Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast, where we watch every zombie movie ever produced. Yes, all of them. How many is that? The current total is more than 600, and we will try to watch them in order of release date, with a few flash forwards for fun. We look forward to watching zombie cinema evolve and become what it is today. I'm John, and I'm joined by my co-host Andy and our producer Brad. Join us for this journey to see which of us makes it to the end alive. Hello, producer Brad. Hello, Andy. How are we doing today?

Hey, John. Hey, Andy.

Doing well, John.

Hey, who's excited to watch a zombie movie that has a bunch of zombies in it? Anybody else excited? I'm excited.

It's been a long journey to get here.

Yeah, right off the jump too. First scene zombies. So I'm excited. But I do have to bring us down for a second. I have something serious we have to talk about. Where did you guys watch this movie?

I watched this on YouTube.

Yeah, I watched it on what would it what C-flicks or something? It was like screen picks. I subscribed to it through Apple TV. Where did you guys watch the last movie?

I think that was also probably YouTube. Possibly Tubi. No, I watched Ritual on YouTube.

I know you didn't watch Ritual on YouTube because it's on Tubi because it's not on Tubi. So that's what I want to talk about. Our dear friend Tubi, that's twice now. You know what Tubi does have? The Super Bowl. And celebrity coach Deion Sanders with his own show. I feel like Tubi's forgotten its roots. Like, I don't even know them anymore, you know? So I'm just a little-

Well, I gotta say, what you get with watching it on YouTube is YouTube is not afraid to include the racist intro and outro to a movie like Ritual.

Okay, maybe I need to re-examine my position. But Tubi, I don't think it's too late. You know, call me, we can work this out, but I'm just a little disappointed. All right. Speaking of which, we're actually watching a movie with zombies in it. And that movie is called Revenge of the Zombies from 1943.

Pretty exciting. As far as content warnings on this one, John. We don't have a whole lot, but I will say that like a couple of movies we featured in the past, particularly a very specific movie that I think Brad will get to in just a minute. This movie does heavily feature the trope of a black character who is a servant to the white characters, and who is, while friendly and likable, portrayed as superstitious and not very smart. This movie, I think, builds itself as a comedy, and I think it derives most of its comedy from that character's antics. So just know what you're getting into, I guess, if you watch this one.

Yeah. What's interesting about that, just as we see it as modern viewers, the way it comes across is that the other characters who are less animated are just sort of boring. And he becomes the one that's interesting. It's a weird thing. But yes, that is definitely here.

I want to get into that when we get to that character in our recap, but I agree with you. Although it's really a racist role that this actor is in, he is the only character in this movie that has a real distinct and charismatic personality, I think. So make of that what you will.

Agreed. And then, Brad, we need our breakdown of the cast and crew and the stats on this movie. There's a couple of exciting people in this movie.

Revenge of the Zombies opened on September 17th, 1943. It's the same year as I walked with the zombie. This is another low-budget movie produced by Monogram Pictures. Monogram produced King of the Zombies, which we discussed in episode nine. Steve Sekulie directed. He directed many B movies. The only other film of his you might recognize is Day of the Triphids from 1963.

Oh, wow. Okay.

I figured that might ring a bell. Edmund Kelso and Van Norcross are the writers. Kelso also wrote King of the Zombies. So there's a pattern here. King of the Zombies keeps coming back with this film.

Yeah. Early Hollywood people are getting pigeonholed into genre.

The top-billed stars are John Carradine, Gale Storm, Robert Lowry, and Mantan Moreland and Bob Steele.

Mantan Moreland's back. Yay!

Mantan Moreland is back. Just like in King of the Zombies, he plays a character named Jeff. But it doesn't seem that this is the same character. At least this Jeff doesn't remember the events of the first movie. Or doesn't seem to remember having seen Zombies.

Yes. And this is that difficult thing where he's a racist trope, but also we like him because he's the only interesting person here.

Do you think somewhere out there online, there is a wiki that details the cinematic universe of these two films?

Well, now we have to make one. Thanks, Andy.

Well, I think Moreland did a lot of films for Monogram. He was on a contract there, so they liked him and they did use him a lot.

Yeah. Well, he's really charming.

He's a joy to see on screen, honestly.

I've never heard of Gale Storm, but apparently she was somewhat famous. She was a singer and had a sitcom.

She had her own sitcom called The Gale Storm Show, O Susanna, 1956 to 1960, before Our Time.

Is that her real name or is that... Because if it's not a made-up name, that's one of the best names I've ever heard.

I know, right?

So Andy wins the award this episode for asking me a question I didn't research.

Good job, Andy.

John Carradine had a long career. He was in The Grapes of Wrath, Stagecoach and The Man Who Shot Liberty Violence, and horror fans might remember him in The Howling. And he's also the father of David Robert and Keith Carradine, who are all actors.

Yes.

He gives off real Vincent Price vibes to me.

It's striking to me because he was very famous in a lot of movies, but he, like he's a mad scientist here, and I'm like, yep, that tracks. Like he looks like a mad scientist.

Robert Lowry, who plays Larry, he played Batman in a 1949 serial. So that makes two actors that we've seen who played superheroes. The other was Dick Purcell, who was Captain America.

That's right.

See, this is really feeling like a cinematic universe.

It is.

We haven't really tied the bow around it quite yet, but we're working towards something.

Yeah, exactly.

The last actor I want to mention is James Basket. He plays the zombie Lazarus. Basket was in Disney's infamous Song of the South. He played Uncle Remus, and he voiced Brer Fox.

Okay.

The film title, I think, is kind of interesting. There are many titles that start with Revenge of the...

Yeah, I was curious about that.

And so I did a quick search, and the majority of them are low-budget films. But from what I can tell, Revenge of the Zombies is the first. I couldn't find any before that. But we know Revenge of the Panther, Revenge of the Nerds. There's Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen, Star Wars, Revenge of the Sith.

Yeah, but the Revenge of the Sith one is interesting, because there's a rumor, George Lucas wanted to also do Revenge of the Jedi.

It's not a rumor.

Yeah, but he's very much, he's a very much pulpy, like this is his generation of film, right? And this pulpy stuff is formative to him. So I guess that doesn't surprise me, is what I'm saying.

Shall we talk for a minute about what was going on in the world in 1943 when this movie came out?

This is, we should, because this movie is the most relevant movie to it, but in a very strange way. So yeah, give us some context and we'll talk about it.

So like the last couple of films we discussed, the big thing going on was, of course, World War II. More specifically, in the year before this movie came out, the US rolled up the biggest and maybe only German spy ring that had infiltrated the US. It was called the Duquesne Spy Ring, and it had 30-something individuals involved in it. And that was kind of it as far as organized German spy networks in the US. The access was generally not as effective at creating networks, either signals intelligence or human networks in the allied countries.

If we can just become a history podcast again for a second, Brad, Andy and I read a lot of books about World War II and World War I. The Germans have notoriously for the entire 20th century been bad at spying. You just keep reading about these battles and it's like, and they attacked, but they had no intelligence, and they attacked, but they don't know what they're doing.

Absolutely.

How did the US find the spy ring?

I believe that one of the participants, a German American citizen, was either tangentially involved or he became aware of it and he tipped off the FBI. That's my understanding. But, yeah, that was about it as far as, you know, actual threatening German espionage in the US., but I can only imagine that that was a very exciting and scary thing to think about. And I'm sure as the war, you know, hit its midpoint in 1943 that that was still on everyone's minds. And while it's hard to call this a war movie exactly, it's clearly, well, it definitely, it involves the threat of a Nazi spy. They don't say Nazi, which is quite interesting.

They don't say Nazi or Germany in this movie, which we'll talk about as we go. But the implication, do they say the Reich? I don't believe so. At one point, they talk about going back to Europe, but they don't.

Yeah, they seem to be dancing around it for reasons I don't entirely understand. We'll get to it, you know, but when they like, they salute, they do. It would have been easy to have them, the evil bad guys do a Nazi salute to each other, but they don't. And I wonder if there was some like accepted boundary of film vocabulary when it came to talking about the Nazis.

You know, it's interesting. Yeah, I don't want to get too lost in our history podcast here, but there are a lot of one of the earliest and largest groups to settle the United States of America since colonization were the Germans, right? There were a ton of German families and still are in the US. And I wonder if it was just a sore spot to be like rag in Germany. You can't say it, but you can show it. I'm not sure. So, okay.

Well, it could be. But yeah, I think that's the major thing that this, as far as cultural relevance that this film is tugging on, is that that fear that the Germans might have a lot of spies. We now know that they really didn't, but that wouldn't have been clear to average Joe Muvi viewer at the time, I think.

And let's talk about the poster for a second here, producer Brad and Andy. So, Revenge of the Zombies in Red. And it's got that weird montage colorization thing going on. What jumps out at you on this poster, Andy?

Mostly that it's got, it doesn't feel like a real intentional piece of art in the way that I think modern movie posters are. You know, it has that feeling of, here's just four scenes from the movie that we've slapped together and we haven't bothered to make the coloring consistent. So, you have one scene that's black and white, one that's in color, one that's green, and one that is, I don't know, maybe partly black and white.

Yeah.

Yeah, sort of orange-ish. So, I mean, it does have a lot of content from the film. And I will say that it's actual stuff, I think, from the film, for the most part.

I think so. And it's definitely saying to me, here's John Carradine mixing an elixir in a lab. He's a mad scientist. Like, that's front and center as well.

Yeah, it's not real subtle, I would say.

So, let's just get into it. I'm going to give a high-level plot summary, and then we'll go back and do some of the details. So, let's just go over the plot of this movie at a high level, and then we'll jump back in and do a lot more of the details. So, the movie's set in Louisiana, and we start with a doctor, Dr. Keating, who has invited two people to his home, Scott Warrington and Larry Adams, and Scott Warrington's sister, Lila, has died, and Dr. Keating was her doctor. And Dr. Keating is suspicious. He thinks that her death is suspicious. There's something nefarious going on. So, they're going to go see her husband, a Dr. Van Alterman, and find out what really happened to the sister. They go there. They also have their valet, Jeff, who is Mantan Moreland, our favorite. And they go to see him. As the movie progresses, he's clearly playing some game, Dr. Van Alterman. And it turns out, not only does he have some nefarious plot about Lila, Scott's sister, but he's actually a German spy. And he has a handler. And it turns out he's been conducting experiments on dead bodies to try to make a super army for an unnamed source that we're all pretty sure is Germany. And then the plot becomes rescuing Scott's sister from his clutches and also stopping him from making the unstoppable army. So that's the rough summary, but let's go into it. So we open, this is why we were so excited at the beginning. We open with zombies. We open with a zombie named Lazarus, who does this howling call. And we have this sort of protracted scene, which I love. I don't know how you felt about it, Andy, where he calls into the graveyard and all the dead rise. One comes out of a crypt and some come out of graves. And then it's all black and white, and there's a storm. And then Lazarus gives them instructions, and he sounds like this.

That's to say, get picks, shovels, go to work. You, Pete, watch Dr. Keating's house.

Yes. So that's one zombie giving instructions to another zombie. So what did you make of this to start?

A couple of different things jumped about the scene. First, I think this feels like the most intentional combination of soundtrack with what's going on the screen in a movie we've seen to date. Because as the zombies lurch around, they are marching exactly to the beat of the soundtrack. That doesn't sound too exciting when I describe it, but that's not a level of coordination we've seen in any movie to date in this podcast.

To me, it sounded like Fantasia.

Yes.

Yes, very much.

Where the brooms are marching.

It's very heavy-handed, is what I would describe it. But it works because it's like a cheesy movie with zombies. It's kind of what I've expected this whole time, you know what I mean?

Yes. And this isn't a comic scene, but I think that is the sort of thing you get in a funny movie, right?

Yes. But it's not played for humor here. I also love that one of the zombies is just named Pete.

So this movie has something I don't remember seeing in other zombie movies I've seen. I don't think we've seen it to date in this podcast. And that is vocally calling the zombies, summoning them from the grave with this sort of this, I guess. I just wrote down this kind of a yodel.

Yeah.

But it's used throughout the movie to buy the controller of zombies to summon the zombies to do his bidding. And I don't think I mean, have we seen this elsewhere?

We have not. There's two things we haven't seen here before. One is, there's one zombie that seems to be able to control or direct the others. And the other thing is this sort of skill or technology. It's interesting because this movie is clearly a mad scientist movie, but this part feels very mystical.

Yeah. I wanted to note also that the zombies in this movie can talk. We've seen that. I think the movies we've watched to date have gone back and forth about whether zombies have the ability to speak or not. Here, for the most part, they speak robotically. There's one exception, but they speak robotically and without much semblance of sentience or free will. But I do wonder when zombies speaking will leave these films.

So yeah, it is interesting. These are not, like I said, we were excited about zombies, but these are not cannibal hordes yet. Certainly, they're sinister. Certainly, they're dead, right? That is a point that is made is that the zombies are reanimated corpses, but we're not at modern zombie yet. The talking is a big giveaway.

Yeah. And like zombies we've seen earlier, there is a master who is controlling them. In this case, the master is right now is off screen, but he has delegated sort of an overseer zombie, I think, to manage-

And that's Lazarus.

Yeah. Lazarus to manage the sort of lowest level zombies.

Lazarus, one of the many incredibly subtle names we'll encounter in the course of this film.

And if you were wowed by that subtlety, don't worry, later in the film, a character is like, oh, Lazarus, like character from the Bible that rose from the dead.

Oh, yeah, in case you missed it. Yeah. So then we cut to, and we don't need to go in detail, but we cut to a scene where Dr. Keating is telling Scott and his detective friend Larry something sinister happened at that house. Scott admits he hasn't seen his sister in a couple of years, so they decide to go together to the doctor's house. And I'm trying to, they call him Dr. Von Alterman, but just to spoil it, because it's so hilarious. John Keating's mad scientist character is named Max Heinrich von Alterman. I think they must have had a contest in like the writing room to be like, okay, what's the most German name you can come up with? And this is what they came up with. It's pretty hilarious. But they've decided to go see him. Can you tell me about this plot they hatched that makes no sense to me, Andy?

So we have three characters here. We have Keating, we have Larry and Scott. And I'll just tell you, throughout this entire movie, I could not keep track of who is Scott and who is Larry, because they are another of these bloodless, boring white male protagonists that the movie doesn't feel like it needs to give a personality to.

Yeah, I think their personality is like being tough and nothing bothers them.

Right.

But it comes off as just so boring.

It's so interesting because it does have the effect in this movie and others of the side characters in Comic Relief are just so vividly portrayed compared to the people you were ostensibly cheering for. But anyway, they hatched the scheme. So Keating is suspicious that Lila's death was unnatural. It wasn't the heart attack that the Corners report said that it was. He specifically says he suspects poison. So Larry and Scott are going to investigate.

By switching places?

Yeah, by pretending to be each other. This plot, it doesn't go anywhere because their scheme is revealed not very long after this, and I don't understand. But the long and the short of it is they know that, I call them Dr. Max, but is it? They know that the Dr. Max Heinrich von Alterberg or whatever has not really ever seen or met his brother-in-law. So they are going to be a little tricky, and I don't, that's as much as I understand.

That's as much as I can understand.

I think the plan was Larry is going to pretend to be Scott because Larry is the detective, and he's sort of the beefier, bigger guy. So if something physical were to happen, Larry can protect Scott. To me, they're different. Scott is thinner with a pencil mustache, and Larry was the huskier, stronger-looking guy.

All right. Fair enough. I didn't pick up on that.

Here's a question asked that will ruin a lot of this movie. Why are there two of these people? Why is this character not just bundled into one? Why are Scott and Larry not the same person?

If this were Jason Statham, they'd be one character who is both mourning his sister and a highly trained operative that could solve this crime all in one.

So yeah, I mean, they basically then set out to learn more about the situation. John, you want to tell us where we go next?

So they drive to, let's call them Dr. Max. I like that. They drive to Dr. Max's house. Now, Jeff, our favorite character, is the driver. And like in all these movies, the poor driver has to stay in the car while they go inside. So Scott, Dr. Keating and Larry go inside. And just to be clear, Scott is the actual brother. And even though Scott and Larry change places, we're just, Scott is the brother, and we're just going to stick with that. They leave poor Jeff in the car, like you do in all of these movies. So while they're inside talking to Dr. Max about what happened in a very stolid way, where even Dr. Max, who is, you know, her husband, can't bother to pretend to be upset or crying, they talk about this and there's a little wordplay. But well, Jeff is waiting in the car, Lazarus comes up to him, and they have a conversation, and Lazarus sort of gives away the plot, or at least part of it right away. And Lazarus and Jeff have this exchange.

Well, you see what I was going to say was, beautiful car. I drove car like this for Master. Yeah? When I was alive. Oh, when you was alive? When you was alive, that did it.

Yeah, see, Jeff's funny, and I also think it's hilarious that the zombie just says, essentially, I'm a zombie.

Yes, yeah. This was a really funny scene. This is one of several times this movie is, and John, you have mentioned the Scooby-Doo connection here, but it's just so evident where Scooby-Doo got that idea, where the most scaredy cat person is always, they're always finding reasons to leave this person by themselves. Like, you wait by the car, you wait here.

Yes.

And that person always sees something scary. They have a big overblown reaction to it. But of course, when the rest of the group comes back, there's no sign of whatever it was.

Exactly. And they do actually have two quote unquote special effects in this movie to accentuate that. In this scene, he drives the car away, but they like speed up the film, so it like zips away really quick. And this happens again later when he runs into another zombie in the graveyard, he runs away and they speed up the film, so he's like sprinting away comically fast.

So yeah, there is a scene. I think this happens a little later, but my favorite Jeff line in this movie is later, he, Lazarus is showing him some zombies in a swamp, and Lazarus says, this is the cemetery. And Jeff says, thank you, but I got to go home, I forgot something. And the zombie, again, showing a little bit more like verbal wit than most zombies we've seen so far, he says, what did you forget? And Jeff says, I forgot to stay there.

Yes, yeah. So, and I can't remember if we're doing this out of order, but at some point we get a shot of Dr. Max, John Carradine, working in his lab with a mask over his face. And what he's doing is reanimating his wife's body, right? And she comes back to life, but you get this wonderful shot of him turning around with his syringe, and it zooms in on his crazy mad scientist eyes, and you see him mad scientist-ing like crazy.

And thunder crashes as he turns to the camera.

And thunder crashes and the whole thing.

I love the visual language of the mad scientist lab that films have. It's so funny. It's all these test tubes, and I have never learned what are those spiraling tubes? What are the functions of all these things? It's very fun, I think. But it also establishes... I thought this had the most Frankenstein-esque elements of any movie since maybe all the way back to Maniac, just because there's some scary looking electrode type things here that evoke Dr. Frankenstein.

And so he's clearly, they make no bones about it. His wife has died and he is injecting her with a serum to reanimate her. Lila is his wife. So then the folks show up and he introduces himself. He pretends to be upset. He has this weird vibe where he is both, and we'll get to it in a minute, where he's both revealing that something is up to them, but also trying, like he's more clever than they are. It's very strange. So but right now he's, Dr. Max is just saying, no, everything's fine. She died. It was a heart attack, which Dr. Keating is suspicious of. And after they verbally joust for a little bit, we do get introduced to another character. This character is unnamed. He plays two parts in this. He is pretending to be Dr. Max's German handler, right? Like, like he is communicating to Dr. Max from whoever the commander is. And they have exchange in the lab. Describe to me their exchange, Andy, because we were talking about how they never say Nazi or German here. But like, how did they just tip their hand that they're totally German and talking about Germany without saying they're talking about Germany?

Well, they, I mean, they're pretty explicit about it. Like, we are spies for this unnamed European power. And they greet each other.

And how do they greet each other?

They greet each other. It's not, they greet each other with, I don't know, picture in your head how two German military officers greet each other. And it's what they do here. They do a little stomp.

Yeah, like a heel click or something.

Yeah, exactly. Like when you see it, you know, like, You know it. US. Army does not, members do not do this in films. You know, only one country does this.

Yes, they click their heels. They give this little curt bow and then, yeah. And then they're restrooms.

Yeah, and he's, Max just pretty much lays out the plot here. John, do you want to, I mean, you've summarized it already, but you want to talk in a little more detail what the plan is?

Yeah, and I actually love this bit. So Max just tells him he is showing off his zombies to our spy handler, spy master here. And the reason I'm not naming him is this character comes back later as the local sheriff. It's a little strange, but anyway, he is describing to his handler what he's managed to accomplish. And he's showing off Lila as proof of his accomplishment. And he gives this pitch to his handler.

Against an army of zombies, no armies could stand. Why, even blown half to bits, undaunted by fire and gas, zombies would fight on so long as the brain cells which receive and execute commands still remained intact.

So I wanted to pause here because, as far as I know, in all the zombie movies we've watched, this is the first mention of the brain. Well, that's not true. They mention it in Shaun of the Dead. But historically, chronologically, this is our first kind of, what is implied here, is you destroy the brain, you stop the zombie, right? Like, they don't say that, but did that resonate for you?

I agree. They're getting more specific about the brain as the really central and only organ of import to a zombie.

Right. I think we would recognize this, right? Like a zombie missing an arm or with a hole through them, and then the heroes shoot them in the head, and that's when they fall.

And in fact, this scene drives that, makes that very clear. Do you remember? Because to demonstrate to his handler, they actually, they shoot Lila.

Yes.

Bloodlessly, of course, because this is 1943, I suppose. But yeah, she doesn't even notice it.

It doesn't seem to me that they're throwing the bullets, at least this time.

We've stopped the bullets throwing.

They're still shooting from their torso, but they're not throwing bullets.

So, yeah. I need to find a scholarly article on how we changed from firing from the torso and throwing bullets with our arms to, I don't know.

Yeah, so this is really interesting. However, when Dr. Max tries to get Lila to do things, she rejects them. She says, no, like in a really sort of, I think there's another effect here. When she speaks, I think they're adding echo to her voice.

I think so too, yes. The other key thing of this scene, John, is that the handler uses, he compares the zombie army, invincible zombie army that Max is describing. He compares it to an army of robots. Not, there are no robots in 1943. So have we hit the year, the great robot to robot switch? I think we have.

Yes, that might be. We'll have to see how it goes. But yes, that's the comparison he makes. And he's very excited.

So do you want to talk here about just the iconic trope here of Nazi zombies a bit?

I do, because it's such a part of our modern zombie lives. Right? Like having Nazis as villains and zombies in villains, and then you throw them together and you get Nazi zombies. Like that just, we've, you and I have always lived in a world where those tropes exist. You know what I mean?

Yes, yes. So I think the last movie we have seen that floated the idea of an invincible zombie army was, I think it was Revolt of the Zombies.

Yes, and that was the Cambodian zombies that were mystically created.

And while I think that movie was also dancing around the identity of the European enemy, they weren't saying the word Germany, that movie presented its idea of a zombie army that couldn't be stopped. First of all, it had a heavily racist slant to it, because they were sort of pitching it as sort of an army, a quote, yellow peril type of menace. But that movie also treated the possibility of zombies, not as something that one country would use to wipe out the others, but as like a weapon of mass destruction that every country would adopt and start using until all of humanity had been wiped out. I think it's a little interesting that in this movie, there is no question that like the allies might try to use the zombie technology. It's not like a neutral destructive force. It's something that only the bad guys would use, in this case, the Nazis.

Yes, I agree. They're like clearly doing something unholy with these creatures. And because they're German, they're Nazis, even though they don't say German or Nazi. Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, all right. But when, let's see, John, you mentioned that Lila kind of refused, or she at least verbally disagreed, suggesting that Dr. Max's control over her is not complete.

Yes.

So what is he determined to do after that?

Yeah, he essentially says, I need another day. I have a potential victim. Give me another day. I'll perfect my serum and then it really will be done. That's what he says. But unexpectedly, she wanders off. So we cut to breakfast the next morning. They have this exchange where Scott Warrington, the brother, and Larry reveal they've swapped their identities. But Dr. Max, this is the sort of summation of that plot to get information out of Dr. Max, but I still don't understand why they did it, right?

Yeah.

They reveal the swap.

Everyone's trying to fool each other here. Is this the conversation where they also spend quite a while discussing Lila's will? Yes. I think the movie wants us to think that Dr. Max is, well, I didn't really understand the will bit, but the movie thought it was important because they spent a lot of time.

It comes up again later. I was just going to brush past it.

Yeah, that's fine. Let's brush past it.

It's more evidence of Dr. Max's deceit, right? Like he is lying to them about this. But at one point we skipped over, but earlier in the movie, they go to view her body in the funeral parlor he has in his house, like you do. And she's there one minute and gone the next, and they chase her around the house. And Dr. Max is like, I don't know what's going on. And my thought is, well, maybe don't show that you're doing something sneaky. You know what I mean? It just seems a little odd.

Were these scenes supposed to be comedic? Were, because there's a number of scenes where Lila's body is missing, and then they come back a scene later, and she's back in her coffin. I don't know.

I'm not sure. I felt like I didn't know what was going on. They did make me laugh. Maybe they were supposed to, and that's why it's so confusing to me.

I will say with these scenes, though, these scenes and others in the movie, I do kind of enjoy what they're going for with these regular scenes where Dr. Max and then the heroes are all gathered, is there is that element where everybody in the room knows, kind of has an idea of what's going on, but no one can come out and say it. So there's sort of this bantering with each other in knowing ways. I kind of enjoy that.

I love it. Actually, just to go on a brief tangent here, when that scene is done well, it's actually one of my favorite scenes in movies. And one example I think to in a movie from this century is in the first Spider-Man movie in the Marvel Universe. There's a wonderful scene where Michael Keaton and Peter Parker are sitting in the car, getting dropped off for prom, and they realize, oh, you're Spider-Man. Oh, you're the vulture. But nobody says it, and they have this exchange. Like, when that's pulled off, I love it. I'm not sure that's that good here, but I like the principle of the scene. There are some other characters here. There's Mamie Buehle, who is like the cook and Lila's maid servant. And she seems to have something going on. There's also another maid that Jeff becomes friends with, sort of like in King of the Zombies.

Yeah, just like in King of the Zombies.

Yes, but they reveal that Lila is gone. And at this, Mamie Buehle sort of cackles. And I feel like she's sort of on Lila's side. You know what I mean? She's on the inside, but secretly opposed to Dr. Max.

Yeah, it's suggested she's served Dr. Max for a long time, and knows all about the zombie business, and has helped him kind of manage the zombies. But I think she's on the side of the zombies, not of Dr. Max. And she does a lot of sort of unhinged cackling, which I always sort of enjoy.

I enjoy very much. So they go out to look for her. There's a couple of things happening here. Larry and Dr. Keating go to find her. But in the kitchen, Dr. Max confronts his staff, and is like, okay, so who let her out? Because the doors are barred. Somebody must have helped. And then he has this exchange with them, which I would like to share. And this is where he sort of reveals how he creates the zombies. It doesn't say it explicitly, but that's what I took from it.

We're off to gather me some swamp lilies. Bring them to my laboratory at once.

Yes, master.

What do he want with swamp lilies?

I reckon he got a use for them. You and Jeff better go fetch him some. I won't fetch him some. And when you go to pull the blooms, don't put your fingers to your mouth for the juice from them lilies is rank poison. Oh, we'll go and...

Poison? Uh, Rosella, you go buy yourself some.

One's company and two's a crowd. I'm gonna stay here with Mammy Bueller. And the worst of it is, you don't know when it gets you. You has no pain. You just get slice-less until you just doze is off.

Hey, ain't that the way that Mr. Scott's sister died?

Oh, one died that way.

So that was a bit of a long clip, but I think it's important because this is the reveal of how the zombies are made. Somehow, mad scientist is distilling these lilies and turning it into a serum that he can use to create and control zombies.

So is the idea here with the zombie serum, so he's not just killing them, they have to be killed by a particular chemical. Is that the idea? That makes them susceptible to whatever he has planned?

I think so. I'm unsure. Okay.

But I think... My interpretation was the poison kills them, and then in his lab, he uses his serums and electricity to revive them as zombies.

Okay, because I thought... I immediately jumped in. Maybe this is because I've seen too many movies like this, but that the swamp lilies of this particular location were the thing that could allow you to create a zombie.

That's what I wondered too. You know, if he had knifed somebody to death, could he raise them as a zombie, or did it require this particular plant's chemistry to do it?

Well, I think it's clear the movie is not clear.

Yes, I think that's the case. So in this adventure, and I don't think we need to go into super details here, but, you know, Jeff goes with the maid to collect some lilies. Dr. Keating goes to the graveyard. He gets the voice of Lily calls to him from the crypt, and he disappears into the crypt and goes missing. Meanwhile, while this is going on, the Knot Brother, Larry, is poking around, and he finds Dr. Max's lab, and they catch him, right? And they sort of tie him up.

So he finds their radio equipment, and it's clear. And he has a conversation with the German handler on the other end of the line, right?

And what's fascinating about this is, I just love the reveal. You open this cabinet, and there's a radio, and they're like, yep, Nazi. What else could it be? There's that wonderful scene in The Rocketeer where the character opens the cabinet and finds Timothy Dalton's radio, and he catches her and says, actor, saboteur, Nazi, all of the above. Like, it's like an homage to the silly scene where they, yeah. So after the detective, Larry escapes, he runs into Mamie Bueller in the kitchen as well, and they have this exchange where he's trying to sort of get information from her about what happened to Lila, which I think is also revealing about these characters.

You know, I've been studying you, Mamie Bueller.

I don't think you're in this with Von Olderman at all.

That I ain't. That man's in league with the devil.

Well, then tell me, what do you think he's done with the body of his wife?

What he's done?

What's so funny about that?

He ain't done nothing with her. That's what gets him so panicked. She just walked away.

So I love that because it sort of ties Lila's resistance, her rebellion in, and it sort of drives the action, because suddenly Dr. Max wants to leave. And I think this is why. Something has gone awry and he doesn't know where his primo experimental zombie has gone.

Right. Yes. Yeah, I think you're right.

So that leads to dinner. And have this conversation over dinner. I think like it's a montage of conversation. What Dr. Max does is he sort of poisons Larry and Scott. To fall asleep, but like they fall asleep while he's telling them interminable stories. So I'm not sure it was poison. They might, he might have just bored them to sleep and they passed out from being bored.

It's a strangely long scene. Yeah.

Yeah. So they have dinner. It's clear that Dr. Max wants to flee. He tries to convince his secretary, Mrs. Rand, who we haven't really talked about. She has wound up in the plot with the will and stuff, which you sort of glossed over. But this is Gale Storm, who ended up being a Hollywood starlet. So we didn't want to dismiss her completely. So he has this plan to escape.

Yeah. She's the romantic interest, I guess. Although she really only has a few minutes of screen time. So she feels pretty underserved by this film.

Yeah. And I think Larry the Detective makes the moves on her, and that becomes like a thing. I don't quite know why. I think it's just because they expect that to happen in a movie, I guess.

But this dinner scene goes on too long. But it is interesting because Larry, who has just escaped from like the basement is, I mean, he is conversing over dinner with Max, and it's exactly what you described with that Spider-Man scene. They both know exactly what is up.

And they don't talk about it. Dr. Max is just like, Oh, hello, Larry. Like, I see you escaped that room I locked you in with the skeleton. There was a great funny bit with the skeleton, and Mantan Moreland is Jeff making jokes about the... I think somebody... I think it actually might be Larry makes the joke when they find the skeleton. It must be Meatless Tuesday or something.

Yeah, something like that, yeah.

But now we're doing that thing where the third act takes almost no time at all. So we're sort of hurtling down. So after this dinner, Dr. Max realizes he has to escape. However, Lila outside runs into Larry and says, you know, at midnight, I'm going to make my move.

Oh, right.

So part of the plot of this dinner is to extract things out until Lila can do something. And we don't know what that is.

And so Lila isn't just resisting control. You know, she is plotting. She's the one that brings the story to a close with her scheme, basically.

Yes, exactly.

Despite being a zombie.

So here we are. We're hurtling downhill to the end here. So Dr. Max goes down to his lab and they confront him. And he goes and he tries to summon his zombies to save him. And he's like, Oh, you think you're going to capture me? I'm going to get you. Meanwhile, Lila is in the graveyard and she is doing that sort of howling yodel that Lazarus did at the beginning. And the zombies are coming to her.

Yes.

And they all go down to the lab. So there's the confrontation in the lab.

There is a neat moment where Max doesn't realize that his zombies have been co-opted by Lila. And so he's cornered down in the lab. But then you hear the tromping of zombie feet. And Max kind of smiles because he knows the zombies are showing up. He doesn't realize they're not under his control anymore.

Yes. So Max thinks, Aha, here comes my cavalry of zombies to save me from these people. But they grab him instead. He flees and he runs into the swamp and all the zombies chase him. And then this is where the zombies get their revenge and Lila in particular. Will you tell us what Lila does to her former husband, Dr. Max?

I love this scene. Yeah, he retreats from her into the middle of the swamp, and he's maybe like waist deep or whatever, and she goes in there after him. And she starts, I mean, she drowns him, but not by holding him underwater, but by pulling him down with her underneath the surface of the swamp. And I thought this was genuinely creepy. I like this quite a bit.

Yeah, it was great. And then there's a moment where I think you feel like some of the zombies are waking up, but that's sort of hand wavy. I don't think that's the case. And then the crypt door closes and written on the back of the crypt door are the words, the end, in paint.

So that was fun. I don't think we've seen like a diegetic thing like this.

No, that was kind of great.

So I enjoyed it. It did just have that comically abrupt ending that all these movies do. They're like, bad guy's dead, that's it.

That's it.

We have no more story to tell you. So there's, I think, do we, we get like a 10 second little denouement where we see that Jennifer and Larry are together now or something like that.

Mrs. Rand and Larry, yes. Everybody's sort of going home and happy.

I thought it was interesting that they didn't, I wondered if we were going to have a movie where like, Lila was restored out of her zombie state, like we've seen in a couple of these movies, but I actually really liked it that rather than become human again, she just pulled Max down with her into death.

Revenge.

Yes, it feels like the movie, I think particularly with the end of like Bower at Midnight where it's hand wavy and everybody's fine at the end, like I like that we finally have a movie that maybe has a little teeth, because that was the most gripping part of this is when she drowns him at the end in the swamp.

Yeah, yeah, good stuff.

Absolutely. All right, so that is Revenge of the Zombies. Let's break this down. Yeah.

Can I just add one thing to the nonsense of the movie?

Yeah. I mean, why not?

Did you guys catch what the antidote to the lily poison is?

It was coffee.

Coffee?

Yes, coffee.

I missed it.

So at the dinner scene, the lairier Adam wakes up, and he's like, aha, I had the antidote, it was coffee. And I was like, did the movie tell us this earlier? Like maybe it did, but so he figured out that the coffee is the antidote to the zombie.

That's pretty amazing. So that makes me feel better about these lilies causing a potential zombie plague in our time, because everybody drinks coffee a lot.

Yeah, that feels like a pretty big potential problem for your plane, but what do I know? So hey, John, we have this litany of questions we go through to try and place this movie in the history of zombie films and in the history of the zombie idea. So let's start walking through them. Is there a hero party or a survivor party in this movie?

Not really. We have people investigating the crime. We've got Larry, Dr. Keating and Scott. And the sheriff, I guess, but I don't know that there's so much of a party.

Yeah.

I don't know, how did you feel about that?

Yeah, it's kinda, I agree. It's kinda interesting. I think since Dr. Max's handler was actually an allied agent pretending to be a German, like his plot was doomed from the start. Like we didn't need Larry or Scott to come in and like investigate. His plan wasn't going anywhere because the allies, he's in Louisiana and the Americans know what he's trying to do. Like what's gonna happen, right? But anyway.

That's a good point. Like this movie could have just been about that agent unraveling the plot and that would have been interesting. Though then we wouldn't have had Lila, who is I think a great part of this movie.

Yeah, agreed, agreed, agreed. So do we have any, how many people survived? Do we have any fatalities and do any of them come at the hands of a zombie?

Yes, well, Dr. Max, Dr. Max Heinrich von Altemann dies at the hands of a zombie. Now, he's not one of our survivors, he's the villain, but the zombie clearly kills him, though it's not cannibalistic, it's just a drowning.

So is the world threatened?

I think so. Yes. Like as you pointed out, the stakes were probably non-existent based on some bad writing choices, but in theory, if Dr. Max is able to execute his plan, Germany wins the war, and that would be horrible.

I agree. I think this is a definite step towards the world-threatening zombie horde idea.

Yeah. And I'm curious about this. And I think one of the premises of Captain America in the 40s is that the zombies do have some sort of advanced technology, and Captain America is their champion. Here we're seeing advanced Nazi technology, which is its own trope, right? Like that leads us into zombie UFOs on the moon, or Nazi mystical powers being unleashed. So there's sort of like, it's also the sort of, I mean, there may be another movie, but it feels like it's the beginning of that trope too.

That is very interesting. I wonder when that started. I mean, I imagine it didn't start with this movie, but yeah, when did Nazis messing with mad science and the occult kick off? This has to have been- I mean, the Nazis had only been around for a decade or so, so this has to have been pretty close to the origins of that.

Well, what's interesting to me about this is a lot of the stories we read. So for example, if you take the Hellboy movie, starring Ron Perlman, the first one, the idea is the Nazis are in trouble and they're leaning on this mystical technology to save their butts. But here it's 1943, they haven't lost yet. And in fact, they might still be doing really well. So I always assumed that trope was about desperate Germany trying to win at the last second. There's all these fantasies about how they could have done it. UFOs, jet planes, zombie technology. But that's not the case here. The war outcome I think is still uncertain to the average person in 1943.

Yeah, I think that's a good point. So what kind of zombie strain are we dealing with in this movie, John? And are there any new strains that this movie introduces?

This feels like a variation on a strain. It feels like the culmination of several strains. Dr. Max is not like a voodoo priest creating and controlling zombies, but he is creating them and controlling them through science. And I feel like we're mashing those two things together here. Does that feel... it feels like a combination of maniac and king of the zombies or something.

I would add, I think these are the most intelligent zombies we've seen to date. So Lazarus and Lila both can carry on like freewheeling conversations.

Yes.

Unlike most of the zombies we've seen, which only respond to say like, I obey or something like that, right?

Yeah. And they have memories of their lives too.

Yes. Oh yeah. I'm glad you mentioned that because yeah, Lazarus explicitly says he remembered driving a car like that. Yeah.

Yeah.

I also have a clip of a zombie whale if you'd like to hear it.

Can we hear the zombie whale? That's amazing, that's Lazarus summoning the zombies at the beginning.

I think that would have been better if they had used the vulture screech from White Zombie. Because that's the most terrifying noise I've ever heard in my life. Yeah, right, exactly. So yeah, anything else we want to say about the strain of zombie that we're dealing with? I mean, obviously we have not yet, with the possible exception of Bowery at Midnight, these aren't hungry zombies. They're not animated by any aggression or hunger.

Right.

They still need to be directed. So if the Nazis put together their army of zombies, they wouldn't be an army of flesh eating out of control cannibals. It would be just like robot soldiers basically.

Right. I still think the group aspect of them is interesting. It's not brand new, but I think they start to feel like a terrifying force together.

Yeah. And I mean, all of these movies have cast the creation of zombies as at least an unwise choice and usually an evil one. But I think here, this might be the first time. I mean, like it's a real diabolical outright evil procedure done for bad ends.

So I think you might be right. I mean, there's a case for revolt of the zombies, but that even feels not quite right.

Yeah. I mean, certainly in like white zombie and others. I mean, creating zombies to serve as your slaves is not a good action. But here I feel like it's expressly described as unholy and in the service of Satan.

Yeah. I mean, to some extent, this is a propaganda film about how evil the Nazis are. They're so evil, they'll create zombies to make an invincible army. You know what I mean? I think that underlies this too.

All right, John, we're going to go through your pillars and I'm really excited because we get to say yes to one of these that we usually don't.

Yes.

Is there an apocalypse in this movie? That was your first pillar.

There isn't, but there could be, I think is the suggestion. This is our first, if this happens, the world is over kind of thing.

How about the presence of a contagion in this film? Is that a trope in this movie?

It depends on how we interpret the lily poison. It's not contagious, but it is naturally occurring. So I'd say no, it still has to be intentional on the part of Dr. Max, but it's interesting.

I can't wait until we reach the first movie where the zombie nature is transmitted through bite. I can't wait till we...

Yeah, I wonder what it'll be. I'm curious. I don't really, I honestly have no idea.

Are there tough moral choices in this film?

I'm trying to decide. I'm not really. Do you think so?

I don't think so.

I don't either.

Not in the sense of survivors making morally difficult choices to, or being torn between their ideals and the need to survive. There's nothing quite like that.

Yeah, I don't think so. I think you're right. That's not here.

However, John, and I'm leading you on this one, do loved ones turn against you in this movie?

Yes. Dr. Max creates Lila as a zombie, and she drowns him in a swamp because of it. So, yes.

Not only is this present here for one of the first times, but this is a really well-done and effective loved one turning on you scene. He's pleading with her, and she just pulls him down. It's great.

Yeah, he even does. I'm always surprised when actors go this far. He's screaming as she pulls him underwater, and his mouth fills with water. I felt like, oh my god, that feels really legit.

Swampy, black, scooby water.

Yeah, I was like, way to do your own stunts, John Carradine.

Maybe they killed him as part of it, just to make the scene that much more believable. I don't know. Okay, so last couple of questions, John. Did the movie poster sell this film accurately?

I guess, because it's all photos from the film. I have to be honest. When I saw the poster last episode, I looked at the poster, and I'm like, why is there a mad scientist giving a lecture to a bunch of people in a swamp, because he's wearing his scientist gear. I was like, oh, he's not giving a lecture. He's been chased into the swamp by these zombies. So I guess I'll say no.

You're right. In the film, that is a terrifying, that is the creepiest scene in the film. And on the poster, it does. It looks like he's just gathered some buddies to. Yeah.

Like, hey, he's like talking like, hey, what's up? Yeah, it's weird. So I'd say probably not.

Would you and I survive in the zombie world?

I like to think so, because it's not, I think without contagion, we have a chance. Though Dr. Max is pretty clever. He might entice us to take the zombie poison.

Are you coffee drinkers?

See, I drink tea.

I'm not, but I'm willing to take up coffee if that's what it takes.

Yeah. So as a tea drinker, I worry that that's going to be a problem for me.

Yeah. I feel like the FBI kind of had this one in hand. So I didn't feel too endangered.

Yeah.

Again, if the Nazis had gotten their zombie army, that would be probably pretty dire. But otherwise, I would have been fine. Once again, I would not have gotten myself involved in these people's little private struggles.

It's interesting because part of it is, one of the things we're up against with this question is, these are still family level personal stories for the most part. The story is really about, to the extent that it's about anything other than Nazi zombies, Scott trying to figure out what happened to his sister. And it's a family drama in that sense. It's not really well done, but that's what it's about.

So another thought on the zombies. So the zombies aren't, they're not really scary or threatening yet. I mean, yes, they sometimes kill people. And in this movie, like it is effective when Lila kills Max. But these movies all play on the idea that, you know, like nothing could be worse than having to face these things. But in the actual scenes in which a zombie is present, I mean, they're comically slow. Like it would be trivial. I mean, I know this is done for narrative purposes, but like in every scene in these movies you see, it always occurs to you how easy it would be to get away from the zombie. And so eventually zombies will become terrifying, I think, just their presence. And if you watch a modern zombie show, you know, it is very common for a single zombie in a room with you to be a terrifying tense.

Yes, and in this scene, after the scene where Jeff runs away from Lazarus after they talk about the car, like I think they're in a room together later, and Jeff is fine. You know what I mean? Lazarus is more like a butler than a scary zombie.

Yeah, so the threat is very abstract. There's no visceral fear attached to these zombies. And I wonder if it's... You know, at some point, zombies will become physically repellent to look at in a way that they aren't yet in these movies, even though they're sometimes a little creepy. And I look forward to seeing if films can sort of amp up, can make the zombies scary on their own, and not just because a bad guy might use them to... I don't know, might order them to commit a crime.

Right. And I think if there is fear here, it's sort of channeled through Lila in the sense that you could lose your autonomy and your will, and that's scary. But as an audience member, I don't find encountering a zombie scary here. I would find being turned into a zombie scary, but not encountering one.

Right, right, right. So we'll see. I'm sure, well, definitely somewhere coming up in our Excursion Through Zombie film, we're going to get to a movie where the zombies are terrifying, but we're not there yet.

We're not there yet.

So John, lastly, would you recommend this movie to listeners of this podcast and to zombie fans in general?

I'm going to say yes. I've got two reasons. First of all, there's lots of zombies in it, right? Zombies are a thing. So if you're curious about zombies in the history, like, I feel this feels like a, I think there's enough things in this movie that feel like new zombie things, like the fact that as long as their brain cells are intact, they can function, or, you know, they do group, they are throughout this movie, like all of those things. This feels like a bigger, like when we watched Bowery at Midnight, the zombies are a sideshow, right? But this movie, it's about a Nazi plot, but it's also about the zombies, they're front and center. So I'm going to say yes. And also, it's competent. It's not like I walked with a zombie or a wongo where like there's something really, there's some really good parts as a movie. Like it's just sort of a competent 1940s movie, but it's not terrible.

Yeah, I agree. It has a lot of new stuff or newish stuff. And you listed them, but you know, just the slight variations in the zombie strain, Nazi zombies, I mean, that's a massive trope that is around today. And it's neat to see it in a very kind of seedling form in this film. So yeah, I recommend this one. This is worth checking out. And it's always easy to recommend these things when you remind people they're like 58 minutes long. So yeah, it's like that's an episode of a Star Trek The Next Generation.

You can do it.

OK, John, next up, you and I are fated or doomed to discover what the next movie we'll be watching is. So producer Brad, can you break the news to us?

Hit me, Brad.

You're not. Sometimes I can be a friend.

OK. Oh, wow.

So I think this movie is interesting because the Nazi is the monster in this film. The zombies are, as you said, they're not as terrifying, and they actually do good at the end of the film. So let's jump to 1966, when we truly have the Nazi zombies with Frozen Dead.

Oh, all right. OK. Exciting. Now, fair warning, I don't think we could find this one streaming. So I had to buy it on DVD, and I actually bought, I ended up with two copies.

So write to John if you need a copy.

Write to John, the first two people get a free copy of the Frozen Dead. OK, so we'll be watching. We're passing around a DVD on this one. It looks exciting though.

Yeah. The poster just popped up here. So I'll describe it. So first of all, we have a really big, there's no green on this. There's not that greenish orange aesthetic that almost everything has had to date. I suppose it's because we're many years later. It's a blue and white poster.

I see blue.

The tagline is Frozen alive for 20 years.

Yes.

They now they return from their icy graves to seek vengeance. And we have a fairly artfully designed title, like the Frozen Dead, but it's sort of stylized so that it's hard to describe, but you should Google it. Part of the F is like forming a bar across a door that a lot of zombies are trying to burst through, I think. And then there's a screaming woman in a low cut dress, of course. So, what else?

And it stars Dana Andrews, who is, maybe it's just in my age, but this is somebody I recognize. And I'm just looking to see, what else would I have seen him in that I would recognize? A lot of stuff in the 40s. Oh, he was in a lot of noir movies. That's why that face is familiar. I see, you can see him in a fedora, you know, smoking a cigarette. That makes sense. But this is after that, right?

But it's before Night of the Living Dead. Is that right, Brad?

Two years before.

Okay.

Interesting.

Guys, I'm actually really excited about this one.

All right. Well, we'll see you next time for The Frozen Dead. 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.