Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast that watches all the zombie movies. Today, it's an Italian Gothic horror film with an evil incantation.

I've summoned them from their graves, and now I'm among them.

A creepy nursery rhyme.

And a lot of theremin and creepy sound effects.

It's the 1965 film, Terror-Creatures from the Grave.

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…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.

Because a Zombie has no will on his own.

What is wrong, what is wrong.

Hey, everybody. I'm John.

I'm Andy.

I'm Brad.

Hello, producer Brad. Well, you picked a fine intro to Italian cinema for us. I guess we've watched one other Italian film.

But the important thing is when you guys were wee lads and your moms were rocking you to sleep, do you remember them singing the Remember Pure Water nursery rhyme to lull you into Sleepyland?

I don't. No, I do remember the part about summoning the dead that occurs later in that nursery rhyme or whatever they said. Yeah, it was quite a charmer.

Now, when I was building that clip, it reminded me of another film. So to break it down, we have an incantation that in the film was being played from a recording. We have a creepy nursery rhyme, and then we have the sound effects of the theremin and the trees and the creepy sounds from the forest. Can you think of a more modern film that does that?

A more modern one? Oh, I don't know. Oh, wait, no, no, no. 28 years later.

Oh, no, no, no.

It's got the Roger Kipling poem. Which one?

The Evil Dead.

The Evil Dead.

Remember they find the recording and they play it and that brings the demons?

That's right.

And then there's that creepy nursery rhyme that's sung. And then the woman goes off to the woods and is chased by the trees.

Yes. It all comes back to me.

I was surprised that this had that similarity.

Is it bad that I've seen Evil Dead more than once? Yes. Okay. That's a fair answer.

Evil Dead or Evil Dead 2?

I've seen them both more than once.

Yeah, same here.

Guys, I have not seen Evil Dead 1 or 2. I've seen Army of Darkness like 15 times.

Right, because it's a crowd pleaser. I'm not sure. It's like listening to old music that has influenced new music and being like, I don't see what's so special about that. It's a super low-budget production by a director who hasn't made his name yet, but I don't know if it would feel special now, the way it did back in the 80s. I guess that's what I'd say.

Well, I have some good news. It's on our schedule and we might hit it by 2027.

All right.

Hey, that's fantastic.

I feel like I can hang on that long. I'm feeling healthy.

I'm just glad Brad didn't say we might hit it by like 2053 or something.

Yes, sorry. Anyway, we are talking about Terror-Creatures from the Grave today, not Evil Dead. Quite an interesting movie. I'm tempted, producer Brad, to just let you get into it, but does anyone have anything they want to talk about, anything they've seen or enjoyed recently?

No, Batman put me off of all media in general, I think.

That was a lot. I am going to try to go, this is more for producer Brad and any Ann Arborites that are listening. I am going to try to go see Jodie Foster and is in a new French film called A Private Life, I think it's called. It's like a mystery. It's playing at the Michigan Theater in the main theater. I was just thinking, producer Brad, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I have not seen a movie in that space in years. I went to see Superman, but it was at the State Theater. They own all of it now, so I haven't seen one in that theater. I think I might go try to watch that.

Is it a fancy old theater?

Yes.

Is it a cool venue?

Yes. It's got like an organ and it's huge and a balcony. Yeah, it's wonderful.

That sounds awesome.

Andy, in Junior High, that's where I went with friends to see the James Bond Marathon. It started Friday night and went to Sunday morning.

It was amazing.

Back then, there's only about 14 films out, so it was a little more manageable.

How many went in and how many came out on Sunday?

That's a good question.

Well, they stopped overnight. So there was like four on Friday and then it was all day Saturday, and then there's three on Sunday morning.

Nice.

So the question is, who had to go to McDonald's on the street to bring meals back in?

That's right. The two things I remember seeing there in high school was, one is they used to touring animation festival was there, and I actually saw the original Beavis and Butthead cartoon in that theater, on that festival, like before it was an MTV thing. Then the other thing was they used to do, because this is before ubiquitous cable TV. I mean, everybody had cable, but there wasn't the onslaught of media we have right now, so they would do a Looney Tunes fest. They would do like four hours of Looney Tunes cartoons back to back, where you get to see all the good ones like Duck Dodgers and all that all at once. It was fantastic. Okay, but none of that has to do with Terror-Creatures from the Grave.

Are you subconsciously trying to keep us away from this film?

I'm sorry. Yes. Producer Brad, there's no trigger warnings here, because we don't really do that anymore. But Brad, tell us how this wonderful film came to be.

Terror-Creatures from the Grave was released in Italy on June 23rd, 1965 and in the US on May 16th, 1967. It's also known as Cemetery of the Living Dead, Coffin of Terror, and Five Graves for a Medium.

And that's the Italian title, directly translated. Yeah.

Do you want to try saying the Italian in Italian?

Uh, uh, five, tombe per un medium.

Better than I could do it.

It needs more Mario.

It's to me, the grave robber. Sorry. Carry on.

It was a co-production between Italian and US production companies. In the US, it was distributed in a double feature with another Italian US film, Bloody Pit of Horror, which is not a zombie film, but shares many of the same cast and crew members. Both films are considered Italian Gothic horror films and were released at the tail end of the Golden Age of the genre, which started around 1960 and lasted until 1965. Roberto, Curti, who wrote the book Italian Gothic horror films 1957 to 1969, breaks down key elements of the genre. They lean or pretend to lean on literary sources and are not set in contemporary times. They repeat plot points, avenging spirits, vampires and reincarnation were prime recurring elements. The majority of the films were set outside of Italy for the same reason that many of the names in the credits are Anglo-Saxon names, which is they were intended for foreign audiences. The look of the films was homogenous, the same set piece were reused over and over in different films. Italian Gothic horror films were meant to unsettle instead of scare, and I think Terror Creatures is exactly that kind of film.

Yeah, I agree.

Sexuality was open to perversions and morbidity. Eroticism was attractive and punitive for the audience and characters. Women were seen as witches, vampires and ghosts. Many were similar to the cruel queens and witches from the Peplum film. The men of Italian gothic films were often the opposite of the Peplum and Sword and Sandal films. They were impotent and weak, not oiled musclemen. And these films had low budgets and were meant for less demanding audiences.

That's certainly the case here.

Famous directors from the genre were Mario Bava, Ricardo Freida and Antonio Margariti. Mario Bava's 1960 film Black Sunday had a shocking level of violence for the time, and many call it one of the greatest horror films of all time. It was released at the same time as Psycho, but showed the violence that Psycho alluded to. Barbara Steele, who is in Terror-Creatures from the Grave, starred in Black Sunday, and that's the film that made her a horror star.

I have never seen Black Sunday, and now I feel like I have to.

It comes up a lot in my research.

Yeah, I think I need to see that.

Massimo Pupillo directed both Terror-Creatures from the Grave and Bloody Pit of Horror. Terror-Creatures is credited on screen as being directed by Ralph Zucker. Zucker was an American producer who moved to Italy to find success. He directed a few scenes, and Pupillo let him have screen credit because Pupillo didn't care much for the film, and with Bloody Pit of Horror coming out at the same time, he didn't want his name on both. The few scenes Zucker directed were filmed for the American audience and added more gore to keep up with the gore seen in the Herschel Gordon Lewis movies.

Interesting.

For example, we all watched the Italian version, but the American version starts with a man running through the town. He goes into a stable to try and get a horse to ride out, and the horse tramples him, and there's a close up of his eyes bulging out. Oh, really? That was an extra three minutes at the front of the American version.

What's interesting is I pegged the increase of gore in modern films on Italian films like when the Giallo films hit, it's going to get real gnarly, and so I'm surprised to hear it's the other way around.

Roberto Natale and Romano Migliorini are credited as writing the script. In the US, the film was promoted as inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, but this was just a marketing ploy. There is no underlying Poe story. Andy, I can see that you're thinking when you were watching the film, were you trying to figure out what Edgar Allan Poe story this was related to?

I can't think of an exact Poe story that it fits. Which is it?

Well, it's none, none of the stories, because they just flapped his name on the front just to ride the genre market that was out there.

Interesting. Okay.

The cinematographer was Carlo De Palma. He went on to an amazing career. In 1966, just one year after Terror-Creatures from the Grave, he was a cinematographer on Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up, which is considered a masterpiece. Starting with the 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters, De Palma worked on 12 Woody Allen films. He was a cinematographer on the Bruce Springsteen brilliant disguise music video. And he shot the Michael J. Fox film, The Secret of My Success. All right, on to the cast and heads up Andy, I'm going to add quite a few films to your, I'm watching this movie for the title podcast.

I can't wait.

Barbara Steele is an English actress. She had many parts in English movies in the 50s, many minor parts. Then she went to Hollywood, continued to have minor parts. She went to Italy and was cast immediately in Black Sunday.

Can you see it though? Like she has severe features, long, straight, black hair. Like I could see how an Italian audience would think, would consider her like the perfect creature, whereas in America, they're looking for something different.

Yeah, well, this film features, I mean, I don't want to sound creepy by talking about women leads like this, but it features a more American style romantic lead. But I think it's Barbara Steele's character that has the more arresting screen presence.

Black Sunday led to a series of mostly Italian horror films. She is known as the queen of all scream queens. In the 70s, she was in David Cronenberg's Shiver, Joe Dante's Piranha, and Jonathan Demme's Caged Heat.

Oh my gosh, Piranha.

Then in the 80s, she won an Emmy as producer of the 1988 miniseries, War and Remembrance, which is the sequel to The Winds of War.

Whoa.

And she continues to work. Her last credit was in 2020 on the animated Netflix series, Castlevania.

No way.

That's amazing. Can I tell you the one joke I remember about War and Remembrance? This was on Saturday Night Live and they said, and now the budget of this thing is greater than the budget of the entire Second World War, which is not true, but it was a notoriously expensive TV show.

Walter Brandy plays Albert Kovacs. He was one of the main stars of Italian horror films, the Italian version of Christopher Lee. His first film was The Vampire and the Ballerina, which was about two women who live in a spooky castle and practice their dancing.

That actually made me think of the movie Abigail, which is just a couple of years old, which is about a ballerina vampire. So obviously it's a resonant theme.

Alfredo Rizzo plays Dr. Niemak. My favorite titles from his filmography are Kill Baby Kill, Go With God Gringo, and God Is My Cult 45.

These are spaghetti westerns I take.

Those are all very good.

Luciano Pigosi plays Curt, the Gardener. He was in over 100 films, and we will see him again in the 70s when we watch Baron Blood. And if anyone listens to my other podcast, Multiplex Overthruster, we saw him in 1983 in the summer film, Yor, Hunter from the Future. He plays-

Oh, my gosh.

Did you see it?

No.

But he played Pag, the sidekick, who has the crazy scene in the trapeze.

Well, I just have to say, no, I just, your episode of Multiplex Overthruster on Yor is some of your finest work. Let me just say that.

That guy has some incredible Igor energy about him.

He does. He was also in a film called Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory. So the same year as this film came out. So I think your creepy energy is correct.

That sounds like a classy film. Can I just say that?

Yes.

Riccardo Garone plays Joseph Morgan. He was in First a Nun, Then a Demon and How to Kill 400 DuPonts. And the plot of that film is a single DuPont wants to be the sole inheritor. So he hires an assassin to kill all the other DuPonts.

Nice.

Renato Lupi plays the Archivist. He was in Nude for Satan.

I missed that one. I'm sorry.

The filming location for this was Castello Chigi outside of Rome. It was built in the 1620s by the architect and artist Pietro di Cortana. He painted frescoes that are still inside the building. And Terror-Creatures from the Grave was one of the most successful Italian horror films of the decade outside of Italy.

Really?

There were many versions of the film, depending on what country you saw it, and the US version was one of the longer ones.

Huh. There's some merit to this film, but also it's very cheap, so I find that surprising.

Yeah. Huh.

John, do you have anything you want to add?

I know. The sense I also got from this film was, it seems like almost like a... Like, maybe I don't know enough about Italian Gothic horror, but this seems like almost like a perfect transition piece to the upcoming wave of Giallo films, which is going to start in a couple of years, which are all essentially have the same plot, which is, I shouldn't say that, that's dismissive. But the plot in a Giallo film is frequently, there's a number of people who come together for one reason, and then they are mysteriously murdered one by one. Like, this is the Giallo Alpha plot, and that plot is here in this movie. So, I just noticed that it's not a Giallo film. Yeah. You want to have a good time, go into a forum and ask if something with supernatural stuff in it is a Giallo film, and watch the flames rise higher. But anyway.

So, why isn't this a Giallo film if it has all those features? So, educate me, pretend, because it's true that I don't know much about the Giallo genre.

Yeah. I'll give you the super high level, but there's a great episode of the Flop House. It's a mini, Flop House mini 127. It's called Always Room for Giallo with Alejandro Arbona, where he goes through how Giallo works. But the short version of the story is all Giallos are essentially the same plot and a lot of people say they're all related to Agatha Christie's and then there were none. People come together, you don't know who the killer is. People are killed in increasingly gory and bizarre ways. But there's always a human motivation, and though it may seem supernatural and scary, there's no real supernatural elements in an actual Giallo film. Plus, color becomes super important to Italian cinema in a couple of years and Giallos are noted for their extreme technicolor gore and blood. So that's why this feels like a proto-Giallo because it has the supernatural elements, it's not set in the modern age.

All right, well thanks, I appreciate the rundown.

Hopefully, I don't think we'll get to watch one because I don't think there's any Giallo movies with zombie films in them, but this is the next, this is the next craze in Italian cinema is Giallo films.

All right. So hey, John, I think you're leading the discussion on this one. Do you want me to do the 30-second overview of the movie?

Yes, please.

All right. So Terror-Creatures from the Grave follows an apprentice lawyer or a junior partner named Albert, who visits a villa deep in the countryside out in the Boondocks. He's a sensibly been invited there to help somebody create their last will and testament. But when he arrives, he finds out that the person who invited them has been dead for a year. So various mysterious shenanigans occur. But what happens is he discovers that the person who invited him was an occultist who is obsessed with the idea of bringing the dead back or revealing the presence of the dead around this sort of haunted location that the villa is built on. And so over the course of the film, people are murdered one by one, and it will be up to Albert, with some help from Corrine and Dr. Nemec, to find out why people are being killed and what ghastly fate is all of this building up to.

Yes, and I will say one thing that, I assumed this was set in Italy, because the sort of ancient curse at the crux of this thing is the Black Plague, is the Black Death. And I didn't mention that for the historical context, to do a super short rundown of that. They refer to it frequently as the 14th century. Historically, most historians agree, though there's obviously some disagreement, that the first place that the Black Plague showed up in Western Europe was in Genoa, Italy, in 1346. So, it made a lot of sense to me, that an Italian film would center on the Black Plague, because it's such a big part of their culture. But, I mean, you could do it, it only took a couple of years to get to England, so you could do it in England too, it doesn't really matter. So, I just have it in my head that the Black Plague started in Italy, at least from a Western standpoint.

There are place names mentioned throughout the movie that didn't sound very Italian to me.

Yes.

So, I think it might have supposed to have been taking place elsewhere in Europe, but I don't think it's ever really established, does it?

No, and it's vaguely, I don't know, there's Steiner and Kovac.

Yeah.

So, they're not really clear, vaguely Eastern Europe.

But I think the intent is, it's outside of Italy.

Yes. Yeah. Even though it looks really Italian.

It looks very, extremely Italian.

Yes.

So, hey John, do you want to lead us as we dive right into this well of pure water? And you'll get that reference in like 30 minutes.

In about 30 minutes, yeah. So, it just gets right into it. In the beginning, we have a man, he calls himself a notary, but we would consider him an attorney. And for some reason, he's reading like this very dark and depressing poem at the beginning. I didn't write it all down, but the last line is, It all ends with death, time devours everything. So, that's how we start the film. He's got to travel and he packs his bag, and then he pulls out of a desk door the world's smallest gun, like it's smaller than his hand. But then we meet his partner, Albert, who's really the protagonist of the film. And a letter comes in and says, Please, I need you to come right away to prepare my last will and testament. And Albert says, Of course, I will. He hops in his car and drives there. Is there anything about this opening you want to mention, Andy, other than it just gets right to it?

It gets right to it. The name of the guy who wrote the letter is the very epic name of Geronimus Hauf.

Geronimus Hauf. He's got to go to Villa Hauf.

And just to be clear, the letter was sent to the boss.

The letter was sent to the boss more than-

And he left work, and because it was urgent, the assistant goes off to the estate.

And this becomes important to the plot later. Yes, that's a great point. And then he drives there. So the first thing I'd like to say is, there's one car in this, and this is how I figured out it was set in 1910. Well, first of all, there's a gravestone of somebody who died a year ago that says they died in 1910. But second of all, it's a very old car. It's a Fiat 509. But think of an old rag-top convertible with the long engine compartment that has a side-lifting hood. It's very classic.

You got to crank it to start it.

So the first thing I want to point out before we get to a couple of other things that happened here is, this movie isn't what I would call subtle. I'd like to illustrate that by having producer Brad play a little bit of the music that plays over him just driving around the countryside. Like, nothing is happening right here. He's just driving. I just wanted to point that out. However, if that wasn't enough, he stops to ask directions to Villa Haufe from an old woman with a scarf around her head. And what does she do when he says the name of the place he's going?

She shuns him.

Yeah, and she crosses herself and doesn't say anything and walks away. But there's a broken sign there, so he sees which way to go. And he ends up at the Italian Downton Abbey, as far as I can tell, and walks in this strangely short door. So this is where the movie got weird. Up until this point, at least in my version, I believe it was all subtitled in Italian.

It was in Italian, subtitled in English.

Thank you. Yeah. But at this point, it sort of hops back and forth. It's mostly dubbed, but has still some stretches of Italian.

Can we talk about these subtitles? Because the English subtitles are often wildly different than the English audio dub of the same corresponding spoken lines. It's not just minor matters of translation.

No.

Sometimes they are saying something that has a different interpretation than the subtitles. It was curious.

It's a little strange. But also maybe just, I imagine the dubbing is from 1965, and who knows where the subtitles come from in this day and age.

They could be AI generated or who knows. They didn't seem like AI generated to me. They didn't have the quirks and failings that you get from AI subtitle generation. I felt like the subtitles were more true to what was happening, and the dubbing felt to me like a somewhat sloppier take. But I actually don't know which of those two things came first. So anyway, it does affect your experience of the movie, to be honest, because the style of dialogue is a little different in the subtitles than it is in the dub, and so it actually affects how these characters come across.

Yeah. I think part of the problem is, so Albert, for example, our protagonist, the Italian man playing him has a softer voice, and he speaks very quietly, but the American dub later is like, hello, I'm Albert. May I come into your home? He's very over-American. So let me be clear, I'm not going to watch this movie again, but I would be curious to watch it in Italian with just the subtitles to see how the experience is different.

There is a Blu-ray release of it. It's a twofer. It's called Nightmare Castle. It has Castle of Blood and Terror Creatures from the Grave. So I don't know if they have better subtitles than that.

Is it Criterion? Just wondering.

No.

John, I assign you to watch, track down and watch every cut and edition of this film and report back to us.

Okay. We'll do. Anyway.

All right. He's out at Downton Abbey, though.

Yeah. He's at the Haunted Downton Abbey, and he goes through a very small door. There's like this giant door, but to actually walk into the place, this is like this small door inside the big door, where he finds a maid, and he gets introduced to a woman, and the maid is a character, but only briefly, she has a bit of a scene later. But he finds a woman named Corrine Hough, and we find out that Corrine is the daughter of Geronimus Hough, and she has no idea why he's there. She's like, why did you come here? He's like, well, I got a letter. Well, waiting there for her to, she's gotta go tell her stepmother, Cleo, who we're about to meet shortly. But while he's standing around there, he sees like bookcases full of skulls and a glass case with severed leprous hands in it. So this is when producer Brad said, like it was trying to be more creepy than scary. That's what's happening here.

All right, quick quiz. What's the other movie we've seen with a row of hands on display or arms?

The Frozen Dead.

Indeed, yes.

These are not as fun as the Frozen Dead arms, but they have their own charm.

Yes.

He also sees a very strange man looking at him through the window, who we will later discover is the groundskeeper, Kurt the Gardener, which is a German name. Maybe they're in Germany, who knows. However, after a few minutes, he gets brought in to meet the other woman who lives here, Geronimus Housewife, excuse me, Geronimus Housewife, who is named Cleo. We find out later that Cleo is not the mother of Corrine, she is stepmother. He shows this letter and he says, well, somebody wrote this letter. Corrine and Cleo trade glances, and this is what Cleo, played by Barbara Steele, says to Albert.

It looks like his writing. Even the seal seems authentic. And yet it...

I don't understand.

Didn't your husband tell you? My husband has been dead for a year.

Whoa, creepy sound. And a gust of wind blows open the door.

This movie wants to make sure you know how you're supposed to be feeling about every...

At all times. So they also...

Can we talk about Kareen and Cleo because they are contrasting figures? Correct. Yes, please. Kareen is going to be the love interest of the main character, Albert. And she is what I would call a pretty typical, like 40s, 50s, like leading, romantic lead, say?

Yeah, she's blonde and innocent and sweet and all of this is beyond her, so to speak.

And Cleo is the opposite of that. She's also young. I think it's... I mean, she must be like 30 years younger than her husband when he died or something like that. But she is kind of gaunt and sharp, like she has sort of sharp features and dark hair and kind of these dark eyes and when I first saw her, it was clear who was going to go on to be this great scream queen because she has a really... She has a real arresting scream presence.

She does and it is interesting the contrast between the two of them.

It's pretty clearly conveyed that there's something a little sinister about Cleo, whereas Corrine is like an innocent naïve.

Right. All right. We find out this is Dr. House second wife and that the anniversary of his death is coming up in just a couple of days. The next bit is there at dinner. The one piece of proof in this film is that the letter that was written was sealed using his personal seal which is on a ring that was buried with him. They would be surprised if that was his actual seal. At some point, Curt appears again and Albert comments on what a strange man, we find out he's Curt the Gardener, as they get ready to go to bed. Then when Albert and Corinna are alone, she confides in him that she would rather not be here. In fact, currently, they don't really live here. They've come back to claim his body, which has been buried near here for a year, and they're going to take it back to be buried somewhere else. But Corinne confides in Albert that this place is actually terrifying to her.

This is a place of horror where thousands of men have died. The villa was erected on the ruins of a 15th century hospital. All the victims of the plague in this region were brought here, and not one of them left here alive. Now you might understand why everyone fears this morbid museum. Look, these are the mummified hands of men who were executed because it was believed they were spreading the Black Plague.

So this is a great backstory for a haunted Gothic house, is it not?

Yeah.

So not only did people die of the plague here, but those who spread the plague were sort of ritually killed and had their arms chopped off.

It's suggested that some of them were maliciously spreading the plague, which doesn't seem like something people would do, but it certainly would be awfully sinister if they were.

Yeah, and we found out later that they were also buried in un-consecrated ground as punishment. So important tip for those burying the evil, if you don't consecrate the ground, that's a good opportunity for them to come back. So I just want to throw that out there, no reason.

Something to think about.

Something to think about, yeah.

Yeah. We do learn here more about the different ways that, what was that guy's name? Dr. Hough. Geronimus.

Geronimus.

Or Hough, how he was viewed. Because Kareen just adored her father and thought he was a brilliant, misunderstood man. But we're going to find out that almost everybody else in this villa thinks he was a crazy wacko who was studying junk science and getting up to no good. So I guess as the movie plays out, I will be interested to hear where you think we land on the character of Dr. Hough.

Yeah, at this point, he's described as a spiritualist. Also, there was something interesting. So anyway, Albert gets to go to sleep in house. I'm just going to call him Geronimus from this point.

Yeah, that's right. Geronimus. Can I say one more thing?

Yeah.

About the scene where Kareen's talking about her father, she describes what he was trying to do as trying to materialize the supernatural forces in the villa.

Yes.

I was just wondering, to me, that called to mind a Lovecraft story that was made into a famous schlocky horror film. Do you know what I'm talking about?

No. Which one?

From Beyond.

I have not seen From Beyond.

The plot of that one is, yes, a scientist is trying, believes that there's stuff we can't see all around us. He's trying to create a device that lets that. I think that's the plot of From Beyond.

I think so. I think you're right. But I don't remember. Yeah.

But he might have been crazy, I guess, is just what we learned from the scene.

Also, that reminds me though, I have to do a correction from last episode. I said that Sinners was the most nominated film ever. It is not. It has the most nominations this year, but both Titanic, which is 13, but both Titanic and Lord of the Rings Return of the King had 14 nominations.

I like how you've buried your correction way into the midst of this episode. Let's just move along.

Done.

Well done. All right. Carry on.

Lucky Albert stumbles across a bunch of Geronimus' things, including a recording made on... Well, do you want to describe? He plays a recording. What is this recording done on, Andy? Did you recognize it?

An old wax cylinder recording, right?

Yeah, which I thought was interesting because this is when I first realized, oh, this is not 19... I mean, when he was driving the old car, I'm like, it must be like the 30s or 40s, but here it's solidly putting it like pre-technology. Though they do have a phone here, which is interesting in 1910. But he hears a recording on the wax cylinder, which apparently summons some spirits because we get this very interesting scene where a point-of-view camera like zooms in and starts zooming around the house, and it zooms in on Corinne, who screams and claims she saw her father. But what else happens when she is sort of, quote unquote, attacked by this spirit? There's something physical that changes in the house.

Well, two things might be physically changing. One, Corinne is changing, isn't she?

Oh, yeah.

Because this movie shows us more skin than previous movies we've watched.

If there's an opportunity to show a woman changing her clothing, this film is all about it.

Yes, but we see a vase that has some flowers in it.

And water.

It's like a transparent vase, so you can see how much water is in it. And there's sort of like a, it looks like a time lapse video of the water evaporating and the plant rotting away, right?

Yes, yes. And then, so Albert runs into Corrine's room, and Corrine runs out and they realize it was just a bust. She didn't really see anything, just a statue. And she says, my father died drunk and fell down the stairs. I don't know why she says that, but in any case, as they're talking and getting ready to sort of settle down again, we see the wax cylinder play and it plays the following.

I've summoned them from their graves, and now I'm among them. I've summoned them from their graves, and now I'm among them.

Yes.

That's pretty creepy.

That's pretty creepy.

That was effective.

So he does, like let's give Albert some credit here. He does try to do the smart thing, which is leave. And in the morning, he's not able to start his car. And in fact, when he tries to start it, there's this horrific noise and he opens the hood. And what does he find inside his engine, Andy?

A dead owl is in there.

An owl. Yes. Caught in the engine. And here we meet another one of our characters, and this is?

Dr. Nemeck.

Dr. Nemeck, who is the doctor who has replaced, who is now the sort of town doctor. So Albert wants to go into town now. He wants to use the phone because obviously, strange things are happening here. But his car doesn't work. They have no mechanics. I think that's interesting, though. In 1910.

Yeah, where are you going to get your car fixed?

Where are you going to get your car fixed? There's no auto mechanics yet. You have to know how to fix your own car, especially in a rural town. So Dr. Nemeck offers to take him to town, and then Corinne decides to go along as well. So they take a horse and buggy into town, which is kind of amazing. Now, when they do that, I think I'm getting way too into this, but let me just mention a couple of things here. First of all, this is the first time Albert hits on Corinne.

Yeah, we get a nice romantic walk, or at least it's romantic for a minute.

For a minute. Then we also, while they're gone, Cleo looks in Albert's bag. So clearly she is up to something, and we just don't know what it is. So they go into town. Nemec has to take care of some business, and Corinne swears, she tells this story about her father in a boat, and she swears she sees her father, and freaks out, and collapses in a marsh. So they have to stay in town a little bit longer. Then we meet this weird guy in the town. We get to see her in States of Undress again, of course. Sorry, I didn't want to skip that. But then-

Here's another little tip. If you're ever getting changed behind one of those curtains, be sure to backlight yourself against the curtain, so that we can all see the silhouette.

Yes. We meet another character, a guy who lives in town. His name is Steiner, and apparently Nemec knew him, and Steiner knew Geronimus. They talk about the seal, which was buried with Geronimus, and Steiner has an old letter from Geronimus, and he pulls it out, and they realize, no, that's the real seal that was on your letter, so we have no idea how that happened, because that should be buried under the ground. Then Steiner warns Corrine to leave the villa by any means necessary, just get out of there. They have one more thing to do. They want to go to the local store, the local pharmacy, and what discovery do they make there, Andy?

They discover that the pharmacist, who also happened to be the mayor of the town, is dead.

Yes.

He is dead and acid has been dripping on his face, so there's a little bit of mild gore, I would say, as he's dead. This is the first of basically a string of murders that is going to happen over the next day.

Yes, exactly. And one of the interesting things here, so Corinne takes the horse and buggy and heads back to the villa, and Nemec is helping to fill out basically the death certificate in the clerk's office of the town. And they meet another strange man who lives here. And so this is what Nemec, this is what he starts with in the conversation they have when he's filling out the death certificate for the pharmacist.

All this red tape, all these formalities.

One moment, who filled these out? I got them ready for you. I was free early this morning, so I wrote them up for you. This morning? How did you know the mayor was dead? The cart of the corpse collectors passed by last night. Everybody here in town heard it. The corpse collectors always come when somebody is doomed to meet his fate. They've passed by three times now. You picked the mayor, but it might have happened to anybody here. It was bound to be here. Why? He was one of those present at the death of Geronimus Hough. They're all marked to die.

Yes. So here's where we get the actual plot. It's that five people were there with Geronimus Hough. Three of them are dead.

Yeah, they all witnessed his death.

Yes. They find a list of people who are there. Who's the next name on the list, Andy?

The next name on the list is the guy.

Steiner.

Steiner, they're talking to him. Yeah, he's a minor character. There's five names on the list. Three are now dead. Is that right?

Steiner is the fourth and the fifth name is illegible.

Yeah. It's suggested that he purposely signed his name weird so that he couldn't be identified. That's the mystery of this film is who is the fifth name.

Correct. I put a note here. There's some more stuff that goes on. The Nemec is a skeptic here, but they go back home and in the evening, Albert is sitting in his room and he hears music. He hears an eerie ghost melody. We played a little bit at the beginning, but it's this almost nursery rhyme, except instead of singing about pure water the whole time, there's lyrics about death approaching. He finds the empty vase, and a bunch of things start happening. But let's stop here for a movie because I want to just describe this scene in total and you correct me on anything I meet. So he hears the girl singing and he sees someone out by the, it's not a pond, it's like a giant round fountain in the middle of the yard, like a cistern or something. He goes down there and he sees the girl, he goes down there and she's not there, but he finds fresh flowers floating in the water, like they've been dropped there just now. Then he goes back inside and goes into this strange room filled with clocks, and he finds one of the same flowers in that room, at which point Cleo comes in and tells him the legend of the girl who died as part of the plague, and she's like, that's just a myth. Is that essentially what this scene is? Because I think it's kind of a linchpin here.

Yes. So part of the myth is that an innocent girl was killed by the plague bearers, like came and killed her. And so I think we're meant to think he's just seen her ghost. We learned that all of the clocks in this room stopped on the night that Geronimus died, right?

That's right.

So this is kind of a creepy little shrine.

Yeah, it feels like, so at this point, I put in my notes, this feels like a ghost story, right? Like it feels like-

Totally, totally, yeah.

Yeah, in a haunted mansion. However, we cut back to Steiner in the village, bad news.

Remember, he's the fourth guy on the list.

He's the fourth guy on the list, and he's having a freak out because he's pretty sure he's gonna buy it pretty soon here. But I just asked producer Brad to grab some creepy effects from this scene because I thought they were so delicious. I think those are supposed to be the corpse collector, Carte.

Oh, okay, it could be, yeah. But he believes that, so we never see a ghost or a monster, but we see him gasping as if he can see something we can't almost.

Yeah, and we get a staple of Italian cinema at this point, which is zooming in on the eyeball.

Yeah.

Like from here on out. Yeah, you wanna know something that describes a Giallo movie? Zooming in on somebody's eyeballs.

There was a great eyeball zoom in on Cleo earlier.

Yes.

As she was watching Albert and Creen head into town, there's a great... It's just a... You know, it is a little hokey when you realize that it's been done a lot, but it is a pretty good... It's a cool shot.

Yes, but the big thing in this scene is Steiner essentially says, the ghosts aren't gonna get me, and he hangs himself. He's in a wheelchair, and I have some questions about the logistics, but...

I thought long and hard about... Later, we see his body, and I don't know how he got up there.

If you see the shadow, they show his body and shadow hanging, and his right hand is the rope, so it's implied he's holding himself up even while dead.

Yes, which again...

Now, that's the Italian version. I watched this scene in the American version, and he kills himself differently.

Oh, really?

He wheels to the wall, and there's this blade, like a short sword, and he goes to a dresser, puts it in there, blade pointed outward, and he rolls backwards 10 feet, and then rolls himself at high speed into it and impales himself.

That's amazing.

That is a less dignified way to go.

And then a hand, you see in Shadow, comes and grabs his wheelchair and pulls him out.

Okay.

So it's implied there is a presence in the room.

Interesting.

Well, this is maybe the second time we have maybe been looking through the eyes of a ghost or a supernatural presence, right?

We get a lot of point of view filming in this film, and this is the second time we've had it, for sure.

Yeah. I was going to ask you, can you think of another movie in our podcast that we've watched that had a shot from the point of view of the zombie slash evil thing?

We did. I have two thoughts in my mind. Was one of them scared stiff? No. I mean, that had a POV shot in it. Are you thinking of the incredibly strange creatures who stopped living and became mixed up zombies?

I think I was thinking of the creature with the atom brain.

Oh, you're right. Yes, breaking into the house at the beginning.

Yes. I'm not sure if that was the only one, but that was a memorable one.

That's the more memorable one, yes. Anyway, I'm going to move us along a little bit.

Yeah, skip us along.

They've decided that's enough nonsense, so they're going to dig up Geronimus' body. They're here to do that anyway.

Yeah. The theory now is that Albert thinks is that, well, Geronimus must not really be dead.

He must have faked his own death. Yeah. They go to exhume the body. One thing I love about this scene is that the two women are wearing morning dresses and veils and stuff for an exhumation. It's not a funeral. You should have done that a year ago. I would be wearing overalls and have something over my mouth for the smell.

Cleo looks so sinister and gothic standing in her black veil next to this. It's great.

Yes. They open the grave and surprise, surprise Andy, who's in the grave?

Nobody is in the grave, John.

Yeah. We cut to a scene of Louise getting scared and running home and running through the countryside. It's to be lost and to disorientate. It doesn't really make a lot of sense, but I think it's just to-

It made me feel sad for her because she didn't want to be in this dumb haunted villa the whole movie and then she ends up running off. At the end of the movie, she gets the plague and dies. It's a bummer.

Yeah. Just a couple other things happen here really quick. Morgan, the original notary who was supposed to get the original letter, shows up and we find out that Morgan and Cleo were having an affair behind Geronimo's back and then of course, that's an excuse to show not actual nudity, but just a little skin as they have a love scene.

Well, this is the first time that sex has been depicted in one of our zombie movies.

I think so. It's been implied, but I think you're right.

Yeah. It is accompanied by the most ridiculous Spanish guitar music, that it's really quite something. Yes. But the gist of it is that Morgan was the fifth name.

Correct.

He was being invited to come back to face the same reckoning that the others on the list are facing.

Absolutely. Then the big twist comes. We haven't seen Curt the Gardener very much, but Curt comes in and he is bearing the body of Geronimus. It has the seal ring on his hand. We realized that it's Curt who wants to make sure revenge happens on behalf of Geronimus and he turns around and he's got the plague now. So he goes to confront all of the people who were there for Geronimus' death. Do you want to talk about this scene a little bit, Andy? It's great.

This is a fantastic scene and it really is the climactic scene of the movie. So yeah, just to recap what you said, so Curt, it's a little unclear what Curt has been doing. Are we meant to think he wrote the letter?

I think so. I think we're meant to think that and he used Geronimus' seal ring to seal the letter.

Yeah, so he's been waiting a year for, he says at one point, Master, the night of your revenge has begun. Yes. But so everybody has gathered sort of Agatha Christie style in a room.

Yeah.

And there's a big mirror there and this is the room where Geronimus died.

Yes.

And Curt staggers in and we realize to our horror that he has these gross boils and blisters on his face. He has the plague somehow.

Yes, and Nemec points out it's a particularly virulent form of the plague and they like bubble and ooze as we watch.

So he comes in and he is dying, but the clocks in the room all begin to tick again suddenly. So it's just the hour of vengeance is here. The severed hands start to move over in their display case. Hearts and jars begin to beat and we see a shot outside of graves starting to slide open.

Yeah, the doors slam shut, the lights go out. It's fantastic.

I did note as much as I enjoyed the scene, I noted here that at this point in the movie, an hour and 15 minutes has gone by. Yes. I would argue that there is about 25 minutes of story in this movie. Yeah. Really, they have drawn this out well beyond the point where you understood what's going on.

Yeah. It starts with, hey, isn't this creepy? Then it's like, look, we're still creepy over here. Yep. Still creepy. It doesn't necessarily escalate as repeats.

I don't know if you want to describe it, John, but they all look into the mirror and we get a flashback vision of the night of what really happened at Geronimus' death. Why don't you tell us how that plays out?

The five people who died, two of whom-

Plus Cleo.

Plus Cleo are there. We see Morgan, we see Steiner, we see other people who are murdered, but they died off-screen. And they're confronting Geronimus, and he is threatening to expose all of their dark sins and secrets. And one of them-

Morgan.

Morgan hits him with something and he collapses.

But before he hits him, he sneaks behind Auf, and he's holding like a candlestick, and he looks at each of the other people, and they all nod, yes, do it. They all commit to it.

Yep. And then they'd laugh as Geronimus dies. But that's not Geronimus' last word on the subject.

No, accursed murderers. You won't escape my anger. My vengeance will find you wherever you are.

I curse on all of you.

And then they all continue to laugh at him. It's amazing.

It is a great, somewhat hallucinatory scene, especially when they start laughing. It's a little bit crazy.

It's a little crazy. It's kind of great.

And we never see his face. It's like that whole flashback is his point of view, because we only see from behind him.

Yeah.

Yes. And Cleo tries to run, but she comes back into the room and she has the plague.

Yeah.

And there is a fantastic shot. She collapses against a harp, and there's just a great shot of her face planted into the harp strings. I'm laughing, but it actually is a pretty great shot.

Yeah.

And Morgan, you see Morgan trying to shoot something that's rushing at him, but you never see what it is. It doesn't work. And then he also dies. And then we hear, and the wheeze dies, and now we hear this water song about pure water that we heard at the beginning. And they realize, so the only people left are Remick, Albert and Corinne. And they realize the only way to live is pure water. They hear the pure water nursery rhyme. So they head out into the rain, but it's not raining yet. And before they can escape, Nemeck also catches the plague.

Yeah, the implication here I think is that the plague, so Curt kind of rants about this. The plague is coming back, and it is going to kill everyone in like the villa and the connecting town and stuff. Like I think, so he specifically says it's going to kill the guilty and the innocent alike. And then I think when we see that the maid Louisa has died of the plague, we are meant to realize like, oh, the vengeance is not going to be limited just to the five murderers. It's going to get everybody.

Yes. However, the rain is pure and saves Corinne and Albert from getting killed. And then there's this extended scene where they sort of walk away from the camera in the pouring rain.

So I have questions. Yes.

Andy, before you jump, one thing about the nursery rhyme.

Yes.

Corinne says that her father taught it to her.

Yeah, I skipped over a scene where she has a doll that plays it.

And that implies that the father knew this was going to happen and was trying to protect her without telling her how to do it. And so at the moment of need, she would have the answer.

Okay. But here's my question. What were they supposed to do with that information? So by this point in the movie, we've heard this rhyme a couple of times and this nursery rhyme that basically says doom is coming for you, but pure water will save you. Okay, we get it. So pure water. But like they don't take any action to like find pure water. They're outside and it happens to start raining. I just felt like-

Little deus ex machina.

Yeah. Maybe that's appropriate to the genre, but they got the warning, but the warning doesn't help you because you can't cause the rain to start. It happened at the appropriate time as a deus ex machina. I just thought it was weird.

It is a little weird.

It was a little weird. Anyway. That's a wrap on Terror-Creatures from the Grave.

Yes, that is. We never see the creatures, though they're clearly some undead influence. This is a bit of a weird one for us.

We see shadows on the wall. That's as much as we see.

We do. There is one time in this movie when Nemec is running at the end of the movie, trying to escape because the plague has broken out. He's running through the woods and we see a hand grab at him. It's like a pale white hand.

Yep.

It's very fast. I think it's supposed to be whatever the entities are, the plague bearers. That was how I interpreted it.

Yeah. I think you're right. All right. Well, do you want to get to it?

Yeah. We have a big string of questions that we ask at the end of our discussion to place this in the zombie movie lineage. I think one of the questions we need to do is talk about to what extent this is a zombie movie. John, in Terror-Creatures from the Grave, is there a hero party?

There is. I would call it Albert, Corinne, Dr. Nemec, and maybe Louise. I wouldn't include Cleo, but maybe we should.

I don't think so. How do they do? How many survive?

The only survivors of this whole film are, in fact, Albert and Corinne.

Yeah. Here's a question we don't usually ask. Is there a zombie in this film? If so, what is the strain of zombie we're dealing with?

This is a great question. I'm not sure. Clearly, there's some supernatural entity here. We have the animated hands which are zombie-like, but they're not actually zombies in themselves. We get the impression that creatures have risen from the grave, but we don't actually see them. I'm going to say there are zombies here. They are reanimated plague corpses. We just don't see them.

I was going to ask, in your head, Kenan, since the movie doesn't establish it, do you think that those graves opening, that after the camera cuts away, that a gross zombie corpse climbs out of those graves?

I think so, because I think that's what gets NEMEC in the end.

I would add that they are... Howe has been described as an occultist, and we have the summoning on the WAX recording. So these are like summoned zombies.

Yeah, they're like part ghost, part zombie, is the way I think about them.

Yeah, it's less like he created them, and more like he's calling them forth to do their thing, which is to spread the plague, right?

Yes.

So if we are gonna call them zombies, and I think we can if we put a little asterisk at the end of it, that's a pretty interesting zombie master relationship.

Yeah, because they're like ancient zombies tied up in a curse, right? Almost like the zombies of Moratau, kind of, but older.

And these are evil creatures. Correct. Most of the zombies we've seen are controlled, are mindless and just being controlled by someone who's usually evil.

But these are malicious.

These are malicious, yeah. And when they're summoned, they do their thing, which is to maliciously spread death.

Yes.

Which is pretty nasty.

Yep.

Okay. So is there a zombie horde in this movie?

I'll say yes. Again, you don't see it, but it's implied.

Yeah, it's an implied zombie horde. So put an asterisk on that one. Yeah. What is the kill count in this movie compared to other zombie films we've watched?

It's probably half a dozen-ish, a little bit more. But there's a suggestion that this could be a broader phenomenon, that other people die that we don't see because of the plague.

That leads well into this question. Is the world threatened?

Yes. It's threatened by these zombies who could spread the plague back through the world. That's fascinating because this might be our first instance, inadvertently, surprisingly, of a viral.

Yes.

Or bacterial in this case because it's the Black Plague spread of a disease. Now, the disease is not zombification, but it is the zombies spreading the disease.

That is very interesting.

Yes. I think there's a jump there. People infected just have a virulent form of the plague. They don't become zombies, at least that we know about. However, it is spread by the zombies. If you get touched by a zombie, you get this disease.

Next, I would ask, are there any kind of zombie firsts here? I think that is the biggest one. This is the first time we have seen zombies spreading a contagion.

Yes. Now, it's the black plague. It's not zombie-dom, but I think that's the implied idea here.

Can the zombies return to being human in this movie, or can their state be reversed? No.

They're undead, unsavory spirits.

Do you think that Geronimus is a zombie presence in this film, or is— I don't think so.

I think he just, inadvertently or inadvertently, through his curse, summoned them to rise up. He communicated with them. When you hear the recording, they wake back up again, and his curse invokes them.

But he also says, I am now among you.

Yeah, you're right.

And so, Corinne claims to see him twice.

That's true.

So, but this movie is a little bit unclear about whether Geronimus is really executing his vengeance beyond the grave, or not really. He's just, if anything, he's just returning from the dead along with the plague bearers.

Or is Curt the gardener moving his body around the house to scare people?

Yeah, we don't know. It's a little unclear. And I think, intentionally.

I know. I mean, it's a good unclear, I think. I don't need answers to those questions, exactly. All right, John, at the beginning of this podcast, we established four pillars of the zombie film genre. Let's find out how many of them are present in Terror-Creatures from the Grave.

All right.

John, in this film, is there an apocalypse?

I'm going to say yes, because the village is threatened, but more importantly, the Black Plague counts as an apocalypse.

Yes.

In any sense of the word.

And there is just an apocalyptic vibe.

Yes.

Over the whole film, I think.

Yes.

Are there tough moral choices in this film?

Yes, I think so. Steiner has to choose whether he's going to die from the plague or hang himself. Remick has to choose to save Corinne and he gets the plague himself. So I'm going to say yes, because it's a movie filled with people who've made unethical choices and the consequences of them.

I'll buy that. Are there loved ones turning against you in this film?

In this sense, I think, no, because the loved ones who die from the plague don't become zombies in the traditional sense.

I am tempted to say to give us a half yes.

Oh, Geronimus, because he does love his daughter.

Because remember, Curt explicitly says, even when he's telling everyone they're doomed, he explicitly says, even Corinne is going to get the plague.

Okay, I'll buy that.

I don't know if that's like Geronimus' intention, but he certainly unleashed the forces that are going to kill his own daughter.

Yeah.

So I give it a half yes.

I'll give it a half yes. You skipped one though, Andy.

Oh, I did. Did I? Is there, oh, of course. Is there contagion in this movie?

There is. It's not what we meant when we defined the term, but I think zombies spreading a disease is contagion, even if it's not zombie-dom. So, yeah.

It's just, we're getting so close to the Night of the Living Dead.

We're so close. I know. I can taste it. Speaking of which, it's the 1960s. Can I ask you some questions about the 1960s?

You may, with the caveat that I don't know my 1960s Italian culture, although one of the books I read about the 60s flagged Italy as one of four places in the world that really defined the 60s culture. That said, my knowledge is a little weak on Italy.

Is this film depicting an increase in violence and grittiness, and I'll just throw in there sexualization as well?

Yes, it does. We should just add sexualization to that question. It definitely does. As far as gore goes, it's not a huge escalation from past movies. I would say it's about on par with the last couple of years of the zombie films we've watched. It mostly boils down to some fairly gross makeup of people with the plague.

But if you watch the American version, so the American version which your questions were meant to apply to, it does show that.

That's true. I don't want to sound skeevy here, but this movie does have a definite escalation of sexualization. We get like, there's actual nudity in this film, albeit brief, and it does have the first real sex scene that we have seen in these movies. I mean, it still would get a, I mean, this would all get like a PG-13 rating probably today, but we are moving up the rating scale. I truly- We are. So yes, I'm going to say that yes, increase in all that stuff.

All right. Do our heroes question authority? Are they rebels amongst society?

I don't think so. Our main hero, this feels very much like a 1940s hero. He's a professional with a career and a life and stuff.

So yeah.

All right.

Here's an interesting one. Focus on the hero's inner life, a more personalized brand of horror.

So yes, this is a very personalized horror. It's not, this might be a distinction we might need to make. It is not the hero's inner life that the horror is leveraging. It is other characters, but the horror is all about their choices. Like Cleo in particular, you know, a lot of Cleo in particular, and the betrayal and the choice of the five witnesses to betray their friend. Right. Yeah, the horror is very much based around that stuff.

I'd like to throw something else in there, which is Albert, I think this is the first time we've seen this. Several times during the film, Albert has an inner monologue where he's considering the aspects of what's happening, pointing to an inner life for Albert, which is, I don't know that we've seen that in any movie so far, much less a zombie movie.

You are right. We have a voiceover and like Albert narrating what he's thinking at a couple of points, which is definitely new, I think, to zombie films. Maybe Last Man on Earth did have Vincent Price doing some voiceover, but it wasn't meant to be reflecting his thoughts in the moment, I don't think.

It seems like a post-narration almost.

Right. So along those lines, I was going to say, oh, so this might sound weird, but if we're to say it, this, speaking of personalized horror, this is a movie where people were convincingly, authentically afraid of the horror. Yes. I mean, in all of these movies feature people screaming and running away from the zombies and stuff, but this is the first time where Cleo at one point is begging Morgan, like, let's leave. We need to get out of here. It's a real personal fear of what is going to happen to them. I thought it was quite effective, and it's much more authentic feeling than the fairly unconvincing fear that people show of supernatural stuff in past movies where it is either kind of a generic, like, sure, the women scream and faint, or sometimes it's played up for laughs in characters with, like, actors like Mantan Moreland.

Yeah.

But this one, I felt like they were really scared of what was going on, and they didn't know exactly what to do about it.

Yeah, I agree. Okay. Is there a fear of crime, societal chaos, and anarchy here?

Maybe a little bit in the sense that, like, anyone that is intentionally spreading the plague is like someone who likes to watch the world burn, I guess. But I don't think this was really trying to evoke inner city crime or something like some of these films have.

Well, let me hit you with the next one then, a sense of looming apocalypse and psychological stress.

Yes, very much. We're reminded throughout how close we are to the one-year anniversary of Geronimus' death, and that is always presented as an apocalyptic moment of reckoning that's coming. Even if the characters don't know exactly why they feel that way, or what form the reckoning might take. But clearly, there are clocks in this movie literally counting down to everybody's doom, and the stress is very visible on the guilty also.

Yes, and also the innocent, like Louise feels it a lot too, even though she is innocent. Last one, and I think this might be a very successful movie for you, Andy. Are there horrors without solutions, or a lack of clear villains to defeat?

Yes. To the extent these horrors are defeated, they're just defeated by a natural phenomenon of rain. I guess you could say that a sort of divine intervention stepping in to save our heroes.

But yeah, there's no chant, or there's no chant they need to do, or some spell, or they don't have some solution.

They haven't done anything to like cleanse the area of this problem. It's still cursed. Whoever moves in there next is in for a bad time, right?

Yes.

So I think that that does, that's an answer of yes to that question.

So this is a pretty solidly 60s movie based on your predictions.

So I would even say that the villain, to the extent that Geronimus is a villain, he is a relatively nuanced one in the movies we've watched to date. He is understandably wants revenge for the people that have killed him, I guess. But the vengeance that Curt reeks, building on Geronimus' dying curse, is pretty disproportionate and it's not discriminating, like the guilty and the innocent. Right. That is an interesting thing because I don't feel like Geronimus would have wanted this to happen in this way. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. I agree. So.

Okay. All right. Lastly, so John, we always close each episode with three important questions. So here they are. Brace yourself, John.

I'm ready.

Would you and I survive in the zombie world of Terror-Creatures from the Grave?

I don't think so because even innocent people who are just trapped in the whirlwind of this vengeance die. So I think, you know, if we were like the policemen who came out to investigate, we'd catch the plague and die and not really know what happened. We're like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern here. We just, death, our fate would be sealed.

Yeah. Once you introduce Contagion into the picture, my answers are going to start, my answers to this question are going to start getting more and more negative. You know, there's not much you can do to escape this plague. If you just live in that town, short of leaving, there is nothing you can do to get away from this. So I think I'd be in trouble. John, is this a zombie movie or a movie with zombies?

I'm going to say it's a zombie movie. And I didn't think I was going to say that when we started recording today, but I'm saying it now.

I was going to say it's a movie with zombies. So tell me your thinking.

Well, I think that the sort of fulcrum of the horror is these, are these zombies who spread the plague. So I think it's about them in a way that makes it a zombie movie. But I could be convinced otherwise. What's your position?

I don't know if I feel strongly about this one. This feels like a ghost story to me. Yeah. With a little bit of zombie just to justify the physical element of the contagion.

I could buy that. Yeah. We never see the zombies. I mean, that has to be said, so, okay.

This is an unusual one in our list, I just have to say.

Yeah, I think so.

It sort of defies some of our questions here. Yeah. Lastly, John, do you recommend Terror-Creatures from the Grave? Firstly, just to people looking to watch a good, interesting movie, and secondly, to the legion of zombie-loving listeners of this podcast.

This is a tough one, because I think it gets better in the telling, so to speak. As we were talking about it, my opinion of it rose. But I think if you're just sitting down to watch a movie, there's even better Italian Gothic horror films than this one you could watch, much less other Italian films of this time. So I'm going to say no on the recommendation. But for the Super Zombie Curious, I'll say a soft yes, because I think it's an interesting movie from just the spiritual aspect of zombies and raising the dead, that we haven't really seen in much. So I think in that sense, so I'll say no to general yes for zombie people, because it's not a great movie. It's a little cheap.

Yeah, I'm going to agree with you. I haven't watched a ton of Gothic movies. I bet you you could find quite a few that are stronger than this one. This one, the fault of this one is not really its slow budget. It's just that it's an hour and a half, and I don't really think it has enough material to justify that length. Yeah. It's pretty draggy, and the third time something spooky happens, pointing to Geronimus' revenge, you're like I get it. Yeah, exactly. It was okay, though. I didn't dislike this movie. It looks pretty good despite its budget.

I think it would look better if you could find the Blu-ray too as opposed to watching a crappy YouTube upload, which is what we did.

I think I could do a stronger recommendation if it was a more consistent cut. If there's a good cut out there that is either the Italian one with consistent subtitles or the American one with decent dubbing, it would be a stronger. I'd have more of a chance to recommend it.

There's a couple of stylistic things that stood out in this movie. It's possible these are cliched elements of Italian film that I'm just not as familiar with. I thought that they did make the movie stand out a little bit as a film. The eye shots are good. The roving point of view is good. There are a couple of scenes where various effects, like when Luisa is killed in the swamp, the camera is swinging wildly around looking up at the trees. There's just a couple of things that are a little bit more coherent artistic choices than you might expect from a really low budget film like this.

I think so too. I think it's at least trying to do something. It's trying to disorient you using camera technique and cinematography. Does it look cheap? Yes. But it seems like a genuine effort.

When everyone is laughing in the mirror scene, like I use the word hallucinatory. It's a weird nightmare scene, I think. So I'm going to give this a tepid yes to the first and a tepid yes to the second too. Okay.

All right.

Andy, without having seen The Evil Dead, you just described many scenes of The Evil Dead with a low budget, with the camera jumping around.

Yeah. There's multiple scenes where the camera chases people through the woods.

Do I need to see The Evil Dead?

Well, you will as we keep going.

Okay. Yeah, I am going to. All right. Fair enough. All right. Okay. Well, that's all of our questions, which means we can't put it off any longer. It's time for the scariest part of every episode, and that is when Producer Brad reveals to me and John, what zombie movie we're going to be watching next.

All right, Producer Brad. What fresh hell is this?

As always, while Producer Brad gets ready, I tried to think back of the recent track.

I know.

So we had Batman, which was dire.

Like it can't be worse. I keep thinking it can't be worse than Batman, but I know it can be, so I don't know.

Well, I hate to do this, but we have to go backwards again.

Oh, no.

You're killing us.

You're killing us.

It's that book I read on Italian Gothic films.

I have to tell you that now you know the consequences. We could rise from the grave and haunt you in vengeance. I just want you to think that through.

This one might be more like Andy said, proving it's not a zombie film, because in this book I read, it mentioned the film I'm about to present to you, and it had the words, Flying Zombie.

Oh, okay.

Before I show you the poster, here is the trailer.

A more boating place of no return. Hercules in the haunted world. An unearthly world of eternal darkness. Ghostly kingdom of the undead demons of death.

Whoa, Hercules in the haunted world. All new and all new height in fright and might.

Okay.

You want to describe the poster?

Yeah, we have a picture of Hercules presumably, and he is like hoisting, he is holding up the title Hercules in the Haunted World.

Yes.

Like Sisyphus holding up the globe or the whatever. And then below it, we do have a skeleton looking creepy. A creepy skeletal hand is reaching toward us. And we have what looks like it could be a female zombie rising from a tomb or coffin, right?

Yeah. And it's all green except for Hercules.

It's green and it's all new. So just, we'll have to keep that in mind.

You probably can't read the lettering on the bottom.

Christopher Lee is on this.

What?

Is he an executive producer or is he in it?

Starring.

Starring. Okay, I'm here for this. I'm ready now.

All right, all right.

All right, gang. Well, thank you for joining us for Terror-Creatures from the Grave and next week, join us for a new Hercules film. Thanks for watching. And if you did enjoy this, take a moment to subscribe or give us a good review. It costs you nothing and is incredible benefit to us.

So please nothing, nothing but your self-respect, correct, depending on what you're writing.

Yes. In any case, thank you for listening. And we will see you next episode. 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.