Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast that watches all the zombie movies. It's time for our Zombie Strains Season 2 Recap.

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

Zombies or something? Zombies.

Zombies?

What's a zombie? Well, a zombie, they are …Mr Bill? The living dead.

They are the living dead.

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

I saw the dead rise.

Kill the brain and you kill the ghoul.

Hello, I'm John.

And I'm Andy.

And I'm Brad.

And producer Brad added some new treats to our delightful intro. Those are awesome.

It was time for a little upgrade.

It's time for a little upgrade. I love that. Well, hey, so folks, if you've been listening to the show and you listen to our first season, you know what this is. We watched 38 zombie films, all the ones that we could find between 1950 and 1969. And boy, are my eyes tired. No, I'm kidding. So it's time to sift through everything we learned. And we're going to talk about the different categories of zombies, how zombie movies have changed from the end of the 40s to the end of the 60s. The short answer is a lot. And we have a lot of different topics we want to cover today. So Andy, producer Brad, anything you want to say before we just jump into it?

I don't think so. I am excited.

Let's go.

All right. So first we're going to read through every film we watched just to remind all of you. So here we go.

Season one ended in 1946 with the Valley of the Zombies, and season two, the first zombie film, was 1951 with The Man from Planet X. So that was a five-year gap where Americans did not have a zombie film.

That's terrible.

Terrible. And then it continued onward in the 50s with Zombies of the Stratosphere, Scared Stiff, The Revived Monster, Creature with the Atom Brain, Voodoo Island, Zombies of Moratao, The Woman Eater, and The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.

Continuing, we have Invisible Invaders, Plan Nine from Outer Space, Teenage Zombies, The Dead One, Dr. Blood's Coffin, The Curse of the Doll People, one of my favorite, Santo vs. the Zombies, Tales of Terror, and Carnival of Souls.

That brought us up to 1964, which was a tremendous year for zombie films. That year started out with La Cabeza Viviente, the living head, and continued with Monstrosity, the incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and became mixed up zombies, War of the Zombies, The Last Man on Earth, the Horror of Party Beach, The Earth Dies Screaming, and An Evening with Batman and Robin.

1965, we had Terror Creatures from the Grave, Hercules and the Haunted Realm, The Frozen Dead, Dr. Orloff's Monster, the man from Uncle in the Episode, A Very Important Zombie Affair, and The Plague of Zombies.

Ah, you mean the plague of the zombies, Producer Brad.

I missed the second the. That is tricky.

Yes. Okay, well, picking up from there, just to round out the 60s, we had Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horror, The Deadly Organ, Strange Invasion, The Astro Zombies, and a late season surprise hit Dr. Satan vs. Black Magic. And we wrapped up the 60s with, of course, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. In addition to the films we watched in Chronological Order, we also had a special episode on the 1960s about the cultural context that we were getting into. We watched three modern films that Andy and I talked about, 2025's Weapons, 2026, 28 years later, The Bone Temple, and 2026 We Bury Our Dead. That's a lot of movies.

That is a lot of movies. I don't want to tally up the hours.

No. Let us not do that.

They were enjoyable hours though.

They were enjoyable hours.

For sure. So those movies accounted for all the zombie movies we could find that were released between 1950 and 1969. It's always possible we missed something. So if you're an especially astute student of zombie cinema, and there's something we ought to have watched that we didn't, we'd love to hear from you. We've done a couple of quick rewinds to catch something that we overlooked. But hey guys, by far, the biggest element of these two decades of zombie film was how much they changed across those 20 years. So let's sift through what we've learned about how these movies have evolved over the years. And let's start with how zombies have changed. If you remember from our first season, when we covered movies from the 1930s and the 1940s, we had a fairly stable and particular type of zombie film we were watching. So just to remind you, if you were watching a zombie movie in the 30s or 40s, there was a very high likelihood that it involved a mad scientist of some sort, someone who was creating zombies for his own sinister purpose. The zombies were his mindless and soulless slaves. They weren't free roaming, ravenous, cannibalistic ghouls. So over half of the movies in the 30s and 40s that we watched featured a mad scientist. The other big prominent theme of that time period was the presence of Haitian voodoo and just Haitian religion in general.

You know what's surprising is that there's more mad scientist movies than Haitian voodoo movies, which if you had told me that was the case ahead of time, I would have been surprised.

Yeah, absolutely. But there was still a lot of Haitian voodoo. Over a third of the movies we watched in the 30s and 40s had Haitian voodoo. And that started to change pretty promptly as soon as we got into the 50s. So John, what did we start seeing emerge as far as themes go about what zombies are and why they exist and what they're trying to do in the 50s?

Yeah. So our two classics are still here. Our largest portion of the 1950s and 60s are still mad scientists. But if you compare them, that only makes up about 30 percent of the movies in the 50s and 60s, where it was over half of the movies in the 30s and 40s. So we still have some Haitian voodoo. That was interesting because it's almost as if they forgot about Haitian voodoo for like 10 years, and then it came back almost unchanged, but maybe more codified a little bit. So that was interesting. However, Haitian voodoo was replaced by just other mystical versions of zombie-dom. Like in the Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, it was South American mysticism that was, as far as I know, made up, but sort of was a stand-in for that Haitian voodoo. But there was a couple of really big things that came into play. The big one, one of the big ones was alien technology, right? And we'll talk about this when we get there, but a lot of our alien technology movies actually plant the seeds for the modern zombie in a really interesting way. Also, we got a little mutation, radiation and contagion, our first real contagion movie. That's exciting. In addition, we had a movie about a curse, a movie about a post-death experience, and a mythical movie, which was Hercules and the Haunted World. So again, still leaning towards mad scientist and Haitian voodoo, but with some important new entries in the game, so to speak.

Yeah. I mean, when you lay it all out like that, it's clear how diverse zombies are getting as far as their origin and reason for being. A lot of them are still created by one bad person to achieve a sinister purpose. But now, there's like a half dozen other explanations for why zombies are here. And we also see this, there's still some Haitian voodoo mixed into a number of these movies, but you see this sort of a separation of the zombie myth from a specific cultural milieu. And I don't know, there's a lot of interesting stuff. With that, we also saw zombies changing location. If you were watching a zombie movie in the 30s or 40s, there are basically really only two places that that movie was going to be set. Either in North America, which is about half of the zombie movies in those decades were in North America, and about 40% were set in the Caribbean. There were a few outliers. We saw one movie that was set in Asia, and one kind of quirky one, J'acuse, which was set in Europe. But those are sort of outliers. It was basically the US or the Caribbean.

In the 50s and 60s, zombie films are still mostly set in North America, but Europe has made strong gains, and zombies spread to Africa, South America, and an unknown South Pacific island. And what's interesting about North America is we're no longer talking exclusively about the United States. We had five movies set in Mexico, which was kind of great. And actually, Argentina came up very specifically, which I also really enjoyed. So I liked our new diversity of places where the movies came from. It made a much more interesting season to me.

Agreed. And in the same way that zombie movies were changing their setting outside of just the US and just the Caribbean, in the 1950s and 60s, we see production companies in other countries starting to produce zombie movies. So the 30s and 40s, really up to about 1950, it's really only companies in the US that are producing zombie movies with a couple of strays from England and France. But in the 1950s and 60s, we see a growing diversity of places that are producing zombie films. So in the 50s and 60s, most films are still being made in the US, but we've got a good number of being made in England and a good number of those set in the Cornish tin mines, if you recall.

Yes, the Cornish tin mines.

That was a surprise.

It was. That was a delightful surprise, actually. It was really fun to see so many movies, five of them produced in Mexico and Argentina, and then several in Italy and one from Spain. So we're really starting to see the zombie become a more global phenomenon, I think.

Yes, and I feel Italy figures. I keep saying this, but Italy is going to figure large in our future, I'm pretty sure.

Yes, yes.

All right. So all of that's really interesting. And I love stats and I love knowing about the different places the movies were made. But one of the big things that we discovered, and one of the big things we're here to discover, right, is how zombie movies have changed over time. In the 1950s and 60s, what new innovations to the zombie have happened, right? Because when we started this, I had a clear idea, I think, of what a zombie was. Isn't that right, Andy? Like a zombie is a cannibal that will kill you, and if it bites you, you become a zombie, and they're often your old loved ones. But that's not anything we got in the 30s and 40s. And we didn't really get that till near the end of the 60s. But the little pieces of what we consider the modern zombie film, the innovation start here in the 50s. And that's the part that I found really exciting. So just to throw a couple out there, one thing that's interesting to me is we get our first science zombies like in Creature of the Atom Brain. It's just science, these atomic powered, reanimated people. And there's no mention of voodoo, there's no mysticism. Or we have something like Man from Planet X or Invisible Invaders, where it's about alien technology is used to create zombies. So yeah, those are the two that jumped out to me first, is like really big things that we discovered in this season.

Yes. And along those lines, in the 50s and 60s, we start seeing different ways. If in the 30s and 40s, you had to intentionally create a zombie, and in the 50s or 60s, we started seeing some movies where the zombies were the result of like kind of a vague curse.

Yes.

Or the result of an oil, a toxic waste spill.

I think the Masterless Zombie is an interesting development.

Yeah. What I like about that is it's a given. If you're a fan of zombie movies and hadn't gone back before the 70s, you have sort of no thought that a zombie should have a zombie master in the classic sort of voodoo sense. This is not a thing. But for the first 30 years of zombie movies, it's absolutely a thing. There's zombie masters everywhere, which I think is super interesting.

Well, I think one thing that really stood out to me, a new development, was just the increasing scale of the zombie threat. If zombies in the 30s and 40s started as extremely local threats, often involving or threatening just like a half dozen people, by the end of the 60s, we have global apocalypse or something very close to them. It starts in the 50s. We started seeing this where a whole city would be threatened and I felt like the scale just kept getting amped up until you have your Night of the Living Dead or your Invisible Invaders or the Earth Dives Screaming, where the whole planet Earth is threatened.

Yeah, it's almost like the biggest innovation here is the apocalypse. And before those movies that you mentioned, we didn't really have it. And I think we talked in our 60s episode that it was very much a sign of the times, speaking of atomic war and the Korean War, and just all these things that are making people less hopeful than they were. The joy, and it wasn't joy for everybody, but the positive outlook of the 1950s has begun to deteriorate. And until that happens, you can't have an apocalypse movie. You know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. If you listened to our episode about Night of the Living Dead, we talked at length about how one thing that changed was not just the zombies themselves, but the people that are surviving the zombies.

Yes.

And so by the end of the 60s, we have groups of regular people with their flaws and their competing agendas, and their weaknesses, and their strengths getting thrown together. And a lot of these movies are suddenly not, how are they going to stop the zombies, but how are their different personalities and agendas going to create friction and enjoyable drama to watch? And so, by the time we get to Night of Living Dead, we have a bunch of really ordinary Joes stuck together with Neri, a scientist or a beautiful scientist's daughter, in sight. Yeah.

And the first movie we noticed this was a movie I liked way more and it stuck in my mind way more than I thought it would, which was Zombies of Moritao, where we had like, that was the first like group of rascals.

I really, really enjoyed that movie. It's one of my favorites from this period, but John and Brad, when I was getting ready for this episode, what do you think the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes is for Zombies of Moritao?

I don't want it now. I'm worried.

4.3.

No, well, you underestimate it. It's 11%.

Oh.

Come on, people.

Well, I meant like 4.3 stars out of 10. So, okay, I hear you. It's not that bad.

One thing I thought was interesting was in the 30s, in Revolt of the Zombies, there was the fear that someone could raise the dead and make an army.

Right.

And there's the imagery in the film of someone imagining that. And then you have King of the Zombies, you have Revenge of the Zombies, where they're trying to make, bring the dead back to make an army for foreign power. But you don't actually see an army until War of the Zombies, which is set in mythical times where the undead are raised against a Roman army. And that's the first army. And what we're used to, we don't see armies now, we see giant hordes. There's not someone controlling them, there's not a purpose for them where they're being directed. So it was interesting that in the beginning, there was a thought that there would be an army that would be controlled, that would wreak devastation, and it happened once in the 60s. It'll be curious to see if it happens again in the 70s.

Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah, and one of the things that jumps out at me that's sort of parallel with that is Invisible Invaders has an army of zombies, right? It's alien technology. They're coming down and inhabiting corpses. But that movie in particular, like you get a decayed zombie. It has a documentary feel that we're used to from Night of the Living Dead. It's got your science bunker, right? It's got all these survivor types. It's got, in our notes, it says it's our first real tough moral choice, right? Where the soldier has to shoot a man who's in their way, so everybody else can survive. So that one just jumps out at me is one where a lot of these things started to come together, but we still don't have the full apocalypse or the contagion quite yet.

One thing that has been interesting is, when you watch all these older movies, 30s and 40s, you get to watch year by year as these movies start to get a little edgier and more violent, and a little sexier. And by the end of the 60s, we're not, I mean, it's still pretty tame by modern standards, but the difference from the 40s is pretty remarkable. Suddenly, our zombies aren't just regular-looking people with maybe a little bit of makeup on their face. We're seeing zombies with grotesque wounds on them. We're seeing, when someone gets shot...

Decaying flesh.

Yeah, we see decaying flesh. When someone gets shot, we see maybe a bloody wound. So that's been interesting to track. As we've discussed on a number of occasions, I'm a little scared of where it's going in the 70s, but it has been kind of a remarkable journey.

Yeah, I agree.

Well, I had two other things that were interesting. I think it's really interesting and kind of funny that the imagery that we have of zombies rising from the dead is their hands bursting through the earth. And the first film to do that was Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Yeah, I know. It makes the list of important innovations, and it's so terrible, which is lovely. I actually love that. Yeah.

And the other thing I think is interesting, we've been tracking what we've been calling the Hero Party, and we got to Night of the Living Dead, and we were referring to it as the Survivor Party, but I forgot in our notes that we noted the first time we called it a Survivor Party, and that was in the Earth Dice Screaming.

That's right.

Oh, interesting.

So that's when it's no longer a group of people, professionals, here to save the day, everyone survives. This is when shit's gone bad and there's a Survivor Party.

Yeah, when you look over the list, with all these movies, it's rare that a movie didn't add something or evolve something. But there's like maybe four or five movies that felt like they really pushed the whole genre forward. Like The Earth Dies Screaming. I thought of that because The Earth Dies Screaming is one of those movies where that one has a ton that it adds into the mix. And like Invisible Invaders contributed a ton of modern zombie ideas. Last Man on Earth. So it was interesting seeing where these feel like kind of the load-bearing zombie movies of the 50s and 60s.

Yes.

Yeah, I agree.

All right. So do we want to take a minute and talk about some new zombie terms?

Yeah. You guys have a favorite term for zombies because not every movie here calls them zombies.

Well, the two I'd like to point out is the two movies that I think feel closest to a modern zombie film, which are The Last Man on Earth and Night of the Living Dead. Don't use the word zombie, right? The Last Man on Earth calls them vampires because they are. It's just they have these sort of sub-vampires that are identical to zombies in our mind. And of course, in Night of the Living Dead, he calls them ghouls.

It is interesting that I guess we'll see in the 70s if ghouls sticks around at all, or if it's just completely dropped, because modern zombie movies don't use that term pretty much ever.

No.

Despite using a ton of other stuff from Night of the Living Dead.

Yes.

There are two books I use for reference, and I'm trying to remember which one, but one of them in the front lists what is and isn't a zombie. It very clearly says a ghoul is not a zombie.

Oh my.

Yeah, which is interesting because I think we have to admit that Night of the Living Dead, the things that we call zombies, our modern conception of zombie is from that film in many ways, but they're not zombies yet. It's like we took that style of film and what happened in that movie and decided they were zombies. And George didn't really have anything to say about it, you know?

Yeah.

He was gone. What he did is he dropped that bomb of Night of the Living Dead. Then for 10 years, other people evolved it. And then he came back at the end of the 70s. So, you know, he said, again, he's going to be another target for us with Dawn of the Dead at the end of the decade too. So that'll actually be an interesting comparison.

So the book I'm referring to is called Zombie Movies, The Ultimate Guidelines. And what it says is ghouls share two elements in common with today's zombies. They can often be found in graveyards where they like to eat flesh. The only difference is that they are not dead. So I don't know if this is one author's vision. Or if it's what...

That is a more traditional understanding of ghoul. Like that's a Lovecraft ghoul you just described.

Yeah, it's a horrible creature that robs graves and eats the marrow out of bones and stuff, but has a sort of sinister intelligence. Romero uses the term ghoul, but he says they're very explicitly risen from the dead, right? So I don't know if it's just we wanted to use the term zombie or his sort of conflation of the two. People went, well, that's not a ghoul, that's a zombie. And that's why it became zombies over the next decade. I don't know.

Yeah, I would be interested in why he used that. I mean, so clearly the creatures in Night of the Living Dead are what we all know as a zombie. I don't know if he was trying to avoid the word zombie because of connotations or he's trying to, I don't know. I'd be interested to hear his motivation. In our research for Night of the Living Dead, did you come across any discussion of that?

Well, he did say multiple times the initial title was Night of the Flesh Eaters, which would more closely describe a ghoul because that's their thing. It's the eating part that makes a ghoul. And it's the combination of that ghoul-like attribute with the other things that we think of as zombies, rising from the dead, being emotionless and slow. That sort of, it's that fusion that makes the modern zombie, you know?

Do you get any sense that Romero thought that his Walking Dead were a new type of creature, enough so that they needed a new name, that they weren't the zombies that you had seen in movies before?

Yeah, because I think he wasn't basing them on old zombie movies. I think he was basing them on vampires from Last Man on Earth and Richard Matheson. I think that was his inspiration. What the culture has done is take the zombie concept and married it with his concept, which is really similar to zombies, but I don't think that's what he had in mind. He didn't have white zombie or invisible invaders in mind, when he made Night of the Living Dead. He had a more personal apocalyptic story in mind.

Yeah. Well, there's obviously a lot more we could discuss as far as all of the firsts that we noted as we watched all these movies, and I just invite you to review the last season of this podcast. If you really want to see the nitty gritty of what movie introduced what specific concept. But guys, I think we need to move on to a discussion I'm really excited to have. I think we should talk about what our personal best zombies from the 50s and 60s are, and I want you to define best however you see fit. So it could be like the scariest zombie or the most modern style of zombie, or the goofiest, whatever. So let me throw out, let me start this by throwing out. So I picked three zombies that I consider the best zombies from this era. So I'm going to throw out my first one, and then let's just go around, and we each make a pitch for a favorite. So I picked, as I think, my favorite zombie from this entire era, I picked Zombie Alice from The Plague of the Zombies.

Curse you, Andy.

That was my first pick as well. I knew we were going to step on each other here. So that's why we each have a couple of choices.

So that's why you chose to go first.

Yes, exactly. Well, you guys are going to pick my next two. Well, you will pick my third. You won't pick my third, but you'll get my second. Anyway, I don't think I have to convince you guys that Zombie Alice is a great zombie. It's a combination of a lot of things that make her so good. First, it's just good acting and good directing. But we get the revelation that she has returned as a zombie, is such an iconic zombie scene. She returns, she looks like a decayed corpse. She's immediately is, she's murderous. She's coming after her loved ones from life. And she has to be put down by someone who loved her. It's just all of the good stuff you want from a zombie returning. You get, and on top of a talented actress doing a good job with this kind of ludicrous role. So what, do you guys have anything to add about Alice?

No, it's just, she's so perfect because there's that POV scene where she is crawling towards the camera with that smirk, with that sinister.

Yeah, it's the smirk.

It's the smirk. It's almost a Mona Lisa smile, right?

There's like an evil intent with her, unlike Night of the Living Dead, they're zombies, they're just sort of blank.

Yes, yeah, exactly.

She is not blank. There's malevolence about her.

All right, so John, I want you to do your next pick, and we'll see if you knock one off of me and Brad, another one off of me and Brad.

Well, you know what? I'm going to pick one out of left field just for fun, but I really did enjoy them. I'm going to pick the two female zombies from Dr. Satan and the Black Magic.

Yeah.

I thought about them.

They're great. And what I love about them is their creepy synchronicity. They're very clearly zombies, right? They feel no pain. They have more intelligence than average zombies, but in every other way, they're very zombie-like. But they almost harken back to voodoo zombies, but not quite. But there's this one scene, I can't forget, where they're tailing black magic and his minions, and they both come out from opposite sides of a tree, wind up next to each other and start walking down the street. And I just can't get that out of my brain. There was something so delightful about them. And also, there was that moment where Dr. Satan has regret about turning one of them into a zombie. I don't know. There's just something about those zombies that I love. They don't really get as closer to Night of the Living Dead, if you know what I mean, but I love them.

Yeah. All right, Brad, cue us up with another.

I'm going to go with The Man from Carnival of Souls. I know it's debatable whether he's a true zombie, but I believe the way he looks is sort of terrifying in the way he's portrayed by the actor who's also the director of the film, that ghoulish makeup, the black and white film, how he's always present wherever she is, and it's completely unexplained why he is there. It was really creepy and terrifying.

And he walks at the camera with the big zombie eyes, very much in a scary zombie way. Even if it's debatable if he's a zombie, he's got that vibe. And it's rare. And actually the three that we've picked so far, individual zombies often aren't scary in these sort of big set piece movies, but these are three individual zombies who are scary.

All right guys, my next pick is also a little out of left field. I picked the zombie wrestlers from Santo versus the zombies.

Just to make us laugh?

Yeah, they're obviously not very scary, but I just love how much fun that movie has with the concept of the zombie, because I suspect we're going to see fun, like really waxing and waning over the years in zombie movies. But it's just something so fun. They're mindless slaves, but they still retain their wrestling skills. And there's just that wonderful scene where they're all sitting together in a car. Yeah, three across. It's just, that was a very silly movie, but silly in a way that I really enjoyed watching.

Yeah, those are great ones. I love those.

All right, John, who else would you nominate?

So this is my non-left field pick, and I'm going to pick the zombies from Invisible Invaders. Because this is the first time we saw people in regular clothes that looks like they had come out of the grave in a mob. It's a low-budget film, so there's not like 100 of them, but there are a dozen of them. And they're just, they're all men, which is weird, but they're all wearing suits that are torn, and they have decay on their faces and stuff. And those are the first ones I felt like, okay, here we go. These are what we think of as the zombie.

That's solid, yeah.

All right, producer Brad.

I'm going to end with the cemetery zombie from Night of the Living Dead, because it's the first zombie we see in the film. He ends up leading the horde, attacking the house, and he's kind of like the leading charge for all zombie films going forward. That is, he's like the first one, and from him, everything else comes.

Yeah, you're right. He does that. He's like harmless, he's walking, and then suddenly he springs into action in a weird way that is totally unexpected. You know what I mean? And that scene where she tries to sort of brush past him, and then he suddenly activates is iconic. I see what you're saying, yeah.

So I think you guys, all of the rest of you guys' choices have been burned, but I have one more I'll nominate. This feels like kind of cheating, but I can't not say Zombie Karen, the little girl from Night of the Living Dead. Yeah, she's terrifying. It's our first zombie kid. This is going to be a terrifying archetype in zombie films going forward, and it turns out that it was terrifying from the very first time this trope appeared on the screen.

Yeah, and seeing a little girl eating her own father, how many times is that? Are we going to get something haunting like that? And it's never going to be as good as this first time. I mean, there'll be great moments of it, but this first time is amazing.

So yeah, listeners, if you had your own favorite zombie from these decades, please shoot us a note. We'd love to hear it.

All right. So zombies, we've got good zombies that we all like. Now, this concept is going to go away, I think, in the next couple of decades, but we still have some mad scientists and whatnot going on. So let's come up with our sort of best villains from zombie films. And I have a pick that I would- producer Barrett, I'll ask, would you like to pick first or may I pick first?

Go ahead, John.

All right, so my pick is going to be the old woman from Monstrosity.

No, you've-

Dang it!

I was like, there's no way they'll pick this one.

Yeah, Marjorie Eaton. This is the second time we've seen Marjorie, I believe, because she was also in Zombies of Moratao. And as Brad stated in our absolute favorite piece of trivia from this season, she may have been and probably was one of the actors who played the Emperor in Empire Strikes Back in the video projection. Anyway, her name is Marjorie Eaton, her character's name is Mrs. March, and her goal is to steal the body of a young woman and take over that body. And she's such a delicious villain. I have a sense that Marjorie was probably a hoot, like in real life. You know what I mean? That's just the impression I get. There's a moment where she's trying to decide which of them whose body to take over, she's like poking them with her cane and like, it's just, she's awful and it's great.

Well, she's monstrous. So this monstrosity is not one of the better films we watched, but it is kind of stuck in my head. And part of it is because of Mrs. March. She's a horrible monster, but that was such a strange movie because it's so trashy. I mean, the movie was mostly interested in showing you cantily-clad women. And yet it was one of the first movies we had that had an interesting, almost progressive reflectiveness about beauty standards in Hollywood. It was just such a strange thing to get an interesting theme from a movie that, interesting film, good villain. She's not sympathetic, but you can say, I can see why she has become the person that she is.

Yes, I agree. All right, I think we'll let producer Brad go next.

I chose Frank Buchanan from Creature with the Atom Brain. He was the criminal who was banished from the US., who then latched on to a discredited, was it Italian or German scientist, who had the technology to reanimate the dead with atomic brains. And he, of course, came back to the US to seek vengeance on those who threw him out. I just liked it because it was the 50s, and it was a very sort of 50s sci-fi, and the actor had a great voice, and his voice projected through all the zombies because he was the zombie master.

Right, that's right. Yeah, that was creepy.

Yeah, no, that's a good one. And he was so intimidating and scary. I think he had our first really hard kill too, right?

Yes.

Yes. And it was such a personal reason to have the zombies, yet the scale was epic because they had to call the military in to try and contain these zombies who are roaming through this town.

Yep. All right. Nice one. All right, Andy.

All right. Well, I'm still mad that you burned the monstrosity epic. But so one of my favorite villains was Dr. Blood. Yes. Dr. Blood's coffin.

He was great.

He was. I mean, so on one, there's so many mad scientists in these movies. And in one sense, Dr. Blood is just another mad scientist. But you get to know Dr. Blood, like you get to watch his madness kind of unfold.

Yeah, because he's the protagonist, right? He's the villain, but he's also the protagonist. And we've had many mad scientists, but he's like the most passionate. Like his speech about why he does immoral things because to advance science and make the world better, we've seen several versions of that speech, but that's the best one.

Yes, agreed. So.

All right.

All right, back to you, John. Who's somebody else? Who's another good villain?

Well, this is a tough one. You know what? I'm going to do it. I'm going to pick Dr. Satan. And here's why. So first of all, he does make zombies. He is a zombie master. He is the protagonist, but also this is a battle of two villains. So you could pick either villain. And I just, like we, we realized that there was an earlier Dr. Satan film we hadn't seen. And as soon as I learned that, I'm like, I would like to watch another one of these movies, right? Like it's villain is protagonist, kind of like Dr. Blood's coffin. But I just think he's amazing. And his predicament is fascinating. Like a sympathetic villain, right? All Dr. Satan wants is to not have to be brought back to life by the devil again, to get eternal rest. And he's not allowed to. Like, so I don't know, I just, maybe that's cheating, but I like Dr. Satan a lot.

Well, I will follow up your Dr. Satan and say that I liked Black Magic.

Oh, there you go.

The nemesis of Dr. Satan. It was just a fun movie. It was, he was a vampire. He had his own little sidekicks. He had his own little lab.

He could cast spells. He was a scientist and a magic user.

Just a little bonkers. And it was great. It was fun to watch. So I enjoyed him.

My last villain pick is, I cheated a little bit here because this is a villain duo, but they're like inseparable pals. So didn't feel right to mention them separately, but I picked Dr. Zurich and his sidekick, Zombie Zutai from The Four Skulls of Jonathan Trey.

And they're zombies. They're zombies and villains.

They are the rare villain mad scientists who is also a zombie. So, and their story is just so interesting because Zurich is like this, is this the corpse of an old, like new world explorer with a head. No, he's the corpse of a Central American tribesman with the head of a European sewed on top of it.

Yeah, that's right. He has to wear gloves the whole time.

That's right. And Zutai is the corpse of a zombie shaman who's hundreds of years old, who has his lips sewn shut. And together the two of them are just a pretty effective villain team, I thought. And I also just got a lot of joy out of Dr. Zurich's like sepulcher-like, like you know he's the villain. Like the movie tries to pass him off as not the villain for quite a while, but as soon as he opens his mouth and talks, like well obviously he's the villain. All right, John or Brad, you got anyone else or did we burn your choices?

I had one more. My last one is, I believe the name was Tony Warren from Scared Stiff. Only because it was sort of the last Scooby-Doo villain that we had that I can remember where the zombies were, there's a zombie this time, it really doesn't matter. He was just trying to get the silver all for himself and scare everyone else away and kill a person or two along the way and he was undone at the end by Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. And it was just sort of the last of those classic Hollywood stereotype villains like that. It was just kind of fun to see it one last time.

Yeah.

That is right. That's good.

I have one more pick and I'm just going to throw out there real quick. It is Clive Hamilton from The Plague of the Zombies. Because he had the whole ritual thing going on. He was just a delightful vision villain, kind of like Dr. Blood, but his self-absorption was unique.

Yeah. His arrogant nobility, I think, made him a little unique compared to other mad scientists.

Yes. And I wonder if we'll have this question in season three. We might not have any more villains in this way. That's a really great question. I'm curious to see.

All right. Well, if we've talked about our favorite villains, I think we need to close this out by nominating our favorite heroes or survivors, however you want to call it. So I'm going to go first so that nobody burns my first choice. I think my all-time favorite survivor from these two decades of zombie film is Grandma Peters from Zombies of Maura Tao.

There you go. Marjorie gets two nominations.

Same actress who was Mrs. March from Monstrosity. So I love Grandma Peters for a lot of reasons, but mainly because I think she's one of the earliest examples of the brutal pragmatist survivor.

Yes.

So in any modern zombie movie, we saw some vivid examples of this when we were talking about the... What's the TV show that's with Pedro Pascal?

The Mandalorian.

No.

Last of Us.

Last of Us.

Last of Us. Thank you. He also was in The Mandalorian, but no zombies in that one, I don't think. The brutal protagonist is the person in the Hero Party that, as soon as you get bitten, they're like, we just need to kill them. So, Grandma Peters, if you got bit by a zombie, she would be the first one to insist that you be put down. And she would have this discussion right in front of you.

Right. Yeah.

I just respect that. Absolutely. All right. So, John, who do you got for best hero?

I hate to say it because this is my... I didn't go out of left field on this one, so forgive me, but I'm going to say Vincent Price from The Last Man on Earth.

Oh, yeah.

It's such a performance that is so counter to what you normally expect him to be. You don't expect him to be an everyman, and he's not like an every everyman, but he does pull it off, and he has this sense of, I don't know, just the way he projects this tired, I'm just one day at a time kind of vibe. He's the ultimate survivor in a weird way because he doesn't care that much. I don't know if that makes sense, but I like him.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, producer Brad.

I'm gonna go with Sir James from The Plague of the Zombies.

Oh, man. We played with the zombies.

I have some predictions about-

He's racking up the nominations.

Yeah. He was great because he's older, but he's very gentrified. He comes in from London to Cornwall. He wraps the knuckles of Sir Clive the villain and tries to teach him manners. And then he has some physical scuffles with some of the cult members there. And he was in charge the whole time. He never doubted himself. And he quickly figured out what was going on, which was kind of nice for us. I enjoyed him.

I liked that he was a contrast to his son, who was kind of a mess, understandably, but he was the rock of the movie.

Not his son, former student.

Yeah, his former student. You're right.

All right, guys. Well, my next nomination is Nora from The Revived Monster, played by Miroslava. And I don't think this is, I don't have a lot to say, except that she's just a great, confident and competent protagonist. She's like curious. She's a good investigator. You see her holding her own in a world of a bunch of men in her career and then in her investigations. And after a long couple decades worth of movies where the women were always just the scientist's daughter, who is also the love interest of the young professional. It was just interesting to see a different type of protagonist.

Yeah, she was confident. She was a professional. She wasn't there because she had a man in her life. There is a connection between our sad protagonist of this movie, but it's not romantic, and she stands on her own. So yeah, I think that's a great one.

All right. Who else do you got for us, John?

Okay. So I'm going to pick, sorry, I'm going to pick Santo.

Oh yeah.

I just love Santo. He was a breath of fresh air in the middle of a rough run. You know what I mean? And just he's a sort of delightful, corny, old school hero. He walks off at the end, not seeking any praise. Like he's so cartoony that I just, I loved Santo.

Yeah. Can't argue with that.

Yeah. What do you got, producer Brad?

My last one is I chose Ben from the Night of Living Dead. I know he fails, but he's the first guy who takes complete charge. He tries to make everything better, right or wrong. And he was in control, and he's sort of the template for what we see in the future.

Yeah. And he's complex. He's complicated. He's wrong. He makes mistakes, right? So yeah, I think that, I think you kind of can't. All right, Andy.

My last one, this is maybe a little bit of stretch, but I just couldn't resist. I got to nominate Mona from Zombies of Moratao, played by-

That was on my list.

The great Alison Hayes. It's just a great performance. It's one of our earliest, like, you know, flawed protagonists. There's that great line, you're listening to Port Mona, which I'll remember the rest of my life. And at one point, like a candle stick is chucked at her head and it bounces off, and she doesn't break character. She keeps on plugging away.

So, yes.

All right. Does anyone have any other nominations?

Last one. I'm just going to the protagonist from Carnival of Souls.

Oh, yeah.

Because she's a protagonist that doesn't survive, which I think is important. And she's just in a panic the whole movie, and I just found her really compelling. Yeah. Not because she's particularly competent or something. It's just like she's in a crazy world, she doesn't understand. Yeah.

Does she named in the movie?

Yeah. That was Mary Henry played by Candice Hillegos. And it's one of her only roles. I'm not even picking it. I'm just picking it because I thought she was just such a interesting character, maybe different than a lot of the others, so.

Yeah, for sure.

All right.

All right. So with all of those favorites thrown out there, one last question for you guys. What are the scenes or the moments or the lines that are burned into your brain that will live rent-free in your head from the 50s and 60s? John, anything from these 20 years of zombie film that is going to stick with you?

There is so many and it would be so easy to pick Zombie Karen eating her dad, but we kind of already picked Zombie Karen, so I kind of want to pick something else.

Zombie Karen is one of my choices too. I thought her stabbing her mother. I mean, she goes after both of her parents and they're both kind of iconic, horrifying kills.

Yeah, I think the one I'll pick again, I'm not sure it's the best performance, but we got a bit here that I loved, which is that will become a theme in zombie movies, but it happened sort of the first time here. In The Last Man on Earth, in the flashback, Vincent Price's wife dies, and all the ads are like, burn your loved ones, take them right to the burning pit and he won't, and he buries her and she comes back. And the moment when he opens the door and he sees her, that is burned in my brain. I just love that bit.

So that's a fantastic scene.

What about you, producer Brad?

I'm gonna go with Dr. Blood's coffin when in the corn, corn, in the tin mines, the mad scientist brings Linda down to show her that he has rejuvenated her dead, was it husband or boyfriend? I don't remember now.

It was her husband.

Yeah, that's right.

And the zombie rises and instantly starts attacking her, trying to kill her.

Yes.

And the violence and it was the terror on her face, that was pretty intense.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was good. And we can't pick the moment with Zombie Alice and the plague of the zombies again either. So that's another one that's burned in my brain, but we already went through her rise from the grave.

A scene that I would nominate is the scene at the very end of The Last Man on Earth. Vincent Price has just been killed and the movie closes with shots of infected vampire mothers comforting their toddlers as Vincent Price dies. And that's like that, I mean, that whole movie is, there's a reason we keep mentioning Last Man on Earth in this discussion because it's such a memorable and important film. But one theme from that movie that only gets sporadically picked up on by future zombie movies is the idea of the zombie is like the next stage of human evolution. Yes. And I just, it's a chilling, it's a sad scene. Vincent Price, he's dead and he was forced outside of humanity. And just the idea of just those mothers comforting their kids, don't worry, the monster is dead, it's just a great scene.

It is, and it sort of presages, like when we first started this podcast, right? We each picked a movie that we thought sort of represented something interesting about zombie movies and you picked The Girl with All the Gifts, which has the exact same, not the exact same, but a similar theme, right? So yeah, I thought that was, yeah, I agree, that's really great.

I have one other scene that lives in my brain for the wrong reasons. And that is The Man from Uncle, Napoleon Solo getting a manicure. When I think about all the zombie films we've seen, that we actually had a, we saw a scene with Robert Vaughn getting a manicure. Juxtaposed with everything else, it just seems out of place, which that whole episode was.

And I have one that has no bearing on zombies and is completely nuts. But one thing that lives in my head is The Frozen Dead, when the dead woman's head is on the table and she's snarling and sneering and using her psychic energy to kill people with arms that are on the wall. I can't really say that informed the future of zombie movies, I just loved it.

I wish I could fit her into either a villain hero or a zombie, because she's one of that, that head is one of my favorite characters in zombie movies from this era. My last one I nominated, actually I had one more, but we've already talked about it. It's Zombie Alice advancing on the camera in The Plague of the Zombies.

It's just so good. Yeah, it's just so good. And we didn't mention this part, she gets her head cut off of the shovel, which is also amazing. So yeah. All right, producer Brad, you're introducing our next topic.

Next up, we're gonna go to our Zombie Hall of Fame.

All right.

Which we started in season one. In season one, we added, we inducted Bela Lugosi, who was in one, two, three, four movies in the thirties and forties, and then added one in the fifties when he was in Plan Nine from Outer Space. We had Darby Jones who played the same zombie in two different movies. And I walked with a zombie in Zombies on Broadway, which we commented was a missed opportunity to create a zombie monster that people recognized back in the forties. It didn't happen.

Yeah, create the Wolfman of zombies, so to speak.

We had Edward Kay who was a composer, who was actually nominated for an Oscar for his score to King of the Zombies.

Which is crazy. But yeah.

And Montan Moreland, who was comic relief in two different films, which we also loved. Glenn Glenn, who did sound design on 20% of the movies in the thirties and forties, which is kind of crazy that he was that involved.

Yeah.

Monogram Pictures did four movies in the thirties and forties, so we put them in the Zombie Hall of Fame. And then lastly, we added Sir Lancelot, who played a similar character also in I Walked with a Zombie and Zombies on Broadway.

Yes.

So we need to talk about who we want to add from this season of films.

Okay.

Anyone want to start?

I'll start. I remember at the end when we did this last time, we had nominated John Carradine and I said, maybe he hasn't earned it yet, but I think he has now. He's a staple, and I love him. So I think John Carradine should get into our hall of fame.

He's been a mad scientist. He's been a zombie. He's been a host of one of the trilogies we saw.

He's played bongo drums during Vincent Price's voodoo ceremony.

He's been a henchman.

He's been a henchman. Yeah.

He's all over the zombie sphere.

Absolutely.

I'll throw out, so two names that are kind of related to each other. What do you guys think about inducting Vincent Price into the Zombie Hall of Fame?

Okay.

Because we've seen him twice now. He's obviously the iconic lone survivor and the last man on Earth.

Yeah.

But he also was in, was it Gallery of Terror?

Tales of Terror.

Tales of Terror, yeah.

And we had a lot of fun with him in that one. And then kind of a companion, do you think we need to induct Richard Matheson in on the basis of The Last Man on Earth, which was based on his novel? I Am Legend. That's right. Yeah. So should we get Vincent Price in here? And how about Richard Matheson?

So I am a yes on Vincent Price because of The Last Man on Earth. He just defined something there. I don't know. But a lot of people don't love that performance. They think he's out of place. I just, he did something there that I really like. So I'm down with that.

Well, when you are nominating him for a good hero, John, I do think he is out of place. It is an odd choice of actor. However, something interesting comes out of that, that I don't think you would get with a more conventional choice.

If he were more sympathetic, like Vincent Price is not necessarily a sympathetic. He doesn't cut a sympathetic figure. You know what I mean? He looks kind of sinister or snobby or something, you know? And I think, I think that really worked.

Yeah, he brings a weary, he brought a weariness to that role that I think would be harder with a more, a straight, a more straight up choice, I think.

Yeah. I don't know. Do you have thoughts, producer Brad? I have thoughts on Richard Matheson, but I want to give you a chance to jump in.

Well, we know that Romero talked about Matheson in the book. So it was important to him. And then there's also the film, which is a template for many zombie films, including Night of the Living Dead. It feels very similar.

I think his innovation, right, is he nailed the apocalypse that we would continue to use moving forward, right? Invisible Invaders kind of had an apocalypse. There was some apocalyptic kind of thing, but the style of apocalypse that either brings about the zombie apocalypse or is brought about by the zombie apocalypse, I think he defines it in, I Am Legend and then Last Man on Earth.

Now I know we have a couple of additional adaptations of I Am Legend coming in the future. Do you know, Brad, do you know if we have more Richard Matheson in our future besides those, or is this his only foray into the zombie genre?

That's a good question. I don't know the answer. I feel like we should include him because he put something out there that people have latched onto, and whether or not there were the second and the third adaptation of I Am Legend, I think that first film in that book is enough. That would be my opinion.

Yeah.

Yeah. And to just reverse that on you, it was such a compelling story. They did it three times. So even if we don't like the last two or, I've never seen the one that's actually called I Am Legend with Will Smith.

I haven't either.

In a decade, we'll be talking about that.

I have seen it. I will. Now, I can't.

All right, here's another pairing that I'll bring up. I mean, George Romero and Dwayne Jones come in under the wire, right? George Romero is considered the father of this genre, and Dwayne's survivor performance is the sort of complex, tough moral choice performance that we've come to love in this genre. So I'd like to throw both of them out there.

I mean, Romero is, we can't not put Romero, and he is the hall of fame.

Right.

Dwayne Jones is interesting just because it was this one role and then nothing else in the zombie genre.

Yeah.

It is, however, a very iconic role. What do you think, Brad?

I think if he wasn't good in the role that the movie would have suffered, and it's his performance that helps make the movie as realistic and terrifying as it is.

And like George really didn't know how to shoot super good monologues and stuff. So at one point, he's giving a monologue, disassembling the table, and it's just a still mid shot of him. And that shot completely fails if and where he's telling his story of how he encountered the apocalypse, you know, at the truck stop. And if Dwayne Jones isn't the good actor that he is there, like that scene doesn't work, but he's so good that it's amazing.

Okay. Yeah, works for me.

You know, I had one more I want to throw in there, and we didn't consider him before, but I just want to throw him out there. Boris Karloff, for a number of reasons, he was in a number of movies, Voodoo Island. He was in Zombies of Morta, was he not? No.

No, he was in The Walking Dead.

Yeah. I don't know if he's worthy. That Walking Dead performance is good. He has that ability to switch from empathy to being frightening, by flipping a coin, and I just found him compelling as the sort of sad man in The Walking Dead. But maybe he doesn't deserve a place in the Hall of Fame. What do you guys think?

I think we hold. I know that there's one or two more coming with him.

Okay.

They may not be of high quality, so it may not help his case.

Yeah. Well, and he's a great actor. That doesn't mean he's had a huge impact on zombie movies yet.

Yeah, I'm okay with holding. His performance in The Walking Dead is quite good, but it's a very abnormal zombie role. So I would like to wait and see if he gives us a more traditional contribution to the zombie genre.

All right. He'll be our John Carradine of season two, like considered but not admitted.

Yeah.

Well, I think we should consider Edward L. Kahn a director.

Oh, absolutely.

Because we watched, there's a bunch of movies in the 50s, and every time there was something we liked, we looked at the credits and he was the guy who directed it. He directed Creature with the Atom Brain, Zombie of Moritao, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake, and Invisible Invaders.

And we talked about all of those films at length when we were picking all of our favorite stuff.

Yes. Yeah, it did feel like anytime a movie made a significant step forward in zombie mythology, he was involved. So that's a no-brainer.

Yeah, I agree.

He didn't unify them in any way towards Night of the Living Dead. They all went their separate ways, but they were all very creative and had interesting firsts in them.

And I'd be curious, I know George's name called Last Man on Earth for his apocalypse, because I think what George Romero really did is codify that apocalypse, right? But Khan introduced, I think, that concept in the way that we see it wasn't in its final form, you know what I mean? But he's got a couple of iterations on it, in Creature with the Atom Brain and Invisible Invaders that seem like shots at a good apocalypse, but don't quite survive. I don't know if that makes sense.

Yeah, totally.

And he's got the first science bunker, right?

Which we were very excited about. Yes, that was great. So hey guys, this is something we talked about in our wrap up for season one. But I think we should take a minute and just throw out the question, did we miss anything? Is there anything that we skipped on past or that you've learned now that you wish we had delved into at the time? I'm going to throw, I just have one thing here. And I'm not, it's not something that we missed. It was something that we mostly made a choice not to do, a rabbit trail, we chose not to go down. But that is episodes of TV shows that feature zombies. Now, I was really pleased, Brad did have us watch one episode of The Man From Uncle that featured zombies. If you do a little Googling around, though, you will find that a fair number of TV shows in the 60s in particular had at least one episode that had zombies in it. Now, this podcast is about zombie movies. If we expand that to TV, I mean, we're already locked into this podcast for another 300 years. If we expand that to TV, it'll go even longer. But I would be interested in maybe doing a side episode sometime in the future where we just maybe do a grab bag of different zombie TV episodes. I'm just interested to see how they parallel or don't the zombie movies that were coming out at the same time.

Right. Any thoughts on that? If there are a throwback like the Man from Uncle episode was.

Right.

Exactly. I'm curious about that too. No, I think that's great. And like, yeah, I mean, the Walking Dead is the 800-pound gorilla in the middle of the room, and we're not planning to talk about it because it's been talked about so much. But I think if there's obscure episodes of 1960s TV shows that have zombies in them, that's still within our remit.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

I think so. Just something that occurred to me. Did you guys have anything else that you think we missed or that we ought to revisit?

Other than the first Dr. Satan movie?

That was on my list too. That's always my regret is when we make this big list, and then I find something else out there, I go, we got to go backwards and catch this one too.

I think we literally figured it out when you were reading out the production notes and we were all like, oh, this is the second one. Oh, no.

I knew it was the second one, but the second one shows up in Zombie List, but the first one doesn't. So I just assumed it wasn't. It was my mistake for not double checking. Well, I think that should also be maybe another episode that you guys do between seasons is watch the first Dr. Satan.

Yeah. And I will say, I know this sounds strange. They can be controversial or they're old fashioned or conservative. I'm sad we only got one Hammer movie. I don't know that there's other Hammer films that would have been appropriate. I guess not. Otherwise, producer Brad would have selected them, but I did really like The Plague of the Zombies, and I've seen lots of Hammer movies, and I remember liking them too. So, I'm a little sad we didn't get to do more of that.

Yeah, agreed.

All right.

Are you guys ready for a little trivia? Let's see what you remember.

No. I mean, am I ready? No, I'm going to humiliate myself.

I think we did pretty bad on our zombie trivia this season one, but.

So yes, last time we did clips, you had to identify movies from that. That was hard. So let's start easy.

Okay.

So I'm going to read some taglines from posters and see if you can tell me what movie it's from. Okay.

I'm ready.

He comes from beyond the grave based on scientific facts.

The Walking Dead.

No, that was season one.

It's not Plan 9 from Mother's Place.

I don't think they claimed that was based on scientific facts.

No.

A lot of claims were made on these posters. All right. So give us one hint here. Was it a movie where there was just one zombie?

No. I'll give you a further hint. It's one of our favorite directors who we just discussed.

The creature with the atom brain?

The creature with the atom brain, exactly.

Okay.

Fascinating. I don't think that really makes a ton of sense for the movie, but that's okay.

And I forgot there's no the.

All right. Here's your next tagline. It will blow your mind. Exclamation point.

Exclamation point. Oh, I think what's that one, the horrible teenage losers, that the incredibly strange creatures, zombies, is that?

Was it, what was the anthology one we watched that wasn't Tales of Terror?

Wait, wait, wait. I think I know it. It's the Argentine Beach serial killer one.

The deadly organ.

That's right. All right.

This one, maybe this is easier. We'll see. Earth given 24 hours to surrender.

That's Invisible Invaders.

Correct.

Nice. All right.

Unspeakable Horrors from Outer Space paralyze the living and resurrect the dead.

That's Planet of Outer Space.

All right.

And I remember that poster because it's the one good thing about that movie.

Yeah, it's by a guy who did a lot of great art later. It's interesting.

Yeah.

See the dancing girls of the carnival murdered by the incredible night creatures of the Midway.

The incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and became mixed up zombies.

See the blood dance of the zombies, the undead cross swords with the living.

The dead one?

No.

War of the zombies.

War of the zombies. John's got two.

Dang it.

See horror from beyond the grave, a new horror fright. See strange terrors beyond belief. I only put that one in there because there's three consecutive ones that had C. That's a Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horror.

Okay.

All right. We dare you to look into...

Dr. Blood's Coffin.

Yes.

Nice.

All right. This should be easy.

He says.

The weird jungle of cobra plants that feed on women and rip men apart.

Voodoo Island.

Woman eater.

It's Voodoo Island.

Voodoo Island? Oh no. I got my carnivorous plants mixed up.

I'm sorry.

How about this one? It moves, it breathes, it kills.

Oh, it breathes. That's a qualifier.

I don't know.

And that qualifier, I don't think it helps.

No.

I want to say, it's not woman eater, because it doesn't move.

It is woman eater.

It is it? Oh.

Yeah, I think at some point, you kind of hear the vibe of the language and try and pick a decade that might help. Young ponds thrust into pulsating cages of horror in a sadistic experiment.

Is that teenage zombies?

That's like such a lurid description for a really tame movie.

Yeah, I know. They're in the cage for like 30 seconds and they break out.

And nothing happens in the cage. Yeah, exactly. Nothing lurid happens in there.

A tide of terror floods the screen.

Horror at Party Beach. Horror at Party Beach. Oh, really?

No. It's not Tales of Terror?

No.

Mora Town, Zombies of Mora Town?

It says Zombies of Mora Town. It's the Tide of Terror. That's the clue.

Tide of Terror, yes.

How about this one?

Voodoo sorcerers can have the will of the soul of the dead in the genres of evil, carrying on their incredible revenge.

Did you get Harvey to do that?

Shoot. Is that Dr. Satan?

Here's the English version.

Voodoo sorcerers, they can command the souls of the dead, evil monsters carrying forth incredible vengeance against you.

I don't know. Oh, is it Curse of the Doll People?

It is Curse of the Doll People.

Oh, yeah. First time that movie has come up in this episode.

Yes.

I'll give you two more. Weird atomic beasts who live off human blood.

Horror of Party Beach.

The Horror of Party Beach.

Oh, nice.

And your last one, they won't stay dead.

Night of Living Dead.

Night of Living Dead.

All right. All right. Hey, that was fun.

Now we move on to the hard one. There are others. I just skipped a bunch.

There's hard ones?

That was the easy ones, huh?

Okay.

I'm ready.

I'm ready for you, producer Brad. Now we're going to play Sounds of Zombies.

Oh, no.

Okay.

Some of them will be hard because there's music or other ambient sound that sort of cover up the zombie itself. But maybe all that vibe will help you hone in on what it is. But here is clip number one.

First, you must stop the bomb.

Zombies of the Stratosphere.

That's Zombies of the Stratosphere. That's Zombie Leonard Nimoy. Here's number two.

And now you will hear my words. That is?

That's a creature of the Atomic Brain.

No, Sephora Skulls of Jonathan Drake.

Oh, dang it. All right.

Here's number three.

Linda.

Oh, that's from Dr. Blood's Coffin. That's her husband.

That's the man from Planet X. Yes. All right. Here's number four.

He's establishing a wireless directional beam.

The man from Planet X.

Yeah. Good call.

The man from Planet X. That's the guy who turns against him to help the alien.

That's right.

But he's made into a zombie. All right. Number five.

Is that the Frozen Dead?

No.

I thought it might have been one of the, you know, those zombies are sort of weird. Yeah.

It sounds similar to that opening scene where one of them is wailing. You want to hear it again?

Oh, I'm stumped on this one.

Is it the plague of the zombies?

No, it is the revived monster.

Oh, okay.

Oh, that's right. The feral guy in the basement, right?

All right, here's clip number six.

That's not Night of a Living Dead, is it, when Karen is killing?

It sounded like horses, didn't it? Oh, can we hear it again?

No, it's Hercules in the Haunted World.

It is Hercules in the Haunted World.

Good call, all right.

All right, here is number seven.

Oh, I know this, it's...

Is that Carnival of Souls?

That is Carnival of Souls.

I was gonna get something else, thanks for saving me.

We're doing better than how we were, John.

Here is number eight.

This is the corpse of an Earthman who was known as Carl Neumann.

And voiced by?

John Carradine.

John Carradine. All right, number nine.

Who could forget Carl Neumann?

And his atomic accident?

That was the scene where he shows up with what a piece of alien tech that looks like a baked potato wrapped in aluminum foil.

Here's number nine.

That's not Night of Living Dead, is it?

Want to hear it again?

Yeah, I don't know either.

Scared Stiff is the one lame zombie in that movie.

You know, somehow that wasn't even on my list of possibilities, producer Brad.

That would have been like my 20th guess, just so you know.

All right, here's number 10.

Oh, that's the one where the guy gets shot in the head. What is the name of that movie? It's the hand.

Now, this is challenging because-

It's the Spanish one.

This is the one that you, the version you and I saw, John, but Andy watched a different one and didn't get that line.

Dr. Orloff's Monster.

Dr. Orloff's Monster, because he watched a different version.

That's right. And his said, what did yours said? I forget. It was weird. It was totally different. It changed the whole movie and I forget what it was.

Yeah, I don't remember. We'll have to go back and listen to that episode.

Here's number 11.

I told you I'd come back.

That's one of the anthologies.

Yes, it's from the one with the guy who- No, like rides in a carriage across the beach.

You guys are on the wrong trail.

I told you I'd come back.

I told you I'd come back.

I don't know.

Creature with Adam Brain. That is Frank Buchanan speaking through the zombie.

Gotcha.

That's right. We should have known that one.

All right, next up we have-

Is it really Woman Eater?

No.

That's the end of Night of Living Dead.

No.

What is it?

It is not Woman Eater, but that is exactly what those creatures are doing. It's the horror of Party Beach, it's the slumber party.

Oh yeah, it's the slumber party.

Yes. What a movie that was, can we all agree?

All right, here's number 14.

Oh, Last Man on Earth.

Last Man on Earth, correct.

Great scene.

Number 15.

Lo siento mucho, señoritas. La vacante ya ha sido ocupada.

Oh, well, it narrows it down a little bit.

It's not, is it Dr. Blood's Coffin? No, not doctor, the Curse of the Tall People?

I don't think Spanish was spoken in the corners ten miles.

I meant to say Curse of the Tall People.

Is it Monstrosity?

No. Would you like me to give you a rough translation of what she's saying?

Yes.

She's saying basically, thank you ladies, the position has been filled.

Oh, it's Dr. Satan, yeah.

Dr. Satan, correct. It's when one zombie brings in another to become a zombie.

All right. I don't know why I said Monstrosity, that wasn't the Spanish.

That's right, I said Dr. Blood's Coffin. Yeah, that was not in Cornwall, you know.

Here we go.

I wonder if dear Helen will recognize me.

Gallery of Terror?

Yeah, this is the one we were thinking of first.

I love that guy so much.

Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horror.

That's right. So that is not Dr. Satan.

I was going to say it was Dr. Satan, is it not?

What's the other Argentinian movie we watched?

Well, there was the living, the something organ, the deadly organ.

Yeah. Is it the deadly organ?

It is not. It is the living head. That is the Aztec, what was he? The zombie who walks around killing the people for the head on the table.

Another movie we've made it through this whole episode without mentioning once. What does that mean?

All right. Here is one more.

Is this Dr. Satan?

Nope.

I'm trying to think of that line.

I already did Dr. Satan.

Is it Plan 9?

Yeah.

Nope, it is the Earth Dive Screening.

Oh, okay.

The radio-controlled zombies.

Interesting, okay.

All right, here we go.

What can you do for the dead?

What can you do for the dead? I feel like I should know this one.

Remember, everything you hear is being spoken by a zombie.

Oh, okay.

What can you do for the dead?

Oh, this is a man from Uncle.

This is the man from Uncle.

Is that Night of the Living Dead?

That is Night of the Living Dead.

Yeah.

That's how we're gonna end, that's the last one.

That was fun, Brad.

I feel like we did better this season. But maybe that's just because of the poster titles that we did pretty well on, I'm not sure.

I think I guessed Dr. Satan like eight times, and it was never the answer.

And there were more choices, there's more options to choose from, and you did better than last year.

All right, well, what's left?

Okay, so yeah, what do we got left to cover? So here's a quick thing, guys, and I just want to throw this as something to think about, and I thought maybe it might be fun to have this conversation where our listeners can hear it. So to date, for the first, what, 60-some movies, we end each episode by talking about how those movies do or don't include your pillar, your four pillars of the zombie film. And those, to recap, you want to just quickly recap your four pillars?

Apocalypse, Contagion, Loved Ones Turning Against You, and Tough Moral Choices.

So here's a question. So I feel like those movies were all anticipating, or those pillars were all anticipating Night of the Living Dead. Now, and Night of the Living Dead indeed met all four of those pillars. Now that we have reached that milestone, does it make sense to keep asking about those four pillars? Do we need to make our pillars more specific, or change them around, or are we... I suspect we're going to get more and more movies that meet more and more of those pillars going forward. So yeah, have you thought of those?

And I thought, my thought is, is they might not be set in stone yet. Like I feel like our next big target is Dawn of the Dead, where clearly those four pillars are important. But we're going to travel to some new and exciting places, and they may not be relevant in those movies. So I guess I'm not prepared to abandon them yet, but I'd be willing to if we just start checking them off every time, you know?

Yeah, I think that's fine. I think we should keep our eyes peeled for when it makes sense to shift up those pillars a little bit.

Another one that's just sort of become relevant that I think we should keep, but let's ask, is the Hero Party stuff. We've been talking about number of kills in Hero Party, and it hasn't been super relevant yet, but I think it's, again, Night of the Living Dead was sort of the best, perfect example, right?

Yeah, I think we could start getting more specific with some of those zombie trope questions. You know, like, how many headshots are there? You know, like, we could start getting a little bit more granular with those. So, I mean, we can just kind of evolve those as we go along.

I mean, obviously, we want to do, we're going to, at some point, we're going to do an episode in the 70s, so we're going to change. I mean, one of the things that we always get to change is when we switch decades, we get to ask some new cultural questions.

You know what I'm interested in about that, John, is at the beginning of each decade, we basically made some predictions about what we're going to get in the decade, and what we've found is those predictions do come true, but they come true in the last two years.

Yeah, I feel like the 60s really let us down in particular, but yes.

Yes, because we'd got a lot of great 60s stuff, but it was way at the very end of the 50s.

I know, and we didn't get our cool 50s teenager stuff till teenage zombies, which is an absolute nightmare. So yeah, but it's fun to make, I think, the predictions, so yeah.

Agreed, yeah.

All right. We want to end with the best movies of season two for us. And because we haven't let him go first yet, I think, producer Brad, we're each going to pick three. Now, let me ask you, are we going to each have three, even if they overlap, like we've been doing? Let's do that.

Yeah, I think we should each have our three.

So we might only end up with three, but let's have producer Brad go first.

Well, I'm going to say the one that we're all going to say, which is Night of the Living Dead. You can't not include that on a zombie list from this era. Correct.

I mean, it's the whole one.

It's the one, it's the template. It's what we know to this day. I also like The Plague of the Zombies.

Yes, I like that one a lot too.

I think partly because we'd seen a whole bunch of low budget films, and then suddenly there's a Victorian well-made, it wasn't a big budget, but it looked good and it had great actors, and there was intense moments and creepy scenes. So I put that up there.

That's what I kind of miss about Hammers. They did figure out a way to make a good movie in that era. You know what I mean? A lot of them are compelling. So like the quarter mass experiment, but that doesn't have zombies in it. So yeah, yep.

And then I'm going to cheat. I'm going to put two together because they're similar. It's hard to narrow down the three, but I can choose Invisible Invaders and Creature with the Atom Breeding, both by Edward Kahn. They were both the early 50s, and they were just enjoyable to watch, and they had new ideas on how to use zombies, and they had fun actors, and I enjoyed them.

Yeah, I'll take those. Andy, I'm going to be nice and let you go next.

Well, I'm really struggling with this one because I think if you ask, like, what are the great movies?

Yeah.

I think we're all going to, there's like basically four or five options, and we're all going to choose from them. They're going to be like Night of the Living Dead, Last Man on Earth, Carnival of Souls.

The Plague of the Zombies.

I will say, can I say one thing about Carnival of Souls, even if it's your pick? Of all the movies we've seen, it is the one I most want to watch again. So for that alone, it sort of goes on my best movies. It's sort of like my I walked with the zombie of this decade. It surprised me and was engaging in a way I didn't expect, and I really want to watch. When I watched I Walked with the Zombie, I didn't watch it again, but I did go out the next week, and I watched Cat People, you know what I mean? So anyway, that's how that one feels. But sorry, I interrupted you.

Oh no, so I was going to say, so I mean, some of my answers are basically those, but knowing that you guys were probably going to pick those, and those are like the obvious choices. If you want to go beyond the universally acclaimed movies and dig into the slightly like less good, but slightly, but maybe a little juicier stuff. I think Dr. Blood's Coffin is a really rewarding viewing.

It's almost as good quality-wise as The Plague of the Zombies, but not quite.

Yes. It feels similar to Plague of the Zombies in general.

And a compelling anti-hero, which is great.

Yeah. And I've been carrying the torch for this movie throughout many, many episodes at this point, but I think my favorite movie from this period is Zombies of Morrigan.

I would pick that one too. I'm looking at it going, I really liked that movie a lot. And it's not just for the Mona.

Yeah. And how about you, John? Anything, any surprises for us?

I want to throw a goofball pick in there because one of my goals, like when we watched The Frozen Dead, we actually watched it in season one. But when we talked about it, and I'm not picking that one, but what I said about it was, like this is the sort of schlocky fun that I thought I was signing up for. So I would like to pick sort of a schlocky crappy movie. I'd actually like to pick two. Obviously, Dr. Satan versus Black Magic. I mean, we all loved that movie. And the other one I'll pick because it was so goofy is Hercules in the Haunted World. It was so corny, right? But I loved, I just love the big vibe of the whole thing. It was so ridiculous. Like, I don't know, it just cracked me up. And I enjoyed researching that one, too.

Admit, though, Monstrosity was your first choice, right?

Now, I do have another film that's sort of on my list. That one I would ever recommend to others, which is Strange Invasion, the second Argentine film we watched.

Interesting movie, yeah.

Oh, interesting choice.

Because we all talk about media turning you into zombies, even to this day, social media. And this film in 1965 from Argentina explicitly had TVs turning the children and the elderly into zombies.

Yeah.

And I don't know if people need to watch it, but I think the concept of the film happened back then is interesting.

And I'll throw just one more out there. The revived monster, we found the characters in that movie strangely compelling. And I think when we watched it, we were like, this should be terrible, but it's not. And I'm not even sure I can recommend it to a normal movie watcher, but I don't know, if you're sort of a movie aficionado, I think you might find some value in it.

Yeah. That's a hidden gem, I think.

All right. Well, I think we did it. We did a whole season and we finished it. What are we going to do next?

We're done, right? The podcast is done?

Well, we're going to take a break before season three starts so that we can regroup and bank some episodes. But I think you guys have some plans to drop some entertainment in between seasons for the listeners.

Andy and I picked a couple of just fun, silly things that maybe aren't on our radar or our roadmap, but we want to talk about and just maybe do shorter, kind of like we do with the modern movies, but they won't be modern movies, though they might be, but there'll be other things like.

And they will be zombie-related.

Andy mentioned TV episodes. We'll probably do a couple of those. Okay, now, there's a fun one, Andy, and I don't know if you peaked yet, but producer Brad sent us an email, a message that was basically like, here's a secret zombie movie you have to watch. You're not allowed to know anything about it. Until you watch it, I'm not even going to tell you the title, and I haven't sort of opened the envelope on that. You know what I mean? But I'm in. And I actually, I'm excited to not know what it is until we actually watch it.

So in other words, we have a couple of fun episodes for you coming up, and then we are going to start season three with the 1970s in just a few short words.

But can we say what the first episode is? Because it's a returning...

I have you all set up for that moment. But I'll just say, though, it's interesting that Night of Living Dead is the last zombie film of the 60s. Yes. Which is nice for us for a nice clean break.

That's true.

It is kind of funny. We got like the late 60s, there we had some years in the late 60s that had, the mid late 60s that had a lot of zombie movies in them. But it's kind of funny that there's nothing at all in 1969.

Are you guys ready to see the poster for your first movie of season three?

I'm ready.

Here we go.

Ah, Santo y Blue Demon los Monstros. Oh, excuse me, contra los Monstros. So this is very exciting for me. I love Santo. Also, Blue Demon is the other famous wrestler from this period. He's no Santo, but if Santo is Superman, Blue Demon is Batman.

We gotta talk about this poster, though. So this looks like Santo and Blue Demon are going up the whole roster, up against the whole roster of classic cinema monsters. We have the Mummy, we have the Vampire Woman, Frankenstein, we have the Vampire, we have-

This is great. No, hold on.

Crazy Man.

Yeah, but it's not the Wolfman. It's El Hombre Lobo.

That's right. And then this one's a little out of place.

The Cyclops. Yeah, that's a little strange. So where's the zombie though? All right. Well, I guess we'll find out.

We'll find out. Yeah.

And if we are successful, we'll have our friend Javi join us for this episode as well. He's the one who read the tagline earlier in the episode today.

Yes, our first guest and our first, it's our cross promotion with Brad's other podcast, Multiplex Overthruster. So I'm excited. It'll be great fun.

Exciting.

All right. Thanks everybody. Well, if you enjoyed season two, send us an email atmbestrainspodcast.gmail.com. Also folks, we have merch, t-shirts, coffee cups, all that good stuff. We're on Redbubble and there's a link to it in the show notes. So if you want that Zombie Strains t-shirt, now is the time. We could always use more ratings in Apple podcasts or in Spotify, five stars are the preferred rating. And thanks to everybody for listening. Like we're having a blast over here and we hope you're having fun too. So thanks to all of you for listening. We'll be back in a few weeks with some goofy fun. 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.