Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast that watches all the zombie films, including back-to-back Santo films. That's right, it's time for 1970s Santo and Blue Demon in The World of the Dead.

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

Zombie.

Zombie?

What's a zombie?

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

They are the living dead.

Get me the zombies!

Against an army of zombies, no armies could stand!

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

I’ve seen the dead rise.

Kill the brain, and you kill the ghoul.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to your favorite Santo movie podcast, Zombie Strains. I'm John.

I'm Andy.

And I'm Brad.

John and Brad, did you ever guess when we started this podcast that we would be seeing more Santo than like Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi?

I did not.

I think Bela is still in the lead though.

Okay.

Yes.

It's just been so long, so long since we've seen one.

That's true. But yes, I was surprised and I'm actually delighted that we get a couple more Santo movies. I enjoyed the first one so much. Didn't do great on the last one, but we'll see about this one. I'm feeling a little stronger about it. But I want to hear what you guys have to say.

I have some hot takes about this one compared to the last one we watched, but I'll save that for later.

I'm ready for that. Anyone reading anything zombie or horror-related or watching anything good that they want to talk about?

Not really. I have been considering revisiting a Stephen King novel or two because I've got some travel coming up and those are good, take it on the road books. And I was eyeing his only zombie novel, Cell. Did you ever read that, John or Brad?

I didn't because the press was not great. It was, it came out, it was sort of his first book sort of back.

Yeah. And I've read it before. It's not, it's definitely not one of his better ones, but the zombie theme might lure me back just because.

Yeah. No, I actually probably should read it. That's one I, that's one I just decided to skip, but.

When you say it's one of his first ones back, what does that mean?

Well, he had the accident.

Okay.

So it's back in that era.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's back right after the accident. It's not, it's not like Dreamcatcher bad, but it is.

It was just forgettable. Yeah.

That's what I've heard.

How about you, John? Yeah.

I am reading this horror novel that is not strictly zombie related, though it does. We've had a couple of zombie movies set during the Black Plague or with, you know, a history set in the Black Plague. I'm reading a book set in the Black Plague, called, it has an unfortunate title, which is Between Two Fires, because that reminds everybody of Between Two Ferns. However, it came out in 2012, which is before that. Anyway, it's a story of a knight who comes across a plague village where everyone is dead, except for one girl who seems like pure beyond reasonable belief. And he somehow convinces himself that he's got to take her and protect her to Paris on her holy mission during the Black Death. So, it's pretty good so far.

Does it feature lullabies about pure water saving you?

No, but there is a lot of talk about water because they have trouble finding it and they have trouble finding food. So, it's very interesting.

That's a deep cut for, you know, faithful listeners.

That's right. We're not going to spill that. If you know, you know. All right, gang. Well, I mean, I think we just get to it. Anything else we want to talk about or let's go? Brad, how did we get here? How did we get to Santo number two in a row?

Well, I think our Mexican film friends were just making a lot of Santo in 1970. There were five of them that came out.

Yeah.

And just as a preview, which I'm excited about, we're going to watch a lot of Mexican films in the first half of this season. So we'll be talking about that more as we watch more of them.

You know, guys, if like two Marvel movies come out in a year, I feel superhero fatigue. I don't know how I'm going to be doing by Santo number four.

We'll see.

Well, The World of the Dead was released in Mexico on October 1st, 1970. It came out only a few months after Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters. Horror films released this same month were The Vampire Lovers with Peter Cushing, it's a Hammer film, and House of Dark Shadows, a feature film based on the TV show Dark Shadows. Mainstream films included The Great White Hope starring James Earl Jones, CC and Company starring Joan Amoth, and the post-apocalyptic film No Blade of Grass, which I hadn't heard of, but I looked it up and I might track it down and watch it.

All right.

Let me know if you find it.

Now, The World of the Dead has the same production team as the last film we watched, Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters. It's Gilberto Martínez Solaris directing, Rafael Garcia Trevici and Jose and Jesus Sotomayor Martinez wrote the script.

So it's the same team that did the last one. Did they just get a good night's sleep before doing this one?

I don't know. They may have been doing it at the same time. If they're smart, they stage things like the set is here, let's just use it.

Yeah. Well, first of all, well, there's something that happens at the end of the film that I found absolutely fascinating, but we'll get to that. But I am curious. Yeah, they seem to be a little more, I mean, this is no great work of cinema, but it seems a little sharper than the last one.

Yeah.

We'll say that.

And I think the quality of the film version I watched was pretty poor, so it's hard to see at times. I don't know about what you guys watched.

I watched it on YouTube and it was supposed to be 4K and it wasn't fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, since this is our third Santo film, I won't go over all the details of Santo, but the highlights are he was the most popular luchador in Mexico and made over 50 films. Blue Demon co-stars with Santo. He was the second most popular and he starred in 25 films and nine of those were with Santo. Co-starring with them was Pilar Pieser. She played both Lady Damiana and Alicia. She had a long career that stretched from 1950 to 2018.

I feel like I recognized her, but that may be just a false memory.

Well, I'll bring up a movie in a bit. Let's see if you remember her from this. Now, she won an aerial award for best actress in 1974 for the film La Chocca. She appeared in a few English language films like the 1968 Western Day of the Evil Gun that starred Glenn Ford and Dean Jagger. And you guys should recognize the name Dean Jagger.

I recognize the name Glenn Ford, but not Dean Jagger.

Well, Dean Jagger, not only was he in White Christmas, but he was in Revolt of the Zombies as the mad scientist. All the way back in 1936.

Yes, and Glenn Ford played Superman's dad in the Chris Reeve Superman. Right.

Now, the film you may recognize P. Acer from was 1981's George Hamilton film, Zorro the Gay Blade.

Oh, 100%.

I think she was like the wife of one of the mobsters in the film.

I missed that one. I grew up watching the old Disney Zorro TV show, but I totally missed the 1980s or a movie. Huh?

Wasn't that who was the guy? Is it Guy Williams who was the Zorro in that TV show, who was also in Lost in Space? Okay. We're getting way off track.

Let's put it back in.

Back on target.

Yes.

I do have a Zorro tie-in to this movie, by the way. We'll get to it when we get to it.

Okay. She died in 2020 and she worked up until 2018, so she had a long career.

I always like it when an actor didn't have to quit, and they could just be a working actor their whole career.

Antonio Roxel played Don Alfonso. He has over 300 acting credits. He had a role in Dr. Satan, which we still have to watch. He was also one of the three archaeologists in The Living Head, one of the first Mexican zombie films that we watched.

Oh, yeah. I didn't recognize him, but I remember that.

Well, there are two guys who look very similar. There's three archaeologists and two of them were thin, with distinguished goatees. He was one of the guys.

Okay.

Now, he was also a voice actor dubbing American movies into Spanish. So he was the voice of Spock in Star Trek II and VI.

Nice.

And he was the voice of Commissioner Gordon in the 1966 Batman the Movie. Awesome. And back to back, Santo means I don't have much else to add. So Andy, do you have any historical context that you want to add in?

Well, yeah. So 1970 in Mexico was, there's a lot going on. And I feel a little weird talking about it in the context of a Santo movie, which I think is going to be pretty divorced from a lot of the interesting cultural movements that are going on at the time. However, let me go through a few things and who knows, maybe we'll pick out a few points of connection. So one thing I wanted to bring up, I'm not a sports person, but right now we're doing a World Cup, right?

I'm missing the Portugal-Croatia game to record this podcast.

Okay. And that's soccer.

And that is football.

And the beautiful game, Andy.

Mexico has a big presence in the World Cup, right?

Mexico is the, here's my opinion on Mexican sport, on Mexican soccer. They are the nation that is the most enthusiastic about soccer that has not won a World Cup yet. Because they are soccer crazy and it's amazing.

Well, in 1970, shortly before this movie dropped, Mexico hosted the World Cup.

As they're doing this year.

Oh, hey, there you go. And it was the first World Cup that was broadcast live in color all around the world.

Oh, wow.

And it was part of a, it was a big cultural moment for Mexico. The government really tried to use it as a sort of driver of patriotic sentiment and present Mexico on the global stage as a modern, industrious state.

Yeah, I think, like, if you're familiar maybe with the Olympics, you see all the work that countries do to get the Olympics and promote their country during it, the World Cup is the same.

So according to the Internet, I don't know anything about this. The Internet tells me that the 1970 World Cup was a pretty big one.

Yes.

And that Pele was in it.

He was.

He wasn't on the Mexican team, I don't think.

No, Brazil.

Brazil, right. So anyway, big World Cup, I guess. So you guys know more about that than me. That was a really big cultural moment in Mexico. But so in 1970, 1970, Mexico was in the midst of a big, youth-driven counterculture movement that centered and encompassed a lot of avant-garde literature, music and art and film. So directors like Jodorowsky, if I'm pronouncing that right, were active at this time doing a lot of surrealist stuff. And what had happened is two years earlier, the Mexican government had massacred a bunch of students in 1968 in the, forgive the pronunciation, the Tlatelolco massacre. And by 1970, this had really shaped into a counterculture movement that is sometimes called La Honda, the wave. And so it's hard for me to see how a Santo movie about Santo punching a bunch of zombies fits into this, but let's think about that. So there's a lot going on in Mexico at the time. One of my favorite authors, Roberto Balaño, is Chilean, but he was in Mexico at the time of the massacre in 68, and he wrote, and that informed a lot of his later writing, which includes some of my favorite novels. So lots going on in Mexico.

By the way, Andy, Brazil featuring Pele did win that World Cup, just so you know.

Oh, okay. Yeah, Pele, I remember as a kid, I like knew who Pele was. I don't know how or why.

He was the first breakout soccer star. We will not get into it, but he played for 20 years or something in five different World Cups, and he's a legend.

So while I was watching this movie, guys, something has been kind of bugging me about these Mexican films we've been watching. And I'm just curious if either of you guys have noticed. Have you guys noticed anything that I'm not, I'm getting you have to be canceled here? Have you noticed anything about the ethnicity of the actors in the vast majority of these Mexican films?

I haven't. I assumed all of most of them were Mexican.

They are, but they are all white skinned, white and fair skinned. They look very European, which has struck me as odd because Mexico is a really ethnically diverse, it's a huge country, of course, and encompasses a really wide range of ethnicities. There's a bunch of indigenous ethnicities, there's a substantial portion of people from Africa, and then there's plenty of people of European descent as well. But it just struck me as a little odd that a country that pride has throughout history, Mexico has officially presented itself as being proud of its multi-ethnic identity. And it just seemed weird to me that we were seeing a lot of light-skinned actors and very, very few indigenous actors. So I looked it up, and yeah, it was a thing in mid-century Mexico, despite kind of official ideology that Mexico was kind of a post-racial nation. The reality was that light skin was associated with sort of higher class. And so while there were programs and movies that featured indigenous and darker skinned actors, if you were in a major, a leading role in a major Mexican movie, you were almost certainly to be light skinned for that reason. Interesting.

And it's not too different from here. I mean, we went, right? We had in the 30s and 40s, we had black actors in our films, and then we went like two decades without seeing one black skin person in our film. So it seems like not a localized trend.

Yeah, exactly. You know, it's just fascinating. I'm pretty ignorant on the subject. So, you know, forgive my ignorance, but it's just interesting to see Mexican, the ethnic tensions and dialogues that are just as impactful as the sort of ethnic situations going on in the US, but they just take a very different form due to Mexico's history at this time. So the last thing I wanted to say is that Mexico is in the middle. Me and John are big Cold War dorks, and Mexico is in the middle of what's sometimes called the Mexican Dirty War, which is basically the Mexican front of the Cold War. It involved a lot of ugly stuff. The US was involved along with a number of other countries in ways that probably won't make you feel super great about the US. But it is an interesting time in Mexican history. And right into that comes Santo and his sidekick, Blue Demon.

All right.

So that's all I got.

So it's interesting that you say that, Andy, because they solved this problem by actually setting the beginning and the first half of the film, not in 1970, but in 1676. So given that, give us a 30 second recap of the time traveling romp we go on here.

Yeah. So I never know what I'm going to get when we watch a Santo movie, except that it will involve wrestling. Yeah. But I was not expecting that this movie would start in the 1700s. And like the first third of this movie is basically giving us back story that's going to inform the second two thirds. What we learn is that Santo's descendant, who is also a masked vigilante, known as the white masked knight, is that it? The silver masked knight.

The knight with the silver mask.

Knight and silver mask.

Yep.

Is fighting for the inquisition, basically, against satanists, satanic cultists in 1700s Mexico. And so we get a big sequence in which Santo runs up against an evil witch named Dona Damiana. And that storyline resolves. But then we skip forward 300 years where the spirit of Dona Damiana is possessing one of her distant descendants to take vengeance on Santo and all of Santo's friends who were all related to the people that persecuted these satanists back in the 1700s. I don't know if that makes any sense. Lots of wrestling happens. There's some teleporting zombies. There's a lot of wrestling happens. And then it culminates with a trip to hell, so it's pretty wild.

It's pretty wild.

Even by Santo's standards, it's kind of wild.

It was just very convenient for Damiana that her descendant is actually dating Santo. So she didn't have to go far to seek her vengeance.

All of their descendants are still like best pals 300 years in the future.

And look the same.

What's so interesting is that like this is a trope that we've seen many, many, many times in modern films, which is the actors from the past play their newer versions that have to deal with some sort of curse from the past. I was surprised to see it in a Santo film though. I don't know why. Maybe there's another film. I should have liked this up. Was there a film in 1970 that, like in a case like this, I think what you have to do is say, is there a successful film in the recent past before this film, where they said, let's do that, but with Santo?

That's a great question. That's usually a good guide for that. Blue Demon's also in this.

Yes.

And we get kind of the dark backstory of the Blue Demon in this one.

Yes. He's definitely less blue and more demon in this one.

All right. So hey, John, you're leading the discussion today, so lead the way.

Yeah. So we start in the middle of a witch trial, and I do not think I am wrong in saying the Santo film has taken a hard pivot into salaciousness right out of the gate.

I had this noted too.

They are tormenting witches and their accomplices, and the first and the opening credits almost sort of take place over a woman being whipped by an inquisitor for an extended period of time that is really awkward, and then people being burned at the stake by those inquisitors as well.

Yeah. I thought it was interesting. Apparently, when the inquisition whipped you, you would moan in a sexy way instead of like screaming in pain.

So yeah, it is leaning into the 70s grind house in a way that I did not expect from Santo.

Maybe it's not your father's Santo.

I'm beginning to suspect not. So they are pretty, and they extend these things. So not only is the whipping seen a while, but as these men who have been condemned by an inquisitor, burned to death, they just have extended views of them. Well, Damiano looks on and proclaims vengeance for what the inquisition is doing. Yeah.

We see some special effects of their skin, kind of like blistering.

Blistering and bubbling, yeah.

It's quite a bit more gruesome than the last run we had with Santo.

Absolutely. And just a quick comment on the inquisition. So there was in, at this time, there was an active inquisition in New Spain at the time, in the 1600s, and it had actually been going on for almost 100 years. And it did not end until 1805, which is bonkers to me. And for those not familiar, who have only seen History of the World Part 1, the inquisition was the Catholic Church's attempt to weed out blasphemers from their midst. And that did mean things like witches and sorcerers, but it more meant three other groups. One is the sort of morally impure, mostly philanderers, mostly people who cheated on their spouses, mostly women who cheated on their spouses. That was a big target for the inquisition. But the other one really, and this veers into territory we don't normally cover, but their real goal was to weed out Protestants and Jews in their midst. That was the inquisition's real job. And there was an active one in New Spain. And the fact that it went to 1805, like 15 years after the founding of the United States of America in what is supposedly the Enlightenment, just really turned my head. I just had no idea.

And Santo is on the side of the Inquisitors. I don't know about you guys. About the time people were being slowly burned to death, I was on team Satanists here. I don't know about you guys.

Well, and they set it up like, so the chief Inquisitor has like this goatee that is very, he looks like the devil. And then his sidekick is a monk who is, we'll use the term corpulent, right? He looks like a corrupt monk from a more modern film. And I keep expecting like Santo to challenge them. No, he's just on team Inquisition, like these two characters who would so obviously be clearly evil to me are like pals.

And there's a third one, the guy who actually does the burning is showing like laughing and grinning with glee as he watches them burn.

What happens is Damiana, who's the main witch, watches these burnings and she summons her people to a ritual. And they're going to summon a demon to help them take vengeance for these killings. We meet the Silver Mask Knight. We see him briefly. This is Santo. He is wearing, he's not a knight. It's 1676, so it's not like a medieval knight in heavy armor or something. He's more like a, well, more like Zorro, right? He has like a silver frilly shirt and a silver mask, and he fences. He doesn't really, they're not like hacking each other with broadswords, so it's a very sort of modernist interpretation.

Yeah, it's like a swashbuckling Santo.

A swashbuckling knight, yes. Yeah, which is absolutely amazing. Okay, so we're kind of all over the place, so let me try to focus this in. So the next thing Domiana is going to do is she's going to conduct a ritual to summon help from the underworld to help her defeat the silver masked knight. So I want to say two things. First of all, this ritual is amazing.

It is, I thought so too.

Yeah, first of all, the witches just have conical hats like dunce caps. They don't have like the brims, which is pretty great. And then the village, the townsfolk who are like in league with these satanists, just do these sort of jaunty little dances as the satanic ritual is going on. But they end up summoning a creature. But what creature do they summon?

Well, real quick, so the entity they call on is Astaroth. I always get kind of interested in the details of these little demonic ceremonies. This just reminded me a lot, made me think a lot of Dr. Satan versus Black Magic, which has some good devilish ceremonies. But the demon that appears, would you say that it is a bluish in color demon?

It is a bluish demon. We also should say this film is in color. And our first one wasn't, and I sort of have blocked out the last one. I don't think that was in color. I can't remember.

Yes, it was in color.

I was being stupid, but the demon who appears is blue demon. Who we know from the last movie as Santo's sidekick. As has been described, he's like the Batman to Santo's Superman.

Yes, but in this case-

But in this movie, he's been sent on behalf of the devil.

Of Lucifer himself to help her complete her mission, he states very clearly that he has no will of his own, but the triumph of evil is near. Can we stop and talk about blue demon?

Yeah.

Here? So if blue demon is summoned from the afterlife, and he's come back to life, and he has no will of his own, is blue demon a zombie? I don't think so, but I wanted to pose the question.

See, I think he is very much a figure like Dr. Satan. He's like an emissary.

Yes. Yeah.

I don't think he's like, quote, undead.

The devil owns his soul.

Yeah. It's kind of a Greek mythology version of hell and the underworld. And yeah, so it's kind of implied that Blue Demon was defeated or overcome by the devil and forced into service.

Yes. Yeah. So they hatch a plan, and I was interested in the dynamic here because I don't think I understood it. I think she thought she controlled Blue Demon, but there's scenes later where he demands that she follow through on her mission, and if she fails, she's going to face great punishment.

Yeah, she gets a little mouthy with Blue Demon, but I think he is in a position of authority as he represents Lucifer himself.

Yes. So in any case, we cut back to Santo and his lady friend, and they are going to get married, and he says, we can, but I have a mission from the Inquisition I have to kill or I have to get rid of, Domiana, before we can get married. There's multiple plots to kill Santo, and at this point, we're maybe 10 or 15 minutes in, and I'm thinking to myself, there have been fights, but in sword fights, which is cool, but are we going to see a Santo film without a prolonged wrestling?

I had the same thought.

Yeah. I was like, is this really going to happen?

Listeners, don't worry. You can relax.

So Santo, they have an exchange. Santo, it's so funny. They do this thing where like villains just invite the heroes over so they can have like a face-to-face chat. So first, the monk goes to see Domiana and scares her with a cross.

Yeah. I wanted to say about this cross. So all you have to do to fend off all of the bad guys in this movie is produce a crucifix. And if you're going to be a satanic cultist, you gotta develop a tolerance for basic symbols of Christianity because otherwise it's just very easy to figure out who you are.

As an alternate, you could also stop trying to kill people inside of churches, which this group does not seem to learn, but let's come back to that.

Yes.

Also, Santo goes to see Domiana and she tries to kill him with a knife.

Yeah.

She fails, but the knife brand Santo's hand. He leaves, and when he leaves, Blue Demon shows up and says, you cannot fail again. You must kill Santo the next time. At this point, Domiana has the actual zombies we're getting in this film. So she goes to...

Yeah. Can we talk about that real quick?

Can we talk about this graveyard?

Yeah. So what I love about this graveyard is there's a sign in there that says, here, good Christians, beyond this point, everyone in the cemetery is a Satanist, so don't go to this part of the cemetery. Yes. I love that there was a sign for that.

And they make a distinction between these two parts by having one smoke machine in the Satan part that is working its ass off to try to make this seem like a sinister place, and it's not really working. So, yeah.

I want to, you know, I'm not opposed to dividing cemeteries into Satanist and non-Satanist halves.

It seems reasonable.

Yeah.

Like, yeah. However, she goes to the Satanist half because she's got to summon help in the form of what, Andy? What does she summon?

She summons four zombies.

Yes.

So we see a bunch of clips of kind of skeletal hands that look very zombie-esque.

This will come up later, but did you recognize where those clips were from? Because they're the same ones at the end.

They sure looked like the sort of thing you would find in a Hercules movie.

They were from, they are from Hercules in the haunted world.

But it's a little bit of a fake out though, because the actual zombies, when they appear, look like wrestlers with a little bit of gray makeup on them to, I guess, sort of evoke that they're zombies?

I think they're trying to be a little green makeup, but yeah.

Mostly just look like wrestlers.

Yes. And so there's a plot to kill Santo in his home. It's kind of fun. There's a sword fight. I'm always here for sword fights.

Yeah. This is where the Zorro connection is that this sword fight is, it's quite good. It's, it's a, it's an enjoyably choreographed sword fight and it looks exactly like something you would see in, see in any episode of the 1950s Zorro show.

Yes. And so the priest heals Santo's hand. Santo writes a letter to his descendants talking about his battle against the servants of Satan. In one point in this fight, Santo swings from a chandelier and kicks people in the chest, which is amazing.

Yeah.

And then all Santo has to do is pick up a cross and they disappear.

Yeah. Well, it's the, this is not the first time that bad guys who are forced to flee when day breaks and the sun comes out, seem to attack, start their attack on Santo about four minutes before daybreak.

Over and over.

Yeah.

Yes. So they have to flee. However, things are not over. Blue Demon gets in the game. He's gonna kill Santo. And while Blue Demon is doing that, Domiana is going to kill Santo's betrothed, which she does. And though they capture Domiana and foil her plans, and Blue Demon's plans, Santo's betrothed is dead. Domiana is defeated and declares a curse. In 300 years, I will have my vengeance. And that is the end of our sort of prequel, our act one prequel.

Yeah. This is way longer than like a prologue scene. This is like a whole 30 minute episode of something.

Yeah. It's the first act of the film. Like, and at this point, we're given no indication that the film was going to be anything other than this, other than it's short. And you realize it's coming to an end and like, okay, we're probably going to shift forward, right?

Yeah. I was intrigued. I think Santo, I think this is just one of Santo's ancestors, but I am kind of intrigued by the idea that Santo and Blue Demon are like eternal champions in the more cocky sense.

With the same masks, right?

Like that's fantastic. I hope that, you know what? That's true. We've just made it canon. So, in any case, as Domiana is being burned at the stake, she speaks her curse, and then we move to, and this is actually a great transition. We move to a woman who is the is just the same actress that played Domiana, but she is having a dream about being burned to death, and she wakes up screaming, and she's in 1970 Mexico. This is Alicia, and her dad comes in to see why he's screaming, and her dad is the Inquisitor, who sentenced everyone to death, and she's worried that they're going mad. And we quickly find out she is Santo's girlfriend. They are together. In fact, they go on a date, and where do they go on their date, Andy?

Well, they decide to take a romantic tour of the old Inquisition dungeon where Amiana and the zombies and satanists were burned to death.

So, if Santo is nothing, if not a hopeless romantic. But then they go to a groovy party.

Yeah. So the party is pretty groovy. And throughout this, Alicia wears, I don't know what the term for it is, but it's very like swinging 60s outfits.

It's called a, it's called a shift dress.

Okay.

And you can imagine if you, you could see Jackie O or Twiggy, if those names mean anything to you. It's a, it's a, it's a one piece dress that comes down to about mid thigh and often has like a belt at the waist.

Yeah.

And you would, and it's one, usually one solid bright color.

Do you guys remember how when we're watching the 60s films, we're waiting for the 60s culture to show up? Yeah, now we're waiting for the 60s culture to go away.

Yeah, absolutely. So they, so, but this is the, this is the part where it all starts to sort of come together. I think you made this note, Andy. She starts sleepwalking. So her name is Alicia. She's the reincarnation of Domiana. And she starts sleepwalking, muttering things, subtle things like, finally, revenge is mine.

And the hour of revenge has come.

Yes.

Her father says, yeah, I keep finding her wandering around saying the hour of revenge has come, which made me laugh.

Yeah, that seems a lot. But what happens is she wakes up and she sort of sleepwalks, I think into the basement of the church.

Yeah, this was confusing, which seemed to be like also the basement of her house.

Yeah, and there were mummified bodies there.

I got excited because I thought we were going to get real corpse zombies, because she goes down there and she finds the mummified remains of, I think, some of the Satanists that were killed.

Yes.

And I was bummed out that when we do see the zombies again, they again just look like living wrestlers.

No, sadly, that's all they are.

Because they had some cool props here in this scene.

Yes, but what I will say, what is cool about this scene is functionally what has happened is, Domiana's spirit from the past has summoned Alicia into this basement and had her stumble across Domiana's evil knife that she used to attack Santo, that she plans to use to kill him now. So she gets Alicia to take that back to her house. And this is, I think, like a phylactery for Domiana. Like she is bound to this knife. So by bringing the knife back to her room, she's freed Domiana, who then possesses her and makes her do her will. But Domiana also sort of wanders as a spirit at the same time. It seems like it's like a lazy choice because they're cheap, but I actually feel like it's kind of a cool way to have this curse manifest. I don't know, what did you think?

I agree. I like the special effect where Domiana possesses. It's suggested that Domiana can take control of Alicia when Alicia is sleeping. So Alicia will lay down to go to bed and you will see the transparent form of Domiana laying down and superimposing herself on Alicia, and then Alicia will wake up with an evil gleam in her eye.

Yes. But Domiana's first mission is to kill the knight in the silver mask's descendant, who is Santo. And here's where she does it. So first of all, I want to say, for those worried that we were not going to get an extended wrestling sequence, fear not. Here we are. I want to say one thing before we get to the wrestling match, which is they intercut, which I always think is fascinating, like actual footage of Santo walking into a wrestling arena and being carried up to the ring. Like this footage is not from this film. It's clearly like stock footage. The crowd is bananas. Like you just, you have to see it to believe it. Like it's crazy and really fun. But once they get in the wrestling ring, clearly it's just we're back in the regular movie. However, Domeana's first plan is to essentially distract Santo. So she keeps appearing. Santo's manager thinks he sees her. And then when Santo is in the ring fighting, he keeps seeing her ghost and it distracts him. And it distracts him so much. Andy, he loses two out of three falls in this wrestling match. Two and nobody.

It's brutal. Yeah.

What the hell? Like I'm worried about Santo now. I wasn't worried about the ghost, the demons or the knives or anything, but Santo losing a wrestling match, that's bananas.

Yes. Santo, do you know? I don't know if this is like a signature move of Santo or just a regular wrestling move. But did you notice how many times Santo is like pinned to the ground, and he gets his legs around the neck of the other guy and he like flips him? It reminds me of like black, it's like a Black Widow move from the Avengers. Yes. It does it like five times. It's how he gets out of anytime you've got him pinned down, don't let him get his legs around your neck.

Yes. And also, I would note, the one hint we get that maybe Santo, the actor and the person is slowing down a little bit is we're starting to see some sped up film in the wrestling matches to keep the action exciting. So after he loses, so this surprised me because I just assumed that Santo was like Richard Roundtree and just, he had it in his contract that he doesn't lose, but apparently not. Apparently, Santo as a plot point can lose a wrestling match. This shocked me. But now we're back. Now, the movie sort of moves from scene to scene without transition or explanation a lot. So I feel like I'm doing a lot of explaining. I'm going to sort of gloss over a couple of bits here. But what happens is that the monk from 1676 is now a priest in 1970, and he is looking through a book that is called The Holy Office of New Spain, which is essentially the log of the Inquisition. And he is reading it. And then Santo in a minute is going to be reading a book called Exorcism and Witchcraft, which is the book that he wrote to his future self back in 1676. So they're starting to figure out the plot, what's going on here, right? So just to stop and summarize, Santo is off his game because he keeps seeing spirits. Alicia is weird. She's wandering the night. And now we're going to start to see some deaths starting to happen among Santo's friends, who by the way are identical to the people who were the Inquisitors back in 1676.

Yeah, and it's about to ramp up a little bit. And can I just say it was about this time I realized like, this feels like a horror movie that happens to have Santo in it. I mean, yes, we've got these really long wrestling scenes shoehorned in, but this could have been the plot of quite a few movies we watched in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

Absolutely. And so Santo is reclining at home, reading his book on witchcraft, and he gets a phone call. His friend is having a supernatural experience, so he hops up, he's going to go rescue his friend, and four zombies appear. Now, can we talk about, Andy, would you describe how creatures, Domiana and the zombies keep teleporting in and out of scenes. Would you describe how that happens for our faithful listeners?

I don't know what the special effect is called, but they just pop into the scene. There's no real special effects around it.

There's no smoke.

They just pop in, and then they sometimes pop back out. So they could teleport directly to where they want to go. They don't have to travel there on foot, I guess.

Yes. And so anyway, Santo is fighting these guys. They're beating him no matter what he does. He kills them, whatever, they keep coming back. Fortunately, as you pointed out, they have attacked four minutes before dawn, and Santo was saved by the dawn again. However, not without getting his hand branded in the same way it was in 1676.

Yeah, it's kind of a cool, evil rune. It's like an upside down triangle.

Yes, but the symbol of this cult, basically.

Yeah, but the points don't quite touch. So it's like three lines. Yeah, it is kind of cool. However, what happens now is it's a series of killings by Domiana and her minions. We get the woman actually back who was whipped at the beginning of the film. So finally, at 52 minutes and 36 seconds, we have a car, our first car.

You must have been so frustrated, John.

I know. And fortunately, it was easy. It's a 1965 Ford Mustang. It's iconic. My dad had one, and then I was born, and then he had a Pontiac station wagon. So I think, I think there was always a little resentment about that car. But the car pulls up, and it is, it is one of Santo's friends, but is also the man who is laughing in delight at the burnings in 1676. And he is with the woman who was whipped at the beginning of the film. And they, and Domiana teleports into the car, and they kill this man.

Yeah.

And then disappear.

So, Domiana is just basically going down her kill list of all the old people that did her wrong.

Yes. And then, well, I love what happens next. We cut to a scene with Alicia and her dad and the priest, and they're like, hey, I think we should delay the wedding. And she's like, why?

Yeah.

Well, honey, I think you're possessed, and Santo seems awfully busy. And then this is immediately followed by the priest licking up a passage from Luke about exorcism. So, I don't know if you're familiar with this passage, but I don't know if it's even real.

No, it is. It's a famous story where Jesus sends a whole bunch of demons out of somebody into a herd of pigs, and then the herd of pigs jumps off of a cliff.

Oh, wow. All right. The other note I have is that, so the priest gives Alicia a blessed cross to wear at night. And what happens is Alicia's dad is sitting there next to her while she's sleeping, and Domiana possesses his mind and gets him to take off the cross so that she can re-enter her body. But the other note I have is, where's Blue Demon? We haven't seen Blue Demon since 1676. So again, the attempts to kill Santo continue. So what is the next thing that every villain in a Santo movie is going to do to try to kill Santo?

That happened in the last movie, in the wrestling ring. They got to get him into the ring against a zombie.

Correct. And so very subtly, there's a wrestler with a mask or a bag over his head, until he gets into the ring, and then you see it's one of the zombies with the very weak green-gray face paint on. Yeah. And then there's another zombie.

Yeah. Another zombie teleports in that has to be violating some rules of wrestling.

Yeah. I don't think so. But yeah. But here's the big thing, Andy. The zombies fight and it's pretty ferocious. And what happens to Santo?

I couldn't believe this.

I thought this movie was, my note here says, wait, is this director's cut? Like, yeah, what is happening here?

We are definitely moving into like deleted scene territory because Santo gets stabbed in the chest.

Yeah. This is Zack Snyder cut.

So yeah, Santo gets stabbed and it looks like he's dead, but it turns out he is just barely clinging to life. And so then we get a remarkably gruesome scene, John, tell us about it.

Well, it's gruesome in the sense that we get a series of, we get a montage of images of open heart surgery, including somebody using a knife and a rib splitter to open his chest. However, what's great about it is, it's actually like four different surgeries that they've just sort of mashed together and put tense music behind. And it's sort of delightfully terrible.

But to be clear, it looks like it's real surgery. It is real.

No, it is footage of a real heart operation.

Human heart, yeah.

Yeah, 100%. It's not fake. It's also not like Santo. But it's, I was fascinated they put this and just lingered on it. Like this is, it's gruesome, but it's like acceptable gruesome because it's just surgery. It's life-saving surgery and not scientific.

It's like sneaking in. It's like, yeah.

It's not gonna scar you for life, but it's like so much more gruesome than anything in a Sant... I mean, I think of Santo as a very PG superhero at most, right?

Yes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, anyway, so we get this kind of graphic surgery scene.

Yeah, and so then Santo goes home, and he's just reading in bed. He's fine. Can I say, can I say, just if I may get a little personal for a moment, my wife had open-heart surgery, and she was not fighting satanists the next day. I just want to say that.

Did she have the opportunity?

You know what? I did keep the satanists away for four to six weeks. So you're right. Maybe I underestimated her. However, there's a big fight in the yard of the Inquisition Castle, including a woman who has a pitchfork. Like, I don't even know where that came from. It's kind of amazing. But anyway.

Well, the movie clearly is reaching the end of its run time, and they're like, we got to get to the end. And so they just sort of, right after the surgery scene, Santo is off having a big fight again.

Yeah. And so in any case, I think Domiana is defeated and the zombies are defeated, but Alicia's soul has been stolen and taken to hell by Domiana. And she's in a, she's essentially in a coma, right?

I didn't really understand, but yeah, that's the idea that somehow Alicia is in the underworld now.

Right. So the plan is Santo is going to go to the underworld to save her, while the priest performs an exorcism on Domiana's spirit inside of her. This is the near the end of the film, but it's, it gets wild.

It's such a wild turn.

So I want to say like, so they get into this scene and it's like, they're running across all of these suspension bridges back and forth, like they can't find each other. And the film is tinted red and there's this creepy music. And then there's like these bubbling pools and stuff. And that's when I realized, wait, most of the footage from this scene is from Hercules and the Haunted World, which is a movie we watch. And these like demons come out to chase them. There's no dialogue, there's no talking. And at one point, even to the point, do you remember in Hercules and the Haunted World, we were making fun of Hercules because what he was doing is picking up these giant stone plinths and throwing them? Like, they reused the footage to the point where they have Santo do that same action and then cut to footage of the zombies from Hercules and the Haunted World being hit by the plinth for no reason other than they had this footage to use. I think that's amazing.

And they suddenly have the flying zombies down here too.

And the flying zombies from Hercules and the Haunted World are here? Like, yeah, it's crazy.

It's a crossover.

You know, it's a little sad though because I do think, I think very highly of the look and style of those flying zombies from Hercules, and they just look a lot better than anything this movie managed to do on its own.

Yes. That's why the vibe struck me so hard. But then they escape with the help of who, Andy?

Well, at the very end, we've been waiting for it. They're getting over, Santo is getting overrun by zombies in the Underworld.

Yep.

And who should come running up and punches all the zombies out? It's Blue Demon.

It's Blue Demon sort of redeeming himself.

Yes.

And saving Santo and Alicia.

And so Blue Demon tells them how to get out, because there's a time limit all of a sudden. And by helping Santo, I guess he's redeemed himself.

I didn't quite follow. I think they needed to just get him back in there because they realized they hadn't had him for an hour. The priest exercises Domiana out of Alicia and they get married and the film ends. Here's why I like this film better than the last one. In the first one we watched, there was like a speech that somebody gave about how great Santo was walking off seeking no reward. So at this one, we see Santo walking off and it says, So a man shielded by his faith manages to overcome evil and escape eternal darkness, to rise again and seek the luminous paths of light where truth and goodness will shine forever. It's amazing. I'm here for it. And that is a wrap, Andy, on Santo y Blue Demon and El Mundo de los Muertos. So what do we think about that whole thing?

Well, I have thoughts about this one. I will not lie. After the last Santo movie, my morale was a little low going into this one. Because I figured, if that last one, it looked like they were really tired of making Santo movies, and this one came after that one, what are the odds that they got re-energized with a fresh vision? But you know what? This was a much superior film to the last one. And it's because it works quite well, in my opinion, just as a straight forward horror movie.

And there's for sure one too many wrestling matches or fights at the end, or two or three, but it has pace, it has a plot you can follow. It's just sort of, it's so cheap, the effects are cheap, but it at least feels like a competent story that is engaging. Can he save Alicia? Is she possessed? How will she get free? I can't say I was super invested, but I was at least engaged with these characters and what was happening.

It made me wonder, so we've seen three Santo movies that had something of a horror genre lean. And I'm just curious, and I don't know if we know the answer, but did Santo do a bunch of genre movies? Is there like a Santo is a cowboy movie and Santo is a World War II Nazi fighter movie?

Another Santo is a spy movies.

Okay. Because I'm just curious if horror, and it's pretty PG horror with a few more gruesome bits. But I wonder if horror is part of the Santo's mythology, or if we just happen to be watching the handful of movies that took a genre turn like that.

Well, I think that these movies are for kids largely, and they have that vibe of the not really scary horror movie that we watched when we were little, right? Like, remember how we talked about it in the Night of the Living Dead? One, about how parents are used to dropping these kids off at the movie theater for these sort of harmless horror shows. And I feel like this Santo movie is in that vein of these sort of harmless horror shows for kids. Yeah.

So hey, shall we go through our traditional wrap up questions, John?

I feel like it's been a while, so let's do it.

Let's do it. All right. In Santo and Blue Demon, in the World of the Dead, is there a hero party?

There is. It's really just Santo and Alicia, though you could throw Alicia's dad in there.

Yeah, they've got kind of some minor sidekicks kind of clustered around them, but Santo is the hero.

Yes.

How does the party do? How many survive?

They all survive.

No.

Several of Fanto's friends get killed.

Yeah. His first, his 1700s girlfriend gets killed.

Yeah.

And then a bunch of his modern day friends get killed.

So kind of jerks back in the Inquisition days.

And Santo almost gets killed. I mean, so it doesn't count.

I thought he was dead.

I'm like, whoa.

They really upped the stakes on this one.

Yeah, I think so. I thought what happened when he got stabbed is he was going to move to the underworld.

And that was going to be the rest of the movie.

But they're like, no, we just need to patch him up.

That would have been a much cleaner way to do this, to be honest. And it would have let them chop out 15 kind of pointless minutes.

But that's okay.

Yes.

All right. In this movie, is there... Well, first of all, what kind of zombie are we dealing with in this movie?

So if we don't count Blue Demon as a zombie, we're just dealing with a classic resurrected zombie, resurrected by a witch or a sorceress.

Satanic mysticism.

Satanic mysticism. I like that. But they are indistinguishable from, say, the zombies that were summoned in the plague of the zombies.

Right?

They're summoned from death and put to you under the control of a master.

Yeah. And they are not shambling corpses. They are pretty good health-looking guys with some very slight...

With wrestler builds. Yeah.

Wrestler builds.

And they have all this... They don't speak or anything, but they do have all of the reflexes and the wrestling moves of a living wrestler.

Yes. And can I just say here, like one of my favorite things in this when you talk about the wrestler's physique is when Santo gets a break between falls in a wrestling match, is matter just that thing where in trying to relax his muscles and stuff, gives him a series of karate chops that is supposed to relax him. Like here, you just got the crap kicked out of you.

Let me punch you some more.

I just always cracks me up. But anyway, carry on.

All right. Is there a zombie horde?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's for, but it's hordish. It's a suggested horde.

And at the end, in the underworld, Santo does kind of, he's getting kind of swarmed by a hordish looking.

He does run into Hercules' zombies. There's something magical now that I think about it, of Santo just following in the steps of Hercules. If you can set aside the notion that they just did it because they had some footage and that's why they did it. Doesn't that sound like a great path? Like Santo is a great hero like Hercules.

You know what I mean?

So he's following the same path. However, I don't think that was their intention, but I'm going to think that because I liked it.

Well, the descent into the Underworld and the emergence from it is part of the classic hero journey, right? It's a very Greco-Roman myth cycle sort of thing to do.

Yes.

So, all right, how are zombies destroyed or killed?

They actually are not. The only thing that drives them away is a cross or the dawn. But Santo never meant he skewers one multiple times with a sword, and they just keep bouncing back.

Yeah, and you see the wound vanish on one of them. Yes. The sword stabs them.

So, they're indestructible zombies, satanically mystical zombies.

And let's see, is the world threatened?

No, it's personal.

Yeah, it's highly personal, yeah. What's the kill count here? And compare it to some of the previous zombie films we've seen.

So, in recent, I think we've had more recent ones with bigger kill counts, but it's a good dozen kills if we count satanists and people who vengeance is taken on.

Yeah, we get a bunch of satanists are burned in a very extended, kind of unpleasantly extended scene. Several people are stabbed to death, somebody is drowned.

Yes.

I do like, by the way, the kill where Santo's friend is in the car with the woman and Damiana teleports into the backseat. I love that the way they kill him is to stop the car, push him out of the car and then zombies appear and drown him in a nearby like trough of water. It just seems like, was there not a, I mean, you had a knife down there.

You have a knife right there. Like there was a scene in Goodfellas where they just popped it in the back of somebody's head right there. Like she could have done that.

Probably too soon.

We are a long ways as far as kill count goes though, from that first Santo versus the zombies movie we saw.

Yeah.

Okay. What? So I guess we already talked about this. Are there any new zombie strains in here, or any zombie firsts we want to call out?

I mean, I have to say no, but like the satanic element, I cannot recall a straight up satanic. Like they just basically subbed sort of vague hand wavy Caribbean magic for satanic magic.

Yeah. I do think that's a little interesting. It is. That they have converted this from a voodoo ritual to a Christian satanic ritual. Yeah.

And I love that the satanists here are just so unapologetically just driven to bring around the evil destruction of the world. And yet you still kind of root for them because they're up against the Inquisition.

Yeah. There's a funny line at the beginning where in the 1700s, the priests are lamenting that they don't yet, they all believe that Damian is a witch, they don't have proof. Yeah. And someone's like, well, we really believe she's a witch, but everyone in the town thinks she's a kind and generous person. So at that point, I was like, I think she's the hero of this movie. Yeah.

And when did that ever stop the Inquisition also? Yeah.

Did you have something to say Brad?

Yeah. For first, have we had zombies that can only operate at night before?

I don't recall. It doesn't jump out at me.

I feel like this is not the first time we have seen that, but I am struggling to think of it. So put a question mark on that one.

The other note I had is I think this might be our first spiritual possession.

Is that right? Well, maybe. And it's certainly our first exorcism. Like Andy, I remember at one point you were sort of lamenting the fact that, that there was a lack of sort of Christian symbology and ritual in these zombie films that we hadn't seen. And it's 100% full Catholic crosses and the whole thing here.

Yeah, yeah, this is totally, all this stuff that will be in the exorcist in just a couple of years in much more terrifying form.

In a much more terrifying way, yes.

Okay, and then the last question we asked is, can zombies return to human, which they cannot?

No.

Although Blue Demon, see, I was a little surprised Blue Demon did not emerge from the underworld and join Santo in the real world. Because it really, this really doesn't answer the question of how Blue Demon was in the last movie we saw. But in this one, he's been in hell for the last 300 years.

Yeah, I don't think continuity is big for them.

But I bet there's a wiki that explains it.

I'm sure there's a well-crafted wiki.

But I think it is interesting that Blue Demon is like Dr. Satan. He just wants to rest in peace.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, Blue Demon is very Dr. Satan-ish in this.

And I wonder if that's like a trope or a set of values in Mexican cinema. Because I'm getting the sense from these movies that there's a definite sense of a sort of sacrifice, humble sacrifice is lauded. You know, Santa does it in the first movie, Blue Demon does it in this movie. So it feels like a cultural value that I want to look into more.

Yeah. Okay. So John, at the beginning of this podcast, you identified four pillars of the zombie genre. We may or may not be updating these pillars this season, but for now, let's just go through your classics. So John, in Bull Santo y Blue Demon en el Mundo de los Muertos, is there an apocalypse?

No, there's not. It's again, a personal story.

Is there contagion?

Nope.

Are there tough moral choices?

No, not really. I mean, if the Inquisition had paused to perhaps reflect at any point, there might have been, but that does not occur. So I'm going to say no.

So Blue Demon does not make tough moral choices in the sense that we meant this question. However, he is kind of like a tortured antihero, I think. OK, and lastly, are there loved ones turning against you in this movie?

I think so. I think Alicia is possessed by Domiana, and though she does not directly try to kill Santo, I think she has turned against her father and Jacob. Agreed.

And I think this is a pretty good horror movie set up. Your significant other is trying to kill you, and you don't know it. I think it's pretty cool.

It's surprisingly novel, and I feel like there has to be a movie that did this. And I don't mean to be mean, but they threw this together in a few weeks, so I'm curious. Normally, at this point, we would ask, Andy came up with a series of questions about the 1960s. We are not going to ask those questions today because we're on the cusp of recording our 1970s episode, and we're gonna have a new set of things we expect to see in 1970s film that will include, I think, probably a section about Mexican cinema because there's a lot coming up and a lot of Italian cinema too. So we'll have to think carefully about those questions. Having said that, Andy, let's go back to our three barn burners that we used to shut this thing down.

You bet, John. Would you and I survive in the zombie world of, and let's see if I can say this again, Santo y Blue Demon, El Mundo de los Muertos?

Um, it depends on if we're friends with Santo or not. Probably yes. Like, I mean, if we were, if we were people who participated in the Inquisition, if we were their descendants, the answer is no, we would get killed. But if we're just regular bystanders, Domiana doesn't seem that interested in anybody else.

Would you have been a goody two shoes peasant in 1700s helping out, ratting out people to the Inquisition, or would you have been one of those peasants dancing in the satanic coven?

I'd like to think I was one of the coolest satanists, but if I'm honest, I have to say, I'd probably be the rat.

Yeah, I'm a rule follower. I wouldn't turn these people in, yeah. So if your wife, John, was possessed by one of her ancestors and trying to kill you, would she get the job done?

Yes. Yeah, I trust her and I'm kind of clumsy. So yeah, she would.

She knows all your weaknesses. Yeah, I'd answer it the same way. All right. John, is this a zombie movie or is this a movie with zombies?

I'd say it's a movie with zombies. They're sort of, she uses them, but they're not central to the plot.

Yeah, I mean, they could just be like living thugs quite frankly, and it wouldn't change the story much at all. And lastly, John, do you recommend this movie first generally as a movie that movie lovers should take the time to check out? And secondly, do you recommend it specifically to the zombie-loving fans of this podcast as a movie that has some interesting zombie gems in it?

Yeah, so we've been sort of pumping this movie up a little bit. It was some silly fun, but I still would give a strong recommendation to our first Santo movie, but this one is still a step or two down from that one, so I'm gonna say no to both. And there's nothing that new, zombie-wise.

Yeah, you've literally seen the zombies before if you watched Herculean.

And even though there's some cool stuff, some cool ideas, I think it's still a bit slapdash, so I'm gonna say no to both.

I'd agree, this is a big step up from the second zombie movie, but I don't know why, if you want to watch a Santo movie, just go watch that first one, Santo vs. the Zombies. It was maybe not a better film, but it was, I don't know, it's had a little bit more of a delightful sense of fun than this one did.

Yeah, it was a little more earnest and fun, yeah.

And having seen three of these movies, I'm no Santo expert. I don't really think that the gruesome horror is really a very Santo feeling genre to me. And I mean, this is still, it's like still PG or PG-13 at the most, but I don't know. Grim dark, Santo is not grim dark, and multiple shots of people, of Santo with a dagger impaled in his chest and bloods everywhere, is just kind of like, is this what the kids want?

Yeah, that was a little strange, but maybe the kids are getting a little edgier. Maybe that's what we'll find in the 70s.

I guess so. Well, I mirror your recommendations. I don't really think you should, you need to go out and watch this, and it doesn't really hold anything that's all that interesting from a zombie perspective.

All right.

All right, well, it means we've reached the end of the show, and this is where we entered the scariest part of the episode, and that's where Brad reveals to me and John what zombie movie we will be watching next. I would love it if it's not a Santo movie, as much fondness as I have for Santo.

All right, we are leaving the border of the 60s, 1970, and we're going to 1971.

All right.

And here is our next film. Here is a poster for you both to describe.

Oh, hey.

Oh, hey, Boris is here.

Boris Karloff, and the movie is Snake People.

Voodoo rituals on an island of evil.

All right, so we've got a, is that kind of like this poster? It's got a big sketch of Boris Karloff at the top, eyeing the camera menacingly. There's a skeleton, looks like a skeleton next to a tree or climbing a tree. I'd like to know what's going on there. There's a scantily clad woman at the bottom, and then there is a woman lying down upon whom a snake is slithering up her body towards her throat.

And interestingly, it says, with guest art, Tongo-lee, Tongo-lee-lee. So I'm curious who that is.

I bet it's the scantily clad woman.

I'm sure it is, but they presented it in a way like this is somebody we should have known, and I haven't heard that name before, so I'm sort of curious about who that is.

It's been a while since I've done an Andy's Grammar here, but can I pull one out here?

Please.

Welcome to Andy's Grammar Corner. It really bugs me that they capitalize on and of in the tagline up there. It just looks bad. How could you be proud of this poster? Don't do it. Okay. That's it.

Excellent. Excellent point, Andy, and I think that's a great note to go out on. Would you please go to your podcast app of choice, Spotify, and point out, give us five stars for grammar on this podcast, and we'll see you next time for snake people. 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.