You know, I've seen people act like that in pictures.

What do they call them, zombies or something?

Zombie.

What's a zombie?

Just what is a zombie? Well, a zombie is, Mr. Bill is...

The living dead.

They are the living dead.

It's an army of zombies. Because a zombie has no will of his own.

What is wrong?

What is wrong?

Welcome to Zombie Strains, the podcast where we watch all the zombie movies in chronological order. This episode, we go back to 1957. I'm John.

I'm Andy.

And I'm Brad.

Get in, losers. We're going to Voodoo Island. All right. So yeah, what do we got going on today, Brad? We've got Andy, we've got Boris Karloff, we've got Voodoo Island, we've got 1957.

The gang is all here. All the ingredients we need for an action packed episode.

Yes. It's a little bit of a weird one. This again feels like we're solidly in the MST 3K movie sweet spot in this one, just like the previous one for sure. All right, Andy, any trigger warnings for this Boris Karloff masterpiece?

I do have a couple of content items I want to point out for the benefit of our listeners and anyone thinking about watching this movie or listening to our discussion of it. First of all, we have some very stereotypical depictions of South Pacific islanders, I think you would say. Yeah. And not in the most racially sensitive way. Their chieftain is just a white guy dressed up like an islander. This movie also is one of the more egregious films in really butchering the historical context of Voodoo. This movie is going to ask us to believe that Voodoo was prominently practiced by islanders in the South Pacific in the mid-20th century. And lastly, this is, I think, the first time I'm going to do a content warning about a death. We have a surprisingly disturbing death of a child in this episode, and we'll definitely be talking about it because I think it's kind of an important new thing in our podcast. But just be advised, we won't be graphic about it, but we will be talking about it.

Brad, what happened? How did we get here? How did this movie get made?

Voodoo Island was released in February 1957. Notable films from this year are The Bridge on the River Kwai, 8 In Place, 12 Angry Men, In a Fair to Remember, and Jailhouse Rock.

Are you sure that Bridge Over the River Kwai doesn't have zombies in it? Because I would be up for watching that film.

I thought you were going to ask, am I sure that a year that has films of that quality would also produce this film?

Also a good question.

You guys, you're tipping your hands.

Sorry, sorry. It's great.

Horror films from 1957 include The Abominable Snowman, The Curse of Frankenstein, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Incredible Shrinking Man, and Teenage Monster.

So see our episode about the 50s where the teenager is invented. And now we have all these teenager movies.

Yeah, they're just jumping right into the deep end of that theme, aren't they?

It's in the title of the movies. Voodoo Island was shot on the island of Kauai with an estimated budget of $150,000.

If you had said $1,500, like I wouldn't have tried to correct you.

Howard Koch produced the film with Aubrey Schenck. Koch was a prolific producer and director. He started in B movies, but by the 60s, he was producing A films like The Manchurian Candidate. The Odd Couple, Airplane, and in the 80s, he did Dragon Slayer.

Oh, Dragon Slayer.

And he was also president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. So he was a big guy in film. Voodoo Island was directed by Reginald Le Borgue, who was a veteran director of B movies, working with many of the Poverty Row studios, including Monogram Pictures. In 1956, he directed The Black Sleep, a film with a monster cast, pun intended, which included Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr., John Carradine, and Bela Lugosi.

Oh, wow.

Le Borgue also directed many episodes of television in the 50s and 60s. Boris Karloff plays Knight, and this is the second film we have watched Karloff in after The Walking Dead from 1936. Karloff signed a three picture deal with the producers of Voodoo Island, and this was the first picture. The late 50s marked a return to horror films for Karloff. He made three horror films in 1958 and continued the trend of the 1960s, but also appeared in TV shows like I Spy and The Wild West. Elijah Cooke Jr. plays Skyler. He was a great character actor appearing in many film noirs.

Yeah, he's a that guy. He started in 1930, but even I remember him as a that guy from the 60s, 70s and 80s. He was in an episode of Star Trek. I was like, I know that guy. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, and what I remember him from was the Maltese Falcon. He played the young killer named Cooke. Yeah, and he later returned to the role in 1975 when George Segal starred in the comedy The Blackbird. And so 40 years later, he got to do the part again.

Nice.

His last roles were on Magnum PI and Alf.

Hey, you got to go out some way.

That's right. You go out with a bang. And do not go gently into that. Yeah.

Well, you know, Magnum PI is not bad.

I loved that show, but that's a whole different podcast.

Rhodes Reason plays Gunn. He was the star of two short-lived TV shows, White Hunter and Bus Stop. He starred in the Japanese kaiju film King Kong Escapes. And he appeared in the original Star Trek series in the episode Bread and Circuses. That's when they went back to Rome.

Yeah. Fun.

And Adam West plays the radio operator.

Heck yeah.

In one of his first, if not his first feature film. He was in Hawaii at the time working on a TV show so called Alkini Popo.

Okay.

And he had a friend who was in Hawaii, he said, come on out here, there's some work. And while there, he met Hollywood film producers and that's what started his career.

Can I just say that like, Adam West in 1957, we remember him as a sort of doughy middle-aged guy who maybe should have moved on, but he's a handsome fella. He's got a strong voice. Like I could see why he would get cast in as Batman or in a bunch of other stuff because he's got the presence.

Or as a radio operator who repeats the same phrase over hundreds of times. But that's the excitement we'll get to in a few minutes.

Adam West from 1959 to 61 made many one-shot appearances on TV shows. In 1961, he got a part on the TV show The Detectives and had 30 episodes. Then in 1966, he was cast as Batman.

There you go.

Those are all your tidbits for this show.

Awesome.

Andy, up to you in history.

Yeah. What was going on in the world when this movie came out? Well, as a general note, the late 50s are one of the most exciting and overwhelming time periods, I think, to have lived in the 20th century, if you're in America. This year, Humphrey Bogart died. Technology continues to rocket ahead. John Glenn sets the transcontinental speed record. He flew from California to New York in just over three hours. I think that either this year or very soon, the first videotape recorder, I know it was being worked on throughout this decade, but I think the videotape recorder came out this year or the next year. This is a year when civil rights is really starting to gather momentum. I think this is the year the Montgomery bus boycott started, and there's a lot of stuff going on, including a lot of really extreme backlash from the southern states in particular. Leave it to Beaver Premiers, the Mackinac Bridge, not too far from where I live, opens. At the time, it's the longest suspension bridge between two points. And I think that is all the specific stuff I want to say, except just to keep in mind also that the Cold War is really heating up at about this time. For sure. I think in the next year or two are going to be some of the most dramatic occurrences of the Cold War, so it would have been on everyone's mind. That's all I got for history stuff, unless there's anything you guys think I missed.

No, I think you nailed it. Do we want to go over the poster really quick, and then I can do a quick recap of the movie before we jump in?

We do need to go over the poster because I got this poster wrong last time, so I need to correct the record. Oh, no. Yeah, so why don't you describe the poster to us, John?

So, it looks like it was made by perhaps a child. It says, supernatural across the top. Actually, I would like to read the text because I enjoyed it. The weird jungle of Cobra Pants, the weird jungle of Cobra Plants that feed on women and rip men apart, and then it says Voodoo Island in red letters. It's got this weird Voodoo mask in the background. A woman is screaming and being threatened by a really bad drawing of some kind of lizard thing. Then Boris Karloff is there, his hair is blonde and his mouth is hanging open.

Well, the thing that I think I got wrong is last week, I also identified that as a lizard thing, but having watched the film, I think that is supposed to be a plant thing.

It is. Yeah.

Is that right?

I think you're right.

It is not a bad drawing of a lizard thing, it is a bad drawing of a plant thing.

Yes. Now, we'll get to it, but the prop that they're drawing was so good to start with.

Right. Maybe they weren't happy with what was on film and they thought, we'll just fool them with the poster. Yeah. We'll make them think there's giant lizards.

Yes. Yeah, for sure.

Oh, that's delicious.

All right.

John, we usually start with a quick 60-second overview of this movie. Will you do the honors?

Yeah, absolutely. This movie starts in an office. Boris Karloff is examining somebody and what we found out is that our instigator of events here is a man named Carlton. He's a millionaire. He owns islands and he likes to put fancy luxury hotels on them. We discover that he sent a team to survey an island in the South Pacific and only one member returned and that member is a zombie. There's a lot of rigmarole where they get to the island. It takes the majority of the movie to actually get there. Once they get there, they run into badly stereotyped natives, carnivorous plants and props that are hilariously bad. They get captured and then it just kind of ends. Like that's the weird thing. Like I'd like to give you a summary about how it ends, but then they just kind of leave and that's the movie.

You forgot the coconut crab.

The coconut crab, there's a boat, their boat keeps breaking down. There's all kinds of stuff, but that's pretty much the basics is trying to get to Voodoo Island. Throughout all this Boris Karloff is a scientist named Dr. Knight, and his entire goal is to go, is to poo poo any mystical evidence of Voodoo here and say there's a scientific explanation. So really the ending is him going, okay, you're right. I think that's how the movie ends.

Okay, well, that was a good summary of an equally good film. A great film. Sorry, for sure. It's gonna be good. So I think you're gonna take the reins on it today. So why don't you get us started on a more detailed walkthrough?

Yeah, can we just start with the opening, right? So first of all, there's a piece of technology we didn't talk about in our 1950s episode that I think is gonna be crucial to horror films from now until the 70s probably, and that is the theremin. We are treated to a theremin, a solo theremin, playing creepy, goofy music. There it is. Like I think, Andy, this is our first theremin, and I don't know where 50s and 60s horror would be without the theremin, I'm not even joking. In science fiction too, I don't even know how one works. But anyway.

But if you want to know, the podcast, History of Rock and Roll in 500 Songs, when he did the episode on Good Vibrations, I think he started it with 30 minutes on the theremin.

Awesome.

And the history of the theremin.

Okay, that sounds amazing. So, yeah.

So during the credits, John, is this our first clear picture of a voodoo doll?

Yes. It is a voodoo doll, but it looks like a puppet from a 19, it looks like a marionette, the head looks like a marionette from a 1960s British sci-fi marionette show, like the Thunderbirds or something. Like, it's got a cloth body, it's got a doll's body wearing a suit or whatever, but then it's got this cast plastic head. It's absolutely bizarre. Yeah. For a more modern reference, the heads look like the heads on the marionettes in Team America, World Police. So that's the reference I'll make.

So pretty terrible.

Which is amazing technology for a bunch of stereotyped Polynesians to make for their voodoo dolls, but I think we'll brush past that. In any case, there's also this weird shot where you zoom in on what is clearly like a fake building with a fake lake and palm trees and stuff. And I'm like, come on, this movie isn't that cheap, but they outwitted me. And it is a diorama, a mockup of the hotel that this man Carlton wants to build on his new island. And then we pan over and we see Boris Karloff, who is a doctor, Dr. Knight, examining a man who will not speak, does not move, does not say anything, he just stares into the distance. So this is one of our zombies. What did you make of this sort of intro of start?

Well, the focus on the miniature building also got me, I like paused it a couple times and I was like, that's a miniature, like this, I can't wait to point that out on the podcast. And then the movie was like, oh yeah, this is a miniature.

Yeah, absolutely.

Really stole the thunder.

Did it concern you, that's the quality of the film?

It did.

I was very concerned about the quality of the film, yes. And those concerns never really went away, but yeah, so I liked this opening scene because like you say, the camera pans over to a catatonic looking person who's just staring dead-eyed at the camera. And this is a movie that it gives you a couple of minutes to try and figure out what's going on, if that makes sense. It doesn't just explain it all really simply. No one issues like a quick summary right at the beginning. So, I was a little bewildered about what was going on and I liked that feeling.

Yes. I will say one thing this does, this movie does that was strong in like the first act, is build a sense of mystery, right?

Yes.

We haven't had, I thought it was actually kind of well done and a little subtle, like let's keep raising the stakes on the mystery of what's going on. The problem is they never stop doing that and provide any resolution. And if we've learned anything, it's that people lost on a tropical island, you can't just keep introducing mysteries forever. Eventually, people get tired of it. You can maybe do that for two seasons and then you got to move on.

But I don't know what you're referring to there, John.

That just occurred to me. I don't have a good example of it. But yes.

So do you want to describe our zombie here since we get one, right? In the opening moments of the film?

Yes. So our zombie is Mitchell, I believe is his name. And he's the one survivor of this four man survey team who went to the island. And he is dressed in a sport coat with a shirt. He's a very normal looking person, except he literally does not move and stares into space with these sort of black eyes. The poor actor must have had eye drops or something because he never blinks in any of the shots that he's in. So yeah, he looks very normal, is what I'll say.

Yeah. And he's not dead. He is the type of zombie we've seen in a number of earlier films where it's just a living person who's been stripped of their volition.

Right. Now, I do want to play a clip here because he does set up a little bit about how, you know, we said at the beginning that Boris Karloff is a debunker, basically. He wants to debunk any mystery around this, but the mystery keeps escalating. So here's what Boris Karloff says after examining Mitchell.

Do you think I'd sink millions of dollars into a venture that would scare the paying public witness? Why not? The public loves to be scared. Excites the imagination, makes them believe in the existence of things unreal.

And that's him saying, why would you want to hide this? You know, people want to believe the supernatural because it's fun, not because it's real. And you get the impression that they don't describe it explicitly, but Dr. Knight has a show where he debunks stuff like this, and he wants to do a show about this island and this occurrence. Is that what you got out of it?

A television show.

A television show.

Yeah. I had trouble with this part because I didn't understand why they were acting like this catatonic guy was like this crazy supernatural thing that would freak everybody out. Right. I mean, at this point in the film, it's not really established. It doesn't look like there's anything supernatural here. It looks like he's just gone catatonic or had some sort of a breakdown and gone non-responsive. I mean, there's a million non-supernatural reasons that might happen, such as having a traumatic experience on an island like he did. So I thought that later on, more supernatural stuff is going to more blatantly appear. But I thought it was kind of odd the way they were acting like this. This just traumatized person was like this shocking supernatural event.

But they do crank it up right here and crank up the supernatural. They're trying to arrange. So they've all decided for this group of people, Boris Karloff, his assistant, who will meet in a minute, Mitchell, Mitchell's doctor, gangster, are all going to go to Voodoo Island. However, as they're trying to make a phone call to arrange for the plane, we get theramins again and we get an intense stare from our zombie, and things start to go haywire. As hokey as this diorama is, the plants in the diorama start to wilt and bleed, which I thought actually really worked. What did you think about that?

I actually loved this. I didn't expect this at all. And so I felt like this movie cranked, went up several notches on the dial like right away here.

Yes, yeah, absolutely. So I want to just sort of get to Voodoo Island. So what's going to happen is they're going to fly to Voodoo Island for those keeping track at home. It is another Beechcraft C-18, just like we saw in our previous movie serial. Though I had a moment, I was looking up the plane just to confirm it, and I thought it might be a Lockheed Ventura, because they're very similar, but the Lockheed Ventura is a much more famous plane. Do you know who flew a Lockheed Ventura back in the day? Sort of. And got lost in one. Amelia Earhart.

Amelia Earhart.

Oh, wow. So they're very similar, but the stabilizers on the C18 are a little bigger. But anyway.

Listeners, take note.

Take note. Anyway, so we do have to meet a couple other people really quickly. Most importantly is Sarah Adams, who is Boris Karloff's super uptight, dull, all business assistant, who is of course devastatingly beautiful.

Everyone talks about her as if she's super uptight and dull. This is not an evidence in her behavior.

She seems really cool and like, yeah, it's very strange.

Later, she will be berated by another character for being so uptight. It's like she's just acting normally.

Yeah. What do I know? The first thing we see is, as they're boarding the plane, Mitchell walks by two Polynesian women. One of them is stitching up a doll, and he reacts again and we get the theremin again. Theremin means zombie powers being activated.

Maybe the theremin is taking up where the Voodoo drum has left off.

Do we know that the people in the movie can't hear the theremin? We're just assuming it's incidental music, but it could be his powers activating and everybody hears it. You don't know. In any case, they need to fly to the island. They have to stop at Wake Island. Again, I'm not going to get into the details. But as they're getting ready to land on that island, can we please hear them trying to communicate with the weather station where they're trying to land?

N5621 Victor, Howard Carleton's private plane. I wonder how they got that much solid gold off the ground anyway.

Andy, who is that acting, incredibly funny genius?

That is none other than Batman. That is Adam West.

Yes.

What a delight it was to see him.

It was pretty great. Anyway, the communications are-

Did you know he was going to be in it? Did you check their credits?

I did not.

It was a surprise.

I checked the credits after and then was very excited.

After meaning you didn't recognize him at the moment?

No.

As soon as I saw him, I was like, no way. Then I looked up the credits. Yeah, for sure. In any case, the plane has all kinds of technical trouble. There's more theremins, the plane lands. I do like the expression they use here, just a slang expression, they're flying by the stars, which was a neat expression to say all their instruments had gone out.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

There's a little bit of a Bermuda Triangle vibe going on here, as weird stuff is happening as they're flying.

Yeah. There's an incident here where whenever Mitchell, the zombies around, the radios go haywire, trouble stops. At one point, Mitchell, his blood pressure goes to almost zero and then it recovers. Again, this is all layering that mystery on that I liked. Clearly, something supernatural is going on here, but they're not giving us any explanation. How does this make you feel? I don't think we need to do detail, but just give me your overall impression of how they're building this thing.

I liked what they're doing. It felt a little clunky, just unexplained event after unexplained event. But this is a more subtle build than most of the movies we've watched in this podcast, Marriage.

I would agree.

Part of that build is that you don't really know what it's building towards because it's not really clear at this point what kind of movie we're dealing with.

Right.

Exactly. At this point in the movie, I was annoyed at how long this Wake Island scene went, but I was enjoying the build towards something and was hoping that it would pay off.

Yeah. In fact, I took a note that at this point during the film, we don't quite know what's going on, and this feels like a halfway decent screenplay. It's layered pretty decently. They go to one island, they meet up with Gun. There's a man whose last name is Gun, and they just call him Gun, and he's a former sailor. He wears a sailor hat.

He's going to be their guide. They're outdoorsmen team lead, I guess.

Yeah. He's the team lead. He knows the island. He's familiar with the locals, all that stuff, and he's going to drive them in a jeep. They're going to rent a boat, and they're going to try to head to the actual island where all this takes place. So this is kind of like the sub, sub, sub basements of Bowery at Midnight. There's islands within islands within islands here.

Yeah. It's amazing how many islands that the movie brings us to before we get to it.

I feel like they could have just landed on one island and then taken a boat, but that sounds too easy.

I do have a couple notes about this sequence. One is what's a movie from our teenage years, John, that this whole sequence reminded you of as they're on the island prepping to go.

Oh, I mean, I kept thinking Gilligan's Island. I don't know. What are you thinking?

I kept thinking Jurassic Park.

Oh, yeah.

This whole sequence has a Jurassic Park vibe to it, down to some kind of interesting details. Like, when they all set out, they get in jeeps to drive across the island that just had a huge Jurassic Park vibe. Later, as they approach the island, they do some similar stuff that Jurassic Park does, where they see the island in the distance, and it looks mysterious and beautiful and dangerous. This felt like a template for Lost World type shows.

Yeah.

I'm not sure this is the movie, but definitely it calls to mind the feeling that Spielberg is trying to evoke in that opening sequence to Jurassic Park, because that island is a mystery too. It's got a huge mystery, and nobody really knows what's going to happen, so yeah.

And you have to fly to it. It's very distant.

Yeah.

Yeah. No, I like that. That's good.

And there's one other comment I had, and I want to talk about Gunn a little bit, if we can. Sure. He gives off a little bit of Indiana Jones energy at times, I think. He's kind of a gruff person, maybe a little bit difficult to interact with. And I thought this was a really good example of a theme we wondered if we'd see in the 50s, which is the shift in the type of protagonist we have. Because Gunn is a kind of a damaged, vulnerable person. He is, although he is handsome, he's going to be the romantic lead in this film. And he's physically very capable. He has this baggage in his past and this insecurity. And it's causing him to sort of act in a gruff way towards the people around him. And that's just a very different kind of hero than 10 years earlier in these movies.

Yeah, we've been dealing with Marcus Aurelius since like the 1930s. And now we have somebody with actually some emotional range and willing to talk about himself. So that is kind of interesting. He's also here to be a love interest to Mrs. Adams. Here's a weird part, and I just didn't get this. There is another member of the party, Claire Winter. She's older than Sarah Adams. I don't know why she's here. I just know that Gunn hits on her and they clearly have some past or something because she dismisses him randomly. But this is never explored. I don't know why she's here. I don't know why. I don't know what their past is. Did you follow any of this?

She's coded as gay, which is why she dismisses him so abruptly and coldly, which is why she spends so much time with, what's her name? Sarah.

I missed that completely.

So go back and listen to all of this.

This is making a lot of sense.

Yes.

A gun says, what kind of world do you live in? She goes, I live in a very exclusive world. You're not invited into my world.

Okay. I was interpreting that as some shared history that I was unaware of, but that's fascinating and I missed it completely, because it's 1957 and I didn't think that would be here.

I missed it too, but this makes so much sense because there's several scenes between Claire and Sarah that are strangely tense, and I didn't understand why they were so tense.

Yes. He represents male virility and she resists it because she's not interested at all. Very interesting. She actually has a lot of initiative and that gets her into trouble on the island. It also gets her killed, so that's a problem. Now, that becomes more of a problem now that Brad has pointed it out to me. We'll get to the island here. The important sequence here is that while they're waiting to take a boat to the final island that they're going to, the actual Voodoo Island, in the middle of the night, Mitchell escapes. They do a bit of running around, but what happens is they find him on the boat. He's dead. Underneath his body is a, what do they call it, a wangabag?

Yes.

Filled with death sentences that have the names of all the party members we've met, and his body is pointing towards Voodoo Island precisely like a compass or something. And I actually found this great, though I want to say one thing here, which is Boris Karloff is awfully spry for a 70-year-old man. At one point, a jeep is slowing down, and before it even stops, he jumps off. And then here, when he's getting on the boat, he leaps over. I thought he was, I wouldn't do that stuff, and I'm younger than him, I think. So anyway, he does have a lot of flexibility here. But what did you think of this sequence? I thought it was great, and did that thing we're loving, right? Build more mystery.

Yeah, I liked it a lot because it wasn't clear what was going on. There's kind of a neat sequence where Mitchell is crawling in a kind of creepy way across the boat dock.

Yes.

And then he dies, and later Knight diagnoses him as basically having died of literal fright.

Yeah, we actually have a clip of that. So here's where we get the one scene of Adams trying to be up tight and Boris Karloff asks her to repeat what he dictated.

Adams, what was that I dictated last night in reference to Mitchell's demise?

Death is a result from extreme stimulation of the body's defense mechanisms, which when finding no outlet or escape from the primary cause precipitating such emotion, in turn, panics, commits emotional suicide.

Thank you, Adams. What does that mean? What does it mean? That he was scared to death.

I love that we are starting to see examples of that trope of like where one person says something in slightly technical language and then someone else has to say in English, please.

Yes. Early example of that. I love it. They find the Owinge bag. Boris Karloff notes that there's a death wish for each of them in it. He's unimpressed and he tosses it over the side into the water.

Let's talk about Boris Karloff's character here for a little bit. We've said he's a debunker and he's a little bit insufferable.

Yes, he is.

He is full of himself. He's got this arrogance as he dismisses all of these mysterious events that are happening. He has this- Hubris. Condescending dismissal of all of this stuff because there's a scientific explanation for everything. At this point in the movie, I just noted that he was becoming pretty insufferable.

Yes, but once they get on the boat, unfortunately, he trades his tasteful broad-brimmed tropical hat for a hat that the mechanic wears in the World War II movies. It's got this giant brim that sticks up. I'm like, what if he had a better hat before Boris? Yeah, he looks much less serious.

So hey, why don't we move ahead to them making landfall on the island?

Yes. So as they're approaching the island and want to do one thing, they just do one more mystery building thing where the boat craps out, and then they're like, oh no, the power of Voodoo, and it turns out there was a bug in the fuel line, and so Boris, it's just another opportunity for Boris Karloff to go, oh, you see, it isn't supernatural, and this is the point in the movie, this is what I think, where they could have started pivoting towards actually having a plot or solving something, and they chose not to.

That's a good way of putting it.

You know what I mean? They spent overnight on the boat, which I thought was going to be a thing, but then they just get up in the morning and continue on, so I'm not quite sure why that happened. However, they'd land on the island, and you see them wading ashore, and they start to find evidence of the previous crew, and there's actually a montage. They find survey gear and all this stuff and clues, and they're hiking around the island, and then they decide, well, we're gonna stay here, so the men, the four men will hike back to the boat, and we'll leave the two women here at this camp that was the Surveyor's Camp, with a gun, and they'll sit and chat. This is another weird thing, but ultimately, it's just to say the men come back, all the supplies are ruined, and now they're stuck on this island with no supplies. Do you wanna unpack anything else here other than their wonderful camping arrangements?

Yeah, just a couple of notes. One is we get, it's not our first jump scare, but it's a very dramatic one. When Sarah is almost hit in the head by a falling coconut, and it's a very dramatic moment, and then a crab like lurches out of the under brush.

That's right.

And it is like a montage, and it's presented as a really arduous journey through the jungle.

Can you describe the lurching of the crab?

It's as if it were clearly being dragged jerkily on a string.

There's no movement to any of the legs.

No.

It's like someone's shaking it from behind.

Like, yeah, don't be fooled. Like this is absolute MST 3K fire. This movie is not like brilliant or anything. And we start to see it here, because first of all, when they're sleeping on the island, they just sort of roll out some blankets and like sleep under the stars in the tropics. This doesn't seem like a great idea. I feel like they could be a little better prepared. Even if their rations went bad, like they must have like a tent or a wooden stick to make one.

Did you notice what I jotted down in my notes as performative machete-ing? As they're walking along pretty clearly, pretty clear paths and then taking the occasional swing at plants kind of off on the side.

Yes.

Anyway, there's a lot of that.

Yes. So we start to see some natives peering out from behind leaves and stuff as they're walking through. Then again, the men decide to set off to do some investigation. This is the next morning, and Claire decides to go on her investigation. She finds a waterhole and decides to go swimming. Not the best move, I think, but there's a theremin-induced carnivorous plant here, and she's in for trouble. Is this the worst special effect in the movie, these carnivorous inflatable leaf arm plant things?

So this special effect is so bad, it's almost effective, if that makes any sense. It looks so ridiculous, like that it's just, it's a little uncanny to watch.

Yeah, they're like these giant straight leaves in the water that like inflate a little bit and sort of move around.

They're almost like, yeah, they're kind of like octopus tentacles.

Yes, but they're a plant. And I would laugh until they get, she gets wrapped up and killed by this thing, drowned, as everyone runs up to see what happens to her. Yeah.

I found this scene genuinely surprising. I think shocking is too strong a word, but it was almost shock because, John, people, our heroes almost never die in the movies we've watched today. There's almost, almost all of our movies, everyone makes it to the end with just a few exceptions. And this is the first movie that has had that real horror movie feel of like people being picked off one by one.

Yes.

And so this just had a very different feel than the previous zombie movies we watched. And so I enjoyed this scene.

Despite the bad special effects.

Yeah, despite the bad special effects. This scene is also, it's kind of a sexy scene, right? Like it's right out of like kind of like the titillating murder of an attractive young person, like horror.

Right.

So they have her take off her clothes, but it's behind a plant and then she drives in the water. And then she's wrapped up in this monster and she's clearly negative. So they're trying to combine, do that, the mighty combo of sex and violence to excite you about this movie.

And then she has to manipulate the effects herself. So as it's wrapping her up, she's twisting to pull them around her. Yeah.

So bad that all of the attacks in this movie just have that wonderful thing where they're clearly just wrestling with an inert object.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So I do want to hit on one thing here, which is that they, we're almost an hour into the movie here. We're still building the mystery. There's now a fight that breaks out, and we haven't talked about all the characters. There's a mobster named Finch here, and he says, let's get out of here. This is not worth it. This is our last clip, but Boris Karloff shuts him down.

We can't go back. Not now.

We can't go back.

What do you mean we can't go back?

Why?

Don't you see that every sign we followed has drawn us even deeper into the jungle? There are more ways of destroying us than just by open attack. I'm taking that chance if it happens. Mr. Finch, if this island is inhabited, we won't live that long, unless we go on as though we suspected nothing. Somebody wanted us to come this way.

This sets up the trigger warning, which I think is actually an important scene, and I want to go over that.

Yes. Before we get there, can we talk about a couple of things? First of all, I liked the idea that the clues they had been following, which in retrospect were very obvious clues, were they were being lured into the heart of this jungle, which I, by someone, which I just kind of like that. And did you mention that Doctor, that Knight kind of, he talks a bit, he identifies it as a carnivorous plant that maybe is sort of a holdover from basically dinosaur times? So there's some lost world energy out here.

And before we get to the big scene, they do run into other carnivorous plants. Sarah Adams gets attacked by one and they beat it off of her. Then we get to Knight, and this is where Gunn reveals his fears about his boat that sank during the Second World War. I think that's interesting, Andy. Like it didn't occur to me when I was watching it, but I think one of the things is, sort of pre-World War II, or we had this vision of people as sort of these stolid men who survived difficult situations. Now we're saying, okay, maybe that war did induce trauma in some people, and here's somebody that is suffering from that trauma, right?

Yeah. As we discussed in our 50s episode, this is the James Dean, Elvis is going to do this starting a year after this movie comes out, I think. It's the wounded, vulnerable, tough man.

Yeah. There's a little pillow talk between Adams and Gunn. I think that's the closest we're going to get to romance between them.

Do you remember their poetic dialogue?

I do, but I blocked it out.

He says some, she's complaining about how damaged she is, and he says, well, we all have hills that block our path. She goes, yes, but I climb mine. You run from yours.

Oh, right. Yes. Called out by the efficient and heartless Adams. But her heart melts a little bit here for him.

Well, he really tears into her for basically not being feminine enough, which is like, this whole scene was kind of weird and it was a little weird and dumb.

Now, I would just like to point out one thing. We've had two carnivorous plant attacks. They think they found natives that are after them. They realize they're being drawn deeper into the island against their will. So they go to sleep again under the stars on blankets and don't have a sentry. Like, maybe it's just going to play too much D&D in my time, but you never sleep without like rotating your guards, right?

Yes.

But in the morning, Finch gets attacked by another carnivorous plant.

By several plants.

Several. And he runs away. This is the, I really want to talk about this scene. And then we're going to get drawn very quickly into the end of the movie. But Finch runs away. He escapes from these carnivorous plants, but he's separated from the group. And then he sees two little children, two little girls playing in a field. They're the first natives that our characters have seen themselves, though we know the natives have been watching them. Do you want to describe what happens here, Andy?

This was a genuinely disturbing scene, which seems kind of funny to say about this very silly movie. As he's watching these two kids play, one of them basically steps on sort of a Venus flytrap type of carnivorous plant, and it wraps around the kid, and then the camera kind of lingers as it, I mean, you don't see anything, but the plant crushes and kills this child. While Finch is watching sort of mesmerized with terror, I think you would say.

Yes.

And this was like, I'm a big softy, I guess, this is where I admit it, but I thought this was actually kind of upsetting scene.

It was, and then of course, it's accompanied by a theremin. But what happens here is Finch loses his mind, and we're given the impression that this is what caused Mitchell to become what he was. It's not like a ritual or anything, you just lose your mind from the terror of this island.

Yes.

I was expecting him to rush out and try and save the girl.

Yeah. It's like, what the heck?

But he stands.

Yeah. He's lost his mind. It's all too much.

I had to say just this movie is a big step ahead of anything we've watched to date as far as just the brutality of the kills. Yeah. They are teem by modern standards, of course. But we have seen a naked woman crushed to death by plant tendrils and we've seen a child devoured by a plant. That is miles beyond any shock horror we've seen in the vast majority of the movies we've watched.

For sure. I think one thing about this movie is it takes itself very seriously. A lot of these things happen and there's theremin and nobody's laughing and there's no jokes. It's a little harsher than what we're used to. Now, there's an ending here. I don't know how much you want to talk about this, but there are survivors. We're down to four survivors. They get captured by the natives and this is where they get the lecture from the Polynesian man who clearly looks like a British professor, who perhaps teaches mathematics. This is absolutely bizarre.

He's Austrian.

He's Austrian, excuse me. But yeah, he's got gray hair and he just looks like a regular European person.

He looks like JRR Tolkien.

He does, with more hair, with better hair, for sure.

Well, let's talk about his lecture that he delivers, because I do think it was an interesting lecture.

Yeah, what jumped out at you?

I mean, so the story he tells him, he has captured our heroes and he gives this villain monologue. But his villain monologue is basically, my people have been fleeing from the encroachment of civilization, slash white people, and we've just been fleeing from island to island, and we've finally been backed. This is the only place left where civilization hasn't touched. We've been backed into a corner on this very dangerous island where we've had to live. I wouldn't go so far as to say that is a really subversive thing to say, but I thought it was a slightly more interesting motive than just I'm an evil islander.

I think that is interesting, Andy. You could almost miss it because it's so tame, but it is actually a message that you could take away. I think we can just run towards the end here. They get captured, they, Boris Karloff escapes, there are voodoo dolls of each of them. Shiler, who's the guy who owned the boat, our fourth guy who's neither gun nor knight, has a moment where he falls 15 feet from a bridge into water, which is apparently fatal in this island, and instead of just giving you a rash on your back from slapping the water. In any case, he dies as well, and Karloff has escaped, but he has an encounter with the man who gave this monologue, and he basically says, I hear what you're saying. We're going to leave and leave you alone.

The reason he was killed, I think, pretty much is he was the one. So after they heard that monologue from the chief, Knight said, we get it, we won't say anything about this island, we'll go back to the world and we'll say it's too dangerous to settle, so leave him alone. But then Skyler says, the heck you will, I'm going to tell everyone about this island. So he kind of has to be killed.

For greed, he says, you're not going to take away my chance for profit here.

Yes, yeah, and then so he dies as well.

And then he evidences, I'll say, a really racist attitude towards the locals.

Absolutely, and we won't even use the language. But here's what I want to say, Andy, about that monologue, his death, all of this kind of stuff. It's 1957, right? We're starting to maybe see, like the idea behind horror movies today is kind of like the idea around, or used to be, let's say the 60s and 70s, was it was kind of like punk rock, right? You would make a really sort of gnarly, nasty thing to be subversive. And I'm not saying this movie is that. But you take the idea like, which is probably a new idea to people here, like, no, maybe we shouldn't disrupt the lifestyles of people who've lived on lands for centuries, and maybe that was a bad thing, and put it in a horror movie, it's a way to get your subversive idea out into the world using horror as a mask for it. Yes. So, and I think that's a new thing, and I think we're going to see it a lot more, right? As we go into the 60s and 70s, like Night of the Living Dead is a lot of things, but it's also a subversive movie about the American culture. So, again, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves, but this helps set the stage for that.

I think in tandem with this colonialism, there's the developer, the commerce part, which we haven't seen before. And later films, this presented as evil, but the developer here just seems to be a guy who's trying to figure out what's going on and not let his people get hurt.

That is interesting, but it is like the growing spread. Maybe there's sort of a communist idealism in here, too, where that sort of greed and avarice has led to these people having to live in a really dangerous, unpleasant place. But we could also be reading too much into it. So I don't know what you think about all that, Andy.

Yeah. I mean, to be honest, one of my big takeaways was are we entering the era of horror movies where we can look forward to gnarly kills? Yeah. Because the kills in this movie, particularly the naked woman swimming, felt very set piece like gnarly kill prototype to me. For sure. By the time you get later, for sure into the 70s and stuff, part of the reason you're watching this movie is to see how people get creatively killed. Right.

Yeah. If this movie had better special effects or, I don't know, didn't just end, sort of end, it would have struck much harder. There we are. The movie ends. We don't see them leave, but we assume they somehow get home. Let's go ahead and do our wrap up.

Yes, absolutely. We're going to have a lot of good stuff to discuss in this wrap up.

I think so.

John, is there a hero party in this movie?

There's 100 percent a hero party that's trapped in a desperate situation.

I think this might be the first time we have a different answer for the next question. How many people of the hero party survive? How do they do?

They only 50 percent of them live. Knight, Sarah Adams, and Gunn survive, but the other three are killed.

Yes.

Well, no, because Finch, he's a zombie and they walk him off.

That's right.

We don't know if he's alive, it can be returned to human state or not.

We don't know that, and we don't actually see them pick him up and take him away.

He can still be there for us. At the end, he's walking with them across the bridge.

He might survive. So two of them get killed. One is a zombie with an uncertain future.

It's a failure. The film didn't tell us what happens to him.

Correct.

Yeah.

That's the big problem with this film.

Add it to the list, yeah, exactly.

Sorry, not the A failure.

A failure, yeah.

Is there a zombie horde?

No, there's only two zombies. The real threats are these carnivorous plants and stuff.

Yeah. How are zombies destroyed or killed?

They just sort of expire on their own. I think they're still alive.

Yeah.

They're these living zombies, which are the space between the infected and that kind of stuff. So yeah, they're not pure zombies in that sense, and they never use the word zombie.

These are zombies of the sort. You once articulated this that these are zombies where the horror of the zombie is the horror of being a zombie. It is not scary in a traditional way, although it's certainly creepy. But the zombie state is like a sad and scary way that you could end up, not a threat.

I will say, though all he has to do in this movie is stare. The actor who plays Mitchell has these features that almost say like, this is horrible, I'm trapped in here kind of thing. I think you do get that vibe from him.

All right, let's see. So that kind of covers the question of is there a new zombie strain? Is the world threatened in this movie?

No, I don't think so. I think it's a story of people going to a place they shouldn't and getting their hand burned. I don't think there's a suggestion this will spread beyond the island if people just stay away.

And we already kind of discussed this, but what's the kill count here compared to previous movies? I think maybe from here on out, we can start kind of keeping track of the kill count.

Yeah, perhaps. So I think we can say a Salad 2 killed by monsters. Now, they're not killed by zombies, but they are killed by the island that produces them. So, yep.

Are there any new strains or zombie firsts that you want to call out?

There are a lot of firsts in this movie, and I think you observed a bunch of them. Not necessarily zombie firsts, but we get our first wounded hero who's actually a little vulnerable. That's a first. We get our first brutal kills. Like you pointed out, the death of that child is pretty brutal. That we actually see. There's been other suggested ones, but not this clear. Of course, the breathtaking first here is the theremin, which is going to be the instrument of doom for the next couple of decades. Also, we get the first realistic looking voodoo doll. They're very silly. They have these weird plastic heads like marionettes, but they are voodoo dolls and they are specific to the people here, which is a voodoo thing, not necessarily a zombie thing, but those two things are still interlinked right now.

Yeah. All right. John, let's walk through your four pillars of the zombie movie. Is there an apocalypse in this film?

No, there isn't. Well, I'll take that back. It is an apocalypse for the natives who are forced to flee from development. Let's say yes, because I think that's the case. They have to react by putting themselves in a dangerous situation where they could be killed or become zombies or something like that.

Yeah. Is there contagion in this film?

No. You can get turned into a zombie by spending too much time on the island, but another zombie doesn't turn you into a zombie.

Are there tough moral choices in this movie?

I think so because they're deciding should they leave the island for safety or should they keep going and they make the choice to keep going. In fact, Schuyler chooses greed and ends up dying. So I'm going to say yes, there are tough moral choices.

Yeah. I'd agree with that call. Lastly, are there loved ones turning against you in this film?

I think so because I think Mitchell, somebody must love him, but what's, well, I don't know. The zombies just zone out. They don't turn against people. So I say maybe not, maybe not.

I don't think so. Yeah. John, did the poster sell this movie accurately?

Maybe. There were coniferous plants, but it's hard to tell from the poster, so we'll say no. So Andy, when we did our 50s episode and we've been trying out some new questions for this decade in these films, so let me ask you a couple of questions. Was paranoia a major theme in this movie?

I don't think so, no. How about, do you disagree?

I don't disagree, that's not really.

I mean, there is a kind of a background growing unease that feels maybe like a cousin to paranoia, but it's not the fear that like, you know, your loved ones and neighbors might secretly be enemies.

I agree, but what do we think about the themes of conformity or breaking conformity, hypocrisy, dark secrets? I think there's a bunch of examples of those here. Name some that you saw.

So I think that this movie can be seen as sort of, this movie feels a little bit like it's showing us kind of the dark side of American expansion into new parts of the world. We've got sort of this, he's not coded as a villain exactly, but this greedy developer kind of pushing into new parts of the world. And I mean, these, this would have been kind of a part of the globe that was kind of newly on, or at least freshly on American minds after World War II. And I feel, I don't want to say that this is a nuanced movie, but there is a little bit of unease with American presence and expansion into these traditional cultures and plans. What do you think about that?

I think that's true. But I'd also like to add Claire, now that Brad has pointed out to me, she is breaking conformity as a gay coded character. She's resisting the charming man. She is breaking conformity and has, I think, a dark secret just as Gunn does too.

That is, yeah, that is interesting. I wish I had been more observant and noticed that while I was watching the film.

Yeah, absolutely. Now, there's a couple other things we predicted would happen. Our heroes are younger and less professional. Do you think that's true?

Absolutely, yes. Yep.

And we said-

Yep, they're single. They start out the movie single. They aren't- They aren't engaged. They don't start the movie engaged to someone. So we have, they are doing the romantic pursuit of each other in what feels like a pretty modern way.

Yeah, I agree. Now, science and sci-fi, have they taken a more central role in this movie? It is called Voodoo Island. So what do you think about that?

I do think that a lot of the radio and airplane stuff was designed to dangle technology in front of us. I mean, this movie has a very ham-fisted message of, is this a scientific world? Can science explain everything or is there room for mystery in the world? And this movie lands unconvincingly on the idea that, yes, there is room for mystery.

For sure.

Generally speaking, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it tries to have it both ways in a way that we've seen in some of our other zombie films.

I agree. Now, you also made a prediction that the zombie genre would leave its local Caribbean roots and spread more broadly into the world. I feel like that happened here, but not in a great way. What do you think?

It has absolutely happened here, but yeah, in a weird way that feels like a half step towards what should happen, I guess, because they expanded this into a new part of the world that we haven't seen in any zombie movie yet, but they did it weirdly by transplanting Caribbean voodoo over into this new part of the world, which makes no sense.

It's a lot like Revolta de los Zombies, where they did that for no clear reason. But it's probably like Hawaii has just become a state, so this part of the world is now being traveled to by Americans that aren't in the Navy, which is a new thing. So I think that's part of it too.

All right. Well, John, it's time for our final wrap up questions.

Yes.

Would you and I survive in this zombie world?

You know what? I hate the heat. I don't like sleeping outside. I think maybe I might be in trouble. I might go the way of Finch here.

Would you wander off and swim naked in a little girl?

Well, that's the thing. I would not wander off. I could get separated like Finch does, but I wouldn't wander off like Claire does. I hope.

I think I would be at great risk of being killed in a brutal way in this zombie world, to be honest.

Is it because you'd be so hot and sweaty, you wouldn't mind maybe?

I think that one of those plants might get me while I was talking to somebody else, similar to way, that's how they almost get Sarah.

Yes. She's just chatting and the plant's waving behind her and nobody says anything and then like, we'll begin to, it's pretty hilarious.

The plant, yeah, it swings out or sort of bludgens her in a very comical way. So maybe I would be able to defeat that particular plant, but I feel like this is a step up in sort of hostile environments for these films. Agreed, agreed. Let's see, and is this, John, a zombie movie or is this a movie with zombies?

I'm going to say it's a movie with zombies because the zombies are present, but it's really sort of about this, exploring this exotic location and, you know, the carnivorous plants and stuff. I don't think, I think the zombies are the inciting incident, but not, it's not a zombie movie. What do you think?

Yeah, I mean, this is a lost world movie that happens to have some zombies in it. I could, I'm a little on the fence. I mean, the zombies are the kind of inciting incident of this film. And Mitchel does, Zombie Mitchel does have a pretty important presence through it. So it's not a throwaway thing in the film. But I would agree, it's not really where the main excitement, I'm putting that in quotes, of this film lies. Right, right. And so with that said, do you recommend this movie, either in general and more specifically to the zombie loving listeners of this podcast?

I don't think I can. Like, I enjoyed the first half of it in the sort of construction of the mystery and the setting of stakes. But it ultimately falls flat and the zombies are not super zombie like, though there's some interesting things. So I'm going to say soft no on both.

I'm going to say, I'm going to say a soft yes.

Okay, fair enough.

I really, I'm, the gnarly kills, that's an exciting development for me and I don't know, I mean, it's hard to recommend this movie, but it's not without its pleasure.

It does have its pleasures, for sure.

Yeah. Okay, well, it's time for the scariest part of our episode, and that is when we learn what we will be watching next. So, Brad, what do you have in store for us?

Well, we are staying in 1957, and here's the poster for our next movie.

All right. The Zombies of Maura Tao.

Zombies of the Ocean Deeps, that's a new one. Yeah. Water zombies, right?

A tide of terror floods the screen. Sorry, I get excited.

All right. It's hard not to laugh at these. I know that's probably not very helpful for our listeners. So, let me describe this. At the top, we have a creepy looking zombie or zombie master looking at us through a sort of murky mist that might be water or fog. Then we, secondly, we have a woman screaming as some, I mean-

Is that a horde?

Those look like, that looks like a sort of modern zombie horde. They look kind of decay-dish, and there's five of them, so that's almost a horde. They appear to be lurching out of the water, maybe towards this woman who's screaming. Then at the bottom of it, we have the title Zombies of Mora Tao, and we have the same screaming woman who is screaming over the unconscious or dead body of a man who's clutching a box of some sort, an ornate little box.

All right.

Looks like a treasure chest.

Okay, well, I am intrigued to be perfectly honest.

Yes, okay.

Now, it's not a whole horde of zombies. There's like five of them. Is that like a gaggle of zombies? Like maybe we need a term for, you know, a small amount of zombies hoarding, so we'll have to think about that.

Yes. A clutch.

A clutch of zombies, a cops of zombies, something like that, yes. All right, folks, tune in next episode where we watch the zombies of Maura Tao. 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.