Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast that watches all the zombie movies. Today, our film takes us back to old-fashioned voodoo tropes.

What are these zombies?

Oh, it's a voodoo superstition. They're supposed to be the walking dead, raised from their graves by magic and put to work in the cane fields, like slaves.

And you can't have voodoo without...

What is it?

The drums, Captain, the drums.

And, of course, we have an old friend back with dreams of a perfect world.

Oh, we would indeed have a new world. No more war, no pestilence, no hunger, famine, disease. Perhaps even no more death.

That's right, it's Boris Karloff in 1971's The Island of the Snake People.

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

Zombie.

Zombie?

What's a zombie?

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

They are the living dead.

Get me the zombies!

Against an army of zombies, no armies could stand!

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

I’ve seen the dead rise.

Kill the brain, and you kill the ghoul.

Hey everybody, welcome to Zombie Strains, I'm John.

And I'm Andy.

And I'm Brad.

Hello, producer Brad. We haven't seen you in a while. Andy and I have been secretly recording without you.

Having fun?

I think so.

Yeah, it's been a good time.

Took a while for Andy to answer that question.

Yeah, I had to think about it for a sec.

All right, well, what do we have on our plate today?

Well, we have Snake People, and I just want to comment on one of those first quotes we played with the guy saying the drums, Captain, the drums. In the movie, when he says it, all I could think of was Andy going, the drums, Captain, the drums.

Yeah.

I love how that guy's answer doesn't really provide any useful information. It's obvious they're drums, right? I get that, right? Yes. He's looking for some significance to the drums, which we do not get.

I don't have anything exciting to talk about except this exciting film. Does anybody else have anything else, or should we just toss it right to producer Brad?

Let's jump in.

All right, let's do it.

Snake People, also known as I'll the Snake People, or John, I'll need your help with the Spanish. Do you have it in front of you?

I don't.

La Muerte Viviente.

That would be the death of the living dead.

The living dead.

The living dead.

Was released in the US in March 1971. Movies you might know that were also released this month were Get Carter with Michael Caine, George Lucas's THX 1138, The Andromeda Strain, which was the first movie based on a Michael Crichton novel, and the arthouse classic Death in Venice.

Interesting.

We're starting to see a lot of sort of dystopian or apocalyptic mainstream movies coming out, which is kind of interesting.

That's right. Was there a James Bond movie this year?

I believe it was Diamonds Are Forever.

That's right. Sean Connery's Return.

Now Snake People was produced by Luis Enrique Vergara. He was known for producing and writing low-budget monster and horror films. And to get better access to funding and a wider audience, Vergara would sign known Hollywood actors to star in his films. John Carradine made four films with Vergara. Snake People is one of four movies Vergara made with Boris Karloff. The other three films are House of Evil, Fear Chamber and The Incredible Invasion.

You know what's interesting about that is that sometimes actors, especially later in their career, will just take a very short term job. Like I imagine Boris shot his scenes in a handful of days and get a paycheck for them. And modern actors do that too. I remember Ben Kingsley was in the Blood Rain movie, and I was just like, oh, I'm in this part of the world while this movie is being shot. You can have me for a week for a gazillion dollars. So it's still going on.

Well, Boris was too ill to go to Mexico, so they hired an American director named Jack Hill to film his scenes in the US. And they filmed all four movies back to back to back with his scenes in a short amount of time, and then shipped the film to Mexico where Juan Ibanez then directed the rest of the films.

That's interesting and makes sense. And he's such a pro, like I'm sure it wasn't a problem for him, even though he's elderly.

We'll get into it, I'm sure, when we discuss the film. For some of this movie, he's masked, and is that really Boris Karloff, or do they just have a stand-in for him?

I would imagine except the bit at the end, where you can sort of see through the mask, it's not him.

Although it's pretty close, it did leave me wondering.

Yes. Can I also point out that we've been watching Boris, well, first of all, you know, Frankenstein came out, I think, 39 years before this film, and our first Boris Karloff film was The Walking Dead 1936. So here we are almost 40 years later, 35 years later, and Boris is still chugging along.

And for him, it's doing a low budget film, which is a zombie film that he comes back in. So he doesn't do, there aren't any high budget films in the zombie world.

No, none.

Now, Karloff does not have long to live when this came out, right? Or when this was-

No, they filmed this in 68, and then he died in 69. So he died before any of these movies were, well, he died before this movie was released. I think two of them came out around the time of his death.

I've been reading a book about 70s movies, and one of his last films was a movie called Targets, which is a sort of infamous film, and I don't know what his actual last film was, but now I'm curious. I'll have to look it up. Sorry, carry on.

Back to the American director Jack Hill. He was a classmate and friend of Francis Ford Coppola at UCLA. He worked on some of Coppola's early films. He was the second unit director on Coppola's 1963 film Dementia 13. Hill went on to become known for his work in 70s exploitation films. He directed the Pam Grier films Coffee and Foxy Brown, and he is the director of Switchblade Sisters. So the film was written by Juan Ibanez, the director, and Luis Enrique Vergara, the producer. Vergara often wrote his films to save money. And Jack Hill, the director of the American portion, also wrote of those scenes filmed in America. The score of the film was composed by Alice Urita. She was a concert pianist who composed just six scores. She also composed the score for one of the other four films with Karloff called House of Evil. And I found the score for this film kind of enjoyable. It had hints of alien in it. Did you guys hear that? I did.

It was actually pretty good. And I did notice it was a female composer. So I think we're getting to the point where that's not going to be a surprise anymore. Soon.

Well, I think we've watched, what, 60 some movies and we've had two female composers.

Yes. I predict that James.

The other was Elizabeth Lutens for The Earth Dies Screaming.

Yes, which is also a very cool score.

Onto the cast, Boris Karloff stars as both Karl Van Molder and Dumballa. Do you remember the first time we heard the name Dumballa?

I was trying to remember that. No, I don't.

Was it in I Walked With a Zombie?

I'm pretty sure it was the movie Voodoo Man, where they were chanting to some god.

That's right, it was.

Yep. Yep.

That was with Bela Lugosi and George Zuko.

For the record, this was his second to last released film. The last one was The Incredible Invasion.

Which was also one of these four films from Mexico. Boris Karloff, as we talked about, is best known as the original Frankenstein Monster, and he was the original Mummy. This is his fourth appearance in Zombie Strains. He saw him in the 1936 film The Walking Dead, the 1957 film Voodoo Island, and a 1961 episode of the TV show Thriller called Pigeons from Hell.

That's right.

These four Mexican films were the last four that Karloff made, and he was paid $100,000 for each film.

That's a lot of money.

Yeah.

I mean, that's a lot of money today, but that's a lot of money in 1968.

Yeah. Half a million dollars for what? Like a week or two of filming?

Well, then you have to ask yourself, what does the filmmaker get for that? He gets to put Karloff's name on the film, and when you watch the credits, whose face is frozen behind the credits, like a Brady Bunch grid. Julissa played Annabelle Vandenberg. Julissa is a singer and actress from a family of performers. Her son, Benny Ibarra, was a member of the Mexican team band Timbarriche. And as a crazy side note, my wife went to high school with Benny. It's the first time that my life has finally, well, not finally, the first time my life has collided with Zombie Strains.

That's kind of amazing, actually.

Tonga Lele played Kalea. She was born in Spokane, Washington. Did you guys realize that when watching the movie?

No, no.

She was the dancer? Yeah. She was born in Spokane, but moved to Mexico when she was 15. She was a dancer from an early age who became famous in Mexico as a vedette, which we would call a cabaret or burlesque dancer. And I was also surprised to discover that that streak of white hair she sports in this film, that was her trademark before this film. It wasn't part of her costume.

Oh, interesting.

Is that a style that has a name? Because I think of it as like a Bride of Frankenstein hair streak.

You know, I don't know, but I'm willing to say going forward, any hairstyle questions will leave to Andy because he did such a great job researching in... Which movie was it?

Oh, I don't remember, but I recently... I didn't talk about it in the episode, but in our Avengers episode, I did troll around a lot of fashion blogs to learn about Emma Peel's outfits. He's a woman eater.

He was a woman eater. It was his short hair.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. That was one of my glories in this podcast. It was.

That's why we remember.

Yeah.

Tonga Lele died in 2025 at the age of 93.

Wow. It's nice to hear a female actress not have some horrible death, which is what we've kind of gotten used to.

It's a low bar for being excited, but yeah, for sure.

Quentin Boulnais played Klinzor. He is the man who is in love with the zombie. He was also in Curse of the Doll People, the 1961 Mexican film we watched. He played Xandor, the Haitian voodoo priest in that film.

Oh, okay. All right. I didn't recognize him.

No, it's a small cast. That's what I have for you guys. Should we jump right into the plot of the film?

Yes. To the extent that this film had a plot, let's jump into it. John, do you want to take a stab at a 30-second overview?

So our film takes place on a fictional island in the South Pacific. It opens with two people arriving at the island. This is a classic trope for us. Annabella Vandenberg is one of them. She is part of the Temperance Movement, which we will get into when we get there. We also have a Captain Pierre Labouche, and he has come to the island to enforce law and order. Also on the island is Carl Van Molder, who is the uncle of Annabelle. And the plot of the film follows the Captain trying to get rid of all the voodoo superstition on the island through brute force and basically police brutality. And as he pushes on the voodoo practitioners, they push back, ultimately killing him, several other people. However, Annabelle and her heartthrob she meets on the island, Wilhelm, escape. And we find out that Boris Karloff, Carl Van Molder, was not who we thought he was.

Dun dun dun.

Dun dun dun. Does that cover it pretty much? I mean, it's a pretty simple plot.

I'm impressed you were able to pack all of the twists and turns in Psychedelia into one short summary. But yes, that's great. Thank you, John.

Yes.

So let's dive right in. And I want to start us out pretty quick here with a voice over narration that accompanies us. As the camera pans across a map of the world, and I was trying to figure out where it kind of zooms in. So you said South Pacific.

Yeah, but it's not like it's closer to Indonesia than it is to Hawaii.

Right. Yeah. So we get some voice over narration as the globe pans by, and we learn that on this fictional island, there is a real, a lot of superstitious native practice. And let's hear the narrator tell us a little bit about what lies in store for us on the Isle of the Snake People.

Unscrupulous adventurers take advantage of these superstitions to put docile native girls under their power, transforming them into zombies. So they will submit to their primitive instincts. There are many existing opinions about the living death. The truth is that many strange and horrible stories are told, like the one that happened in Corbis to Captain Pierre Labiche.

Okay. So you guys, what do you make of that opening narration?

It gets right into telling us that this movie is salacious.

Yes.

So this is 1971. Can I make a quick point here? Because one thing I thought of, spoiler for a little later in the film, I'm sure you're going to bring up Andy, but this is our second film with, I believe in a row, with a woman being whipped by a man and an extended sequence. So the point I want to just make quickly is, there was a point, maniac, right? Where very salacious things were on film. Then there was a sort of, is it the Hayes Code, Producer Brad, but the Code, the Producer's Code? Yeah. Right?

There was the Hayes Codes.

However, in 68, we get the X-rating, and things are starting to crack along the edges. And this is the late 60s, early 70s, is when Grindhouse really takes over, really salacious movies take over. And I think we're getting just a taste of that in this movie. And it says it right in the intro, right? Like we're going to have women turn into zombies, they can submit to your primitive impulses. So we're back to the old days, I guess.

Yeah, it is an interesting combination of going back to the kind of zombie tropes of earlier decades, but infusing it with the sort of lurid salaciousness that I think has always been implied and lurking under the surface, but here they can say it more, just come right out and say it, right?

Yes. This film feels like an interesting transition. We'll get into this when we talk about our 70s episode, but a lot of people consider this period sort of sparked by Night of the Living Dead, actually, as the time when horror movies sort of weren't for kids anymore. And this feels like that kind of movie in transition, if that makes sense.

There's some interesting stuff I want to unpack later, so remind me about the relationship between all of the different characters and the different factions they represent and the Native religion here.

Yes.

I want to hold that thought for a little bit later, because we do need to get rolling with this movie. And we open with an extended, hard to follow scene in which a... I thought he was like in one of the adventures referenced by the Native, but I think he's like a... Is he a policeman? Is it Clemson? Is that the guy here? Well, anyway, there's a guy being led through a creepy voodoo scene by a little person whose name is Santanon. Santanon.

This is also our second little person this season.

Yes.

It's the same actor. He was also in Santo and Blue Demon Versus the Monsters, and his name is Santanon, same as the character.

Interesting.

Oh, interesting. And so Santanon is dressed up in a really over-the-top outfit. John, you want to describe what he's dressed up as throughout most of this movie?

Yeah. So he has a pair of very small spectacles on, and like a top hat sort of thing, and he's wearing like dress shoes. It's like formal dress, but he's got on like a necklace of teeth, and gloves with like all these rings on his fingers. And he looks, he reminds, you know, like this is sort of iconic now, both him and the man, we're going to see soon, Dumballa, remind me of a very, of what we consider now sort of a voodoo character, which is the tall, formerly dressed person with the top hat, who's actually the voodoo practitioner, like the guy in the Frog Princess from Disney. You know, like I think we haven't seen that before, but it just occurred to me that we had to see it at some point, right? Because it's sort of iconic now.

Yeah. So I think he's supposed to evoke a figure from voodoo mythology that is, that does play a role in this, and that is Baron Samedi.

Yeah.

Baron Samedi is that, is often displayed in that stereotypical, like he's got kind of a skull paint on his face. Yeah. And he's got a top hat, and he's got kind of a posh look about him.

Yeah.

Baron Samedi, he's an important spirit in Haitian and Louisiana and voodoo, and he is a kind of a high ranking. He's a charismatic leader in voodoo mythology, and his purview is sort of death, fertility, resurrection. He plays the role of sort of guardian of the dead in this mythology, and I think he might play the role of like ushering you into the afterlife when you die. He also has an important sort of trickster streak to him, so he plays that role if you're... That's an archetype that shows up in a lot of different mythologies. So Baron Samedi will be mentioned much more as we discuss this movie, because he gets mentioned a lot, but that's clearly what Santanon is dressed like.

Can you name the Bond film that has Baron Samedi?

I can't, but John surely.

Played by Jeffrey Holder, the 7-Up guy from the 7-Up ads.

Yeah, and I know which one it is. It's the one set in the south.

It's Living Let Die, Roger Moore's first one, which has a fictational Voodoo Island in it.

Yes.

Well, there you go.

And that was 1973 in terms of timeline, so it doesn't make more mainstream for another two years.

Yeah, and it also has a really great, one of the best car stunts ever done. So anyway, carry on.

Is that the one where he like the car flips and you hear the sound of the whistle?

Yep.

So where are you saying that was great?

No, no, that you're wrong movie. That's the next movie, The Man with the Golden Gun.

I don't know.

John, I'm so bad at James Bond.

You've been letting me down lately.

I just have to pretend I don't know anything about James Bond. I've seen them all multiple times, but I don't know anything. So let's just move on.

Without Brad, we just fall apart on the Bond stuff, honestly.

Absolutely.

Okay. Well, guys, let's get back to the Isle of the Snake People. So Santanon is leading around the other guy, Klinsor. Now, Klinsor is down here in search of a voodoo bride. So that narration that said that people are coming to this island and trying to use voodoo to get a local woman to be their mindless slave, which is all very gross. That's what we see play out here in a pretty grossly suggestive sequence, I would say, that involves what I'm pretty sure is the killing of a real live chicken.

Yes, and they just barely don't show you cutting the head off.

I Googled it and according to the Internet, this was a real chicken that was killed on camera, which was not the way to get me to enjoy the rest of this movie. But hey, at any rate, some voodoo ceremonies are done and they dig up a coffin. Inside the coffin is a native woman who is resurrected to be the wife of a Klinzor. Did I get that right?

You did.

So that establishes that there's some salacious unpleasantness going on with voodoo, but it also suggests that outsiders are maybe doing the salacious stuff, not the native voodoo practitioners. Did you guys pick up on that?

Yeah, because right after that, Kalea, played by Congolay?

Congolay-lay? Yeah.

So yeah, because right after that, Kalea, who is sort of the voodoo priestess, the sort of lieutenant to the main voodoo priest, says the spirits do not like this when she catches him.

So I thought that was kind of interesting because I think there are basically four factions in this movie and let's just talk about them right now. So we have the native practitioners of voodoo. Yep. Sort of led by Kalea. They're just doing their thing and they don't seem to be doing anything quote evil, right?

No, they're just doing their thing. They dance with snakes.

Right. They're just practicing their religion.

Yeah.

Then we have a group of outsiders represented by, among other people, the local police force who seem to be non-natives for the most part.

Yeah. And at the beginning of the movie, everybody who's not this new captain, LeBouche, LeBouche, have just sort of accepted that this is how the world is, and they just let it all go by.

Yeah. So these outsiders have come to the island, and they're interested in the power of Voodoo for the most base of reasons. They want women. Yep. And then we'll meet him later, but there is a character called Dambala, who we learn is also an outsider, who also is attracted to the power of the Voodoo religion on this island for his own ends, which are more noble in a sense, but still represent an outsider coming into this local culture and trying to co-opt it for his own purposes.

So I thought he was like the Voodoo equivalent of God in this, or a Voodoo's powerful spirit in this, so I think I missed that connection.

Well, you're right, because Dambala is the name of the high creator entity in Voodoo myth. Let's talk about it a little bit later, but he's not a native, and he wants something from Voodoo that I think is different from what the locals want from Voodoo. We'll talk about it. And then lastly, we have the fourth faction, which is represented by Captain Labiche, who we're going to meet in just a second. And he is coming in from outside. I mean, so it's suggested that he's French. Does that give us a sense of what part, what country like this is all supposed to evoke?

So this is weird. Can I just say like, this is such a mishmash because Voodoo does not exist in the South Pacific, but it's clearly in the South Pacific. They have a mix of sort of Mexican attire, right? So a lot of the just the average locals will go around in, not in sombreros, but just large, big straw hats that are used for harvesting in the sun. And then those people look Hispanic. And then there's some black people who practice the Voodoo, but they all seem to be hanging out together. So it just seems like they threw together what they had, I guess.

So maybe this was a confusing way to start into this movie. And so I apologize. But I just wanted to say, this movie, I don't think, takes all of that stuff seriously, but there is interesting stuff below the surface of this movie about different groups of people interacting with a culture and a religion that aren't their own, and that sees something in it that they want, or that they want to stop. Okay. Well, I've suddenly, I've gotten us way off track. So let's get, let's pull ourselves back in and meet our heroes. The movie truly begins with the arrival, as is totally common. John, you mentioned we see this all the time in our movies. We have a kind of quote civilized person arriving in a quote exotic place. We get a little bit of the exposition dump by the person guiding them around. Two people have arrived on the island. One is Annabella. She is a temperance activist. And John, you said you might have something to say about temperance, the temperance movement. I'd like to hear about it in just a sec. And then we have, she is being escorted by Captain Labiche, who is here from some, I guess, mother country.

They do say later that he's, that they say, hey, Labiche, this isn't Paris.

That's right.

So that suggests, like Haiti was, when it was Saint-Domingue, it was a French property, right? So I think that's what they're going for.

Yes. So we're going to learn that Labiche is here to bring order to the island, which is a ribbon with superstitious practices and religion that he wants to get rid of. And all law and order has sort of collapsed as the police and stuff have just stopped doing their job. So do you have anything to say about these characters or about Temperance, John?

Well, let me say something about Captain Labiche first. From the side, in profile, did he look a little bit like a doughy Pedro Pascal to either of you? Like he's got the same nose and eyes as Pedro Pascal.

That's amazing. And that is changing my understanding of this film, but yes.

Also, yes. So the Temperance movement, we're talking, right? The Temperance movement is like late 1800s through the beginning of Prohibition, a serious effort by many Americans to eliminate alcohol from not only our culture, but all other cultures. So I wanted to bring that up because it sounds like that's trying to set the tone for when this movie is, which would be early in the 20th century. Is that what you took from that? Because that's what I did.

That's what I took from it because I can't say there's a lot else that really specifically dates this film, like when it's supposed to be taking place.

Right.

But that puts it in a pretty specific stretch of time.

Yeah. So I think they're trying to take us back to the 30s.

Okay. So after the introduction, Labiche and Annabella kind of tour around and take stock of the situation on the island. What they find when they arrive in the main town is that, as predicted, Labiche finds that the local police, the local law and order is just not doing their job at all. They're drinking openly on the job. They pass one of the militiamen or police officers who is being served by a docile local that I think we're led to understand is a zombie. Like that a lot of these guys have taken zombie wives. Ian, let's pause. I guess we have been saying zombie without talking about what these zombies look like. So John, what did these zombies in this movie look like?

They're not particularly gruesome. They're not gruesome at all, really. They look like regular people. They are all black, which I think is important, and they have pasty face paint on. And that's about the limit of their zombiness.

Yeah. I don't think they ever talk. No. And they just obey the orders of their master, I guess, which in most cases is the man who has raised them to be his wife. Okay. So they meet a local police officer named Wilhelm, who's going to be our, kind of, quote, romantic lead. Wilhelm is a younger man, and he works in the police department, and he hasn't gone native, but he has lived, been here long enough that he's kind of trying to advise Labiche to take it easy when it comes to cracking down on local customs and to avoid interfering with the local religion and local beliefs.

He's like the local guy who knows how things work and is using them all to his advantage and kind of likes the status quo, right? He's got this cushy position. He's got his zombie wife. He's nominally the police chief, so people don't mess with him, but he doesn't really have to do anything because there's a sort of tacit agreement that you leave us alone and we'll leave you alone between that and the Voodoo community.

Exactly. So Wilhelm decides to take LeBiche and Annabella to see the local rich man or the tycoon, a guy who owns half the island. This is Carl Van Molder, played by Boris Karloff.

And dressed like Colonel Sanders.

Yes.

Actually look this up just for context. Colonel Sanders, like Kentucky Fried Chicken did come out in 1930, and Colonel Sanders was the brand ambassador, so that's not made up. Like that suit existed for a long time before Boris Karloff wore it in this movie.

So it was a deliberate choice, is what you're saying.

Yeah.

Okay. So Ven Mulder is also the uncle of Annabella. So she's here to see her uncle.

Yes.

They go to his fancy mansion or plantation.

And you can tell it's fancy because he's got a toucan.

That's right. Yeah, there's a toucan in a lot of scenes in this movie, just sort of hanging around in the background. On the way, they come across a voodoo funeral procession, and this prompts a little bit of a discussion about the local religion. And here we hear Annabelle and Wilhelm talking about the local religion of voodoo.

What's this, Wilhelm? It's a voodoo funeral, sir.

Voodoo?

I don't understand.

What is this voodoo?

Oh, it's a native superstition. They will bury their dead in a special place, which is supposed to be protected by magic. And they'll keep a vigil for three days and three nights, just to be sure.

To be sure of what?

Oh, to be sure that the bodies cannot be raised and made to walk at night, forced to work in the field. Which I gather doesn't happen too often. Not too often.

I do kind of like that exchange, not too often.

Yeah.

That's good.

I also love the sample of music we get there.

Well, we should take a moment and let people know that this movie is dubbed. So the voices we hear are not the actors who were filmed, with the exception of Boris Karloff.

Yeah. It's a little jarring, because he's clearly speaking naturally and everybody else is dubbed.

So in the course of this, while they're traveling to Ven Mulders, they also learn that the local voodoo circle is led by a mysterious figure called Dambala.

Yes.

And Dambala, we talked about earlier. Dambala is the name of a high god or the high god in voodoo mythology. I don't know if it's weird that basically a high priest type character would also be called Dambala or not. I just don't know.

There's an interesting, I'd like to learn more about it, but we're sort of at the end of our voodoo-ness. It's very surprising that a movie, this straight up voodoo is happening this late in our timeline. But I'd still like to learn more about it. And like the character you described earlier, as Baron Zameda, he seems, he's not completely mystical and he's not completely human. And there's this weird mix of the material in the present and the superstitious that I find fascinating.

Yes. Yeah, the character you're talking about is Baron Samedi.

Baron Samedi, I'm sorry.

He gets mentioned in this scene. And I think this is the first time, for all his centrality to actual voodoo practice, is the first time I think one of our movies has mentioned Baron Samedi. Is that right?

I think so.

I think so. So we get a lot of voodoo stuff here. And this is the first of several pretty trippy, pretty salacious presentations of voodoo rituals. There's a lot of voodoo drums. And in particular, there's a lot of jiggly voodoo dancing by Kalea. And it turns out that voodoo dancing in this context looks an awful lot like cabaret dancing, strangely enough.

But with a snake.

With a snake. So there's lots and lots of snakes in this movie as well, usually being hoisted or caressed or hugged by a scantily clad woman.

And it makes me crazy because they have boa constrictors, which is what they're dancing with. And then later, the boa constrictors act like venomous snakes, which they are not, and my inner nerd just screams every time that happens. Boa constrictors can kill you, but they don't bite you like a rattlesnake.

Put it in the goof section on IMDB, John.

Fine.

Yeah. Yeah. So we get a big scene of a voodoo ceremony. There are skeletons, there are snakes, there's suggestive ecstatic dancing.

Yeah.

There's really trippy cameras zooming in and out really quickly. It goes on forever, quite frankly. Did you have any thoughts on this whole scene?

I do, because I think that one new thing, I think I said earlier that this is a movie with one foot back in our sort of white zombie 1930s world and one foot in the modern cinematic world with its salaciousness. And I think one of those things is these are shot to seem like a drug trip.

Yes, very much so.

Like LSD is a thing, people know about it. And I think there's an element of trying to recreate the experience here. Not exactly, but certainly like strange drugs making you feel strange and see the world strangely is an emphasis of this ritual.

Yeah, there, this is presented as a trippy, ecstatic, religious experience.

Yes.

You know, I don't know if it was important or not, but I think a local man was killed during this ritual. Is that correct?

I believe so.

I think so. Did someone say something like people want to die so they can be brought back as zombies or did I invent that?

I don't recall that, but somebody definitely died during this ceremony and he didn't seem, nobody seemed too upset about it, I guess is what I'd say.

Well, this is presented to us as an example of what Labiche is here to clean up. He wants us to stop. And so they meet with Van Molder, Boris Karloff, who invites them into, he has sort of a kind of a mad science lab. It's got a few mad science pieces of paraphernalia, but it also has snakes in cages, that sort of thing.

And a toucan.

And a toucan. So it's like a jungle mad science lab.

Yes.

And Van Molder goes on at some length about the local voodoo religion, and he has his own take on this. Van Molder believes that there is something to it, that there is real power behind this specific cultural belief, and that it might be able to be harnessed for something remarkable. And he goes so far as to try to demonstrate to Labiche and his niece, Annabella, psychic power. So he tries to move something with his mind. I didn't see it move. He claimed that it moved a little bit.

I did see it move.

It moved a little bit.

It jiggled.

Right. Well, Labiche dismisses it as fakery. And that's when Van Molder calls in Kalea, who I think is a housemaid or housekeeper. Yeah.

I'm curious about their relationship because clearly he respects her, but she does work for him. But I think it's not that simple.

Do I have it correct? Kalea is working for him as his housekeeper, sort of, but she also is kind of running the local voodoo circle. Is that right?

That's how I understand it.

Okay.

And he kind of knows she's powerful.

Yes, because she comes in and she ups the auntie here by, she has an incredible Bela Lugosi stare that she does many times during this movie. She employs it here. The camera does a close up on her staring eyes and she ignites a, like a pile of sticks or something like that. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. And I think what's interesting, one interesting thing about her is yes, it's salacious and yes, she's here to be scantily clad in dance. However, she's also the most powerful person on the island that we've met.

You know what I mean?

Like she's clearly in charge of a number of things.

Well, this is a topic we probably aren't very equipped right now to discuss. But there is that paradox of, you know, of sexuality in a somewhat sleazy movie like this, being simultaneously an objectification, like meant for the viewer to just sit back and salaciously enjoy. But it is also a part of her power that she has in the context of this movie, and it's presented as such.

So, how about this is like the general introduction of this trope, which we will see in gruesome fashion very shortly. How about that?

There you go. So, all right, we need to move along. So, anything you want to talk about, about this big conference scene where Van Molder kind of first espouses his theory that he thinks local voodoo religion can be harnessed to do something great. And I think Brad even played a clip at the beginning about him saying, like there might even be the power here to end death itself. Any thoughts on this before we move along?

Did I mention the toucan?

Yes, you do.

Then I'm good. You can't mention the toucan enough because just remember viewers, there is a snake, a toucan or both in every scene of this movie.

Yes.

All right. We move on and then a lot of stuff happens in this movie and I'm gonna need a little bit of help like deciding what's worth talking about. Well, because it gets honestly pretty murky starting around now. Yeah.

So like, can I unmercify it for you? Please. So this begins an extended, this is the bulk of the movie and it is the same thing over and over, which is Captain Labiche saying, I'm gonna put the screws to these voodoo practitioners. He goes and beat some up. It's like a gang war, right? Then they come back and kill some people and then he escalates and then they escalate. And there's a couple of like trippy dream sequences that people have. There's a wonderful moment where like Annabelle sort of meets herself, her dark self in a dream.

Let's hold on that because I want to discuss that scene in detail.

Let's go to that in detail. But essentially, all of this is part of this back and forth gang war between Labiche and his police officers and the voodoo practitioners who do not want him to be training on them about their faith. I mean, that's the rest of the movie, essentially.

Yes, that's well put. And along the way, Wilhelm is sort of the voice that's trying saying, Labiche, you got to take a gentler hand. You're biting off more than you can chew. The people, you know, you're asking for trouble if you keep pushing it. But Labiche does not throw until the very end of the movie, he does not bend one bit. He's just going to crush this. I do love that when they need to infiltrate a voodoo ceremony, which they do a couple of times throughout the movie, they dress up in masks. They're the only people at the entire ceremony wearing things.

No one else is wearing.

And so when at one point she picks him out, I'm like, what took you so long? He's the only guy standing there in a black hood.

Exactly. Who could the police spies be? Could it be the only two people here who are wearing these ridiculous masks?

Okay.

Yeah. All right. So a lot of stuff happens.

But does any of it matter?

Some of it's cool, but does any of it advance the plot? I'm not sure.

I don't think so. So a couple of things I just want to call out. A couple of things are established in the course of this kind of police versus zombie voodoo gang war that you just described. One is it's established that Santanan, the guy who was dressed up like Baron Samadhi, is the main guy, I think, who is letting outsiders use voodoo to get themselves their zombie wives.

Right. Which is established in the first scene of the movie, but it continues.

Yeah. We get a couple of more scenes that nail this down. And that Kalea, the leader of the voodoo circle, doesn't like it. She resents it. It's a misuse of the voodoo religion. We get, yeah, like there's that scene in one of these scenes, like a woman is whipped to death. And like, it is kind of funny that we've seen two films in a row with this particular trope, I guess.

Yeah.

But all of this serves to enrage Labiche at this, you know, barbarism. And so he decides to implement a curfew on the entire island. And that's where we sort of moved to our end game because he is basically banning voodoo religion here by preventing people from leaving their houses. So, Van Molder, who also has been trying to talk Labiche down from his anti-voodoo crusade, has predicted that something big is going to culminate soon, that Dambala, that mysterious voodoo figure, is soon going to sacrifice somebody to summon Baron Samedi to usher in a new world.

Okay, I didn't follow that part, and I'm glad you did, because now it makes sense.

Yeah, so, and this is his kind of utopia slash dystopian dream, where Baron Samedi will usher in, and death will end, and all sorts of stuff will happen. This all kind of comes to a head, though. So the tensions rise until, and the voodoo cult is striking back pretty hard. And one of the things they do is they finally lash back out at Annabella.

Which is the weirdest, coolest scene in the movie.

It is the weirdest, coolest scene in this movie. So Kalea and Santanon sneak into Annabella's room while she's sleeping, and they do a creepy ritual on Annabella while she sleeps that involves a snake, and they keep, they're whispering to her, is it like send your dreams to Dambala?

Yeah, and a mirror is involved too. There's something very cool about mirrors, using mirrors to sort of capture people's dreams and spirits. It's not particularly well executed here, but I love the idea.

Yes. And what this involves is in a very trippy dream, a very weird, trippy and sexually suggestive dream sequence. Annabella appears in a creepy voodoo cave or something, and she encounters a clone of herself.

Yeah.

And there's a long scene where this clone is clearly, I don't know, like you said, it was kind of her dark side, or maybe represents her baser impulses.

Yes, she has a lot of makeup on, her hair is done up. Annabelle, as a character, is sort of very straight-laced. And so this woman is sort of wearing lingerie, she carries a snake, she has on makeup, she has this sort of wry smile on her face.

Yeah, and so this goes on for a while, the clone kind of chases Annabelle around and she's vanishing and reappearing in different special effects-y sorts of ways. And it ends when they kind of aggressively kiss each other.

Yes, and again, 1970s, here we come.

Yeah, so this is also a topic I haven't done a lot of research on, so I'm not going to take a long time on this, but this is our second on-screen lesbian kiss, I guess you would say.

Also in this movie, we didn't mention it because it probably didn't shock us, but there's multiple interracial kisses and affectionate scenes in this film as well, which at the time would probably have still been surprising.

Yeah, I think there is a lot of, and combine that with Kaleya's over-the-top dancing, I think there's a lot of transgressive sexual elements in this film.

Yeah.

At this time in Mexico-

Correct me if I'm wrong, in the dream with Annabella, she's kissing herself.

Correct.

Yeah, so she's kissing her dark half, like the clone of herself.

But it's still two women kissing.

It is still women, but to me, it wasn't the two women, it was the kissing yourself that was the-

Yeah, well, I don't say that this is a depiction of, like, same-sex love in any meaningful way. But I do want to say, so I did a little digging, so homosexual sexuality on screen in Mexico was not really something that was happening a lot. Culturally, in Mexico, it was not, homosexual behavior was not illegal, but local police and tradition used and abused a lot of rules about public decency to effectively ban it in a lot of places. And in Mexican film at this time, there were two ways for homosexual acts to be depicted on screen that were safe. One was to make them a joke, like an over-the-top comic effeminate character, for example. And the other way was to depict it as something sinister and dark and depraved.

Gotcha.

If you showed it in one of those two ways, it could make it onto the screen without being quashed by censors, official or otherwise.

So then they chose the latter here.

They chose the latter here. So that was the most interesting scene in this entire movie. But Annabella wakes up. It was kind of all a dream. But let's see, I got a little bit of lust. I have some notes that there sure are a lot of snakes in this. Yeah.

I feel like I rushed you through that, but.

No, no, no, it's fine. This all leads up to, does Annabella get kidnapped? Yes. Yes, she does. So Annabella then gets kidnapped by the Voodoo cult. And we're now moving to the end game. So there is whatever, Damballa has some sort of super Voodoo ceremony planned that's going to usher in this age of darkness. And we've been told the human sacrifice will be involved, and that human sacrifice is implied to be Annabella, who is kidnapped and taken to a Voodoo ritual in progress.

Yep.

Wilhelm infiltrate the ceremony in their masks once again. We do get a little thing where...

Oh, there's one thing I wanna mention. Just for no reason, so they can have a good ending, there is a romantic moment between Wilhelm and Annabelle. I think just cause they need to set up him as the rescuer. I don't see any other reason why that exists.

I couldn't tell if this was supposed to be a genuinely romantic scene or if it It was- a scene, like almost mocking, it was a mocking scene.

It felt like they felt like they had to include it to have a happy ending. That's the only thing I can think.

It's a strange scene because it's between Wilhelm and Annabella, and they're sitting on a couch, and Annabella is actually coming, she's like been doing some research into this Voodoo stuff, and she's coming to some conclusions about what's going on. And Wilhelm keeps interrupting her with these like corny romantic lines like the fire in your eyes. And so that's why I thought maybe this was like a parody of a romantic scene because-

Yeah, it's hard to say.

But they do end up kissing, I guess.

I think they include it just because they felt they had to for plot reasons.

I think you're probably right. So anyway, everyone is at this Voodoo ceremony now, Annabella is about to get sacrificed, and who should show up? The mysterious Dambala, who has remained off screen the entire time, shows up at the ceremony. On the way, he takes a quick stop to murder Santanon, the guy dressed up as Baron Samedi, I think for betraying the real spirit of Voodoo with this crass side trade in zombie brides. There is kind of a cool scene where we skipped where the Voodoo cult seduces one of the local, no, where the Voodoo cult hunts down a turncoat who had some eating info to the police and kills him. At any rate, everyone's here at this final scene. John, do you want to just walk us through this? Tell us a little bit about Dom Bala as we see him in the scene.

So he looks actually not unlike we've described Baron Samedi. He's got a top hat, he's tall, and he carries a staff like a cane, that is a wooden staff with a skull on it. He's dressed all in black, but over his face he has like a veil and there are these black circular sort of welding goggles on his face. And so we can't see him at all. We see him get dressed. But yeah, he has that sort of Baron Samedi look. But we don't see his face, but I'm pretty sure everybody who's watching this movie knows who it is by now.

Yeah. So if you haven't figured it out, Ben Mulder is Boris Karloff. He is both this rich tycoon who seems a little bit, a little unserious, but he is also secretly Damballa, the Voodoo master.

Correct.

I don't totally understand the relationship between Damballa and Kalea, between him and the local Voodoo community, but whatever.

And so he wants to sacrifice Annabelle because that will usher in this new future that he wants.

And Damballa sacrificing his own blood. Yes.

Oh, that's right. Yep.

Yep.

And then it kind of ends as you would expect, right? Everybody is sort of revealed.

Well, what happens, you've no, there's a great bit where, okay. So, so Labiche comes in, he pulls out a gun and we, you forgot the setup, which is he's filled all his pockets with like hand grenades. That's right. And, and so he goes to shoot Dubaal. I think he does. I can't remember. But when he does that, Kalea has a snake, the boa constrictor that's not venomous that they're saying is venomous, bite him on the hand. When that happens, Wilhelm grabs Annabelle, they flee. And Labiche, like is woozy and he falls over and he collapses in the fire and creates a humongous explosion, as Wilhelm and Annabelle run out of the area.

That's right. I like after then Mulder gets shot, he's dying and he says something about like, well, maybe my death can be the sacrifice that brings Baron Zombie to this world, which I kind of thought was cool. But then Labiche falls into the fire and his grenades go off and he explodes. And that's the end of the movie. We see a final shot of fire consuming Damballa. And then the credits roll with Boris Karloff's face like inexplicably plastered behind them.

So yes.

Oh, I don't know if that made any sense. So listeners, write us in and tell us if that made any sense.

It made as much sense as the movie does.

Yeah, it is strangely complex and boring at the same time.

It's hard to. It is, it is. This was trippy. If we have more movies that are this level of trippy, we're gonna have to figure out a good way to recount them because this is a movie you experience more than a movie you watch for its plot and characters, I think.

I would agree.

So yeah, this is a movie. Well, let's get into it. Let's do it. Do you have any final things before we get to our wrap up questions?

No, because they will all come out in the wrap up questions.

Okay. All right. In the Isle of the Snake People, John, is there a hero party?

Yeah, it's nominally Wilhelm, Annabelle, Labiche and kind of Boris Karloff's Van Holder, but not really.

I'll give this movie credit that you don't really feel entirely comfortable with any of the people in the hero party.

Right.

Labiche is like the most traditional heroic character.

But he's kind of a jerk.

Yeah, he quickly goes off the rails with his anti-Voodoo crusade. Wilhelm is kind of-

Yeah, Labiche is the outsider.

Yes. Wilhelm is positioned kind of as a handsome, laid back kind of guy, but you feel a little uncertain about where his loyalties lie throughout most of the movie, I would say. Annabella is the sweet, naive from back home visiting this strange land.

Yeah.

She's a familiar character, but her temperance loyalties introduce an interesting element to this film that I didn't quite know what to make of, but they do kind of prevent you from entirely rooting for her, I guess. Does that make sense?

Well, she seems like the outsider who doesn't really know what's going on.

Yeah.

You know, and she's kind of annoying because of that.

So I don't think I would use the word anti-hero to describe these people exactly, but this is a more complex group of heroes than we've seen in most movies.

Yeah, which is why it's disappointing and it's kind of boring.

Yes. All right. So how does that party do? How many survive?

Only Wilhelm and Annabelle survive. Everybody else is killed, either shot, killed via voodoo, snake bite, or an explosion.

How are, tell us about the zombies. What strain of zombie are we dealing with?

So these seem fairly classic voodoo zombies. They have a little more action. They can move fast and are very strong, but I didn't notice anything beyond very, very classic like back to white zombie working in the factory zombies like all the way back to the beginning.

So this has two elements of the zombie that are feel like very, very big call backs to white zombie in the earliest movies we watched. One is zombies as slaves. So you create a zombie so that you can put them to work as a docile labor force that can't resist you or make choices of its own. And secondly, it's zombies as, I mean, it's a little gross to talk about, but zombies as your eternal love, right? So all the way back to white zombie, that was Murder LeGrand's plan was to zombify the heroine in that movie so that she would marry him and basically be an obsession.

No, she would marry the plantation owner, the plantation owner hired the murderer.

What's interesting, though, is in that movie, the plantation owner regrets it because he realizes how lifeless she is. In this movie, nobody regrets it. They get exactly what they want, which is a little creepy. And when I say a little, I mean a lot.

Yeah. Well, I mean, this theme is still resonant in movies like Obsession, which is about a man who gets himself a perfect obsessed love interest and finds out that that wasn't what he wanted. To say nothing of how awful it is to enslave someone like that. But all the way back to White Zombie, I do think the better movies that touch on this do touch on that unease with, well, do you really want someone that doesn't have a will of their own? Right. You see a lot of people hanging around with their zombie wives in this movie, and you think, that doesn't look very, that can't be what you want out of a relationship. But I don't know. Okay. I didn't mean to dwell quite so much on that. How fast are these zombies? Are they slow, regular speed, or are they speedy zombies?

They're regular speed.

All right. Any new zombie firsts that we need to note in this film? I want to say just referencing Baron Sambique, tying him to zombies is a zombie first, I think.

I think so. I think that look is the first time we've seen it, and I didn't realize it until I watched the movie. But we haven't seen that sort of Baron Zombie top hat skull painted face business until now, and this is really the first time.

Can zombies return to being human in this movie?

I don't think so. I think they're dead.

Okay, so John, at the beginning of this podcast, you identified four pillars of the zombie movie. Let's find out how many of them are present in the Isle of the Snake People. John, in this movie, is there an apocalypse?

Potentially, yes. Dumballa wants to bring one about, where he would end humanity and basically turn everybody into a zombie and create peace.

This is new. We've had zombie movies that featured apocalypses, but this is the first, I feel like this is the first intentionally, apocalypse brought out intentionally by the zombie master.

Yeah. So in like, Last Man on Earth or Night of the Living Dead, it was just something happened, a virus, something that caused zombies to exist. Here, it's somebody contriving to create a world of zombies.

And I should note that Dumballa doesn't necessarily seem to be a zombie master in the traditional sense. He's running the local voodoo situation, but he himself doesn't seem to have or to command zombies. Is that accurate?

I think so. And that's why I think I was a little confused by him because I thought he was like the boss, but he's not really, but he's very powerful.

Yeah. Okay. In this movie, is there contagion?

No, in that sense, it's like an old fashioned zombie movie. You have to be created. You have to die and be created.

Are there tough moral choices in this film?

I think so. I mean, I think when Le Biche goes and sacrifices himself by throwing his body on a fire with explosives, like I think that's not just sacrifice. Like as you said, nobody seems quite right in terms of like morally pure. And I think that comes through in the choices that they're making. So it's not strictly in the sense that we thought, but people are morally compromised for sure.

I'm interested in this next one, John. Does this movie feature loved ones turning against you?

So I'm going to argue yes, because I think the scene with Annabelle and her dark twin has the vibe that we were looking for with the loved one turning against you, except in this crazy LSD world, it's herself.

Yeah, I mean, there is power to that scene in the sense of coming face to face with this very pure character being confronted with the darker version of themselves that they may be keep suppressed under the surface. And that it does have a sense of loved ones turning against you in that sense, even though it isn't exactly what we meant when we asked the question.

Well, and also Dumballa sacrifices Annabelle or is willing to.

Yeah, that's true.

His own niece.

Yep. So I'm not going to ask you your 60s questions, Andy. I think we're on the cusp of having some 70s questions. Some of the 60s questions may apply, but I think we're ready to set those aside. And for now, we're just going to move on to our classic questions with a new set coming in the next couple of episodes.

Yeah, that sounds good. You know, some of those questions do apply. You know, comparing this film to movies from just 10 years earlier, you do see quite the progression.

Yeah, the increase of violence and grittiness, societal collapse, like a lot of that is here.

Yeah. All right. Well, I have some more to say, but I think it'll come out in the next couple of questions. I always close with the same three questions. John, would you and I survive in the zombie world of the Isle of the Snake People?

I don't believe so. I think everybody eats it except for Wilhelm and Annabella. And I think that's just so the movie doesn't have a bummer ending. They probably should have bit it too. So I'm going to say no. Like, I don't know what's so special about me that I would survive.

I agree. The interaction between these different factions makes this place incredibly dangerous.

I know. It's like one of those societies you see in a movie, like Dr. Doom's Land of Morovia, where everyone's a criminal and everything's horrible. Like, how do these societies function? Like, do people go to the store for groceries? Like, what's going on? So in that sense, it just seems like a bad place.

Yeah, I think so. John, is this a zombie movie or a movie with zombies?

It's very solidly a zombie movie.

Yeah, I would agree. And lastly, John, do you recommend this movie first as a general film to a general audience? And second, do you recommend it specifically to zombie-loving listeners who want to see if it has any special significance for the evolution of the genre?

I'll say I cannot make a general recommendation for it. It's too, for all the cool things you pulled out of it, Andy, it was too kind of boring a watch. Like, it just didn't manage to make these things exciting. It's a couple of cool things and cool music. I like this. There is a new facet, which I think is why zombie fans should see it, of the Bear Insomniac character. And like that, that is like a bridge to, I think, modern just sort of, they're not, it's not real, right? It's not real voodoo, but it's a, it's a bridge to modern sort of voodoo stories. And we hadn't seen it before. So for zombie fans, I think a soft yes for regular folks, a pretty hard no.

Yeah, I would agree. I was talking to my wife about this earlier. Like one of the things I've learned from this podcast, we've seen a number of movies that fall into the sort of exploitation genre is that those rarely are very good movies. Right? I mean, like you might think from the presence of a couple really over the top, exciting or titillating scenes that it would be an exciting thing to watch. But the reality is you get like a couple of crazy scenes separated by 20 or 30 minutes of not all that great filmmaking, acting, directing, writing, et cetera. And that's where this movie landed for me. It's just kind of long and kind of an awful lot of it was a slog of repetitive weird scenes.

Yeah. And I think that's sort of what separates the regular folks from the from obsessive zombie fans is somebody who's sort of really into movies are obsessive. They can watch a movie and pull out a couple of things and be like, oh, that movie had this thing in it and that's really cool. Which is why you and I are willing to watch these. But as a regular movie experience, it's just not pleasurable enough to spend the time.

Yeah. And the last thing I wanted to say on this topic is that Night of the Living Dead was so, it just landed like a meteor. Yeah. And watching a movie like this after watching Night of the Living Dead, it doesn't put this movie in a very great light. I think if we had seen this before Night of the Living Dead, brought a fresh purpose and vitality to the genre, I might have had a less negative reaction to it. But now that we've seen what can be done with zombies, I find myself struggling to return to these tales of visiting an exotic island with natives who practice some Hollywood mishmash religion based on voodoo.

What I'm learning is I think we always had Night of the Living Dead as a target for important zombiness. And I think what we're realizing it's actually important for horror movie and actually movies in general. Like I'm not sure that you get a lot of the more extreme movies that happen in the 70s, which we'll be talking about in our 70s episode. Be sure to tune in without Night of the Living Dead in a way that I didn't appreciate before.

Yeah. And it's maybe unfair to compare this low budget Mexican film to the work of a real talent like Romero. But Night of the Living Dead also had a really low budget. It also had a lot of people that weren't famous or... I mean, it had fewer famous people in it than this movie did. Correct.

First time director, didn't really know what they were doing.

It makes it hard to enjoy this because I've just seen what else can be done with John.

Absolutely. But I'm glad we watched it and talked about it because I do like some of the zombie stuff.

Me too. And I do want to credit this, the scene where she interacts with her dark clone. That's new. That was interesting.

Definitely an iconic scene, for sure.

Yeah.

And Boris Karloff was great. He wasn't just hamming it up. He wasn't just cashing a check. He fit in the movie and his performance was Boris Karloff. It was good.

Yeah. In our episode about the where he was the host of Thriller, we were sort of surprised at how, I don't know, maybe it's just easy for him, but how much effort he put into this sort of schlocky, silly role and he does it again here.

There's no sense that he's winking at the camera. Or anything like that.

No.

So, okay, well, we've survived our journey to the Isle of the Snake People, but we are not out of the fire yet or the frying pan, because we're about to learn from producer Brad what zombie movie we're watching next.

Is it another Santo movie?

Well, after watching a bunch of low-budget films, how about we watch a Hollywood studio movie with a $4 million budget?

That'd be great, maybe.

Is this a joke, or are you about to pull the rug out from under us?

I'm about to play step into the trailer and then show you the posters. I'll let you decide. Here we go.

The last man on earth always carries an automatic weapon. The last man on earth is hunting. Because the last man on earth is not alone.

Whoa, what do we got here?

Oh, the Omega Man.

Yeah, we should have known, John.

We should have known.

All right, so this is, you're right, Producer Brad, this is a genuine, big-budget, famous movie. I didn't realize we were going to get this so quickly, it just kind of slipped my mind. But this is the Omega Man, famously starring Charlton Heston, and it is another remake of I Am a Legend.

Yeah, coming only seven years after the original, which feels very modern, actually. But it says, the last man alive is not alone, Charlton Heston, the Omega Man.

And we have at least one person who looks like a zombie, one person who I think is the love interest who he meets later in the film, and then someone on the left who is, I don't know, is that a zombie?

I don't know who that is, but it's important to note that Charlton Heston is carrying an automatic weapon as well.

Yes, it is kind of a goofy looking weapon. What is that scope he's got?

I don't know, a mirror maybe for his-

It's manly is what it is. It's very manly.

It is very manly.

All right, I disagree, but we're getting into subjective takes.

We should just be clear that this is another film, you said I Am Legend, but first film adaptation was The Last Man on Earth.

That's right. Have you guys seen this movie?

I have, long time ago.

Oh yeah, this terrified me as a kid.

I have not seen this movie, so I'm excited about this.

There's also a very famous rock group from the 80s who has a song called The Omega Man, which I'll leave you to discover while we're getting ready to watch this film.

John, this is the second time you have teased us. Earlier on, you said you had a joke that you were not going to tell us, and now you've said there's a band and you're not going to tell us the name of the band.

Yeah, but you can figure that out.

The second one you can figure out easily. The first one, you know, I didn't tell the joke because it's dumb. So there you go. In any case, join us next time for our, where we head back to mainstream Hollywood for The Omega Man. 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.