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

Zombie.

What's a zombie?

Just what is a zombie?

Well, a zombie is, um, Mr. Bill is...

The living dead.

They are the living dead.

It's an army of zombies.

Because a zombie has no will of his own.

What is wrong? What is wrong?

Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast where we watch all of the zombie movies. How about that new intro? I'm John.

I'm Andy.

I'm Brad.

Hi, producer Brad.

Producer Brad.

So, we have been down in the lab all week. We did not watch a new zombie movie, so if you're worried that you missed whatever we were watching for this week, that's because there is no new one. What we're doing today is we've come to sort of analyze what we call the first season of this show. We watched about 22 movies. Most of them, 16 of them were released between 1919 and 1948. And we were originally going to watch just some important ones, but we realized we didn't know what the important ones are. So, we're going to watch as many as we can. We're hoping to watch all of them. So, you may have noticed in the season we picked up a couple earlier movies that we hadn't watched before, starting with Jacque's in 1919. And going forward, we're going to try to watch just as many of these movies as we can in chronological order. We'll also occasionally, we'll still keep jumping ahead, but today is all about those early zombie movies and what we learned. But we didn't start with the early ones. Well, how did we start, Andy?

We started with two relatively contemporary zombie movies. To start out this podcast, John and I each picked a movie that we felt best exemplified what a zombie movie is. We didn't pick movies that we thought were the quote best zombie movies or anything, but movies that we love, and that we wanted to learn how they came about, I guess. So John.

That's true for you. Mine, which was Dawn of the Dead, I picked mine as a, here is a cookie cutter zombie movie where I can sort of explain everything I want about zombie movies. Not that I think it's bad, but it's certainly not beloved.

John, don't be ashamed of your pedestrian taste in film. This is a no judgment zone, or at least only modest amount of judgment.

A mild judgment.

It has everything in it, John. Everything's in it.

It does.

So, but that was the point. We wanted to pick movies that had everything in it that we understood when we thought of the phrase zombie movie. John went first with Dawn of the Dead from 2004, the remake by Zack Snyder. And as John mentioned, that's a, he chose that because it's a cookie cutter, very much in the tradition of George Romero's various Living Dead movies. And I chose Girl with All the Gifts from 2017, specifically because it, it fell into the somewhat more maybe cerebral, more, more, more modern take or rethinking of what a zombie movie might look like. And as we picked those two movies, John created what we like to call his four pillars of zombie films. Now, John, you went out way on a limb because you were making these pillars before we had watched any of these movies, right? So I think one of the most interesting discussions we've had over the course of this first season and that we're going to have some more today is what's up with those four zombie pillars? And now that we've actually watched 22 vintage zombie movies, how do those pillars stack up? John, can you just restate those four pillars? And then maybe give us a few thoughts on how they fared once we started watching all of these delicious movies from the 30s and 40s?

Absolutely. And I'm going to drag you into this too, but let me restate them first. So first was Apocalypse, right? All modern zombie movies feature some sort of apocalypse. Contagion, part of the apocalypse is you can become a zombie if you encounter another zombie. Usually it's by biting, but sometimes it could be something else. But in any case, it's a contagion. Third, then became difficult moral choices, right? Tough moral choices. And I think that third one is sort of generated by the first two. When you're in extreme situation, like an apocalypse, and there's a risk, like becoming infected, then you have to make tough moral choices. So those three go together. And then sort of piggybacking on tough moral choices is loved ones turning against you. And that is part of the contagion theme too. And to me, was always sort of the scariest part of the zombie movie that you would see, you know, like Shaun of the Dead, for example, funny movie, not very scary, but when you see his mother turn into a zombie, it really is scary and heart-rending, right? So that was the fourth one. I left a couple of huge things out here, Andy. So rather than talk about what they, what we can talk about how they fared, but I'd like to talk about first the huge thing that I left out. And you know what's not on this list? I'm zombies. And I don't mean like zombies aren't on this list. All of these refer to zombies. I mean, there's nothing on these pillars about zombies, why zombies are scary. You know, how they impact you as the viewer. And I think the biggest thing I've learned from this season is, and you really put me on to it when you asked the question, we still haven't seen a zombie be scary. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But what we have seen is it being scary to be a zombie, right? Which is something I did not expect and did not even think of. So the experience and importance of the zombie as a character in a movie, and also how we feel about the zombie, or how we feel about becoming a zombie is totally missing from my, not totally, but it's implied, not directly suggested in my four pillars. What do you think about that?

I think that's a great insight, and I think you're correct. We were missing that something crucial. And to me, I was stunned at how few of these pillars were present in the 30s and 40s. And to me, that was an exciting discovery, not a disappointment at all.

Yes, I agree.

Even though in one sense, it does mean we're watching a lot of movies that do not have the characteristics I love about modern zombie movies, right? So I guess maybe my first instinct was to think, what a bummer, how long do we have to wait until we get to the stuff I like? But what I'm learning instead is that far from being, even though this genre kind of has this feel, I think sometimes, of being a very cookie cutter genre with no new ideas and just repetitive, in fact, it has changed remarkably since it was born. And that is more interesting to me than, way more interesting than going back to the 30s and finding the things I know and love already from the 2010s, right?

Right. And I think one of the things I'm enjoying most is how surprising that is and how we get to just sort of learn. It's not a broad lesson in film history, but learn about film history once you sort of get rid of that expectation and instead ask, okay, this claims to be a zombie movie, in what ways is it a zombie movie? And still relate them to the modern ones, but be less dogmatic about those four pillars. We're going to get to a point where those four pillars are going to be right on the nose, and it's going to be like 1980 and 2020, I'm pretty sure. And then we'll be excited to talk about these variations, because the formula will become so regular. So that's my prediction for the future.

I think that around 1985, we're going to have to, if we're refining our zombie pillars now at the early stages, we're going to have to define them again in the other direction. Once we hit the 80s, and they're going to have to start getting real specific, like how many headshots?

Yeah, exactly. Yes.

I think one of the questions is, when are we no longer watching movies with zombies, and instead watching zombie movies?

Right.

Yes.

That's a great way to frame it. Exactly. All right. So yeah, I think the pillars are going to need some work, I think, going into next season too. But what I've learned, just to sum up, is these aren't as relevant, but there were some great bits. And I think the one that came up the most was Loved Ones Turning Against You.

Yes. Although it was interesting to see, even that was usually not executed in these movies in the way that is very familiar to us from modern zombie movies.

Exactly. Well, I get an idea. Let's start off with some listener mail. We got a few questions here, and I think we want to start off there. We appreciate everybody who sent these in. And I'll start with the first one. A friend of the show, Matt, asks a great question. He said, could you envision a satisfying contemporary movie using this older zombie typology? And if so, who would you want to direct it, and what stories might it tell?

Can you talk for a minute, John, about what he's referring to here by older zombie typology?

Yes, let's do that first, because we're going to get to this when we talk about our themes, but we'll cover it briefly here just to sort of answer the question. I think we're talking more about voodoo, mesmerism, people being turned into zombies, but it not necessarily being permanent. And I think another one is it being terrifying to be a zombie, which is something we left out, but jumped out at me in our early movies. What do you think, Andy?

I think so. I also thought about the cultural context that these early movies are, 80% of them are just very firmly planted in the cultural context of the Caribbean and within the Voodoo and in a few cases, obey religious and magical traditions. So, yeah, how would you answer Matt's question? Then I'll take a crack at it. All right.

So I think you could, but I don't think, you and I have been complaining for a long time about, I think you put it best when you said, I'm kind of tired of watching a movie set in Haiti about rich white people problems, right? Which I think is in the context of that time, what else would you tell a story about? Right? So now we wouldn't tell that story. That would seem like a weird story to tell. I haven't seen Sinners yet, but I've seen the trailer, and I am thinking that if we're going to make a zombie movie using those themes and being, I like his use of the word topology here, like in Haiti or Jamaica, I think it's going to have to be more a movie about justice and flipping the heroes and villains from what we've already seen. So I'm going to nominate, actually, I have two nominations, but I'll just give one and wait to see here. Ryan Coogler, depending on how he does with his foray into horror, I think could knock this out of the park because I've loved one of his other movies. So if this one is a banger, that'll be my answer. How about that?

I think that's a great answer. But my mind also went quickly to, this is kind of what Ritual in 2002 was trying to do.

And failing, I think, because it didn't switch the context.

Ritual, we did not consider a very good movie or one that we would strongly recommend to zombie movie fans. But I do think that Ritual may be picked up on the fact that after a couple of decades of Night of the Living Dead knockoffs, maybe there was some way to revisit the roots of the zombie genre, but bring a modern film style. And like we said, Ritual did not succeed in executing that vision very well. To me, I think that we are ripe for a revisiting of this original take of Zombies, both the mechanics of the Zombies and their place in the story and the very local scale of these stories and their cultural context. But I think what we need is for these stories to just be written from a different perspective and by people that can authentically tell those stories from a different perspective. I mean, I would love to see one of these movies. Simply, you could keep almost the entirety of the plot and everything like that. But just give me a protagonist who is a local in the area, right? Or a servant to these rich white people. I mean, if you just flip the perspective, I think you would have yourself a really compelling movie. And I think that I look at the last 10 years of horror movies. It's been a great 10 years for horror, my goodness. And I think the time is right for this. So, you know, Hollywood studios, get, you know, call me. I have reasonable consulting rights.

Do you have a director you have in mind?

So I'm not really enough of a movie file to have a director in mind.

So there's a few, I think, I mean, I am not an expert on horror directors either. There's a couple that pop to mind. One is Robert Eggers, who did Nosferatu last year, and he did most famously The Witch, which was sort of his breakout. I don't really feel like this is his jam, Andy, but the one person I will bring up because I think they've been the sort of strongest sort of pop horror director in the last decade is Mike Flanagan, right? When I see what he did with The Haunting of Hill House, or even his adaptation of Doctor Sleep, which I don't think is a very strong Stephen King book, but I loved that movie. I think he would have some take that none of us are expecting and make a great movie.

Yeah, and I think the only person whose name I would add to that list is Jordan Peele.

Yes.

He has made some of my favorite horror movies, and I don't know if he would have the, if he could, or Eggers could bring that perspective change that is needed. But I do know that he has made a lot of stories that have just been sort of compellingly challenging in their outlook and general perspective.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, that was a great question. What's our next question?

Yeah. Next, we hear from a listener, Erin. She has this question. What's been your favorite moment in a movie where you see a flash of what makes zombie movies so great?

So I think I answered the last one first. So you answer first this time, Andy.

Yeah. So there have been a number of little flashes. I think the one I'm going to call out is in Revenge of the Zombies, when Zombie Lila drags her husband under the waters of the swamp. That caught a little bit of the horror of a modern movie where the zombies bear down on you and drag you away. I just got a little bit of that thrill of terror from that. As really, as mild as that scene ultimately is compared to Dawn of the Dead type situation. There's some other moments too, but I want to hear from you. What's one from you?

Well, one that jumped right to mind when I read this question was in White Zombie, which is the first one we watched, though not the first in order, where they go to the sugar plantation and there's just a sequence where in this sort of noir-ish shadows, these zombies are walking around making the sugar and one of them falls into the machinery and everything just keeps going. Like that really, that's the one that is really stuck in my mind. You know? Yeah. The other one, just because it's so artful, is from I Walked with a Zombie, where they're going through the sugarcane field, and our hero is leading the zombified woman through the sugarcane field. That's just such a well-done scene. I found it really compelling.

I think I want to throw in the sequence from Ghostbreakers, where they are exploring around the mansion and being sort of quasi-stocked by a zombie. I just love that Scooby-Doo vibe, you know, sneaking around and eyes from a painting are following you around the room, and a zombie is right behind you, but you don't see him. I can't say that that is something I've seen.

Or in a suit of armor.

Or in a suit of armor. I can't say that I've even seen that in a lot of modern zombie movies, like zombie comedies these days, like Zombieland or going back a little bit more, or Shaun of the Dead, have, I think, more sophisticated or modern humor than that. But I do love that silly side of horror. And I do hope that in this podcast, we see more of that strain of zombie. So I like that whole sequence from Ghostbreakers.

Yeah, I agree. All right.

Okay.

Awesome. Thank you for that question. We actually have some younger listeners, believe it or not, one of our younger listeners asked this question, which I'm going to make you answer first, Andy, which is, I'm wondering what movie you were most excited about getting to discuss. We might have the same answer here, but you go first.

Yes. So the obvious answer is Night of the Living Dead, right? So I want to try to think of something different. So I'm going to say from the mid-50s, I'm excited to discuss The Last Man on Earth.

Yeah, that'll be interesting.

Based on Richard Matheson's novel, I Am Legend, I believe it stars Vincent Price in the lead role. So just as we've been seeing some young actors who later went on to be popularly stereotyped as old and threatening, I'm excited to see Vincent Price in a romantic lead role. I think that Last Man on Earth might be a movie that really starts hitting our pillars.

Yeah, that's a great one. I'm sort of torn between most excited to watch and most excited to discuss. So I'll say the same thing. I am super excited to watch Night of the Living Dead and talk about it. I've been avoiding rewatching it until we get to watch it together. Having said that.

And by the way, HBO Max is taunting us. It's sitting there in HBO Max.

I know. It's killing me. But there's a couple of very famous movies in our season 2, which I haven't seen in a long time. I'll just pick one of them. Plan 9 from Outer Space, which is Bela Lugosi's last movie. It is legendary. It's so terrible that somebody else made a movie about the making of this movie and how terrible it is. You say a movie that's so bad, it's good. This might be the ultimate so bad it's good movie. With a clueless tone deaf director and everything else. So I'll put that on my list for silliness.

That is going to be a blast. I can't wait, actually.

Yeah. Yeah.

That was a great question. So we're really appreciative to all of you who sent in questions.

Yeah. Thank you so much. All right. Well, why don't we get started? We want to take a few minutes here and talk about all of the things we've learned and discovered. You know, we said at the top like, these are not the movies we expected them to be. So let's do a little bit of rundown here and talk about this. Why don't you kick us off, Andy?

Yeah, that sounds good. Let's just chat for a minute about what the earliest films were that we watched. So let's talk about films released before 1940. And so I have seven films in mind, particularly here. I'll quickly run them off. That's Jacque's from 1919 is the earliest by a good margin. And then we skip up to the 1930s where in rapid succession, we have White Zombie, Maniac, Wanga, The Walking Dead, Revolt of the Zombies and The Devil's Daughter. So John, did you detect any themes or aesthetics or general vibes about movies before 1940 that feel unique to this era?

I think that we are, I think this is the time when Americans in particular become very curious about Haitian voodoo and religion. And I think by the time of the later movies, it's like, yeah, yeah, there's zombies. We all know what those are. Let's just make a movie. Here, we're actually maybe getting into it a little bit.

Yeah. For me, by far the biggest thing is the very explicit grounding of almost all of these stories in the Caribbean. Yes. I was thinking about how this decade, because this is going to change. When we hit 1940, we start to see, I think, a distancing of this. It's still present in the 1940s, but it starts to get more distant. You start to have movies set in the United States. But in the 30s, I was thinking about how this compares to other what you might call iconic monster movie types, so vampire movies and werewolf movies and ghost movies. And I'm going to venture a hypothesis that the zombie movie genre is unique in how much time it spent living in the cultural space that birthed the zombie trope before it sort of internationalized the concept of zombie and ended up diluting and then dropping its original cultural context. If that was a kind of convoluted sentence, you know, think about Dracula and vampires. They have roots in Eastern Europe, right? But vampire movies do not stay in Eastern Europe for very long at all. In fact, the plot of the very first, well, the very first big vampire story is about Dracula leaving his cultural roots and coming to the modern world, London, right?

Right.

When you look at werewolves, I mean, plenty of cultures have mythology about shape-shifting creatures, but werewolf movies didn't spend, as far as I know, much time at all dwelling in any specific cultural milieu.

Right.

And by contrast, zombie movies spent 10 years before someone really had the idea to move this type of story out of this very, very specific place in the world. What do you think about that?

I think that's really astute. And the one outlier here, I think, is Jacque's, which I think more than any of these, for the brief time that there are zombies in it, resembles a more modern zombie movie. You know what I mean? But for the rest of these, I think you're right. And I think some of them, like The Walking Dead, aren't really about zombies. He's just sort of zombie-esque. But I think you make a good point. And I think one of the things I've heard people say, I'll give this credit to Ken Hite, who's a game designer, but I think other people have said it, is that the modern zombie, the Romero-esque zombie, is one of the few new myths of the 20th century. And it doesn't become that until it shakes off these roots and becomes universal in that way. It is a regional horror movie trope, but it doesn't, it doesn't, it's, you know, I don't know, again, we don't know how we're going to get there. We're going to do the 50s and 60s next, but it's got to get married with some other things. And I don't know what those things are yet, so.

This is how these films felt to watch. But now that I look at them, you know, maybe half of them were not set on Haiti. Maybe that's not the best point to make, but it certainly feels like these movies are rooted, you know?

Yeah. Well, when I think of the other ones, I think they've just substituted exotic cultures or something else for them.

All right. Well, was there anything else from the 30s, John, that you wanted to call out or just from the early films we watched?

Not really. I think there's some exceptional things in these movies, but I think we're going to get to that later in the episode where we talk about sort of our favorite things about the different periods. So we'll come back to that later.

All right. Sounds good. All right. Hey, John, do you want to usher us into the 40s?

Yes. So the 40s, I didn't realize it until I saw producer Brad's summary here, but let me just list off the movies, The Ghostbreakers, King of the Zombies, Bowery at Midnight, I Walked with a Zombie, Revenge of the Zombies, Voodoo Man, Zombies on Broadway, and Valley of the Zombies. Now, I'm leaving out Ava and Costello Meet Frankenstein because though it's 1948, it's not a zombie movie and though it's beloved. Well, we'll get to that later when we talk about some of our favorites, but I'm going to exclude it from this list here. So there's still three movies in here that are, that where Voodoo and Haiti and the Caribbean become more important. I walked with a zombie, zombies on Broadway, and the Ghostbreakers all have that Cuba, Caribbean thing going on.

Although Ghostbreakers spends half of its time run in the US, right?

Yes. So I think we've still got those roots, but I think what we're saying is that those roots are taken as read. In zombies on Broadway, they're like, we need a zombie. Okay, off to San Sebastian Island. It's not really about the culture there anymore. They're just paying lip service to it. So I think we're starting to move out of the physical location, and the voodoo part fades into the background, and we're now starting to tell other stories. Like we've really got into comedy, right? Yeah. And we're getting into political movies. We've got some German Nazi mad scientists in here. And we're also introducing, like, mesmerism and hypnotism, which is not really what Haitian voodoo is about, right? Like, are you seeing the same thing I'm seeing here?

Yeah, I would go a little further in to say that we also see the first hints of sort of meta-awareness within the genre. Not that most of these movies are meta-ironic films, but they assume a knowledge of the zombie genre, enough so that zombies on Broadway takes place partly in a club called the Zombie Hut. And it's assumed not only that you know what zombies are, but that you've seen some of these movies, and maybe even become a little bored with the tropes, which is why these movies can suddenly start having a little bit more fun with them.

Yeah, I agree. That's a good observation. So I think we're starting to move away from those origins, but we're still playing service to them, because we haven't found a replacement yet.

And I do think we are starting to inch towards the zombies as an existential threat here, as we get a couple of movies starting to wonder what if the Nazis had zombies, or what if this got out beyond the confines of this little love triangle, right? Since we've been talking so much about the location of these movies, let's just break that down more specifically. John, do you want to kind of walk us through... We have basically four general locations that these films find themselves in. Do you want to just run us through what those are?

Sure. So six of them, mostly the six earliest ones, but not exclusively, are in the Caribbean. Sometimes they're in a made-up Caribbean island, sometimes they're in Haiti, but they're in the Caribbean. We've got one in Cambodia, but I would argue that one is really just transferring, substituting one mystical religion for another, and an excuse to have some.

Yeah, it feels like a coded Haiti, right?

We have one in France, which is our sort of outlier GQs, and then we have eight set in the USA. So the ones that I see on this list, the eight that are, well, here, so that's the list. What do you think about that? Because we've been talking about the Caribbean, but there are a lot set in the US. Is there anything to that, honestly, beyond just US centrism in making movies? It's just easier to make a movie in LA than it is.

I suspect so. I would imagine, yeah, it just costs less. A lot of these movies set in the US, think of, a lot of these movies had what appeared to be about three or four sets. I think if you were throwing together a low-budget zombie movie, I imagine it was a lot easier if you could just film it and just set it in the US and not try to go through the trouble of faking a Caribbean background, right? Right. But, you know, that said, I'm sure this has to do with the shift towards the United States as the primary, as a rising power in the world and as the main producer of these films, right?

And a lot of these, with a couple exceptions, Maniac and The Walking Dead were set in the US, and those are from the 30s, but most of the others are from the 40s. So I think it sort of backs up our idea that we're starting to move away from the Caribbean in general.

But, you know, one thing I didn't note in this chart that I made is that zombies on Broadway, I marked it as US, but the zombies actually come from the Caribbean and are brought to the US.

And we go to a Caribbean for a lot of it. So if we take those numbers in, then it's Caribbean 7, US 7, and that maybe makes a little more sense.

Well, I would say Caribbean 7, US 8. I would still think the zombies do show up in the US.

There you go. All right. So yeah, so I think that backs up. I think we're starting to see a little bit of a move here.

I also think, I haven't thought this through. So let me just throw it out there. I think we are seeing the evolution of a certain sort of American coded protagonist. As dull as we found the protagonist in most of these films, by the 40s, they are taking on a more recognizable type, the sort of stolid American guy, right?

Right. Captain America, Square Jod. Yeah.

And so I wonder if that is the sort of hero people want to see in a movie. It just makes more sense to center the story more and more around the place where you find those people.

Yeah. The other thing I'll say is, I think this has to go with the cultural influence of these movies. We start to get comedies in the 40s because I think people need comedies.

For sure. Yeah.

So I think tone is very different in the 40s than the 30s. Most of these, some of them still do, but a lot of these movies just don't take themselves seriously. And that's different.

So John, let's go back and talk about all of the different tropes. We've been talking a lot about a couple of tropes, but we've actually come across quite a few tropes that are going to resonate for decades throughout zombie films. So do you want to walk us through the things we noticed or that we recognized in these films?

Well, I'll tell you the thing that you are absolutely exhausted by that is a trope in most of these movies is drums. Like, I swear to God, Andy never needs to hear another voodoo drum again. It's sort of constant. That's a big one. And I think one of the things that I didn't expect is the reversibility of zombification. Yes, yes. Because that's not something that I was expecting to see at all. Like, you know, just because of, I think this is what made me leave zombies out of my thinking in the Four Pillars because I just took it as read that like, if you become a zombie, you're essentially a non-person and you're basically dead. You're fodder for our heroes to gun down with their incredible handgun headshots, right? And that's not the case in these movies. Zombies have much more going on than I gave them credit for.

I'll add a trope or two that I took note of. I found the trope of science versus magic to be... It's fascinating that we find it here right at the beginning of the genre because I think that that will be a split in the zombie genre going forward, sometimes within the same movie. And that is the split between zombies as mystical beings raised from the dead by religious rituals or magic, or on the other side, zombies that are the product of science gone awry.

Yeah, and I'm thinking of... This is sort of the mashup of the Voodoo and the Frankenstein modernization tropes because I keep thinking of the Walking Dead here because he's a science-created zombie, right? But he has a mystical aspect to him. And it's that combination and tension that I think makes the most interesting movies here.

Yes, there were a few other kind of lesser ones that I think are still worth calling out.

Yeah.

We haven't seen a definitive statement of how you kill a zombie yet. But we have seen some early tropes that are no longer in zombie movies, like using salt to dispel or shut down a zombie.

I did love that. You described it at the time when we first saw it in Wanga as a bane. Not unlike garlic for a vampire or something. And I like that a lot.

And the concept of zombie dust as being part of the zombie creation ritual, both magical and scientific, depending on which movie you're watching, is here in a couple of movies, and I think is completely gone in modern zombie movies.

Yes. And we also have the serum. There's a mad scientist serum, which those are similar but not the same.

Yeah. Serum feels to me like the precursor to the lab virus that gets out and causes a zombie outbreak. One of our listeners asked earlier, what movie are you looking forward to seeing? I'm looking forward to seeing a movie that marries zombies with the contagion scare films that I think are going to kick in for real starting in the early 50s.

Yeah. And I mean, the one obvious huge trope we didn't mention, but we should, is that using magic or spirituality to create a zombie. And I think that's the one, like that's the main trope here, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's not exclusive, but it's the biggest one.

And I think we assumed that that meant raising the dead, but we've seen many zombies that are living.

Yes.

Absolutely.

I am very interested in John, when is the last movie we'll see where the zombie state is reversible?

Yes, I'm curious about that too. And I think it'll be, well, we'll see.

Yeah.

So, let's talk about some of our firsts. There's a lot of first things we discovered here. I don't think we need to go over every first, but why don't you start? What are a couple of the sort of first things we saw here that you were so excited about, or that you were excited about?

Well, I have to call out the first Rage Zombie, which we have pegged as being in 1934's horrific film Maniac. If what you love about Zombies is your 28 Days Later style Rage Zombie, I'm sorry to tell you that it started in Maniac.

Yes, absolutely. Yes, and I have to say one of my firsts, my favorite firsts is the, I actually got excited about the first horde, the first cannibalistic horde. And I remember that episode, it was in Bowery at Midnight. And I was like, Andy, Andy, there it is. You know, like, those zombies, there's a bunch of them, and they're going to eat that guy. And that's, that's, you know, that's it. And I just got so excited.

And can I play you the setup for that?

Yeah, please.

Here's what the mad scientist says that clued us in. That's what was happening.

Yeah.

How are you, my pets? Hungry, eh? Well, you shall have food and a new companion, too.

Nice. So, yes.

That's all we get. That's the only clue we get.

That's all we get, but I was so excited. And I have to say, the other first was the Nazi plot. Like, eventually, it'll become a communist plot or something else, but just the evil government using zombies to their evil ends. I enjoyed that very much.

You know what I love about that trope, as we've seen it, John, is the first movie where we saw the movie speculating about what would happen if the zombie making process were industrialized and put in the hands of governments was in revenge of the zombies.

Yes, which is really about the first world war. Revolt.

Yes, or revolt of the zombies. And that movie cast it in a really racist way and that wasn't very fun. But the difference between that one, that movie I think correctly understood that nobody should have, no nation should have this because it would be too terrible in the same way that you might argue that no nation should have access to H bombs or something like that. Because no matter how virtuous you think you are, it's just simply too dangerous. But by the time we get to, it's not very much longer when we get to King of the Zombies that that has shifted, and now it's just the Nazis that want this. And I just wonder if there's sort of a patriotic shift going on there. Yeah. In the 30s, this was too terrible power for anyone to have, but everyone was suggested as being interested in using it. But by the time you get to World War II, really, only the Nazis would stoop to this.

Well, there were a lot of other fun firsts here, but those are the big ones that jumped out to me.

I would add, the only film that had a hero end as a zombie was Zombies on Broadway. Now, it's a film where they get reversed, so we know he'll return to normal. But the film does end with one of the leads staring at the camera with zombie eyes.

Yes. And that's a big one for, once we get into the 80s, there'll be a lot of, hey, Bob, are you okay? And the camera spinning around and Bob's a zombie. There's a whole generation of movies that feature that. So yes, that was very cool.

All right. So hey, Brad and John, let's talk about one of the most fun little things we noticed over the course of the season, and that is the different terms that were used for zombie.

Yeah, there's some great ones in here.

Yeah. Obviously, the word zombie was used right out the gate by in White Zombie. It wasn't used in Jekyll's, but zombies used throughout a lot of these films, but it's not the only term. So John, what are some of your favorite terms we heard used for zombies?

Well, I'll say two of them that I loved. One is My Pets, which we just heard in that clip, Bowery at Midnight. And the other was actually, it's not from one of the older movies. It's from Girl with All the Gifts, but I love this one as Hungry's.

Yeah. It's delightful. I think my favorite is Perishables from King of the Zombies.

I know.

It's really just a side statement. It is only said once, but I want to live in the alternate timeline where that became the word for this type of creature.

Yeah. And of course, we get the term the living dead, which I'm interested about because at this time, that could apply also to vampires. It does apply to vampires.

Yes.

I think we're going to, just to throw a prediction out there, I think we're going to see, we just talked about the last man on earth, right? I think we're going to see zombies and vampires merging a little bit here. You know what I mean? In terms of that stuff. But anyway.

All right, John, one thing we did at the beginning of every episode is we talked about the historical context that provided the backdrop against which the movie we were discussing was originally released. And as listeners will know, that section of the show got kind of repetitive because there are a couple of big historical themes that loomed in the background of a lot of these. Do you want to talk about maybe the big obvious ones and then one or two of the maybe slightly less obvious ones?

Well, I think a big one that we saw like in The Walking Dead or in Bowery at Midnight is The Great Depression, right? People down on their luck, they need a job, they need help. So they get lured into these situations where they become prey to other people. Now, in Bowery at Midnight, they don't become zombies, but the theme of The Great Depression is still really strong here.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? And then we actually have a couple with World War I, because we have jacques, but we also have Revolt of the Zombies, which is in the context of World War I. I think there's a big one we missed, but let's keep going to the other big one. So World War II, obviously. And what's interesting about World War II as a trope is, first of all, the two things that surprised me is, they don't directly criticize Germany in the movies that are even about evil Nazis. They make an obvious movie about somebody who is an evil Nazi scientist and never used the word German or Nazi, which I thought was fascinating. But I also think the influence of World War II is comedy. People are tired of war, so let's hit some funny movies here. I think that's a big one.

If anything, I was surprised at the relative subtlety of the anti-Nazi propaganda in these films. This was not an era of real nuanced messaging about the Nazis.

I believe that they referred to them as the Hun in propaganda posters.

I mean, this is the era of Captain America punching Hitler in the face, right? So I guess before we started watching these movies, I would have guessed that a full half of these movies would have been a very, very unsubtle, like the Nazis are the zombies type of messaging. But we didn't get that at all. And when the Nazis did show up, it was, I don't think the word subtle is something I would apply to most of these films, but it was a lot less, I guess you might say, jingoistic than I expected.

Yes. So, crime and gangsters is a big theme. But you know what, I feel like we missed, because I didn't know it until we started this, is the US occupation and fascination with Haiti and voodoo. Like that's a huge thing that impacted a lot of these movies. We occupied it from 1915 to what, 1934, right? Which is roughly contemporaneous with White Zombie. So I think that had a huge influence and I didn't know it when we first started.

Yeah, I think there's probably a lot of interesting stuff going on as the age of the colonial powers wore down. And the US may be coming to grips with its identity as something a little new in a world of old Europe colonial nations, but also having its own colonial empire of a sort. And I think that you can sense that kind of that curiosity and that exoticism or that sort of fetishization, I think sometimes of places that movie going audiences would have described with words like exotic. I think that's all wrapped up in that sort of transitional state out of the old colonial system into something that was newer and more complicated.

And all of this also has to do with the United States of America becoming less isolationist through the 30s into the 40s. You know what I mean? It's a slow evolution of our culture. That's sort of the broad strokes of the season and the big things that we learned, but let's get into some of the fun details of these movies. So I'll start, Andy. What is your best favorite zombie story that we've seen?

I think my favorite zombie story is I walked with a zombie.

Yeah, I loved that one too, and I think I would have to pick that one. Just to pick a different one for fun, I think Revenge of the Zombies is a lot of fun, only because of the Nazi scientists and the zombies turning against them, which is pretty fun. And I'm not saying go with all the gifts, because it's a later movie, and that feels unfair, because it's such a good movie. But anyway, okay, what's next?

John, what is the scariest zombie that we saw on the screen?

The scariest zombie that we saw on the screen? I'm going to go with the zombies in White Zombie, the mindless ones. The idea of becoming one of those is so terrifying to me. So I know I'm sort of cheating on the context there, but that's the one I'm going to pick. What about you?

For me, I have one hands down winner, and then two runner ups that sort of tied. My hands down winner is Darby Jones as Karafor, in I Walk With a Zombie. He's great. He is, to me, he is the best of the soulless husk strain of zombie from this era.

Yeah, and you point out there's no iconic zombie in the way that there's an iconic vampire or an iconic wolfman. He's the closest we come, because he's in two movies, and he is so intimidating.

He could have been, if these movies played out a little differently, he could be the Boris Karlov, Bela Lugosi of zombies, I think.

Yeah, I think you're right.

My runner ups, just real quick, were the horde of cannibal zombies in the sub-sub-subbasement in Powerade Midnight. And then I mentioned her earlier, but Zombie Lila in Revenge of the Zombies for her amazing swamp kill. Yes, absolutely. We talked a lot during the show about when a movie's, zombies are going to start to get scary. And these three are really the only scenarios involving a zombie that would make me feel genuinely terrified.

Yeah. All right. So what's, having said that, who's the best zombie, best meaning worst, zombie master?

Okay. So my favorite, I am not going to go for the obvious one and say Bela Lugosi, although I mad respect if you are going to say that. For me, it's Ian Keith as Ormond Merckx in Valley of the Zombies.

Oh, good call. I like that one a lot. Yes. He is so creepy. I don't know how the man walked down the street on a regular day, but yeah.

That's cheating a tiny bit because he is also the quote zombie in the movie, but watch it. I promise you will recognize it as he's really a zombie master.

Yeah, that's a good one. I'll pick Dr. Max Heinrich von Ultraman from Revenge of the Movies because his name is Dr. Max Heinrich von Ultraman, and he's a Nazi scientist, and I just can't resist.

I'm sorry. Oh, hey, do we want to do a quick shout out to the least scary zombie?

Oh, yeah, let's do that.

What's your least scary zombie?

The least scary zombie, I'll cheat a little bit. The zombies in, except for Darby Jones, the other zombies on Broadway, like when the two comedians get turned into zombies, they're just funny. It's probably the funniest they are in the whole movie, I'll be honest, when they're zombies.

Yeah, this one, it's hard to separate this from what is the funniest zombie, but for me, it's Montan Moreland as Jefferson in King of the Zombies. Just what a delightful.

That's a good one.

He's not going to hurt a fly, so not scary at all.

I agree.

All right, John, this next quick question I have for you is maybe the hardest one to answer. Who is the best hero that we saw on screen this season?

They're all so annoying. I'll pick one. Here's the one I'll pick. I'm going to pick Bob Hope.

Okay.

Because he's the most of the hero characters. He has the most character and is the most entertaining.

He has a personality you could maybe describe.

Yeah. That's something other than stoic. Yes.

So I have my answer dovetails with yours, and I'll say my answer and then back it up with evidence. Okay. I nominate Mary in Ghostbreakers.

Oh, nice.

Well played. Here's my reasoning. So she makes decisions that are clever and interesting. She solves problems in interesting ways. She tricks a zombie by dressing up as her ancestor. She is the one, not Bob Hope, who solves the comical organ puzzle in the crypt. She is brave. She swims to the island on her own, without the men there to help her.

And much less she just decides to move there.

Yes, she resists all this pressure to relinquish her property, and she doesn't.

And when she swims there and it's out of the water, her hair is perfect.

It's incredible, yes. So I nominate Mary. She's my hero of the season.

That is, you know what? I'm not going to be a coward and change my answer, but I think you're right. All right, so having said that, let's move to our next quick question, which is what performance, just pick, let's maybe each pick one, but what performance has really stood out to you? And yeah, you go first.

If you let me go first, I'm going to pick the obvious one. I'm very sorry.

That's okay, do it.

Freddie Washington as Klee Lee in Wonga.

Yeah, super good. I have not followed up on my threat of watching her other movies, because there's only a handful of them, but I would really like to. I'm going to sneak in, the other obvious one is Montan Moreland. He was in two of our movies, and he was the best thing about both those movies. Well, not the best thing. He was in Revenge of the Zombies, and John Carradine is pretty great in that, but he was the most entertaining.

Yeah. My runner-up would, but I already nominated him for Best Zombie Master. It would be Ian Keith just for that scenery-chewing performance in Valley of the Zombies.

He was pretty great.

Yeah.

Okay, John, let's quickly go through. One of the things we did in each episode is we nominated people to join our Zombie Hall of Fame. These are people involved with making these movies that we think had an outsized influence on the genre. So do you want to go through some of the big names we put on our Hall of Fame? And is there anyone that you or Brad feel we ought to add now?

Well, let me start by just listing who's on there for sure. So first of all, Bela Lugosi, which is not a name I expected to be on here at the beginning. He's in four of our movies and he's going to be in at least two more. So just for his contributions to the genre, Bela makes it in. Now, here's a fun one. The Edward Kay, the composer, was nominated for an Oscar for one of the scores here, and he scored a bunch of our movies. So we'd like to add Edward. We've got Edward there. The film studio Monogram, which did four of our movies. They're the Poverty Row film studio. You mentioned Darby Jones, who played the same zombie twice. You said if there wasn't an iconic zombie, it should have been Darby. So we're going to put him in the Hall of Fame. And last but not least, Sir Lancelot, who played music in I Walked With a Zombie, and Zombies on Broadway, and there was a reggae cover of one of his songs in Ritual. So I think we all really enjoyed Sir Lancelot. But is there anybody else we should add to our list here?

Well, I'm going to add somebody who's already come up in our wrap-up here. I want to nominate Mandan Moreland for his two roles as Jefferson, maybe the same Jefferson, maybe different Jefferson's.

Yeah.

But both of them dominate the films they're in, and I hope we haven't seen the last of him.

Well, I'm worried that we have, and so that's part of what makes me think we should add him, because I don't think we're going to get another chance to add him.

Yeah. So he's my vote to add. Brad, you have more of a knowledge about the people that worked behind the scenes to make these films work? Do you have anyone you want to add that's not one of the obvious actors that John and I are talking about?

Well, the name we kept seeing in the credits is Glenn Glenn, who was in the sound department, whether mixing or recording, and he did three of the movies we saw, and that was a large percentage. And I think he's, you see his name over the years in other things, in TV shows, Star Trek, he just keeps appearing, so I think we should add him.

Well, and I think it's interesting that we talked a lot about zombie drums as a trope here, like how much did Glenn Glenn have to do with the addition of zombie drums to the background of every voodoo movie, you know, being the sound mixer on three of them. So, yeah, I'd add that. We also have John Carradine nominated, and I'd like to, here's my pitch to say no to John Carradine. I don't think we're done with John Carradine. I'd like to see more. Like, he's the great, iconic Nazi scientist, but I, you know, I mean, I think he's a more compelling Nazi scientist than the guy from The Frozen Dead, but I don't know, I'm not, he is in two movies. I don't know, I'm split. What do you think, Andy?

Yeah, I think we need to be a little choosy with our Zombie Hall of Fame, and I don't think John Carradine is quite there, but there's hope, John, if you're listening.

Yeah, or if any of your children are listening.

We also had one director who directed two films.

Yes.

Victor Halperin did White Zombie and Revolta the Zombie. We think he qualifies.

I'm tempted because those are so formative, but I don't know, what do you think, Andy?

I'm on the fence. I mean, anyone associated with White Zombie, I really want to add him to the Hall of Fame. Yes.

And he does that iconic scene I love so much.

Could he get a provisional membership while the committee reviews?

Special honor.

Special honor. Special mention to Victor Halperin. Let's do that. All right.

All right. So I know it is hard to imagine John and Brad, but I am told that we missed a couple of things in the course of-

I don't know what you're talking about.

Of season one. So this is preposterous, of course. But I did have one thing that we missed that was right up our alley that I want to talk about. And I want to hear if you guys have anything to add to this. We didn't talk about Voodoo Macbeth. Voodoo Macbeth was a play put on in 1936, directed by Orson Welles, and adapted by him. He adapted the Shakespeare play Macbeth to a Voodoo setting on a Caribbean island. And at least one actor who was in The Devil's Daughter was in this. It was an all-black cast, and I think it was an important milestone in the history of African-American theater. And it's not a movie, and I don't know how we would have watched it, but I wish that we could have found a way. All of it that I have seen, if you go on its Wikipedia page, there's, first of all, there's a lot of good photos from it. And there is a four-minute clip of it being performed, which I strongly recommend you watch. It looks great. And the only other thing I wanted to say is, I think just a couple years ago, there was a movie made about this called also Voodoo Macbeth. And it is about the writing. I think Orson Welles is one of the characters in it. It is about the process of creating the play. The play, I should say, is not called Voodoo Macbeth. It's just called Macbeth, I think. But it's known as Voodoo Macbeth because of its Haiti Voodoo setting. So there was a recent movie about this that I think kind of came and went. It's got a 71 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but only a couple of reviews. So I had not heard of it at all. So do you guys have any thoughts about that? Do you share my regret that we didn't figure out a way to watch that somehow?

Yes, I do. That sounds amazing to me. And pre-alcoholic Orson Welles is a brilliant director and filmmaker.

And the actor who was in that play and in The Devil's Daughter is Jack Carter.

Yeah, I wish we had seen that one.

Okay. Does anyone have anything else to add that we missed or that you regret that we overlooked?

Well, we almost missed Jacque's, but we didn't because we switched to our topic. But if we had missed that, I would have liked to have seen that first because that would have been quite a tone-setter.

Yeah, for sure.

You know what I mean? But we got there in the end, so it's okay.

Yep, yep.

All right, Brad, what do you have for us next?

Well, I think one of the things we did in the seasons we learned a lot about zombies in the early era. So I thought it'd be fun to do a little trivia, and this is all going to be based on audio. So first, I'm going to quiz you guys on what zombies sound like when moving.

Okay.

Now, in the early films, sometimes you actually hear them, like foley sound, footsteps or shuffling. But sometimes it's just a music cue that represents their movement. So here you go. Let's see if you guys can answer these.

Okay. That's gotta be, shoot, that's gotta be Revenge of the Zombies.

Revolt of the Zombies?

It is not.

What is it?

It is I walked with a zombie.

Oh, all right.

John, we're gonna get slaughtered here.

Yeah, we're terrible. All right, let's keep going.

All right, question two.

That is Revenge of the Zombies.

That is correct.

Okay. Revenge of the Zombies. I've been waiting for that graveyard scene, and that was the graveyard, because it had that plucky music every step they took, that dun, dun. Yeah, yeah, I remember now. Okay.

All right, here's number three.

The music's good. I'm wondering if I can reverse engineer with a movie that Edward Kay got nominated for.

Did you hear the shuffling in the background?

I did. Was it? Hold on. I don't know, do you have a guess, Andy?

I'm really struggling with this one. All right, I'm going to guess King of the Zombies.

No.

John? I'll guess Valley of the Zombies.

No.

It's Zombies on Broadway. It's the same zombie and the same shuffling sound from I Walked with a Zombie.

John, did we even watch these movies?

I didn't think we did.

All right, two more of the shuffling sounds. Here we go.

Okay.

This is, hang on, hang on, hang on. This is Voodoo Man.

Correct, that's where Evelyn is walking down the steps.

Okay, awesome, awesome.

All right, last, not last one, one of two left.

That has to be a jacuzzi.

Yeah, it has to be a jacuzzi. No?

No, why? It has to have good music.

That is Ghostbreakers. That's when the zombie appears before Mary is walking towards her and she sees him.

Okay, all right.

All right, last shuffling sound.

Okay. All right, that is stuck in my head. Is that Chacuse?

Nope.

No? I feel like we just, maybe it's the recent one, Andy. I feel like we just watched that one. That music is really stuck in my head. Is it, is it The Walking Dead?

Yeah, but that one didn't have zombies in it, so.

But is it The Walking Dead?

Nope.

Oh, what is it?

It's King of the Zombies. It's when Mantan Morland's in the kitchen going to bed, and the zombies suddenly walk in on him while he's sleeping.

That's right, okay, all right.

Okay, next up, we have zombie sounds. Noises they have made either with words or with just guttural noises.

All right.

I did go into the 60s just to make it easy for you.

Okay.

Okay, so that's Revenge of the Zombies. That's our first. So somebody commented that we said in that episode, that's Revenge of the Zombies, right? Correct. Yeah, at the beginning, and we referred to it as a zombie whale, and somebody thought, you mean like a W-H-A-L-E whale zombie? No, we're like, no, the whaling sound a zombie makes, so.

All right, here's question two.

I have a guess, but would you like to guess first, Andy?

I'm a guest maniac.

Yeah, that's my guess too.

No.

No?

What is that?

That's the frozen dead. That's prisoner number three.

Oh, no. Okay.

All right.

Okay, here's question three.

Okay.

That is Sparrow at Midnight.

No.

King of the Zombies?

No, there was a human voice sandwiched between the two grunts of the zombie. You want to hear it again?

Yeah.

Okay.

It's not the frozen dead again.

Nope. Is it Ghostbreakers?

It is Ghostbreakers. That's when Willie Best hears the zombie behind the door.

Man, we're getting murdered, Andy.

Okay, number four.

That's Maniac.

Yes.

Screaming through my body. Creeping through my veins.

Why is that actor?

How did we not think this guy is the best?

Why is that actor not just world famous for that performance?

Yeah.

Okay, here's your next one.

All right. No mask.

Oh.

Is it Revenge of the Zombies again?

No.

Oh, I can picture this one. I'm just struggling.

I know, right? I'm going to say Voodoo Man, just to make a guess.

No.

Is it White Zombie?

No. It's Revolve to the Zombies. That's Boona.

Oh, yes. That's, yeah. Okay.

So remember, a lot of the things, the creatures in movies that the movie calls zombies, we wouldn't necessarily consider zombies.

Yeah, that's true. That's true.

Okay, here's your next one.

You guard my brother until midnight, then I'll be ready.

So that's, that's I walked. Would that have been, I mean, that's Revenge, right? Because that's. Correct.

That's Revenge.

Because it's her telling, it's her giving commands to the other zombies.

And telling them, no, that's her telling the humans to watch her living brother. I am coming for Vaan Ultraman tonight.

Okay.

Right, here's your last zombie sound.

Oh no, no.

This is Voodoo Man.

That is correct, Voodoo Man.

Oh, nice one. Well done.

Yep.

Okay.

That's Evelyn when she temporarily revives, right?

Yes.

No, that's the kidnapped friend.

Oh, is it?

Okay.

Who learns what she's about to, what's about to happen to her.

You should have quit while you were at it.

Yeah, I just botched it. Okay, yeah.

All right. Next up, we have mad scientists.

Oh, okay. Great.

Here we go. Number one.

That is the king of the mad scientist, the guy from Maniac.

No. Ah!

Is it not? Oh man, I was gonna say that too. No one in Frozen Dead was that maniacal.

No?

Was it Revolt of the Zombies? No.

What was it?

That was Bowery at Midnight. Oh! That's right after Bela Lugosi tells the doctor he's a derelict.

That's right, that's right.

Okay, okay. He goes mad at that point. All right, here's number two.

Okay. Okay. You will get me such a victim, Maxwell. It will be my supreme accomplishment.

This is maniac. I believe we gave him a 10 out of 10 mad scientist last.

That is maniac.

All right.

Here's your next.

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

That's none other than Dr. Max Heinrich von Alterman, Revenge of the Zombies.

And actually, I forgot, that's one of my favorite firsts where they mentioned the brain being necessary for the zombie to survive.

Yes, yep.

All right, here is your last mad scientist.

Okay.

There's no need for you to be afraid. The serum is entirely painless. Oh, you probably saw your friend and wondered what's wrong with him. There's no harm in telling you now he's in a state of suspended animation, technically speaking. That is, he's capable of functioning only under thought suggestions, not his own. To put it more simply, he is a zombie.

This is Bowery at Midnight. No, Zombies on Hollywood.

There are zombies on Broadway, yes.

Yeah, sorry. That's right, that's Bela Lugosi.

Yep.

Okay, next up we have Zombie Masters. This is our last category.

All right.

I'm ready.

Number one.

You have no willpower of your own. You will obey my commands.

That's Dr. Norbert from-

At the count of three, you will raise your arms.

Yeah, Dr. Norbert from The Frozen Dead, right?

That is correct.

And he doesn't mean two arms, he means like all eight of them.

He means the wall of the arms, yeah.

Correct.

All right, number two.

Can you move hand or foot, except as I will it?

No, Master.

Can you think or speak, except as I command?

I know this one, Andy.

Is it Revolta the Zombies?

It is.

Yeah.

All right, number three.

Oh, that's Bella again.

Yeah.

It's the one where, right? Where he calls from a distance.

Which one was that?

It is Bella Lugosi.

This is Bowery at Midnight. No, no, no, no. It's the one where he calls, he gets killed, he says, kill, and then it kills him and said.

Kill, Kalaga, kill. Yes.

Zombies on Broadway.

Okay.

Yes, yeah. Is that right?

That is correct.

Okay.

All right, here's your next.

You are powerless to talk or respond to any direction. Save those I give you.

Well, that's Freddie Washington, so that can only be.

Wonga.

Wonga.

That is correct. Here is your final one.

I am dead.

I is.

Repeat.

I am dead.

I am dead.

I am dead. I have returned to the land of the living. I am a zombie. I am a zombie. I am a zombie. I am a zombie.

I am a zombie.

I am a zombie.

So, that's Manta and Moreland, but it's not Revenge of the Zombies.

I think it's King of the Zombies.

King of the Zombies.

Correct. Correct.

Nice.

That is it. That's all my quizzing for you.

I'd ask our score, but I don't want to.

I hope listeners weren't keeping track of the score there. Yeah. Brad, that was super fun. Thank you for doing that.

All right. Well, we're going to wrap up. We're going to do a couple of things here. So, let's talk about our favorite movies. Let's just each pick a couple, and they don't have to be in any particular order. But what's the movie that maybe surprised you the most that you really are sort of taking away from the season is something really interesting?

Well, one that surprised me, I mean, there's a number here that I think my favorites are really the ones that you would know what we're going to pick based on how we've been discussing them in this episode.

Right.

One that surprised me, I'm going to say that King of the Zombies, surprised me by just I enjoyed that more than I thought. So it's not by any means the best movie we watched this season, but I can't get enough of Manta and Moreland.

I want to pick Wanga because it really did surprise me. I didn't expect it to be as good as it was, and it really was not, it's not the best of the old movies we watched, but I think it was the first time we looked at each other, because this is coming off Maniac, right? And we were like, oh god, and then we're like, oh, there are some good old movies. I think we were surprised, I was surprised by that.

It is hard to say no to I Walked with a Zombie.

Yeah, it's so good.

Of the traditional zombie movies we watched, that's my favorite of this whole season.

Yeah, of the, let's say the movies before 1948, that would be the, if I had to pick one, that would be the one.

Yeah, it's hard not to say J'acuse, though, simply because it's a masterpiece.

It was a marvel to me. I'm generally like an earnest person. Like, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, very things, but like just sort of very sort of straightforward, earnest pleas in movies for certain kinds of grace are just absolutely, you know, I'm just a total sucker. And I, I, J'acuse just nailed it for me. Like it was, I hadn't watched a silent film besides Charlie Chaplin or something in a long time, and this movie really grabbed me. So.

And the only other one I would call out is I expected to like it. So I guess it didn't really surprise me, but I had a good time with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I know that we're not really considering that a zombie movie, but we watched it this season. So.

Yeah, I laughed. I still, I'm still thinking about some of the jokes there. And yeah, I really enjoyed that one. So.

All right. All right. So.

Well.

This is the part of our episode where we are going to look ahead at what is coming next. The next destination along this zombie pathway that we're shambling along, if I have my metaphors all set there, is going to be the 1950s and into the 60s. And the kind of the beacon at the end of this next journey is Night of the Living Dead in 1968. So, John and Brad both. What? I don't really know what's in store for us in the 50s. I don't know if you guys have done much advanced research yet, but I can tell you a couple of the things I am interested in keeping my eyes out for in the 50s. And I want to hear yours too. And the big one that we mentioned in a recent episode, I forget which one, is I am very excited to see how the Red Scare and McCarthyism do or don't make their way into our 1950s zombie movies.

And I think they are going to be a huge factor. I think this is a guess, and I am hoping it's something we will test out here. Like, I think there is a Cold War, you know, not even Cold War, but a Red Scare and McCarthyism panic about Communism that is carried on into movies that are so long after it, they don't even know why they are doing it anymore. I would be super curious to see. So that's a big one for me. The one I am curious about also is sort of some of the, I think, just looking at the list, there is like the atomic brain, and, you know, there is sort of some more science fiction-y ones here. The Last Man on Earth, which is going to be maybe our first Apocalypse of Infected Humans movie, I'm not sure, but Plan 9 from Outer Space. There's a sci-fi space age element that's sneaking in here that I'm curious to see where that comes from.

That we know is at least going to leave the most popular zombie movies by the time we get to modern ones. So if it creeps in here, I'll be fascinated to see when it creeps back out.

Yeah, and having just said maybe our first apocalypse zombie-ish movies come in here, so what about the Cold War? Again, this is, you and I, all of us have lived our whole lives in it, but there were people who made movies at this time who had it before time where they didn't think that there was a big broad way the world could end. Like, that wasn't a cultural idea until the Atomic Age, so what impact is that gonna have?

And we can break that Atomic Age down a little bit more granularly. So far, our movies in the late 40s have lived in a world where there was an atomic bomb, but we have not yet watched a movie that lived in the world of the H-bomb, which is not gonna show up until early 50s, maybe 52. And I don't know if it's widely appreciated that it's the H-bomb, not the A-bomb, that was the true existential world-destroying, civilization-ending superweapon. And I think that is where the dread, the Cold War dread that we associate with that era, really kicked into high gear. So I'm really interested if starting in about 1952, 53, we get that existential menace that we associate with the Cold War, but that I don't think had really taken off quite yet.

And I think that something that dovetails with that from a historical context will also be, you know, zombies are part of being a zombie, is about losing your agency, right? And so in a world where technology is improving so fast, and there's this new technology, which somebody could use to basically alter your life forever, you know, how does that idea fit into the life, to a zombie movie? And I don't know yet, which is why I'm excited to watch these movies.

Yeah, I am interested. We're entering into the era of kind of the Beats, and in the 60s, we get the Hippies and stuff, and I'm curious if we'll see that reflect in these films or not, either of those.

I am curious about that, too.

Yeah, the films we've seen so far have had no youth culture.

None.

So we'll see if that creeps in.

Yeah, the other thing we haven't talked about because of Squares is the big thing in the 50s and 60s is rock and roll. People are still listening to Glenn Miller and all the movies that we've watched so far.

Well, rock and roll. I mean, there's a sexual revolution starting in the 50s because you get birth control, you get teenagers with cars and spare time. If that doesn't start influencing the protagonists of our films, I'll be very surprised.

You know, you say that, and I see horror at Party Beach on our list, and that sounds like a bunch of teenagers with free time on their hands, dancing to loose music, getting killed by zombies. So maybe it's all wrapped up in one. We'll see.

All right. Anything else that you're going to have your eyes peeled for as we go into the 50s and 60s, John? Or no?

Yeah. I think Brad actually just said something that hadn't occurred to me, and I'm curious to see. Most of our protagonists have been older, right? We're not talking about, generally, younger people. We had a couple of fiancés and stuff, but not until we got to The Frozen Dead did we get to like an actual, what I would consider like a young person as a protagonist. And so I'm curious to see what happens to the age of our characters in Zombies.

Yeah, absolutely. We should start tracking like apparent age of the protagonist, see if there's a pattern over time.

Yeah, that'd be interesting to see. Yeah. All right, Andy.

We've come to it. We can't put it off any longer. I know because I have great trust in producer Brad that he's going to start off season two with a really good movie, right? So let's find out what we're going to watch as the first movie we'll cover in season two of Zombie Strains. Brad, we turn our hopeful eyes to you.

We are going to 1952. We are going to watch a serial for the first time, which is 12 shorts made into a longer story. It rivals Jacuzzi. It's two hours and 47 minutes. It's called Zombies of the Stratosphere.

Wow. I noticed some things right away here, Andy. Yeah, so the poster, Zombies of the Stratosphere. So first of all, on the left is essentially the Rocketeer. Do you see that? Our hero, he's got a helmet and a jet pack and a brown leather jacket and a revolver. And it looks like he's combating pale green robots and zombie men or something. And there's giant spaceships in the background, too.

This is straight into the space age that rocket ships aesthetic. There's a robot that looks like a trash can with, is it wielding an axe?

Or something, yeah.

An astronaut who's wearing some sort of a hazmat suit, but he's also wearing jeans with shoes that aren't enclosed in the suit. He's shooting him with a gun and the bullet is not really aligned with the barrel. There's a lot going on. Listeners, I encourage you to check out this poster. It's a doozy.

All right. Well, thanks everybody. I just have to say, I loved doing season one of this podcast, and I'm super excited for season two. I'm having the best time. And tell your friends, give us a five-star review on your podcast app of choice, rate us, spread the word, because we're having a great time, and we want to share with everybody. We're going to take a short break, but season two launches in a couple short weeks. 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.