you the power these guys had back then.

Yeah, yeah.

I think they were paying Fleming a lot of money, and they wanted to keep him locked up.

Gotcha.

Sam Rolfe, creator of the hit TV show, Have Gun, Will Travel, was brought in to partner with Felton. Rolfe created the show's name and wrote the pilot episode, The Vulcan Affair. The series premiered on NBC on September 22nd, 1964, in its first season, THE MAN FROM UNCLE was the 71st highest rated show on TV. Two spots behind, The Flintstones.

Oh, The Flintstones.

The series moved up the rankings in season two, making it into the top 20, landing at number 13.

I have a question.

Yeah.

Is the premise of the show that UNCLE is a non-national spy organization? Isn't David McCallum's character supposed to be Russian? He's got a Russian name, but he sounds British.

From what I've read, and Andy, I know you watched a lot of these, Waverly, their head is a regional head, which implies there are other regions.

Yeah. His character's name, well, we'll get into it in a second, but I was surprised. Anyway, carry on.

I don't know about you, but as a kid, I felt like I was cool because I could say Ilya Kuryakhin.

I can speak Russian.

Before the series ended, there were a total of four seasons and 105 episodes. We watched The Very Important Zombie Affair, the 15th episode from the second season. It was written by Boris Ingster. Ingster was born in Riga, part of the Russian Empire. He moved to the US in the 1930s and directed his first film, Stranger on the Third Floor in 1940. This film is cited as one of the first, if not the first film noir.

Oh, interesting.

In the 1950s, he wrote and produced TV shows like Wagon Train, The Roaring 20s and 77 Sunset Strip. David Alexander directed the Very Important Zombie Affair. Alexander was an experienced TV director. He directed 68 episodes of The Real McCoys, 12 episodes of Petticoat Junction, 10 episodes of My Favorite Martian and two episodes of Star Trek.

He also directed The Munsters.

Well, I couldn't list all the stuff he did. He did a lot. And I know he's a Star Trek fan, so the episodes he directed were Plato's Stepchild and The Way to Eden.

Nice.

Okay.

His last directing credit is an episode of Quincy MD in 1978.

Oh, Quincy. All these are bringing, we're starting slowly. Like the late careers of these people are starting to gel with my childhood. I remember watching Quincy with the family, yes.

I made a point of putting that credit in there because I remember in a past episode you mentioned Quincy.

Yes.

Now, Jerry Goldsmith wrote the theme to THE MAN FROM UNCLE.

I missed it. I didn't see the credit, but I'm like, well, yeah, Jerry's the king, right?

Each season, the theme was rearranged by different composers to match the tonal changes in the storytelling. Gerald Fried scored THE VERY IMPORTANT ZOMBIE AFFAIR in 45 other episodes. Fried was a childhood friend of Stanley Kubrick and scored Kubrick's first four films.

Oh, wow. So just so like to bring the non-complete nerds into the fold, Jerry Goldsmith directed, created the Star Trek Next Generation theme song, correct?

He did.

Fried also worked with our favorite zombie film director, Edward L. Kahn, on the 1958 film Curse of the Faceless Man. He composed for many TV shows, and you've heard his work. Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Gilligan's Island, Star Trek, and Lost in Space are just a few. For Star Trek, he composed the Amok Time episode, which featured the ritual Ancient Battle. Let's see if you remember this.

Oh, heck yeah.

I think there was an episode of Futurama, and I might be wrong about this, where they said, let's now play our national anthem, and it was that song.

You are correct. This was used in Futurama and The Cable Guy, and it was also referenced in Star Trek Into Darkness.

Yes.

Now, Fried was nominated for an Oscar in 1977 for his score to Birds Do It, Bees Do It. He was also nominated for five Emmys in 1977. He won an Emmy with Quincy Jones for the miniseries Roots.

All right.

All right, on to the cast. Robert Vaughn played Napoleon Solo. He had a long career in TV and film. His first five years were all small roles. Then in 1959, he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the film The Young Philadelphians. In 1960, he was one of the Magnificent Seven.

Oh, how was he?

Interesting.

He only had like four or five lines, but he was one of the seven. In addition to The Man From Uncle, I think most of our generation knows him from what? 1980 film? Anyone?

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh, yeah.

I feel like I should know this.

Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars.

Oh, my gosh.

That was Corman's Star Wars influence film.

That's right. Hear me out on this. It's not an exact match, but when I was watching Robert Vaughn in this, I'm like, he's reminded me of somebody. Young, skinny Robert Vaughn reminded me of a young, skinny Hugh Jackman just from the face and the hair. They both got that long nose. I don't know. Maybe it's just me.

I can see it.

Yeah.

For me, it might be just you, but John, from our past, he kind of looks like our friend, Will.

He does look like our friend, Will. Will, if you're out there, we think you're very handsome.

More grist for the Zombie Strains lore wiki that I'm sure some fans out there are creating.

Now Vaughn was also in one of my favorite TV shows, Hustle, which aired on the BBC from 2004 to 2012. Have either of you seen that?

No, I've seen a couple of episodes. I'm aware of it, but I was not.

It's a show about con men and they only go after greedy or immoral people. Robert Vaughn plays the elder statesman who insinuates himself into, he gets the mark that they then go after.

Nice. He's so smooth and he always has been.

Yeah, he's great. David McCallum plays Ilya Kiryakin. He had two breakout roles in the early 60s. He was in Billy Budd and The Great Escape. The role of Kiryakin was intended to be the sidekick to Napoleon Solo. The part was expanded because McCallum and Vaughn had great chemistry and McCallum created a character that the audience loved.

Can I tell you two things about David McCallum?

Of course.

One, I was telling my uncle today who is 77 and my aunt Paula, he said when she was a teenager, she had the biggest crush on David McCallum. Because this is 60 years ago. There was a moment in this episode, he was leaning against the door frame and those blue eyes were staring at you out from under his brows. I'm like, I can see that. Yeah, absolutely. But the other one is, I made my wife come down and I'm like, look, do you recognize who that is? Because my wife, there's people like us that are nerds and we get into all this minutiae and remembers actor's names and stuff, and then there's other people, we'll call them normal, who just watch TV shows to relax, and my wife is one of those people. Anyway, she's watched every episode of NCIS, and for a decade, I think, later in his career, David McCallum played the old British medical examiner in NCIS. She's like, I can see it.

He played Ducky Mallard from 2003 until about 2023, when he died, somewhere in there.

That's right.

We should try and have one of these normal people on the podcast sometime, guys.

I'm sorry, I interrupted you on David. I just told you David McCallum, Thunder producer.

That's all right, that's right. Leo G. Carroll played Alexander Waverly. He was a British actor who appeared in six Alfred Hitchcock films. He played the professor, the spy chief in North by Northwest, and you can kind of see why he was cast. It's a similar role.

Yeah.

Claude Aikens played El Supremo. Aikens was a long time character actor, but Gen X knows him best as Sheriff Lobo. Rodolfo Acosta played Captain Ramirez. In World War II, he was in Naval Intelligence. After the war, his acting career started, and throughout his career, he played mostly villains in Westerns. Linda Gay Scott played Susie, the damsel in distress. Her famous roles were as Moth, the Riddler's Henchman on the Batman TV show, and Arlette, the robot prostitute in the 1973 film Westworld. Those are your facts for this film.

All right.

That's a lot. That's a lot to kind of think through, to be totally honest.

So yeah, so there's a lot going on here I want to get into, but do you want to do like the historical context, Andy?

Yeah, for sure. All right. So there's two things I want to hit on with historical context. One, so we've meant, we noted about some of our earlier movies, the kind that were, they took, they were cranked out in like two weeks. That those movies had an interesting ability to reflect what was going on right then in the national zeitgeist in a way that more modern movies, which might take like two years or so to make, they're always going to be a little behind, right?

Yeah.

And so I feel like with TV shows like this, you do get a little bit more of that sense of like ripped from the headlines, if that makes sense.

Absolutely. Today more than ever, like famously South Park, like literally they'll finish an episode like the day before they release it and it'll be about something that happened two weeks ago. Yes. And certainly Star Trek, like you think about all those episodes during the Civil Rights Movement, there were episodes on race and things in the Star Trek context. So yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So to the extent that this episode of THE MAN FROM UNCLE can be ripped from the headlines, it is pulling on American obsession with the country of Cuba. I think it is very hard for us now to look back and understand exactly how much Cuba weighed on American public thought and discourse in the 60s. Correct me if I get these dates wrong, but basically every year there was some sort of existential crisis related to Cuba happening in the 60s. So in 61, we have the Bay of Pigs, is that right?

Yeah, 61 was the Bay of Pigs.

62 is the Cuban Missile Crisis. 63 is JFK's assassination, which and many conspiracy theories then and all the way since have tied Cuba to that assassination. In 64, the Warren Commission releases its results publicly and they kind of clear Cuba from being directly involved in the assassination. Not that that stops the conspiracy theorists. And then this episode came out in 1965, I think. So we've got four years of this existential terror emanating from this little island nation, not very far at all from the United States. So El Supremo in this episode is a clear reference to Castro. Castro had a lot of nicknames, but he was sometimes called El Comandante by his people in his regime. And more generally, at this point, the US had been sort of interfering in Central and South American politics for many, many years. And the story that the US told itself about these interventions is the same story that this episode presents, that the US is supporting freedom-loving factions and working against tyrannical ones. Now, this was not usually a historically accurate description of what was happening, but it is a powerfully attractive story, and you can see why Americans latched on to it. That is the lens through which, growing up, I understood most of this period of American history.

Right. And what I love about that is that at the end, spoiler for the end of the episode, they kill El Supremo, or El Supremo dies, depending on your perspective, and the nice Democratic guy gets into power. And I took a note that was like, 100 episodes, they probably could have saved the whole world in 100 episodes of how easy that was.

Yes, it's like.

Yeah, it's this American fantasy that if we could just get the right person in charge, an entire culture can change. And like, obviously, that's a little crazy to us as adults. But it is a nice story, right?

Yeah, it is. And so that's what I had to say about the Cuba connection. I had one other thing, but John, did you have any other additional comments?

So when I, I didn't make the Cuba connection initially. I did eventually. But what I wanted to say is, like, clearly, this is an episode about Voodoo. And the Voodoo starts early, and then everybody has Spanish sounding names or Hispanic names and they're talking about El Supremo as if he's like a dictator in a banana republic. And in fact, I'd sort of challenge you a little bit, like, I think he is supposed to be Castro, but Castro would never wear this gaudy outfit, right? That looks more like somebody like Noriega from Panama with the giant golden shoulder pads and stuff. Not that that had occurred yet, but you know what I mean? Like, it is culturally insensitive in the sense that they're essentially mashing up South America, Cuba and Haiti into one place, you know, and throwing all those things together in an unnamed Caribbean island. So, yeah.

No, that's a great point. And as you have noted, we have an interesting return to Haiti here after quite a while in this Zombie podcast of being away from Haiti. So the other thing I wanted to touch on is just talk a little bit about the history of sort of the spy spoof genre. I am...

Is this a spoof though?

So, I think that it is. It falls into the category, I think, of the more outlandish Bond films in that they are not making fun of themselves exactly. But I don't think you're meant to take any of these characters very seriously. I mean, I'm open to disagreement with that.

No, and a couple of times I was thinking, I had thought, like, that's fake or that's dumb. And then I'm like, John, that's not, you're thinking about the wrong show. Like, I want to put a trash can explodes that was supposed to kill them, and not even the glass next to it shatters. And I'm like, well, that's fake. And then I'm like, John, you're thinking the wrong way about this.

Well, we're going to get to it. But I mean, this episode opens with one of its best gags, which is like, well, I don't even want to get into it. But I think it opens up with a gag that, to me, not having watched a lot of other episodes of this show, it certainly read to me like I was supposed to be having fun with this and not taking it, not really sitting in the seat of my...

From what I've read, the first season was more serious. And then as the series progressed, they got added more humor and or more tongue-in-cheek aspects to it.

Yeah. And there's not, it's like at the time of, like right after this, Batman comes out. I think it was a very sort of spoofy, corny time in American television. The other thing that jumped out at me about it, I said to somebody, I was telling somebody I was watching this and they hadn't heard of it. And I said, oh, well, to explain it briefly, Austin Powers is a spoof of James Bond, but it's also a spoof of THE MAN FROM UNCLE. There's some of that energy here, for sure.

So the 1960s are basically the golden age of spy stories. Yes. This is just a small sampling of the spy shows and movies that were out. We have, this is the decade of James Bond, The Saint, Mission Impossible.

So pause right there. Last episode, I said, that's the one with Peter Graves, or Robert Graves. It wasn't Robert Graves, it was Peter Graves. But no, I was thinking of Mission Impossible. So anyway, carry on.

Yeah, exactly. And I would throw like The Prisoner into the spy genre.

The Prisoner was such a brilliant one because it was a spoof of the spy genre, but a serious one.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, what a fascinating show. But yeah, so in the spy stories of Sarah, they emphasize these really masculine heroes, often aided by gadgets and technology.

Yeah.

And part of... We could probably spend a long time diving into what the appeal of the genre at this point in history was. But I might suggest that the Cold War was this complex, difficult, morally difficult-to-navigate situation. And these... It was comforting to see the fate of the free world put in the hands of these super-competent men... Yeah... .who could solve the problem. That said, they over... I think the... Anytime you get a genre, like, tackled so... With so much energy and so much seriousness, you are gonna produce, like, purity and humor takes on it. I think it's just a natural thing. So, I'm... But we have been telling... By the 60s, we had been telling spy stories with elements of humor in them for a long time already. Right. If I were to say... So, I looked up what the first, like, satirical spy novel was. I picked out one, I think, is the most convincing. What might you guess is the first satirical spy novel? Either of you guys have...

No, I don't have any idea.

All right. The one that gets my vote came out in 1908. Does that ring a bell? Oh, yes. Is GK. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday?

I don't know that one.

If you haven't read that book... Well, first, I'm about to spoil it. But the premise of that book is this guy is assigned to infiltrate this cabal of terrorist masterminds. And the big reveal at the end of the book is everyone else on the leadership board of the terrorist group is an agent assigned to infiltrate it. So the book itself, it's not like a haha comedy, but it's clearly poking fun at sort of like the paranoia that you get around spy stories. Yeah.

And even people who are really into spy story and spy lore, like I've heard more than one historian say like, I'm not sure all the spying we did in the Cold War accomplished anything at all, other than stop the other spies, right? Like it's a self-fulfilling industry in the same way the high fashion industry is, right? It's like, it's not that you don't need it for national defense, but it is far less effective than you think because the other team is also doing all the same stuff. You know what I mean? And so sort of like a zero-sum game of not really helping in a strange way.

So just a couple of years before this episode came out, my favorite satirical spy story came out in the form of a novel. John, have you read Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana?

I have.

That is a delightful novel. It is set in Cuba, right, on the brink of the revolution, and that is a novel that mocks kind of the bureaucracy of the intelligence machinery. It's poking fun at the way that paranoid governments kind of make their own worst fears come true, and it has this, its secret agent is like this middle-aged dope, basically.

Yeah, who owns a vacuum store. Yeah.

So anyway, by the time we get into the 60s, we've got a lot of campy spy stuff going on. We've got Get Smart, and if you remember Get Smart had these classic bits like the Shoe Phone, and I think it had the Zone of Silence. Do you remember that?

I do remember the Zone of Silence, yes.

Was it a Cone of Silence?

Cone of Silence. Sorry. And the point was like kind of making fun of this tech, which like never worked the way it was supposed to, and to suggest that these people are more clonish than professionals. So and then we had Armand Flint, and then you guys, you guys told me about this weird 1967 Casino Royale, which is like a weird spoof of itself. Is that right?

Yeah. So and even James Bond, the king, right? Like on Brad's, Brad's other podcast, Multiplex Overthruster, like and subscribe. They just did Never Say Never Again. And you essentially assessed it as also a satire of Bond movies in a sense, right? Like it's a movie that's never made more fun of Bond than in the other movie. And even in the Bond movies, they're filled with sort of wry humor about what's going on. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And he's supposed to be the serious one.

Well, On Our Majesty's Secret Service, the first movie without Connery, the first thing the new Bond says is, this never happened to the other guy.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah. So I guess just to sum up, in the sixties, we have so much spy stuff going on. You can tell a deadly serious spy story. One of my favorite spy novels is John Le Carre's Spy Who Came In From A Cold, The Cold, which is bleak and brutal. And then you can also have all of these wild, you know, shoe phones and other just glorious spy mayhem at the same time. And it's all landing. It all works.

Yes. I can enjoy this and I can enjoy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Which are just exact opposites of the spectrum and they're both.

Andy, I just want to add to your list Spy vs. Spy from Ad Magazine.

Oh, yes, totally. I loved Spy vs. Spy.

It's perfect.

Because their battle was so entirely pointless, right? And never ending that it was just that was the humor of it.

All right. That's my historical stuff. Thanks for kind of bearing with me as I went through all that.

No, no, I loved it. So, I'll give you the quick summary of the plot of this episode. Again, it's called The Very Important Zombie Affair. So, our heroes, can we just call them... Well, I want to say Napoleon Solo, but I don't want to say... I don't know how to say the Russian guy's name. How do you say it? Say it again.

Kuryakhin.

Kuryakhin. Kuryakhin. Okay. So, we've got Napoleon Solo and his sidekick, Kuryakhin.

Napoleon Solo, by the way, is such a good name for a spy.

It's such a good name. In any case, so, they arrive at an airport and they're supposed to meet a contact. And there's a little bit of shenanigans that I'll let you get into when we get to that scene, Andy. But what our heroes have been charged with this time is to save a sort of freedom fighter from an unnamed Caribbean country. However, the rulers of that country are trying to kill him. So, Napoleon Solo and Ilya are trying to get to this guy and save him before the dictatorship can bring him back to this unnamed island in the Caribbean. They, of course, don't succeed. Being a serial, like our heroes have to get their butts kicked in the beginning because they're no good, and then he gets captured, but not before he gets turned into a zombie. So his wife brings him back to this island to get unzombified, and he is stuck under the dictatorship of an El Supremo who has the number of our spies and it seems they're going to be killed or turned into zombies until they turn the tables on El Supremo. Create a voodoo doll of him and kill him by with fear.

How the tables turn.

How the tables turn. Is that good enough?

That's perfect. So hey, John, going through this episode, we're not going to go beat by beat through the plot from beginning to end the way that we have done in the past. I'm going to summarize each act of this episode, and then I'm going to pause and we're going to chat about anything that struck us in particular from that section and then move on. So let me talk about the prologue, which a lot of stuff happens as prologue. They really packed it in there. This is the setup for the episode that happens before the credits roll, essentially. So as you mentioned, John, so the episode opens Napoleon and Ilya are at an airport. They're spies. I guess we haven't actually said this yet. They worked for UNCLE, which stands for United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Although, Brad, before this episode didn't, you told me that they did not intend the word uncle to actually mean anything.

I think the original intent was it to be vague and not explained, but someone along the way felt the need to explain it.

Yeah, something like that can't exist in the wild forever.

So anyway, Napoleon and Ilya are at an airport to meet their disguised contact, who is going to give them the location of their next mission. And this is the setup for this episode's first great gag, because comically, there are two people that match the description that they've been given of their contact.

Yes, and it's a straw hat with a green band.

Yes, so they get their information from the first person, and then they're like, oh, hey, there's that other guy that is, could this other guy be our contact? And this second guy gives, the second guy, though, is secretly a bad guy. And he gives them something that then explodes, it's like a bomb, and it almost kills them. What did he give them that blew up?

So here's what I think actually happened. He didn't give them anything. What he was trying to do is lure them near the trash can where the bomb was held, and then he would leave, and they would be killed by the bomb. That's what I think he was trying to do.

But he handed them a matchbook.

He handed them a matchbook, just like their first contact, but I don't think the match... That was just a lure.

So I love this opening. I do have to say, it made me think that the rest of the episode was going to be madcap hilarity like this. No. And in fact, the rest of the episode is like kind of serious, just regular spy stuff.

Until you get to Susie from Louisiana, who is our comic relief.

Yes, exactly.

I have to admit that I watched this two or three times when the trash can explodes, because it was all in one take, and when the smoke clears, the can looks like it's metal and is blown out. I'm trying to figure out, how did they do that? Did they switch it out? Yeah. I don't know. It was actually kind of impressive.

Interesting. Now I'll have to watch it again.

It is always great when filmmakers, I mean, this is just a passing gag. You're supposed to chuckle at it and move on. But it's neat to hear that real craftsmanship went into making it work. You know, like that's just kind of fun to hear.

And I always love manual labor, like the doors in the original Star Trek. Those are just two grips, like opening the doors and closing them again. And everybody walks toward them with the absolute confidence that they're automatic and stuff.

Yes, all right. So anyway, having escaped that, our two heroes race to the location of their mission, which is a hotel room. On the way, they get into a car chase with some bad guys. And John, the question I'm going to ask you is what were the cars involved?

Oh, I didn't look it up. I was concerned with something else. I failed you.

I had so much hope in you while I was watching this. Okay.

I'm so sorry. What I wanted to note here is, so the guy that tried to blow them up is in the car that's chasing them, and he doesn't change his hat. And I know that so that we know it's the same guy. But I just like to point out that Napoleon and Ilya are spies, so presumably that would jump out to them as well.

Yes.

So I just want to say in my defense, I did identify a vehicle and a gun later. So I wasn't totally asleep on this one. I don't know what I was thinking.

There was a weird gun later. I actually screen capped it and asked AI if it could tell me what gun it was, and it gave me a very wrong answer. So I know it. Let's get to it, and then I want to hear all about it. All right. So they do eventually arrive at the hotel though. But when they do, they find that the bad guys have beat them to it. And they are up in this hotel room trying to kidnap two people. This is a married couple, the Delgados, and we quickly learn that Mr. Delgado is an exiled opposition leader from this Caribbean nation. Later, it's referred to as, let's see, La Puerta del Cielo, the Gateway to Heaven, I think. Right. I don't know if that's the actual name of the country. That would be a weird name for a country.

It would be.

Anyway, so the bad guys are in here trying to kidnap Delgado and his wife. So these bad guys are presumably agents of El Supremo, the current dictator of this country. So there's a big fight scene where our heroes fight off the villains and save the couple. It was a kind of a fun fight scene, I would say.

It was. There's a wonderful flying, like, I think it was his double, but it's pretty convincingly. David McCallum jumps up, puts one foot on the chair, and does this flying kick across the other stuntman's face and then lands. It's pretty sweet.

That's exactly what I had in mind when I said it was a pretty cool fight was that scene.

Now, to answer your question, if this is a spoof or not, Napoleon Solo in the fight gets knocked and locked in the bathroom.

That's right. Okay. So, yeah. So right now, the scale is weighted towards satire. So, yeah. Okay. But in the process though of driving the bad guys off, they learn that there's a supernatural element to all of this political spy mayhem because the bad guys leave behind a voodoo doll with Mr. Delgado's face on it, and it panics him so much. Well, let's just pause here and let's hear the audio of that revelation.

Robert, it is voodoo.

Look at the head.

Is there a face on it?

Matter of fact, I believe it's yours.

No. Don't let him see it.

So that music in the background, I just inject that straight into my veins, by the way. Yeah, for real. But yeah, so when Delgado realizes that his face has been pinned to the face of the voodoo doll, it panics him so much that he collapses and he has to be taken to a hospital, and that's where our credits roll. So John, that is our big setup. We've had some spy action and we've had a little bit of voodoo freakiness. So any thoughts, anything that you wanna call out here?

Just on that last clip, his voice, Robert Vaughn's voice is so smooth in that, that's just how he sounds. He sounds like when you hear people screaming and the calmness of his voice, it highlights what you were saying, is these confident, cool people, like in the middle of people panicking about being stricken by a voodoo curse. He's like, it appears to be yours.

Like he's totally, yes. So do you want to talk about, so what are their characters like? Based on this one episode, what is this duo of heroes like, John?

So Ilya and Napoleon are, I don't want to say flip, but they don't take any of this seriously. It's not that they don't want to do their jobs, they do. But when they find, there's no urgency to them as there would be in a modern action movie. When they find out that the villains probably have gotten there first, they're like, well, we should probably head over. It's that same cool collected indifference to their work throughout, regardless of circumstance.

Napoleon almost has a sort of deadpan delivery of almost all of his lines, like he's enjoying all of this from a slight remove. Yeah. I'd say it works.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

If I may interrupt with breaking news.

Please.

I love the cars.

From Internet Car Movie Database, Movie Car Database. The cab that our agents are in is a Plymouth Belvedere.

Okay.

And clearly this show is sponsored by Plymouth because what car was following them, John? What have you been waiting for?

It's not a...

Oh, no.

Is it? It was My Chance and I missed it?

Is it a... It's a 1966 Plymouth Sport Fury.

Oh, my God. It's not the exact one, but after all this time, the words Plymouth and Fury were together, it was My Big Chance and I blew it.

You blew it.

Well, listeners, mark this date down because this is the date. Yeah.

I'm never gonna forgive myself. Oh my God. All right. What are we doing? Can we just end the podcast here?

We might just have to close down this podcast.

Yeah. Okay. Anyway.

All right.

Let's keep going.

All right. Anyway. Okay. Picking up the plot again. So the credits have rolled. I almost actually grabbed audio just because the theme song really is so delightful. Brad, you talked about the composer at the beginning, but it really is a great spy soundtrack if you want to fire something like that up. So they've got Delgado in the hospital recovering, but while he's there, agents of El Supremo infiltrate the hospital and kidnap him and take him back to this unnamed country. Our heroes suspect that Delgado's wife, who is also vanished, they suspect her of having been involved in this.

Like she's a double agent.

Right. I wasn't very convinced that she was a double agent, but I don't know. So our heroes then are dispatched to La Puerta to try and get Delgado and his wife back. So they check into a hotel.

Yeah, I love this. In perfect James Bond style, like they just use their own names. I have a reservation under Napoleon Solo. The villains know who they are. It's so great.

It's just like common knowledge that they work for uncle. It's just very funny.

But unlike Bond, he walks up to give his name and the guy behind the desk says, wait a moment, and he goes off to deal with the problem. He leaves them standing there. Bond would get the full attention.

That's right. That's true.

Okay. So upon arrival, a couple of important things happened. First, they discover they were going to meet with a local contact here, but they discover that he's been murdered. They find his dead body in the closet of their room. So the regime of El Supremo is on to them, basically. And secondly, in the course of this part of the episode, they meet basically the other three main characters of this story. And I'm going to go through them. John interject, if you want to say anything about these people. First person they meet is Susie, who is...

She's the comic relief. She's intended to be a big, big personality, Southern belle. She's from Louisiana, and she's just supposed to play it huge, and she does. And I have to admit, it was funny at times.

Yes, I agree. This is another putting something on the end of the scale towards satire, I think. Yes. Susie is a local hairstylist who desperately wants...

And manicurist.

And manicurist who wants to escape from this country, but her comical escape attempts keep getting foiled. In fact, they meet her being pulled out of a big steamer trunk. Yes. Yeah. So she didn't even get out of the hotel before she was caught. So she's this kind of... I don't know. I don't like using all these adjectives, but she's just kind of like ditzy, slightly airheaded, I think, is the way it might have that we might have described her character.

Yes.

But she means well. The other another character we meet is Ramirez, who is... I can't really... It's one of our two villains in this episode.

It's Captain Ramirez.

Captain Ramirez. He's a captain in El Supremo's Regime. We recognize him as... He was the fake contact at the beginning of the episode, wearing the hat with the green stripe. And he has been tasked by El Supremo basically with sort of keeping tabs on Napoleon and Ilya while they're in the country, and if necessary, dealing with them.

And it's so great. He's just like... So, they walk into their hotel room, there's a basket of fruit, and it says, your contact is dead in the closet because we've caught him. And then Ramirez comes in and he's totally frank with them. I kind of was enjoying the, look, we know you're spies. Look, you know I'm a villain. Like, let's not muck about. Let's just do it.

I agree. That was an enjoyable element of this. Yeah, that just... Everyone knows the game that they're playing and they recognize the other players, so.

Yeah, the more we talk about this, the more of the fact that it's a spoof, that that went over my head is becoming more and more embarrassing. This and the Plymouth Fury thing, I don't know. No more TV.

I don't know. Yeah. This is brutal. Listeners, this is brutal. But okay, the third person we meet because Napoleon and Ilya are taken to meet El Supremo himself, who is this megalomaniacal dictator of the country. John, tell us about El Supremo has a very larger than life presence on the screen. So what do we get here?

He's dressed like you crossed a matador with Liberace. In fact, he might be wearing a matador costume actually. It's white, it's got like culottes and it's got these big golden shoulder pads, and it's white with like this gold inlay, and there's of course a wonderful moment where there's a painting in his own office of himself and he's standing under the painting in the exact pose that he has painted in.

It's a great shot.

Yeah, it is. So the only problem is Claude Aiken is not Hispanic, and they just put a lot of bronzer on him. He's sort of like his first two lines he tries to do with the sort of vaguely Hispanic accent. They're a complete failure and he just goes back to being Claude Aikens after a very brief attempt.

Yes.

But yes, he's clearly like a caricature of the ruler who endures no insubordination. He's in complete control and he's completely confident in the fact that he runs this place.

Yes, exactly. There is that great clip way at the beginning of the show where he orders one of his subordinates to laugh, but not too much. Yes. The key stuff though from this part of the episode is before they can meet El Supremo, this was the most tortured part of the script, I think. Ramirez decides that before they can meet El Supremo, they have to be made presentable. He takes them to a local barbershop where Susie works. Yes. They are getting their hair cut or comically Ilya.

It's in the hotel.

Oh, okay. Right. They are getting their hair cut. Ilya is comically refusing to get his hair cut. I don't know if that's like a running joke in the show or what, but we do see the suspicious scene in which Susie carefully hands Ramirez two mysterious envelopes at the end of the scene.

Yes.

So we don't know what that is now, but we're going to find out soon. Then they're taken to see El Supremo. We have that great scene with El Supremo chewing the scenery, and El Supremo basically orders them out of the country.

Right.

So the next day, they're on the way to the airport to leave, Ramirez is driving them, but our heroes have sabotaged the car. So a little miniature bomb goes off, it blows out the tire or something.

It's triggered by Ilya's watch, and he uses this watch to trigger various explosions and stuff throughout the show. And I wonder, is that like always his gadget, or does he have different gadgets in different episodes? I don't know.

Every time, there weren't very many gadgets in this episode, but every time there was one, I was like, I want more gadgets.

Yes.

It is kind of funny because they're like a foot and a half behind Ramirez in the back seat of the car, and they're like, hey, did you manage to plant the bomb in the car? Anyway, they had to tell us the audience what was going on. Anyway, because of that, they missed their flight, and so for better or for worse, they are stuck in this country. John, that's the wrap on that part of the episode.

There's one great bit here where Robert Vaughn's Napoleon gives a lighter to Captain Ramirez and Captain Ramirez is where it is going to blow up in his face, his revenge for the bomb, so when it doesn't, he's very relaxed, and of course, it has a microphone in it, so when he takes it to be with the Supreme Leader, they can hear what the Supreme Leader is saying. Of course, the Supreme Leader is too smart, and he immediately smashes it.

Yeah, that was a fun bit. All right, moving on, so this next part of the episode is where the voodoo and the zombie stuff comes in. So far, I'll never say no to watching a good old piece of 1960s TV, but that said, I was wondering when we were going to get to the zombie. Yeah. We get to it here. So we get, like you just said, John, we get our spy gadget moment here, because our heroes try to sneak a cigarette lighter with a bug in it into El Supremo's office, but El Supremo quickly realizes it. Back at the hotel, Napoleon and Ilya meet up again with Susie, the hairstylist, and they promise that they're going to help get her out of the country. Now, I didn't exactly understand what happened next, but I think to meet up with another local contact, they go to a nightclub. Their contact is there. We learn at the end of the scene, after a long scene of a scantily clad woman dancing around, we learn that this is their contact, is in disguise as a dancing girl. What information did the contact pass to them? Was it like the location of Delgado is being held?

Yes. They went there, they had a special coin and she was dancing around, and then at the end of the dance, everyone throws coins at her. When he threw his coin, she saw it and she had a flower tucked behind her ear. She threw it to Robert Vaughn who caught it, and there was a message in the flower that said, this is where Delgado is. All the spy information they get in bizarre ways like in a matchbook or in a flower. It's just all about where the same person is throughout the episode. Like that's all the tips they get. You know what I mean?

Ian, it's just interesting to me. They're not really working very hard. They're being like hand fed.

They're so relaxed. They're like, well, we'll figure it out.

Like somebody else risked their life to get them all of the information that they need.

Oh, that's too bad. Yeah, exactly.

So anyway, Ramirez, though, shows up at the nightclub with a truck full of troops, and Ramirez threatens them not with imprisonment, not with death, but with something even more sinister. So let's hear that clip.

I'm only trying to give you the good news. El Supremo has changed his mind. You won't have to leave. In fact, you may remain here indefinitely.

How long is indefinitely?

I suppose I should be enjoying all this since I've had nothing but grief since you came here. But I'm really a very soft sentimentalist inside. And I have nothing but pity for you, as I would for any creature who is doomed to spend the rest of his days as a zombie.

So I'm grinning. That's a great, that's a great villainous monologue. That's great. Yes, I loved it. So a couple of things here. So we have now been, the word zombie has been uttered. And so now let's talk a little bit about what's going on in the mechanics, what they mean by zombie in this episode. So we learned quickly, I don't remember exactly how, but I put this in my notes, so I somehow absorbed this info. To make a zombie, you have to have a personal item from the intended victim that you intend to zombify.

That's right.

And some of our astute viewers will remember Susie handing Ramirez those mysterious packets in the barber shop. So Susie, this was supposed to be Napoleon and Ilya's hair taken when they got their hair cut, but we learned that Susie has tricked Ramirez and she switched out the hero's hair for Ramirez's own hair. So Ramirez, I don't want to take this too seriously, but it might be worth talking about. In this episode, the fear of becoming a zombie is more potent than is like what causes people faint and stuff at the news that they are being targeted for zombification. And so when Ramirez realizes that it's his hair and that he is now at risk of becoming a zombie, he freaks out, right? Am I understanding the scene correctly, John?

Yeah, and he freaks out and becomes a zombie. Now, you're correct, but also earlier, and we didn't discuss it because it's not really that important, but they do use the word psychosomatic. So I think they're saying without saying it, that this isn't real magic, it is just induced fear, psychosomatic fear of becoming a zombie, which doesn't make any sense, but that's where they're coming at. And so yes, but once Ramirez realizes the spell that has been cast is actually cast on him, he acts like he collapses and then acts like a zombie.

Yes, exactly. And I put a pin in that because I actually think that is one of the more interesting, maybe not a zombie first exactly, but it's something I do want to pull out of this in our close wrap up discussion. Let's see. So, okay, we then switch over to El Supremo, who is pacing around a mad scientist lab and what?

I like that El Supremo does his own chemistry.

I do too. We haven't mentioned it, but El Supremo has a monkey. He does.

A very sad looking monkey. It doesn't like hop around or squeak or anything. He just carries it around. It's very sad.

Do I understand correctly that he is trying to spread the rumor that the monkey is the previous ruler of the country, that he's magically turned into a monkey? Yes.

And it wears a little outfit.

Yeah. It's dressed like El Supremo a lot of times. I guess it's kind of funny. If this monkey didn't look so depressed and sad, what was the last? We've had at least one other movie with a monkey that caused a lot of harm.

Yeah, the one that...

Zombies on Broadway.

Yes, where Bela Lugosi was vexed by this monkey. And the monkey stuck the needle in somebody, turning them into it. It was a very...

Yes.

And there's a gorilla and teenage zombies, I believe.

That monkey in Zombies on Hollywood is having more fun than this monkey is having.

Yes, this monkey is just being... Poor thing is just being carried around.

Yes. Anyway, what is playing on recorded tapes in the background of El Supremo's lab?

Right. So he's playing the sounds of a voodoo ritual as he is doing this chemistry to make... In this case, he's making a drug to de-zombify Ramirez, but presumably he makes his drugs to create zombies here too. So he's playing the recording of a voodoo ritual.

So that is really interesting to me. And I know that this episode doesn't really need us to think about this, but I do think it is an interesting question to ask, would a recording, if zombie voodoo drums are an important element of zombification rituals, which many of our movies have done, would it be enough to play a tape recording of voodoo drums? Because this is the, so many of our movies have tried to thread the needle between like, is this a supernatural thing or is this just a scientific thing?

Right.

I don't know. I thought that was interesting. I don't know what to take away from it exactly, but I liked it.

It feels like there's science and chemistry involved, but also that it's psychosomatic, but also is there maybe magic? They don't really commit to anything. I mean, I think by showing him in a lab doing it, they're committing to a more technical scientific explanation.

I think they are too. Yes. For sure. All right. So believe it or not, we're getting to the end of the episode here. So El Supremo sends Ramirez, who is back on a sort of final mission to deal with our heroes for good. So he sends Ramirez to go and recruit a zombie or a voodoo priestess named Mama Lou. Yeah. And Mama Lou has the power to unzombify you once you're a zombie. So meanwhile, our heroes are making their way towards the place where Delgado is being held. It's near a cemetery. And there's kind of a big action scene here. I think we can skip through. I don't think they know about Mama Lou. Do they know about Mama Lou?

They do. So Delgado's wife knows that she can de-zombify him if she takes him to Mama Lou. And that's why they go.

Mama Lou is the island expert. She's the one who taught El Supremo everything he knows.

So there's a couple of interesting things here. So the weird gun you mentioned is a Mauser.

Okay. And by weird gun, it's the pistol with like a rifle, but stock or whatever, right?

So anyway, three things about the Mauser. I'm sorry. I didn't even have to look these up because I am a weirdo. So it was a German gun, right? Manufactured, but then Communist China basically stole the design and started to manufacture it. And what was unique, it was called a Broomhandle Mauser because it had that, it was a pistol, but it also had a machine clip and then you could fix a stock on to it and treat it like a rifle at the same time. So a lot of Communist countries had them even though even decades after the Germans stopped using it.

Interesting.

Item two is the favorite weapon of my 80s comic book spy hero, John Sable Freelance. And three, it is the basis of Han Solo's gun in Star Wars.

Is it really?

Yes.

Wow, okay.

There you go.

By the way, Solo, I'm Solo.

Yes, there you go.

Maybe influenced by this name.

Do you have a cork board in the back with a lot of photos and threads?

It all centers on the Mauser, yes, so in any case.

So that's great, actually.

And to redeem my car self a little bit, I did note that they drive around in a jeep at this point, and it's just a Willy's jeep from the Second World War. So I'm sorry about the first thing, but I did get that.

So everybody at this point is heading towards Mamalou. The heroes are going there with the Delgados to get Delgado, who has been zombified, brought out of his state. The villains are going there because Ramirez tries to recruit Mamalou to poison the heroes. This is kind of a weird plan, just to be totally honest here, but it is what it is. So, on the way to Mamalou, our heroes come across a group of local people who are kind of listlessly roaming around doing physical labor, and they try to talk to one of them and have this exchange.

What's he afraid of? We might give them something to eat. I've never seen a hungrier-looking lot.

They are not hungry, senor. They are zombies.

Zombies?

Now, you know what happens to those who dare to oppose El Supremo.

Well, quick.

He's calling the soldiers. Thanks.

Is there anything we can do for you?

What can you do for the dead?

So, I have a bunch of stuff here, but why don't you go first?

Well, I was going to call out that we have a talking zombie, which is not our first, but...

Who has some intelligence, but no free will.

Yeah, so this is maybe the most terrifying kind of zombie to be, which is you are in a zombie state, your physical body is utterly controlled by the zombie master, and you are fully aware, which is a terrible fate, right?

Yes.

This evokes all the way back to the beginning of our podcast, White Zombie, where zombies are being put to use as slaves and laborers.

In this case, they say, this is what happens to people who defy El Supremo, he turns you into a zombie. So this is like a collection of former, I don't know, executives or politicians who've been turned into zombies.

Yes. So what else you got for this, John?

The other thing I want to say is, Brad, there's two uses of the word zombie in case you're planning any reconfiguration of the theme for Season 3, and it's been pretty sparse on the ground. We have not heard the word zombie uttered a lot this season so far.

It's interesting that in the mainstream show we're watching, they use zombie. But in these European and low-budget films, they're branching out and using other terms or not describing it so antiquated like a zombie.

This whole episode is interesting because they're just leaning into all of the zombie tropes. But we left those behind 15, 20 years ago from a film context. But they use them here like they're still current and completely understandable, which they probably are. Isn't there like a zombie episode of The Brady Bunch 2? Or somebody gets cursed?

There's a voodoo with Vincent Price.

Yeah. I think this was still in the air in a way that the cheap movies we've been watching have moved on from it. But in popular culture and TV, like Haitian voodoo zombies that get ascribed to other cultures all the time, inappropriately, are just sort of like you know them as well as you know a vampire or Frankenstein's monster.

Yeah. I had the same notes here. I mean, I think those original voodoo zombies landed with such cultural impact.

Yes.

That if you are a real aficionado, like we are, we are seeing tons of movies that are really pushing the boundaries of what a zombie is in interesting ways, and we are watching the zombie evolve. But if you're just Joe Average TV watcher, you're not watching all these weird low-budget zombie movies that are changing the definition of a zombie. When someone says zombie, you think of Bela Lugosi in White Zombie or one of those other early films, right?

Yeah, exactly. In a short time, you'll start to think of them in a completely different way, but we're not there yet. As much as we've been seeing this vision of it building up to this new thing that we're anticipating with George Romero, to the rest of the world, it's not even happening. See my previous note about how my wife is normal and just watches TV to relax.

Yeah, exactly. All right. Hey, we're here at the climactic scene. A voodoo ceremony complete with drums and ecstatic dancing is taking place.

This is the biggest production in the whole show. The rest is just cheap sets and walking around in the hotel lobby and stuff. Here, we're still on a set. We're still inside pretending to be outside, but it's the biggest bit of the episode.

As has been in the case in other movies that have had this voodoo ritual, what always strikes me is how much fun it looks. I know.

There's a woman doing ecstatic dancing and she just can't help but smile. She's got this huge smile on her face.

People are smiling. They're having a great time. It's the opposite of sinister to be totally honest.

Exactly. Everybody's mugging at it like it's terrifying. It's just so not.

The big question here is, is Mama Lou going to side with El Supremo and poison our heroes or is she not? But in fact, Mama Lou frees Delgado from his zombie state. She does this little ritual.

I didn't. I think she takes the potion that Ramirez has given her, but she adds something to it.

Yes.

Or she's poured it out and replaced it with. I think she adds another thing to it that actually frees him.

I think she does too. Does she cut him with a knife or something?

She pretends to, but then he's not injured. They show her moving a knife over his chest, but you just see the hilt of the knife, you don't see it touching his skin. Then you see his shirt open, but there's no cuts or anything in it. In the same way that several people get shot and there's no blood.

Yeah. It's not a surprise here that Mama Lou turns out to be a good guy. Earlier, she was lamenting to someone that she raised El Supremo and she says, she raised him to be a good person, but he turned it all to evil purpose. I think she's getting her revenge on El Supremo here because when it comes time to give the poison to the heroes, it doesn't zombify them. No. They drink it, it has no effect. In fact, Napoleon jokes around a little bit about, it tastes good, you should try some of this, which is funny.

When it sets up here, which I like, and we saw this actually in The Ritual, not our greatest film, but that Voodoo is neutral in the same way any other magic or religion is, and that there are good practitioners who are the normal practitioners of Voodoo like Mama Lou, and then there's those who take it and turn it to evil and use it in evil ways to achieve their ends.

Exactly. The scene culminates when Mama Lou presents our heroes with a Voodoo doll, and this one has Who's face on it, John.

El Supremo.

El Supremo shows up at this point. Am I correct about that? He comes onto the scene.

He has another half dozen soldiers. So far as we know, by the way, El Supremo has a squad of soldiers. Those have all been killed, so he's brought the other half of his army.

The population of this island nation is seven people, plus El Supremo and like three soldiers. Yeah.

So that's how he's been able to maintain that.

Yes. I mean, with those numbers, I guess it makes a little more sense. But so El Supremo shows up and he tries to capture him, and they're like, aha, El Supremo, we've got a voodoo doll with your face on it. But it is weird to say this, but this episode of this random TV show in the 1960s has introduced an interesting new twist to this whole business, which is that El Supremo laughs at the heroes and says, your voodoo doll won't work on me because you don't believe that it will work.

That's right. In order for it to work, the practitioner who created the voodoo doll has to believe it has the power to do this stuff. Which is quite a take.

It is a great take. But of course, the rebuttal is, Napoleon does not believe any of this is real. He thinks it's all psychosomatic induced stuff. But he says, I bet I know who did take believe in this, and it was Mamalu who actually made this voodoo doll. And El Supremo, so I actually-

You can see him start to waver, like, I don't believe you.

Yeah, so you see him start to panic, and then Ilya decides to test this out, the power of El Supremo's belief by, does he stab the voodoo doll or shoot it?

He's got, like, a blow dart pen, and he shoots the dart from the pen into the forehead of the El Supremo voodoo doll.

That's right, and then El Supremo, I think we're led to believe just, it's a psychological thing, he believes that it would take effect. He clutches his head and falls over dead.

But Ilya also says what Mamalou corrected that.

Oh, that's right, because Mamalou has also cursed El Supremo, and that's what convinced him.

She says, tell him I curse him, and then when Ilya repeats that, I think that's what seals it for El Supremo.

So El Supremo topples over, and that's basically the end, except for a comical little epilogue. So the world is saved, El Supremo is gone, democracy and freedom have been restored to this Caribbean island, Delgado is in charge, and at the debriefing, we get one last joke. So put another thing on the satire end of the scale here. As they're talking about the Voodoo doll, and their handler notices that the Voodoo doll has a little label that says Made in Japan.

Yes.

So, the end.

The end.

Okay, that's a wrap on, I forget the title of this, but it has something to do with Voodoo.

A very important zombie affair.

That's right. So, okay. John, shall we go right into our wrap up questions?

Let us do this. Actually, I am very interested to hear your answers to the 1960s questions because I think this is interesting in a way that I didn't anticipate. So anyway, but you start.

All right. So John, in this episode of The Man From Uncle, is there a hero party?

There is. It's Napoleon, Susie, Ilya. I guess we could throw in the Delgados, but there's absolutely a hero party.

And how do they do? They all survive?

They all survive. They're fine. One of them gets turned into a zombie for a while, but bounces back.

Yes. What type of zombie are we dealing with in this?

So that's the interesting question. It is portrayed as a classic Haitian Voodoo zombie. I don't think it's any coincidence actually that Susie is from Louisiana where they also have Voodoo. So it's portrayed as that, but to Napoleon Solo, who's like the ultimate nothing-bothers-me rationalist, it's all psychosomatic and chemicals and drugs, and it's not real. You know what I mean? Because when they talk about El Supremo's death, they say we literally scared him to death. Not suggesting that hitting the Voodoo doll did anything, but they scared him so much he believed it and died. So it's a Haitian classic Voodoo zombie from the film. So I shouldn't say actual Haitian, like a movie zombie. Right, right. But with this undercurrent of it's all in your head.

You know what I mean? Agreed. Is there a zombie horde?

Yeah, there are. They go to that farm and there's like a dozen guys working in the fields. They're not really horde-like.

Yeah, they don't swarm the heroes or anything, but there's maybe a dozen zombies or so. Yeah. How are zombies destroyed or killed in this movie or maybe undone?

Yeah. There's a concoction, El Supremo, and there's a concoction that a voodoo practitioner can make that can unzombify you. El Supremo does it for Captain Ramirez and Mamalu does it for Delgado. So yeah, it's a chemical that you give them.

But it's perhaps suggested that the chemical is like a placebo.

Yes.

Because what really snaps you out of it is you stopping believing that you're a zombie.

Yes.

All right. So let's see. When you're in a zombie state, how do you behave? Are you fast, slow?

You're subhuman speed. You're slow and you're sort of, it's like you're sleepwalking.

We have established zombies can return to being human, through the process we just described. And so are there any new zombie firsts or new zombie strains to be found here?

I feel like there are. You named one. What did you say that felt like something new? It's the idea that belief, that the victim's belief is essential to their enthronement as a zombie, right?

Yeah. I'm hesitant to say that's the first time this concept has been advanced.

Right. Because it might be in ritual too, but again, rituals after this.

It might be the most clearly articulated. A number of our movies, I think, have suggested that the hold of the zombie master is as much a psychological one as an actual supernatural one.

Right.

To me, this is like the mainstream TV show grabbing hold of different genres and taking the cross from the Dracula film, that it only works if you believe in the cross that only protects you at that point.

Yeah. Just like they mashed up a bunch of countries in South America and the Caribbean, they mashed up a bunch of myths about zombies.

Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that, Brad, because this is a really common trope in horror more generally.

Yeah.

Like the power of belief. You know, like Stephen King's It, the whole point of that one is that you can only fight it if you have this childlike belief that it's real and stuff like that. It's really common in a lot of horror, but this is the first time we've seen it articulated in a zombie context.

Yeah.

All right. So we do have these four pillars of the zombie film. This is an episode of a TV show, so it's a different beast, but let's just go through these just for the sake of it. John, in this episode of THE MAN FROM UNCLE., is the world threatened?

No, not really. I mean, yes, but not by zombies, by El Supremo.

Yeah. And it's like the-

He has zombie technology, but it's not like he uses it at scale.

I mean, I might say just due to the genre, it's not a terribly convincing global threat. No. In the same way that every episode of Mission Impossible, of these movies, the world is technically threatened, but you don't really buy it. Right, right. Is there contagion?

Nope. Zombies are made, specifically.

Are there tough moral choices? Not really. Are there loved ones turning against you?

No, because people don't turn against people in this. You become a zombie and then you just sort of become lame. Like you don't become like a snarling creature that tries to kill your husband or something, you know what I mean? So, yeah. Now, I think there's no pillars in this, really.

All right. I'm going to turn it over to you then for some 1960s questions.

Yeah. So this is peak 60s here, right? So do we see an increase in violence and grittiness?

So, no. What's displayed on the screen is not pushing any boundaries.

No.

I do think that the connection to a real world oppressive regime brings a little bit of like sort of thrilling friction to the story. Yes. I don't think this film is saying anything about like the Cuban crisis or the, you know, the Cold War. I don't think it's saying anything deep or anything, but I don't know. I think like it's reflecting, it's reflecting an awareness of like violence and tyranny that is in the air. So I'm going to say no with a little asterisk.

Right. Do our heroes question authority? I mean, I know they work for uncle, but what do you think?

I don't think that they question authority. And in fact, the, I mean, the whole idea of like kind of debunking voodoo and debunking this supernatural practice is really just something that science can explain as a psychological effect is kind of a very, very authority, the sort of thing that the authority, that the Western American authorities would do. So I think they, I think they're agents of authority here.

Yeah, the most rebellious thing Ilya does is he, he's got like a groovy haircut and he refuses to get his hair cut.

Yes.

Yeah. Do we focus more on the hero's inner life, more personalized horror?

Not really. I mean, again, you know, with TV shows like this, you get to know the characters, not because any individual episode really gives you a great glimpse into them, but simply because after a couple of seasons, you've spent like 100 hours hanging out with them. In watching one episode of this, I had no real sense of what makes these people tick beyond the fact that Napoleon has a pretty scientific modern worldview. So I don't think that they're really... I mean, for the locals of this nation, the people being threatened with zombification, I mean, this is, I guess, a very personal horror. Like, it is their personal fears being made true. Yeah. But that's kind of a stretch, I think, compared to what we meant with this question.

Yeah, and I'm gonna sort of group together the last questions, because I think like the, we're finding out it was like My Pillars, a lot of this is not serious enough to have these things in it, right? So is there a looming sense of apocalypse, increased crime, social chaos, horrors without solutions, a lack of clear villains?

No, and again, it's in genre, and this is a TV show. Yeah. There is a, you know, when the villain is defeated, that solves all of the problems, right? You know, the zombies are no more, and freedom and democracy has returned, as far as we can tell, to the Caribbean. It's the definition of like a clearer villain to defeat. And, you know, in that sense, very much part of this escapist genre.

Yeah. I think what was so striking for me about this is that it was fun. Like it was a fun episode of TV to watch, but it's very much like 60s TV. It's kind of low budget. It's all shot indoors on sets. Like it's, and, and so it's kind of, it's kind of harmless, you know, in a way. And it's in contrast to the movies like, like Rosemary's Baby is 1960. That is an edgy, no, it's later than that. Psycho is 1960. That's an edgy movie, right? That's truly terrifying. TV shows are not doing that, right? And they, they'll always be behind that. Like even though we have horror TV shows now, compare them, I don't know if you watched the trailer for, for Undertone or Obsession or any of these new horror movies, like nobody's doing that on TV either.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, the role, the purpose of this medium at this point in time is to be, be toothless, honestly.

Yes, yep, yeah. So.

Yeah, I mean, it's fun, but it is what it is. So, John, we always close with three questions. And so let's do that here. John, would you and I survive in the zombie world of THE MAN FROM UNCLE.?

I think, I think we would look sweet in those 1960s suits. So I think, yes, we would.

I want to see John and Ilya Kuryakin's haircut.

I would like to see me and Ilya Kuryakin's haircut.

That's amazing. All right, so is this a zombie TV show or is this a TV show that happens to have a zombie in it?

It happens to have a zombie in it because, as we know, they did 104 other episodes that didn't have zombies in them.

Yes, exactly. All right, and so, John, this one's a little harder to answer, maybe. So do you recommend that listeners watch this episode of THE MAN FROM UNCLE just generally? Is it a fun way to pass an hour? And do you recommend it specifically to the zombie-loving listeners of this podcast as something that has interesting stuff to say about the zombie film genre?

Yeah, so I'm going to go the reverse of what we would normally do in this situation. I'm going to say yes. Nobody has to sit around and watch whatever's on TV anymore. But if you did, like if you were flipping channels and you came across an episode of THE MAN FROM UNCL., like you would have a good hour. You would enjoy an hour of THE MAN FROM UNCLE. Right? As far as zombie stuff, like Brad said, it's just throwing together tropes that it's grabbed from everywhere. I think it's actually kind of cool the bit with the necessity of belief.

Me too.

But I don't know beyond that. I don't think it's essential for zombie fans. I think it's an interesting summary of the zombie genre as it existed 15 years before this episode.

That is a great way to think of it as sort of like a, yeah, here's what the viewing public thinks of when they hear the word zombie. Yes. Yeah, exactly. I was thinking while watching this, so I enjoyed this episode. I don't think this is amazing TV.

No.

But how do you answer that about a TV show? I love Star Trek, but if you were to randomly pull up a few random Star Trek episodes, you could very well watch something horrifically bad.

You could watch Spock's Brain and be like, why does everybody like this?

Yeah. I think the answer there is, does what we've described sound like a fun rhythm? Have a fun rhythm for you? If so, yeah, check out the show. I might check out a few more episodes of the show just on my own. Yeah.

It's fun. It's got the same production values as Star Trek. They're low, they're simple.

Okay. All right. Well, it's now time for the scariest part of the episode. That's when producer Brad reveals to me and John, what zombie movie we will be watching next.

Well, first of all, I think each episode from now on, we're going to count down until Night of the Living Dead.

All right.

So we have six movies to watch.

Six.

Assuming we don't find something unexpected before we reach Night of the Living Dead.

And who do you mean when you say we there, producer Brad?

Well, if you guys find something I missed, let me know. We'll add it to our list. I also want to say at the top of the show, I didn't mention that this episode aired on New Year's Eve of 1965.

Oh, wow.

So to put in the context of when we watched it, of all the other movies we've watched, which is three days before the premiere of our next film, which was January 2nd of 1966. And this film was strongly recommended by Darren Smith, the host of the podcast, The Undead Symphony. So I will play you a bit of the trailer.

This coach is bound for a terrifying destination. But no corpse can remain at peace in this village of the undead, this land of the zombies. In this place, no one is safe. No one can hide from witchcraft, superstition and fear. Even Sir James Forbes, the clear-headed man of science, was forced to accept the horrifying facts.

Young Martinus also says that he saw something on the moors, something that he insists was his brother. But we know that his brother is dead. We also know that he is not lying in his coffin. Someone in this village is practicing witchcraft.

Are we gonna watch a hammer movie? We are watching The Plague of the Zombies.

Okay. By the way, I wanted to say, that was a great trailer narration. That was great.

That was great. Is this the original poster? Because this looks like a postmodern, It does. crazy poster. These zombies on this are green and they've got these white staring eyes. This poster is bananas. Do you want to describe it, Andy?

Yeah. So we have some really freaky looking zombies. It's a horde of zombies. One of them is holding a woman in a low-cut dress who has passed out from terror, presumably. And there is like what the most prominent zombie has red glowing eyes. These are all green. Their skin is all green. And he's got some sort of like a cross symbol on his forehead. Is that right?

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

So it looks to me like we have a real horde of zombies here.

So yeah, I'm not. I'm just looking through the names. None of these are jumping out of me. So I'll be curious. It's obvious. It sounds well, we'll find out. But I'm excited. So this is sweet looking. Next week, we're going to talk about the plague of the zombies. And if that excites you, please subscribe. Tell your friends. The show is growing, but we'd like more and more people to listen to it because we love doing it so much. So, you know, tell your friends. It's a delight. All right. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next episode. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back next episode to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed our podcast, please take a moment to rate us in your podcast app of choice. Tell a friend. Follow us on Instagram at Zombie Strains. All of this helps like minded people find the show. See you next time.