Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast where we watch every zombie movie ever produced. Yes, all of them. How many is that? The current total is more than 600, and we will try to watch them in order of release date, with a few flash forwards for fun. We look forward to watching zombie cinema evolve and become what it is today. I'm John, and I'm joined by my co-host Andy and our producer Brad. Join us for this journey to see which of us makes it to the end alive. Hello, this is John.

Hey John, hey Brad, this is Andy.

I'm Brad.

Hello, producer Brad. I was fascinated that in today's film, we found the origin of Rick Riordan's famous YA series of novels, the Percy Jackson books. I did not expect to find them in this film. But our main character is Percy Jackson, and I didn't expect all this great- no, I'm kidding. That's just a coincidence, I think.

You know?

You never know.

We should send him an email. Send Mr. Riordan an email and ask.

I know we should. Yes, this movie is from 19- is it 39?

39.

We are watching a film from 1939 called The Devil's Daughter, starring a bunch of people, which Brad is gonna tell us about, but it is an interesting movie, especially coming out of The Walking Dead. It's a totally different aesthetic, and vibe, and I can't wait to talk about it.

All right, well, before we get started, I want to take a minute to talk about any triggering or just content to be aware of in the course of our discussion, or if you decide to go watch this film on your own. The film itself is relatively innocuous, I would say. There are some scenes I found a little unpleasant to watch, involving, I guess, cruelty to animals. The movie opens with a cock fight that looks pretty real.

That I think was just filmed in Israel. I don't think there's any, no animals were harmed in this making of this movie.

Beyond that, I didn't have any other content thoughts about the film itself, but I do think it's worth noting it's impossible to talk about or watch this film today without kind of being aware of its context as a, quote, race film. I was wondering, producer Brad, would you give us just a 30 second run down on what we mean by that term?

Race films are a complicated issue. There was segregation back at that time. There were theaters that would show only to whites. There are theaters that would show to blacks. Some white theaters would reserve off show times for black audiences. And race films were films created for minority audiences. They could be films with an all black cast. They could be films that starred Chinese actors. Usually, the creatives behind it and the producers behind it were white, and the flow of money would go to them. It was rare to see a black creator make the money. There were exceptions. And there was also a lot of independent black American films at that time. As you can see in this film, the degradation of what we saw, the degradation of the film quality, the visual and the audio is pretty bad. So a lot of these films haven't survived. A lot of them, if they have survived, haven't been preserved. And so there's a lot out there that people are still looking for. There's an effort to preserve them. And a lot of it somewhat started in the 80s when BET was formed. And they showed a lot of these films and raised awareness for these films. And people started chasing them down and finding collectors and finding people who had them. And they were delivered to archives and other places. And it takes a lot of time to preserve them. So that process is still ongoing. And there's a pretty good article about this at the UCLA Archives. And I'll put a link to that in our show notes.

Yeah, it is. That is all fascinating. And I think, yeah, it's just all to say that this is a a race film that stars an all-black cast and was at the time intended for a black audience. I don't think that's obviously something we're worried about now. But I appreciate you explaining that.

So, yeah, absolutely. Anything else content wise that merits discussion before we jump into it?

I don't think so. I think it's a pretty, pretty tame movie by our standards.

So, all right, then let's hear about the release, cast and crew from, again, producer Brad.

The Devil's Daughter was released on December 7th, 1939. It's also known as Pocomania, or if you're reading the YouTube closed captions, Pokermania.

I heard that, but I didn't know what the word meant. Do you know, Andy?

Well, I didn't until some very brief internet research. So, but Pocomania is a folk religion from Jamaica, like voodoo and obeying some other things. It's a blend of different traditions, including Christianity. And things like dancing and singing and spirit possession are big factors in it, which I think explains why that word is mentioned in this movie when it is.

Agreed.

And that lets you know this movie is set in Jamaica.

Yes.

All right, so 1939 is considered one of the greatest years of Hollywood films, and here's a few. The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Best Picture Winner Gone with the Wind, Dinnachka, It's a Wonderful Life, and Stagecoach. Wow. Horror movies from 1939 include two Boris Karloff films, The Man They Could Not Hang and Son of Frankenstein, one Bela Lugosi movie, The Human Monster, the first pairing of Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard in a horror comedy, The Cat and the Canary, and Humphrey Bogart in The Return of Dr. X.

That's a pretty intriguing sounding list of films. I do love the title, The Man They Could Not Hang. That's very intriguing.

Yes.

Well, that will be on Andy's side podcast. I look forward to listening to it.

Is that about like the logistical problems they ran into while trying to...

Yeah, they just couldn't get them on the schedule. And so, yeah.

That's all right. I don't know the answer, but it's all right. The Devil's Daughter was released by Sack Amusement, a company owned by Alfred Sack. And Sack produced and distributed many race films. And Andy, this is for you. One of his first films is She Devil. It's also known as Drums of Voodoo. And from the Daily Variety Review, the voodooist Tom Toms beat a monotone throughout the picture. We're pretty close to that.

You're really selling me on that one, Ed.

George Terwilliger wrote The Devil's Daughter. He wrote and directed Wanga, which we featured in episode five. Nina Mae McKinney stars as Isabel Walton. As a teenager, she was a chorus girl in the Broadway show The Blackbirds of 1928, which also starred Bill Bojangles Robinson. He was a famous tap dancer. He danced with Shirley Temple. Okay. One of McKinney's first roles was in the 1929 film, Hallelujah, which is one of the first talking pictures to feature an all-black cast. And she was also in the 1946 film, Mantan Messes Up with our favorite Mantan Moreland.

I think this has to be bonus content. We have to watch these Mantan Moreland movies.

Ida James plays Sylvia Walton. She had three acting credits. Her last film was Heidi Ho in 1947 with Cab Calloway. Emmett Bay Wallace plays John Loudon. He has only seven acting credits, but he performed at the Cotton Club with Lena Horne. His second wife was the sister of Dorothy Dandridge, and she was the first black actress to be nominated for a best actress. And he also was a songwriter. And one of those songs, Old Mother Hubbard, was recently used on the show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

Nice.

Leon Lee is the narrator. This is his only acting credit, but he did write the 1925 film version of The Wizard of Oz. And lastly, Francine Larimore is uncredited as the island girl. And I looked for her. I don't know if I saw her, but she's listed in the credits, on IMDB credits. She is from a family of actors. Most famously, her cousin, Stella Adler, was an actor who then became one of the most influential acting teachers with students like Marlon Brando, Melanie Griffith, Robert De Niro, and Warren Beatty. The Stella Adler Acting Academy is still open in Hollywood. And there are no box office records or contemporary reviews for The Devil's Daughter.

All right.

So I have a couple reactions to that. First of all, was there a narrator in this film? Yeah.

I missed it if there was one.

What do you mean by that? Do you know?

I mean, I'm looking at the IMDb, writing down names and looking them up, and I do it before I watch the movie.

I was actually excited we were looking at another Cryptkeeper thing, where I watched one version of the film and you guys watched the other.

It could also be the sound is lost, right?

It could be, because what we watched, who knows how many pieces of films were put together to make this one.

Yeah, exactly.

My only other quick comment was that it seems like there was a wide range of kind of experience in the cast, and I felt that that was really evident in the film itself, where I think some of the actors seemed to just absolutely know what they were doing, and a couple of other ones had the feel of someone just that wasn't really confident, as confident.

Well, I was going to make a joke about Edith James. It says The Devil's Daughter is her first film. I'm like, oh, really? I'm shocking. So yeah, she's not exactly the... She's no Dorothy Dandridge, I guess.

All right, so if that's all you've got, Brad, it's time to talk about historical context. So what was going on in the world? This is 1939. So we've listeners, long-time listeners of this podcast, we've journeyed through the 30s together already, and you've heard me and John talk a lot about the Great Depression and World War II as the background thing. So those are obviously the big things. Shortly before this movie came out, Germany invaded Poland, and we all know how that played out over the coming years. More specifically, the late 30s in Jamaica was a really important time in Jamaican history. And while it's not very, I do think there are little hints of this in the film. But basically, Jamaica was really, really hammered by the Great Depression. And in 1938, the year before this film came out, was a year of massive unrest. It was economic and labor unrest. There's frustration with British colonial rule. And I think there is at least one scene where I wonder if they're making some, an oblique reference to the labor unrest at the time. But this was a really tumultuous time in Jamaica. So.

All right. Well, do you want to give us a 60 second rundown of this one, Andy? It's pretty straightforward. And actually we've heard almost the identical story before. So a reminder to people, this is a loose remake of Awanga, which was 1936, which we watched. And you can tell because the plot is very similar.

Yeah. And very interesting that the person who wrote Awanga wrote this as well. That seems a little, that's just interesting that within a few years, the same person wrote two different versions of the same movie. But anyway, this is a movie about two sisters. These two sisters are Sylvia and Isabel. They were born on Jamaica. They share a father, but they have different mothers. Importantly, one of them has a Haitian mother and the other does not. The plot of this movie centers around the fact that Sylvia moved to the US with her father when she was young, and Isabel stayed behind in Jamaica to run the family plantation. Now that the years later, the father has died, and Sylvia has returned to Jamaica to, I guess, take joint control of the family plantation with Isabel. Isabel resents this enormously. She has a huge chip on her shoulder, and the movie centers around Isabel's plot to basically scare Sylvia back home to New York. She does this through a complicated set of schemes designed to make the superstitious Sylvia afraid of Obeah, which, as you remember from our episode on ritual, we discussed at, say, Jamaican as kind of a sister religion to Voodoo, different in a lot of ways, but with some similarities. Obeah was prominent in Jamaica, Voodoo was more prominent in Haiti. And the movie's climactic scenes center around Isabel using the trappings of Obeah to try and scare Sylvia away from the plantation and off of Jamaica. Did I miss anything?

No, you didn't. And if we had watched this in order like we should have, we wouldn't have learned about Obeah from a 2002 movie. We would have learned about it from a 1939 movie.

I feel so bad. I mean, I learned an important cultural and historic fact from a truly terrible film.

Terrible film in ritual.

Yeah.

So, well, here, well, now we know. The more you know, as they say. So I wanted to start. So it is actually, it follows the narrative pretty well of a lot of the films we've watched. You know, there is an outsider, somebody from the US, who comes to, in this case, Jamaica, to run a plantation. And they don't know anything about it. And they're getting introduced to the culture of Jamaica through a car ride, like in a lot of the things. But what opens with is there is a, what I think is an Obeya ceremony, or at least a party, right? The first few minutes of the film is on this sort of dance party. There's this chicken fight that people are betting on, and there's gambling and dancing. And I think everybody's having a good time. And the reason I want to just throw a quick clip in here, Andy, is you're always concerned, you're always sort of worn out by ominous voodoo drums, but that's not what the music in this sounds like at all. So just a few seconds of this music to give you the tone of it.

Yeah, those are people having a great time.

Yeah, this is joyous music. There's drums, they even zoom in on people like playing the drums, like they do in every other Voodoo movie, but that's not, but the tone is completely different. Everyone's having a great time, and they actually talk about this sort of throughout the film. Sylvia, I think partially through paranoia is like, oh, do the drums seem less inviting than they used to? Which is a little weird, because I don't think so, because throughout, there are Voodoo drums, and we can talk about those. But I just wanted to nail that down, whereas some films had tried, or a lot of early films had tried to show these Voodoo, or these gatherings as like scary.

Yes.

They're not doing that at all here.

It's incredibly striking, and I checked the time, and almost five minutes of this very short, this whole film is only 50 minutes long. Yeah. And they spent five minutes just showing footage of people dancing, singing, jumping around, clapping, playing drums. So, you would think in a 50-minute film, you've got to be really, really choosy about what you spend time on. And it was important to this film that we get this really celebratory dance sequence.

Yes. But the local fun and games are disrupted by a man who's just arrived from New York, from Harlem, and he tries to cheat some of the locals in gambling. And we find out his name. What is his name, Andy?

His name is Percy Jackson.

That's right. And he is the assistant of Sylvia, one of our lead characters. He tries to run a gambling con game, gets run out and he runs into the woods and hides. But he's followed by a local woman named Elvira. And that's where we sort of get the score, that he and Miss Sylvia have come from New York, and this woman, Elvira, knows Isabel, Sylvia's sister, and offers to introduce them. So that's our first encounter with any of our characters.

Can we talk a little bit about our first impression of Percy, because this was, I think, the most energetic performance in the film, and it made me smile a lot. Can you describe Percy a little bit?

Yeah, he's very outgoing, he's very funny, and if he reminded me of another actor that we've been watching a lot, it's Montan Moreland, right? He's got, he's just very expressive, very funny, and he's the comic relief, right? He does the bits and the jokes to keep us entertained.

Yeah, and the kind of the three line on his character is that he's this massive fish out of water.

Yes.

He just got here two weeks ago from Harlem, and he doesn't know anything about local culture, and he is incredibly vulnerable to believing anything that the locals tell him, which they will, so.

Then we have Miss Sylvia, and she's driving into town with her lifelong friend John Loudon, who is here to take her back to their banana plantation that she now owns, and introduce her around. And I just wanted to stop. There's two male characters here. There's John Loudon and Philip Ramsey. And I only wanted to say their names quickly, because they just use John, Phil, Ramsey, and Loudon, like, interchangeably. So when we play clips, it could get confusing. But it's John Loudon and Philip Ramsey.

And the intricacies of these characters' relationships with each other is it was a challenge for me to follow while watching. And I can only imagine if you're listening, it's going to be hard to keep track of it. So suffice to say, these characters are all sort of tangled up in unrequited romantic feelings for each other.

Yes, I think yes. Everybody, there's four people here, right? There's Sylvia, Isabel, who we haven't met yet, Philip, and John. And none of them love the person who loves them back. It's like the, it's like nobody can, and it's like walking misconnections. So that's sort of part of the tension of the movie, if there is any tension in this movie, but just to be clear. And I want to stop for a second and just talk about the film quality. Because Brad's right, it's not very good. And I think there's two things going on. One is the restoration problem, right? But I think the other thing is a budget problem. Most of the scenes, it looks like a filmed stage play outside in some ways. They just set up a camera and two people have a conversation, or a group of people have a conversation, and they get to the next scene, which is a single camera set up. And so it's just a less sophisticated way of telling a visual story. And that's how this film works. And I don't know if it's a lack of directorial experience, because the writer clearly has experience. He wrote Owanga and directed it, which is not that way. You know what I mean? So I don't know. So it comes off as a little just less professional, I guess is what it says.

There's a little in the way of sort of what you might call set pieces in this film. Even at the end, the very climactic scene is probably the closest we get to a big scene. But everything else is really lacking a sense of visual place or interestingness.

And I think they didn't, not to keep bagging on Ida James, but I think maybe they also didn't get to do as many takes as they would have liked. But all that said, we're sort of into the story now. And Sylvia and John head to the plantation where they meet Philip Ramsey, who is in charge, and she runs the plantation. And they have this interchange, and Sylvia is starting to get a little nervous, or at least she tells us she does.

How's your work getting along, Lowden?

All right.

Why? Well, nothing much. Any of your hands been acting up lately? What do you mean? Any rumors of obia activity? Of course not. Say, what are you trying to do, scare Sylvia? Not really, not. But there's something going on, and I can't put my finger on it. Listen, strange drums at this time of day. I tell you John, they are different from what they used to be.

That's the scene I wondered if it was a side reference to labor turmoils in Jamaica, or if I'm reading too much into it.

I'm not sure. I think they are suggesting that there is some sort of unrest and that those are obia drums happening in middle of the day, which is odd. So I'm not sure because we don't know anything about Isabel or Sylvia or their relationship yet. I felt like they were just trying to set us up to why Sylvia was nervous. They were telling us why she was nervous rather than showing us why she should be nervous, I guess. Yeah, but you might be right about that. That's a good observation.

John, did you notice, so we just commented that there is little in the way of visually interesting set piece scenes in this movie, but there is one that has felt like a very, very intentional callback to Wanga. Do you know what I'm talking about?

No, tell me what you're thinking about.

When Percy Jackson is kind of chased away from his little gambling skin, he runs in and he and Elvira converse at the foot of this massive tree that felt really evocative of the one that is in the climactic scene of Wanga.

Yes, right at the end. It does feel like that. That's a great point. So it definitely has the same feel. So we have this basic set up. But then there's a sort of parallel story that goes on here, which is between Percy Jackson, who meets Miss Isabel and Elvira. And I thought this scene was kind of funny.

Yeah.

What is happening here is that Isabel wants to use Obeya to scare Sylvia. But I think she doesn't think it's real. Right? Like I think she thinks she wants to run a scam to scare away Isabel.

Right?

But there is some element of local worship and gathering here that she I think wants to exploit to scare her. But she shows her power to Percy Jackson. What does she do? What does she offer to do for him? To save his soul from the evil spirits.

Yeah. So first they scare him with talk of roving undead. Right. And then when he freaks out about that in comical fashion, Isabel offers to protect his soul by transferring it into a pig. Yes. And so this is a gag that stretches throughout the movie and legitimately made me laugh a couple of times. But yeah, he finds a small pig, and Isabel does kind of a fake ceremony to transfer his soul into it. And so for most of the movie, he believes that his soul is in the pig and that he has to safeguard this pig or he won't get his soul back.

Yes. And I wanted to play a little of the ceremony here because it sort of speaks to the kind of sort of magic that Isabel is invoking here.

Mr. Presley Jackson, I command you to kneel before me. Yes. Oh, benevolent one, come to my aid, by the sacred horns of the white ghost, by the warm blood of the sacrificial dove. I command that this man's soul seek the protection I am offering through the agency of this meal and little pig. Open up the gates, oh great one, and let his spirit pass within my hand. Let it pass within this meal and remain content. It is done. Rest assured that the evil spirits cannot catch you.

Yeah. So I think that's sort of delightful that Isabel knows it's hogwash and is putting this poor man through this.

In this scene and in the one at the end, you have that delightful sense that she is ad-libbing these incantations.

Yes, I think so.

So yeah.

So we've got the major players here, right? We've got Isabel and Sylvia, who are the sort of sisters. Sylvia plays it like she just wants Isabel to keep running the place. She feels she needs to be here in Jamaica, but she doesn't want to interfere with what Isabel is doing. But Isabel has fled the plantation, and the reason Elvira has to take Percy to see her is because nobody knows where Isabel is. Right? Am I have that right?

Yes. If any listener understood, followed that sentence all the way through, you get a no prize. But Sylvia, it's worth saying, Sylvia is just like this sweet, innocent person. She only wants the best for her sister. She has no sense of why Isabel has a grudge against her. And it's an interesting contrast between the two sisters.

And this is the basic relationship. Then Sylvia and John go for like another drive. And I think they just go for a drive because they can talk in the car. But she says, I just want Isabel to keep running it. And I think the acrimony here is that when their father died, he'd left the ownership of the plantation to Sylvia. But she would like Isabel to stay in charge, and Isabel does not like that. So they get home. Percy finally shows up, because he, remember, works for Ms. Sylvia. Even though he hasn't been around for most of the movie. And they go into the plantation. And what happens to poor, poor Percy's pig?

Well, the pig is grabbed by the cook at the plantation, and it is served as a meal.

And it's served to, I think, Philip Ramsey.

It is filled, yep, to Ramsey, yep.

Yep. So after that, Ramsey goes to see Isabel. And they have an interaction. I think this is another like, you know, you love me and I don't love you, but I honestly can't remember who loves who at this point. But this is also the point where Isabel puts Philip up to something. She says, you don't really love her. I've been getting you to pretend you love her. But more importantly, Isabel tells what she's going to do to her sister.

She does lay out her plan really nicely in this scene.

Now, you understand about this oboe business, don't you? I'm going to put that sweet society sister of mine in an oboe sacrifice scene that's going to make her so scared that she'll leave this island and never come back. And when she's gone, I can assume my rightful place again. And if the police find out about it, what then? They won't stand for that sort of thing. You know that. I'll take care of that. You do your part and keep your mouth shut.

There's Isabel and this is her plan to unseat her sister. And she is manipulating Ramsey to help her get it done.

Can we pause here for a minute?

Yeah.

Because I have a question. Where are the zombies in this film?

There are no zombies in this film.

Yeah. So, I mean, we're at maybe the midpoint of the movie. I'm just curious what you were thinking about where this movie might be headed given that we are discussing it in a zombie podcast.

See, what's interesting is this film is really about, I mean, it's again, it's a personal story between two sisters, and it's about using Obeya as a tool to get what you want. But there are no zombies. We haven't seen any undead. None of that happens. Isabella talks about how she's going to drug Sylvia's wine. But even she says, but it's all fake. It's all just a trick.

And that's just such an interesting contrast, because in any of the other movies we've watched, Isabella would be a zombie master, right?

Yes, but she's just pretending to be one, which is interesting.

So there are, she does not command zombies. And at this point, it was clear enough that she didn't put any credence in that. And so I was wondering, you know, are we going to get an accident? Is she going to accidentally create zombies, you know, by ad libbing around with these voodoo or with these Obeya ideas that she doesn't believe in? I wasn't sure.

I wasn't sure either. And I think, I wonder if this is included because it's in that strain of early voodoo movies that led to zombie movies, but it doesn't seem to have a lot of direct zombie stuff going on.

Well, I'm just, I'm curious why that element would have been large, would change, almost dropped, given Awanga is a much more, it is a zombie movie.

Yeah, absolutely.

I just wanted to mention that at this point in the movie, I was like, how are they going to get zombies in here? And turns out they're not going to.

They're not going to. However, we cut back to the plantation. Ramsey eats the pig that has Percy Jackson's soul in it. Then they go to the racetrack. And there's just an exchange here where Ramsey is pretending to be in love with Sylvia and pressures to get married. But I think we can sort of move on here and go to the encounter with-

Yeah, I think we can skip the romantic shenanigans for the most part, just because they're confusing, even to remember how they all worked.

Yes. And so this is the port we wanted to get to though, is that, so the whole point is, Isabella's told Ramsey to bring Sylvia to her in a specific spot, and the sisters meet, and Sylvia is going to drink this drugged wine. They have an exchange about, you know, it's so funny because Sylvia really is like, I don't want any of this, you can have it. But what Isabelle seems bent on is getting her to leave, to go back to New York. So they have this exchange, and again, Isabella does not care. Who knows it? She has a plan.

All right, you stick to Ramsey, and I wish you love. But you leave John Lodin alone. You love him that much? Yes. I love him so much that it hurts. I've loved him ever since I was a little girl. But he would never look at me while you were around. Now you've come back and spoiled all my plans. I was gonna be a great lady, head of my own plantation. I would have made it the greatest on the island, and I would have married John Lodin. Now you've wrecked all that. But this isn't in yet, no, not for me. Do you hear those drums? Yes, and I don't like them. They frighten me. Please, Isabel, make them stop. They won't stop unless you agree to go back to New York.

Right, so this is Isabel's plan. She's using Obeya to intimidate her sister.

And here we learn that this is the first time we've learned that there's a romantic grudge that's part of Isabel's grudge against Sylvia. I think that she legitimately feels angry and slighted by the family due to the way that their relationship with the father panned out. But at least part of it, or maybe an awful lot of it, is that Isabel is in love with John, who loves Sylvia, who does not return John's love.

It's so confusing.

And isn't even interested in John.

And in their previous exchange, Isabel was like, you know, Philip, stop pretending you love her. And I'm like, well, hang on a second. You just told him you want, what? Yeah, so it's a little, I think this is a little bit why we're confused.

And what made it more confusing for me is the film quality is so bad, there's no details on the faces, and I couldn't always tell who's standing in front of me, between the two men.

Yeah, yes.

Yes, there were scenes where someone was wearing a hat and the shadow of like the hat brim rendered the face like this completely unrecognizable.

Yeah, you know, and what's interesting, so the next scene is a fight between Philip and John, where John makes Philip tell him what's going on, what is he doing? And he lays out the plan where Isabel has drugged Sylvia and taken her off somewhere. There's a couple of things I want to pull out of this scene. So there's a fight, and you're right, I can't tell who's who in this fight. And it's kind of, it's like the big action scene, but it's like a boxing match.

This is the goofiest fight I've ever had. This fight is amazing. And if you're listening, you should, yeah, go to this, watch this fight at least, because they have this really non-intense kind of boxing match in the, out on the lawn.

Doesn't it start with a slap?

It does, yeah.

And it ends when one of them just sort of slumps to the ground. He hasn't been injured or defeated really in any way. And it's just, it's a funny scene.

John wins and says, you better tell me what's going on, Philip. And it is a whole thing. We didn't need to get into it, but he, but Philip gives him one piece of information about where Sylvia is. Where is Sylvia? Did you catch this, Andy?

I'm not sure I know what you're getting at. Sylvia, I know she's out at an Obeah ceremony, but.

Right, but the location of the Obeah ceremony is stated here as, and I quote, the witch's glade, which is a great subtle name for where you're going to conduct your dark witchcraft.

Speaking of witches, that reminds me, I also laughed at the scene where Isabel drugs Sylvia, because she escorts Sylvia over to this chair, and there's a little table next to it with the drug drink on it, and it has the most like snow white, enjoy this apple like energy. It's very funny.

In a modern, even in White Zombie, let's at least pretend we're both drinking and have two glasses, but there's just a bottle of wine and one glass on the table. I should have seen that coming, Sylvia.

Although from what we've learned of Sylvia, I think this, I imagine that she gets this stuff pulled on her all the time because she seems like someone that's not suspicious.

Yeah. So the rest of this movie is concerned with John Loudon, Percy and Elvira trying to find the ceremony. I think Percy, Jackson and Elvira sort of comically stumbling through the jungle. Well, the voodoo ceremony is going on. And I put in the notes here, this ceremony is really long. In fact, we have two clips from it, but I feel like it's the last 12 minutes of the movie. Like it's a huge chunk of the movie.

Well, this felt like a real clear mirror of the end of Wanga where you have the ceremony going on and then all of the other parties are just converging on the ceremony by following the sound of drums basically. And in this movie, the police do not show up, but there is the threat that the police might be on their way. In Wanga, they actually did show up.

I don't think they could afford the extras. So what they do is they say, Philip's had enough, he's gone to the post office to call the police, and that's the threat hanging over, but we never see anything about it. However, there's a couple of great bits here, and most of them are about what Isabel is going to do to Sylvia. So I want to play a couple of those clips. So first one, Isabel is calling on her god to grant her power.

Which death comes at that call?

So that's pretty great. And what I love about it is, it is sort of the one spot that's almost zombie-esque, right? Give me the power to turn somebody into a zombie, is what I feel like she's saying here.

And her body is doing the same motions that Freddie Washington did in Wanga, where her arms are outstretched, sort of like trying to pull something out of the ground.

Yes, yes. That sort of gesticulation. Yes, absolutely. And right after that, John shows up with Elvira and Percy, and Isabel just wants Sylvia to leave. And she's arguing with John, and she basically threatens and says, I'm going to turn her into a zombie. I'm going to complete this ceremony if she doesn't go back to New York and you don't stay with me, right? Is that what you took away from this scene? Yes. And they're just arguing and he's like, Isabel, this is crazy. You know, like, this doesn't work, but something's working on Sylvia. In any case, she makes another invocation that I kind of love here, just because I love the language in it.

Let her beauty become distinct. Let the roundness of her limbs become flat and the strength of her young body become part of the nose. Let the icy touch of our fingers, oh great one, cause the warm blood in her breast to become chilled. Let her pulse beat slower and slower. Let her breath become shorter and shorter. Dissolve the living flesh from her bones, oh great one, and transform her into the ghastly image of death. Death.

I mean, Isabel may be messing around and making all this stuff up, but she's pretty convincing.

This is even up until this moment, I wondered if we were going to get the kids with the Ouija board, think it's a joke, but accidentally conjure something up. I wondered if this was going to work or something, and Sylvia would be temporarily zombified or something.

I kind of would have loved that. This continues to go on, goes on, goes on. And finally, John agrees to take Sylvia back to New York. It is a very strange exchange, because what happens is, then the whole thing's just over. And they say, oh, you know, we didn't really put your soul in a pig. We were just screwing around. So here's, I think it's Elvira saying this to Percy.

Where you going? I got to go and find Mr. Ramsey. He's got my soul and I got to get it back quick. Don't be silly. That was all a joke. Mrs. Isabella is made to put your soul into a pig. She can't do it, will she? Sure enough. Then all of that by them devils was a joke too. Of course. Don't you have jokes in Holland, Mr. Jackson?

And then Sylvia just gives the plantation to Isabella and like all is forgiven and it's fine. The end.

So what happens is, it is such a strange set of events. What happens is when John says, okay, I give up, don't kill or zombify Sylvia. I'll send her back to New York and I'll stay here. Then Isabella has to admit that like, oh, well, she's just drugged and she'll be okay in a couple of minutes. This is all fake. And so then with that, she just admits the whole plan. And then they all reconcile, right?

And then they're like, oh, we can all be friends and then it's over. So yes. What are your thoughts about this film, Andy? You said it was enjoyable to watch. I'm not sure it wasn't enjoyable to watch for me, but I didn't think it was very good. There's a lower quality than a lot of the movies we watched. I will say that.

Yes. I don't think this is a quote, good movie. When I say enjoyable to watch. So I really enjoyed the performance of Percy Jackson. The actor, he has an unusual name. What was his name again? Is that Hamtree?

Hamtree Harrington.

Yes. And I enjoyed his performance. And mostly what I found fun about this movie is just, this is a silly movie. This is a silly movie with a happy ending and everything works out fine. And yes, there's no sinister villain who gets pulled by the zombies back into the grave or anything like that. And it's all kind of a misunderstanding and everyone forgives and forgets and it's just such an unusual thing. I couldn't help but just find it kind of enjoyable.

Yeah, it's also sort of stripped of tension, right? Because in like Owanga, there was real tension. You thought Freddie Washington's character clearly was going to get somebody killed. I didn't worry about that for a second in this movie.

Yeah, I feel like maybe a better movie, or at least most movies would have saved the revelation that all of Isabel's Obeya talk is fake, would have saved that as a revelation towards the end. In this movie, you learn right out the gate that there is no real tension to be had in this movie. I mean, Isabel lays out her plan multiple times. And so, I don't know. I think that just, it's unusual. It seems really like an amateurish way to tell a story that does in fact have a decent core of a good tense. It has the elements of like a good tense sister versus sister, bitter grudges going all the way back to childhood, unrequited love and love triangles and love rectangles or whatever we have. But all of those elements are here, but I did not feel like the movie really knew what to do with, how to wring any tension or stakes out of any of those things.

Yeah, it just seemed to back off from anything that might be uncomfortable. And it just says the characters tell us that they're uncomfortable or tell us what is scary and not anything else. Yeah. So, what do we want to do? The questions?

Before you go there, I would say that, unlike other films, the language of the Voodoo rights was much more explicit. We learned a lot from it. In the other films, they're kind of ambiguous and we're left wondering what goes on, but they kind of spelled a lot out here. Although nothing happened, it was very adjacent to zombie land, but it didn't happen.

Yeah.

And it assumed you would know what these things are. At no point did they explain what Obeya is or any of that kind of stuff. You're just supposed to infer it. And I'm curious if people would have known what that was. Because Jamaica is not the United States, but that doesn't mean there's not cultural heritage there here.

So I'm curious. So, John, before we go to our wrap up question, I have the single most important question I have for you about this movie, to both of you, is from watching this movie, did you learn the secrets of the blood dance? Because that's what we were promised by the poster.

All right. The secret is, I think all the other films have been hiding that secret, which is the blood dance seems like it's kind of fun.

Yeah.

Like it looks kind of just like a party.

Yeah. The blood dance looks like a lot of fun. And really, that's not the right name for it, I think.

No, I don't think so.

It's too sinister. So let's go through our questions. I think this will be kind of quick because without real zombies here, there's not a whole lot of meat to discuss. But let's go through these anyway. John, is there a hero party in this movie?

Not really. I mean, I think John Loden, Elvira and Percy constitute some sort of hero party. But not really. It's sort of not oriented that way.

Yeah. Who do you think is the hero of this film, John?

I think it's supposed to be John.

I think so too.

But I think they just sort of tack, it feels tacked on like after the fight. He's like, I've got to save Sylvia. And he beats up the guy. And he beats up Philip and then Philip disappears.

Beats up is a really strong term for what happened.

He wears out Philip.

Yeah. How do our heroes do? What's the kill count here? How many make it to the end?

They all make it to the end. And they win by convincing Isabel not to be mean. Yeah. They don't have to. There's nothing extreme here. Nobody gets shot. There's one fist fight.

Is there a zombie horde in this movie?

There's barely a zombie. I think technically at the end, when she's drugged, Sylvia is our zombie, but I'm skeptical of her zombiness.

And she's not really even... I didn't get the sense that she was drugged by like a real zombie drug. I think, you know, I think she is just sedated.

Yep, I agree.

So we can skip how our zombie is destroyed and killed because there aren't any real zombies in this film. Is the world threatened?

No, not really.

And we are not, I'll ask the question, I mean, what type of zombie strain are we dealing with, with the big caveat that there is not a zombie in this film?

If there is a zombie in this film, it's a very traditional, in this case, it's Obeya, but voodoo, Obeya style zombie. Like there's no mad scientist flourishes, there's no modern technology, none of that. It's all, it would all be a pure spiritual zombie.

Yes. At the beginning of the film, when they are trying to scare Percy into fearing, kind of wandering dead people, are those zombies that they are warning him about?

I think so. I think they're threatening him with zombies and evil spirits, but I think they're just people.

Yeah. They make them sound like they're just free roaming threats.

Yes.

I mean, I'm really digging. I don't think that there's really much to be mined from that vein here, but I'm just... So, no new strains. Are there any, I guess, zombie firsts of any sort in this film?

Well, technically, Obeya is a zombie first in this film.

Okay. Good point, actually.

It's just not a first because we heard about it in a 2002 movie, Ritual. But I think if we had watched this in order, we would have said, oh, that's interesting. This is in Jamaica. It's a different strain of zombie worship. And we do get these cool... I mean, they're not that great. I'm overselling it. But these interesting sounding rituals and rites that are articulated, which... You get a little bit in a wango, but I feel like it's stronger here. You know what I mean? So if we'd watched it in order, I think we could say there were some firsts here. Just some evolution of the voodoo zombie mythos as we're coming to understand.

I actually think that's a really big first.

Yeah.

And then how many of our pillars of the zombie genre are in here? So let's just go through these four in turn. Is there an apocalypse in this film?

No. Again, personal story.

Is there a contagion in this film?

No. You have to drink wine with fake herbs in it to pretend to become a zombie. So no.

Are there tough moral choices?

I don't think so. It's just a conflict, which is different than what we mean by tough moral choices. It's a conflict between two sisters, and that's not what we mean by tough moral choices.

I mean, the closest we get to a tough moral choice is John's choice at the end, saying, I'll stay with you, a woman I don't love and who's blackmailing me into this, if you'll let Sylvia go.

Yeah, I agree.

And lastly, do loved ones turn against you in this movie?

Not really, because I don't feel like Isabel was ever on Sylvia's side.

So yeah, I think you worded it well. There's conflict in this movie, but it doesn't have much bite beyond just that. So did the poster sell this movie accurately, John?

Well, I mean, do you feel like you learned the secrets of the blood dance? It doesn't sound like you do, so I think that's going to have to be a no.

Well, I mean, I watched like 15 minutes of the blood dance. That's probably more time spent watching any of these sequences.

There was a lot of blood dancing. I will say, I was struck when we first looked at the poster. I'm like, why is that man holding a pig?

Yes.

And now we know. There was a reason. It had his soul in it.

So, John, would you and I survive in this zombie world?

Maybe. I don't think we'd be invited to participate, to be honest, but yeah, because there's no real Obeya, and there's no real stakes, and nobody gets killed. So I think we could survive because everybody gets to survive.

Do you have a sibling? If your sibling were to bear a massive grudge against you, would you win and convince them to be your friend again?

Oh, absolutely not. No, my sister, Sarah, if we hadn't learned to become friends as adults, she'd probably be undermining me somewhere.

So if your sister were behind this scene, would you totally fall for it then?

I would. I would.

Yeah. I think that's the same here.

I think the question to ask is not would you survive this world. Could either of you do the blood dance?

No, I can't. They're too good.

I don't know. I'm seeing some bonus viral video content.

I'm hearing Andy's volunteering.

This is our TikTok strategy. Andy does the blood dance.

I'll give it some thought, but obviously. Of course not. And lastly, John, do we recommend this movie, first, generally, and secondly, do we recommend it specifically to the zombie nerds listening to us right now?

Yeah, that's a tough one. I think I would have had more of a recommendation if we had watched it in order, because it feels like it has some evolutionary components to sort of voodoo Obeya zombie movies. Having said that, not really. It's just not quite good enough to recommend. It's just the whole thing's a little flat.

If you were going to watch one movie that mentioned Obeya, would you recommend this or Ritual?

This.

Okay, yeah, so I think I would. Yeah, I wouldn't.

I don't know. Maybe Ritual's so bad it's good. I don't know, but that's a tough call, but I would say this.

Yeah, I'm with you. It's pretty hard to recommend this movie on its merits. I don't think it's a very good movie. And except for those few curiosities, it's really not a zombie movie, and it's pretty hard to recommend to zombie nerds either. This is, however, a film I find the existence of this film fascinating. Yes, it's an artifact. And the context and history around this type of film, like, utterly fascinating. So, I mean, if you haven't... If that sounds interesting to you, this is, you know, it's just 50 minutes, and you can safely... You can safely skip through at least 14 of the 15 minutes of the blood dance, so...

Yes.

All right, well, then, if you don't have anything else to say, Brad or John, about The Devil's Daughter, well, this is where we usually learn what we're going to watch next. But it's a little bit different this time. So, Brad, why don't you take over?

We have finished our first season. We have watched 16 zombie films from 1919 to 1946. We're going to start season two in a couple weeks. We're going to take a break and regroup. We'll start in the 50s when zombie films return. But before then, we're going to do a season wrap up. We're going to take a look back and see what we've learned and have a big discussion around that.

I'm pretty excited. I have a lot of thoughts about, just the early zombie movies had nothing to do with the expectations I had going in. My pillars, I think, were really stretching to meet those pillars. So I'm really interested in re-evaluating how we started this podcast and why and what's different.

Yeah, it's going to be a great discussion. And I guess this would be a time to invite you listeners, if you have comments or feedback that you want us to consider as we go into our wrap up discussion. This would be a great time to send it in.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you can contact us at zombiestrainspodcast at gmail.com if you have any questions. We're also on Instagram and Facebook as Zombie Strains. I'm excited and I look forward to next week. I've been thinking a lot about what we've learned about zombies over the last few months.

Me too. Well, I'll see you guys next week then.

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.