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, hello producer Brad, hello Andy.

Hello, hello.

Hey John and Andy.

Hey, Bela Lugosi again this week. Indeed. I have two pieces of business before we begin. So one is we got some feedback from a listener. Andy got this feedback. We were complaining about film quality, and this is a true story. This is not me just doing a bit. That person said, You're complaining about the quality on Tubi, but Tubi is known for renting. So movies are sold in pools, old movies, and they're known for buying the lowest quality ones. So they can have tons of crazy old movies, but they're all cruddy. So I actually compared this time and compared the YouTube version and the Tubi version, and the YouTube version was better. Did you watch it on YouTube, Andy?

I did. Yes. I took that listener tip. Yeah.

Yeah. So I thought that was interesting. I'm not knocking Tubi. Like we're here if you want to call us. We'll still take your sponsorship.

The YouTube is a user's upload. So it's not like whoever owns the film uploaded it. Some user uploaded their DVD copy and it looks better than Tubi.

Yeah. But I guess the message is listeners, if you have been turned off by our complaining about the visual quality of some of these films, it turns out that may be the source we are using for our films more than the actual films itself.

So yeah, I think that's the case. Having said that, the film in question is the film from 1944 Voodoo Man starring Bela Lugosi and John Carradine. But before we go further, Brad, I have a shocking piece of news for you. So when you run a podcast, sometimes you have to send each other money for a hosting bill or whatever. So I got a PayPal payment from somebody whose name was not Andy Rao. It was something else Rao. So it turns out Andy is Andy's middle name. Andy, would you like to tell Brad what your given first name is?

Well, I'm thinking about just closing down this podcast and you'll never hear from me again. Now that the secret's out. Yes, it's true. My first name, my name is not Andy. My name is John.

With an H.

With an H. So just like my beloved co-host John Corey.

So we want to propose that we change it to Zombie Strains with John and John. So that's our big idea.

Yeah, I was born into a family with about 5,000 Johns. And at some point, my parents decided, the joke my mom always tells is that one day she realized that when she would call out for John to do something, everybody would ignore her because everyone pretended to think it was a different John she was calling for. So anyway, so yeah, Andy is my middle name. I have a lot of a lot of boring stories about when this has been revealed at awkward times like in college and like now, when I'm being just called out in front of the world.

So that's right.

Well, it could be worse, Andy. In my dad's family, they were multiple Al's, so Albert and Alan. So my dad was Squeak and my uncle was Pudge.

I mean, I feel like there might have been some other options you could go to before Squeak and Pudge. I'm not your family though.

So yeah, Voodoo Man 1944. Are there any trigger warnings for this movie?

Not this time. This is a pretty squeaky, clean film as far as kind of our usual content warnings go. I mean, the worst stuff that happens here is, we do have a lot of women just being sort of menaced and creeped on by the men in this film, but that's not something we're going to be going into great detail, nor is it real gratuitous in the film itself.

Yes, yeah. And you could watch this one with your grandma. She might fall asleep, but you could watch it with her.

Please don't, but yes, you could. This is normally where we turn things over to Brad to tell us what was going on behind the scenes for this one.

Voodoo Man was released on February 21st, 1944. The classic movies from this year were Double Indemnity, Laura, Meet Me in St. Louis, and Going My Way. There are quite a few horror films as well, such as Cry of the Werewolf, House of Frankenstein, The Curse of the Cat People, and The Mummy's Ghost. Voodoo Man is another monogram film, which means it's very low budget. It was directed by William Bodine, who made a career in B-films. He's most famous for two films, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter, and Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, both from 1966.

Those sound amazing, and I'm sad they're not zombie movies.

I haven't seen much, many of the horror movies that came out this year, actually. I'm kind of intrigued. You guys?

I have not. Is Curse of the Cat People like a horrible sequel to Cat People?

It is.

Or an amazing sequel, I think, isn't it?

Well, yeah, I don't know. Who knows?

Yeah.

The screenplay is by Robert Charles, and this is one of two films he wrote. He also wrote Return of the Eight Man, also from 1944. Edward JK returns as music director. This is the fourth film we have watched that he's been in the credits for.

He's our boy. I wonder if there were just so few movies in the 40s, like one guy could write, like, he must have just been Monogram's like house guy, you know?

Well, this one he's credited as music director, so that means he was collecting music as opposed to writing. And I think it kind of shows me, listen to this, it's kind of the right mood, but also kind of could be better.

It's like the right mood, but it's hard. The oboe is just not an instrument that film should lean into quite as much as this film does.

Well, considering this is the fourth film he's done that we've seen, I think we might want to add him to our Zombie Hall of Fame.

I think so.

For sure.

The cast has several returning actors from previous Zombie films. Also, founding member of our Zombie Hall of Fame is Bela Lugosi. This is the third film. We saw him in White Zombie and Bowery at Midnight. He plays the villain Dr. Marlowe here. John Carradine plays Toby, Marlowe's henchman. He was the villain in Revenge of the Zombies. And Wanda McKay is back. She was in Bowery at Midnight with Lugosi.

That's right, she's the fiance in this movie as well.

And then the rest of the remaining cast are all character actors. But what's interesting is for eight of the 11 actors, IMDB lists Voodoo Man as one of the films they are best known for.

Huh, so I have a, okay, I want to get into it because there's a lot of things about this movie and I have concerns about my brain at this point. But we'll go through these as we go, as we get into the movie.

Well, one thing, I find this interesting. This movie lacked a protagonist, I felt. This was like a strange kind of a film, an ensemble of a bunch of different roles, none of which quite rose to the level of protagonist. And so I'm very interested by who this poster calls out as the main actors because they don't really reflect the characters who have like lead roles, I guess. Like almost everyone in this film is a supporting actor, I felt.

Yeah, it's interesting also because from a plot standpoint, this feels like the most straightforward movie. Like it is just like boom, boom, boom. It's like an episode of cheap TV. Like it's not confusing at all. It's really straightforward.

Yeah. Well, Brad, did you have any other film goodies for us?

That's it.

Okay, then let me talk about what was going on in the world when this came out in 1944. This is probably one of the last films we'll get to. We've been talking, we've been mentioning World War II in this part of every episode for quite a while now. That will soon be coming to an end because in 44, World War II still had a year to go, but this was the year Germany fell. And I don't know that this is, this film did not compare to some recent ones we've watched. This film did not feel especially tied into like the zeitgeist. Please correct me if you noticed something in there. I mean, there was a lot of kind of scientific and technological advances going on at this time. And I thought that might show up in this film more than it did. I guess there are some interesting technologies used by the bad guy, which we'll get to. That might have seemed exotic at the time. But other than that, I don't know, John, did you have, John or Brad, did you have anything historically that felt relevant to this?

No. And also, they don't really locate this film, right? There's no, I mean, it's clearly Southern California, but they don't like say Louisiana or Haiti or Jamaica, like they don't say anything. So that sort of makes it a little weird in that sense.

Why don't we go ahead and start, John, because I want to talk about the location bit too, because that was, I thought, an interesting choice to not tell us where this took place. Like you said, it's clearly in Southern California. I didn't know if it was supposed to be in Southern California or not.

Yeah, I think it's just supposed to be out in the middle of nowhere. So let me just give, I'm going to give a quick plot summary, and then we'll start going through the movie. So in sort of an unnamed rural area, Dr. Marlowe, played by Lugosi, is performing magic rituals to bring life back into his wife, who apparently died 22 years earlier. He has a fellow magician who also runs a gas station named Nicholas, and Nicholas lures single women to Dr. Marlowe's lair so he can perform his experiments on them, which we'll get to. By happenstance, our kind of hero, Ralph, who is a screenwriter, is on vacation. He stops at the same gas station and runs into his fiancee, Betty's cousin, Sally. Sally gets abducted, and then the movie is really just about Ralph. Stella. Okay. We're going to talk about that. Stella. So he's marrying a woman named Betty. He runs into Betty's cousin, who's going to be the maid of honor, Stella. Stella gets abducted, and the rest of the movie is really Ralph trying to save Stella and later his fiancee, Betty gets abducted to be part of Dr. Marlowe's plot. And that's kind of the whole movie. There's no B plot. There's not really anything else going on. Did I miss anything? Like that's pretty much it, right?

No, this is a very simple movie. I mean, in fact, to the extent that I know we'll find plenty to talk about, but there's not a lot of meat in this one, I don't think.

No, I don't think so. And yeah, let's just, I mean, you want to just get into it. So the first thing that happens is a girl drives up to this gas station. There's two people in the gas station, one sort of upper class man wearing a sweater vest and a tie, and one sort of yokel wearing some overalls. Anyway, the older man says, I'll get it, and he gives this woman directions, and he tells her like, look, there may be road construction, so if there's a detour, just follow the detour, and she leaves. And then he goes back into the gas station, sends the assistant off, and uses a secret high-tech telephone to call somebody and tell them there's a woman on the way. What struck you about this scene right out of the gate?

A couple of things. First, I always make a note of the music that opens these movies, and this one had kind of, I mean, I don't want to say comical, but like harp and trumpet, harps and trumpets in a way. Like, I still don't think, even though it sounds like we do have music directors thinking consciously about this, I don't think they have figured out how to use music to like really establish the tone in the way that we expect from modern soundtracks. So I don't know. I suspect it'll be a while before that starts to really come about. But, and I just want to note, this is the 40s, and I think it's supposed to take place in the 40s. And so this gas station is one where you have to like honk and an attendant comes out and fills up your gas for you and stuff.

So she goes down the road, and then what we see is a bush seemingly magically moved to the side. Two men, two sort of loping weird men, one of whom is John Carradine, take out a detour sign and they're basically setting a trap for this woman. She follows the detour. Then somebody, we don't see them, but we assume we can see it's Bela Lugosi from the back, uses some sort of device to make her car stall, and then these two loping weirdos abduct her, and then the scene's over, and then we cut to a newspaper headline about all these girls that have gone missing.

The camera hangs on this little newspaper clipping for what seems like about 20 minutes.

Yeah, it's eternal.

They want to make sure you read every word of this. So John, I thought this is a pretty good opening, to be honest.

You know, like I've said, I like a movie that just gets right to it, right?

It just has more excitement in its opening three minutes than I think most of the films we've seen to date.

Absolutely. All right, so then we cut to the banner Motion Picture Company, and two people talking, a man is saying that he's going on vacation because he's going to get married. They talk about the news article we've just read. So the man here who's going on vacation.

John, the news article lets us know that this latest objection is one in a string of women going missing along this stretch of road, basically.

Yeah, absolutely.

This one being the third one, correct?

No, this is the fourth.

This is the fourth? Okay. So we go to the banner Motion Picture Company, and there's just two men talking. The younger one is going on vacation. The boss is like, hey, I've got a picture for you to write, because he's a screenwriter, though. He uses the term scenario writer. Anyway, he says, I can't do it. I got to go get married. I'll be back in two weeks. Off he goes.

The scenario he wants him to write a movie about is the disappearances.

Exactly. So he goes. Now, I have a bit here. Well, not a bit, but I have a question for you guys here. So Ralph goes and he stops at the same gas station. He asks for gas. There's a whole thing that the less smart guy tries to upsell him. He ends up leaving without getting his gas.

This is the longest gas station, Philipsine, you've ever seen in your life.

Like I often complain about modern salespeople. Like it's nothing but up sales. Don't go to the cheap oil change place because they'll talk you into $600 of fluid changes. I thought that was new. No, it's from the 1940s. It's this guy who wants to change the wiper blades, check the water, it never ends. He just talks and talks.

So there's a plot reason for this, I guess. But this movie here and in a lot of other scenes, just maybe reflect on something we've observed before. Movies of this era really let the camera just roll through the entirety of a scene. Hang out, like modern movies. Once you have the gist of what's going on, modern movies feel very comfortable just moving on. So like a modern movie would have just a very short clip of someone pulling into a gas station. And once the audience understands what's going on, the movie would just go on. But this one just, it just sits there until the scene is complete. And it does this, this movie will do this in a number of other occasions where like any modern movie would have cut away like 30 seconds earlier.

But what happens is immediately after he leaves, another woman comes through. Her name is Stella. And I actually want to talk about this at a meta level for a second. In IMDB, it lists her character as Sally. I clearly heard it as Stella.

I heard it as Stella.

Okay, so I just want to, I'm having a problem, and here's the problem. We're now at the point where we're watching movies, where we can correct IMDB, and I went to the Wikipedia page to read the summary. I'm like, that summary is not right. Like, do I need to be, like, we're the nerds who could now become the people who edit Wikipedia to make sure it's correct, Andy. And I'm really troubled by this development. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Well, I don't think you need to correct because in the credits of the film, she's listed as Sally. So, visually, when you see the credits, it says Sally, but in the body of the film, they call her Stella.

Yeah, but now I feel like I need to put that in Wikipedia. Do you see what I'm saying?

You know what else? I couldn't find online the name of Ralph. I couldn't find him, like, in cast listings for this movie. Like, so I think there's a weird, like, I think we're just in, like, I think the Internet just is kind of very patchily relating the facts of some of these old, obscure movies.

Yeah. I noticed this in the last one where there was a really bad plot summary too. I'm like, I could, I should become an editor and edit this. And I'm like, no, no, that's not what I want. That's not what I want to be.

Well, anyway, let's turn our legion of listeners loose on Wikipedia and IMDB. Get them, get them fixed up. Come on.

Yeah. So, but after Sally leaves, she gets the same directions from Nicholas. She gets the same spiel about the detour. And then we hear Nicholas go to the secret high tech phone and make a call. And here's what he says.

Doctor, another young girl just left here alone. Very suitable. Yes, it'll be right over.

Yeah. So, so clearly something is going on here.

I realize that this movie is, you know, only showing us the drivers along this road that are relevant to the plot. But the sense you get is that there is no stretch of road that has more single women driving along it than this one. Like literally, no one else takes this road, as far as I can tell.

And you know what? This bit with the gas station and the like warning people and luring them away, there's a movie this reminds me of. Are you, do you know what movie I'm thinking of? It's an early Wes Craven movie. The Hills Have Eyes.

I've never seen it.

There was a remake too, and both of the movies is a part of the plot where like innocent families are redirected by the guy at the gas station into the clutches of the horrible, crazy people. I don't think that's related in any way other than it's a similar schtick, but I was just reminded of that.

Well, there's plenty of horror movies, the like creepy locals that the teenagers meet as they drive into the back country. I mean, are we seeing a prototype of that trope?

I feel like it, though with Nicholas in particular, he sounds like he's like from Massachusetts or something or England. Like he seems a little highbrow to be hanging out at the gas station in rural Texas or wherever this is. But yes, I think so.

But their plans are kind of getting messed up here because they don't know that Ralph is also driving along the stretch of road.

So Ralph is ahead. He runs out of gas. Sally comes upon him. They have a charming chat about how Sally... Stella comes upon. Sorry, let me take it.

Listeners, Sally and Stella will be used interchangeably. Just pick the one you like.

No, it's Stella. Her name is Stella. So Ralph runs out of gas and Stella comes upon him and picks him up and she says, Yeah, I'm going to my cousin's wedding. She's marrying some Hollywood sap. Turns out Ralph is the Hollywood sap, so they have like a little joke about that. There's a sort of convoluted thing where... So they go to the detour again, and instead of a single woman though, now it's a woman and a man. So they have to get Ralph out of there so they can abduct Stella. It's a whole thing. I don't really feel the need to go to the details here, but long story short, Stella gets abducted and taken underground into the lair, which we now see a little more of, and then Ralph comes back and he's like, where are you? What happened? And I think he ends up walking forward to another gas station.

He does. It might be worth mentioning. So the way they got Stella away from Ralph is Ralph sees a house nearby.

Yes.

And so he goes up to ask for help at the house. He's turned away at the door, and when he comes back, they've grabbed Stella and hidden the car. They never do. I don't think they ever tell us what they've been doing with these cars, but I kind of got to wondering that.

Maybe Dr. Marlowe has this. Maybe this is how he's buying all this high-tech gear as he's selling these cars. Can we stop here and talk about the two henchmen? Yes. It's Toby and Gregor. Toby is played by John Carradine, who the last time we saw him was a mad doctor, evil Nazi mad doctor in Revenge of the Zombies. And here he plays like a dim-witted sort of Igor assistant figure.

Yeah.

It's very strange. What do you make of these two? I thought they were zombies, but I don't think they are.

No, I don't think they're zombies. Yeah, I don't know either. I think we were supposed to find them kind of funny. I mean, they weren't funny, but I think there's an element that the fact that he's a dim-witted doofus is just inherently supposed to be funny, I guess.

Yeah, I think so. There's a couple of comic relief bits in this movie where we just run into characters who are just dumb, and that's supposed to be funny. Later, there's a sheriff who's clueless, and I don't know about you, I just found those scenes to be completely tedious.

Yeah, I agree. I did. I mean, so there is a little bit with the dim-witted assistant. There is a little bit like he doesn't seem like evil. So he reminded me of the scientist guy in Bowery at Midnight, where there's something a little bit off about him. He seems a little like naïve and not really in on the evil plan so much as like he's just kind of fallen under the sway of a charismatic personality. But in both cases, Bela Lugosi.

But do you want to talk about Bela's security system or the camera where you can watch live feed of the road?

Yeah. So now we watch Bela Lugosi. He has this crazy, he has like just like he did actually in Bowery at Midnight, he has this high-tech video surveillance system from the future. Like what it was. So he has all this high technology to make the car stall and then observe the abductions. Is it what? Tell me about this, Andy. Is this weird? What is happening here?

Oh, this is. So this is like a pet peeve of mine. I really can't whenever a villain is using like a device to spy somewhere else. I mean, my mind just goes like, where has he planted the camera? Like, how is he getting this angle on them? Like, I mean, but yeah, he's got a I guess, you know, TV would have been felt a little exotic, you know, this sort of like remote viewing technology would have felt a little exotic. I was surprised they didn't really explain. So he clearly has some device that kills like motor engines. And that's what he uses to strand his victims so they can be kidnapped. But they don't really explain it. And that felt a little like out of character for these movies. I expected, I would have expected this to be like a big machine with blinking lights or something. I don't know.

He's in his lair and he presses a button and you hear an electronic like zapping noise. And then all the way at the road with no instruments around, no antennas, just shrubs, trees.

Just shrubs.

The car stops.

Yeah.

If it were like the late 90s, it would have been an EMP that he was detonating.

Yes. So Stella is now in Dr. Marlowe's lair. And Dr. Marlowe introduces her to his wife, informing her that his wife, Evelyn, has been dead for the last 22 years. And he thinks that Stella can help Evelyn. We don't really need to go into detail on this part, but the cool part we get into, is it cool? We get into the ritual that Stella is going to participate in. So I don't even know where to start with this. Like in his basement, he has a dungeon.

Start with the robes.

What's that? Let's start with the robes, Andy. Would you please describe the robes that, first of all, Dr. Mahler was wearing, and apparently Sorcerer Supreme Nicholas, who runs the gas station, is also wearing.

So this is where we believe. So it is genuinely interesting to me that Bela Lugosi is not the sorcerer.

Correct.

Nicholas, the gas station owner. And in this scene, he and Bela Lugosi are dressed in these very Spirit Halloween wizard costumes.

They have stars and cups on them. They're from the Middle Ages or something.

Bela Lugosi's Dr. Marlowe's whole gang is here. Nicholas is there dressed up as the high wizard who is going to conduct the ceremony. And the two dopey henchmen are there playing, I guess, voodoo style drums. And I want to pause here and talk about the word voodoo in this movie. So when I started watching this movie, my heart was in a bad place because I'm pretty tired of movies set in the Caribbean on a rich white person's plantation. I will give this movie credit. It does not take place in a racist scenario like that in the Caribbean. But also this movie has no ties to voodoo. In the past movies we've seen, even the worst ones have made some effort to connect what's going on to real voodoo, or at least to something that would have been understood and accepted as real voodoo. Whereas this one, there's no voodoo in this movie except for the title and those drums. Do you have any thoughts about this?

So they do also refer to a god who knows all, and is it Rambana?

Rambunan or something like that. I Googled without success to see if this was real. Did you find anything on it?

I did not. So what this feels like is they're taking basically the components of, they've got a fictionalized component that is supposed to be primitive because the Nicholas does wear like face paint and like a headdress, like it's really bad sort of primitive magic stuff. But at the same time, they're wearing these crazy robes. And but they absolutely do not directly connect this to Voodoo or any other spiritual. They don't even say hypnotism or mesmerism. The only person who says hypnotized is the sheriff later. He uses the word hypnotized, but none of the things that we've sort of come into conventions with either Voodoo, mesmerism, hypnotism, none of those are mentioned here.

Yeah, I wondered while watching this if we are seeing an intentional disconnection of the concept of the zombie from its cultural roots in Haitian Voodoo.

That's an interesting point.

I mean, 30 or 40 years, not even that long, 20 years after this movie, we'll be getting Night of the Living Dead, which does not refer to Voodoo in any way, I don't think. Somewhere along the way, we're going to drop this connection to the zombies like roots in Voodoo. And I just wondered if we're looking at a little step on that path.

I think so because clearly he's doing some ancient mystical primitive ceremony, but again, not directly mentioned. So maybe.

I do want to say there is a couple of things that stood out to me in this scene, John. There was a genuinely creepy shot when you see where he is storing all the women he kidnaps. It's in this like dungeon room and they are, each of the four or so women he's captured are still in there, still alive, but they're like in these little like small chambers in a sort of state of like in a trance state, unresponsive trance state, and I thought that was like legitimately creepy.

That was creepy and they all are wearing the same outfit, which is like a white robe with like a rope, is like a sort of belt kind of thing, and they're all in a trance. They all also get their hair done, apparently, because their hair still looks great. But the exciting part is going to happen. We're trying to, this is where we find out Dr. Marlowe's plot. This is what he's doing, and clearly, it is something very important to him. So he gives these instructions to the sorcerer Supreme Nicholas.

It must succeed this time, Nicholas. It must.

It will. The failures we've had were due to the subjects, they were not the right ones. But remember, Rombuna is all powerful.

Yes. Yes, I know. Dobri, get in the zombies.

Yes, Master.

Marin, bring in my dear wife.

Yes, Doctor.

Yeah. So they're going to do this ritual. Would you like to, this ritual is actually interesting to me, Eddie, would you like to describe what happens here?

Yeah. First, I got to mention, I mean, did you hear that music in the background? Like it's just so different.

Kind of Peter and the Wolf-like.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a menacing scene visually. This chamber is lit in a kind of effective way. There's like a central fire that is casting these really exaggerated shadows, flickering shadows around the room. And so the actual ceremony is that they bring in all the women. I don't totally understand why they're bringing in these women who presumably have not worked in the past, but...

Yeah, there's some part of the ritual, they don't really explain it, but apparently their presence is important.

Yeah, so Marlowe sits down and he sits his new victim, Stella, right across facing his dead wife, Evelyn. And I don't know if we mentioned, but like Evelyn's dead, but she still looks like, you know, in her early twenties. I mean, she looks, she's like perfectly preserved.

And she gets her hair done.

Yes, someone is taking real good care of her. And she looks alive, but just unresponsive in that no willpower or zombie thing that we see in a lot of these movies. And the ritual is while Nicholas the Sorcerer in the background is like chanting in a made up language and gesturing. And there's a cool special effect here I want to talk about in a sec. Marlow is attempting to kind of coax the soul out of Stella and pass it over into Evelyn. And it's just kind of a neat thing. He has some kind of rote sayings that he says over and over, about one of life to death and emotion to emotion.

He's like chanting and guiding the spirit from one body to another. And he's trying to get, we find out Stella's life essence into Evelyn, and it almost works. She wakes up and she's like, I forget, does she say his first name here?

She talks and she expresses confusion about where she is and stuff. But it looks like it has worked, that Marlowe has brought his wife back.

But then she fades away and he's just crestfallen. I want to include this cue, because I want to talk about Bela Lugosi for a second, but let's hear his response to the failure of this experiment. Yeah, this harp music is bizarre.

We failed again.

Doctor, she was not the right subject.

Somewhere there must be a girl with a perfect affinity. I must find her. I must find her.

Okay, so I wanna talk about this for a second for two reasons. So first of all, it advances the plot, right? Like so far what he's been doing is he's been finding, he's been abducting these women trying to transfer their life essence to his dead wife. It doesn't quite work because they don't have the right affinity. So that advances the plot. That's why he's doing this.

He's looking for a girl with the right affinity. As far as I can tell, it's like every girl he encounters, he thinks has the right affinity.

Okay, so help me out, Andy. I could be wrong, but I'm seeing Bela Lugosi. I find this scene strangely compelling. And do I have Stockholm Syndrome? But instead of like guards or terrorists who've kidnapped me, it's bad acting. And so when I see a dramatic scene from Bela Lugosi, I'm like, that's pretty good. I just, I'm getting sort of empathy for him. Like, I think he can act and he keeps getting stuck in these like crud roles, right? It's the villain, like Brad mentioned this in a previous episode where he would write letters to studio heads and be like, look, I can act. I don't need to play these horror movie heavies all the time. And I feel like I'm compelled by him here. Am I crazy?

No, you're not. I had the exact same thought. And there is one other scene at the end of this movie where I had a similar reaction to his overly dramatic performance. It genuinely is moving. And it is hard, like you say, it is hard for me to separate my understanding of his character in this movie from my meta knowledge of Bela Lugosi's career, which I find kind of sad.

Yeah, a little bit of a tragic figure.

Yeah. And so Marlo himself is supposed to be, in this movie, he's really less of the voodoo mastermind that Lugosi played in White Zombie. And he's, well, certainly evil. He is supposed to be a much more tragic character. And I think that that just clicks, like at least to our modern view, understanding in retrospect how Lugosi's career played out. To me, that makes this like a strangely good fit for Lugosi.

Yeah, exactly. And now this is the point where I think it must be Stockholm Syndrome, because I know there's a Riff Tracks of this movie. So I can't imagine what the Riff Tracks guys do with this scene, but I'm not going to look it up because I'm sure it will make me feel like an idiot. But yeah, I found it moving. But our plot moves along.

Oh, can we stop for a second? There's a quick special effect in here. While the ceremony is going on, they're like kind of visually symbolizing the connection they're creating between Stella and Evelyn with these two ropes. And there's a shot where the ropes come together and tie themselves in a knot. And I, do you know how they did that? I do not.

It must be stop motion, but they do it really smoothly.

I watched it a couple times thinking it was stop motion. And it looked too smooth, but like that must have, that had to have been how they did it.

Or maybe they reversed it. It was nodded, and then they pulled it apart off camera.

I wondered that too, but that also doesn't, it didn't feel quite right if you watch it.

Interesting. I'll have to rewatch it. I wasn't sure. I was taken by it because I'm like, that's really smooth.

Yeah. Well, if anyone knows the trick they used, let us know. It probably was the reverse trick if I had to guess, but it looks pretty good, even watching it, but looking for like the, that it might be in reverse.

Right.

Anyway, John, help us keep this plot train rolling along.

Can I add a warning to this scene? Yeah.

Please.

If you watch it on YouTube with closed captions, YouTube really tries to give you the words of the mumbo jumbo that they're chanting. Oh dear.

Oh no.

I wish I had written some of it down, but every now and then things would pop up on screen and go, what? And it's trying, it's the AI trying to figure it out.

I should start watching these. I keep resisting closed captions. I should start. So for the next 10 or 15 minutes. Now, first of all, let's go back and realize this movie is just over an hour, so it's a short movie. We're about halfway. For the next 10, 15 minutes, what happens is, and I don't know that we need to go into a ton of detail here, but Ralph realizes that Stella went missing. He realizes that Betty knows her, so he goes to visit his fiancee, who lives with her mother, and they talk about Stella missing. They try to decide what to do. They go see the sheriff, which is a seat where he's like a dope. And he's like, gosh, I guess girls keep missing around here.

So just to be clear, he's supposed to be the worst sheriff, right?

He's supposed to be the worst sheriff.

Okay. It took me a little bit to realize that, but then I was like, this can't possibly be supposed to be a confident sheriff.

I think this is supposed to be funny. He reminds me of Jed Clampett.

Yeah.

He's got an assistant who's even dumber than he is. So they realized that goes nowhere.

But the sheriff is the one that turns them on to like the- Dr. Marlowe lives in that area.

Yes. Or Dr. Martin, as he originally calls him. But yes.

Oh, right. Right.

Well, this is happening through a very painful series of gaffs.

I actually have in my notes, under the section I wrote, typed painfully unfunny.

Through a series of gaffs that we don't have to get into, Toby releases Stella. Yeah, on accident. He leaves her little door open, like all the zombies are in this room with glass doors, and he leaves her door open. So she wanders off and goes to Betty's house. But before that, she gets, no, she gets picked up by the sheriff.

She wanders out onto the road. She's in a zombie trance.

So yeah, she gets found by the sheriff. This is about 15 minutes in the movie after the ceremony, and the sheriff finds her on the road. So how does that go?

Hey, a sleepwalker. A darn pretty one, too. Looks more like she's hypnotized. We better get her in the car and rush her to a hospital. You suppose she's the girl that the Benz was looking for? Might be. We'll stop at the Benton Home on the way.

So I just like to put all this in context. The sheriffs are currently running four missing person reports, and they do not seem particularly excited or concerned that they found somebody wandering alone in the road.

His actual words, I typed in the quote, when he hears about the fourth kidnapping, he says it is, this is getting monotonous. And then when Ralph asks, what did you do about the other missing girls? He says nothing.

So yes. So anyway, also, so they take her to the Benton house, which by the way is Betty's mother's house. So Betty is the fiance, Ralph is our quote unquote hero. Mrs. Benton is Betty's mother. They go to the house, I don't know what happened, but you open, so the sheriff knocks on the door, you get the shot from the interior looking out, they open the door and there's Zombie Stella standing there. And I just burst out laughing in her robe with her rope thing crossing her chest. I just burst out laughing.

Did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she, did she.

This poor woman, she doesn't get to blink forever.

And the response, as soon as the door opens, Ralph, I think it's Ralph goes, hey, it's Stella. I was like, well, what was sort of?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they can't figure out what to do with her. They prop her up in bed like she's sick. Someone has a good idea to call a doctor. And who should show up when they call the doctor, Andy?

Well, our very own Dr. Marlowe. I had to talk about this. So- Marlo, the way this played out, I don't want to go too much into the dumb details, but so when Marlo discovers that Stella has wandered off, he freaks out and he threatens, what's the name of the dimwitted assistant?

Toby.

Toby. And he says, Toby, you've got to, I'll kill you if you don't find out where Stella got off to. And then like with no explanation at all, then there's this scene where Toby says, Dr. Marlo, I found her. So this dimwitted guy, like what feat of investigation did he do?

Like maybe the sheriff should be the sheriff.

Yeah, the sheriff can't connect the most obvious dots in the universe. And this like this person who's presented as this very dull, witted person tracks Stella back to town and figures out where she's staying. Like who would he even contact to like gain this? I don't know. Anyway.

Yeah.

Sorry. Sorry for the rant. No, that's okay. I got excited about that part because it bugged me.

But there is a relevant zombie bit here. So while Stella is in bed, Betty and Ralph are talking about what's wrong with her, and they have the following conversation. You know, I've seen people act like that in pictures.

What do they call them?

Zombies or something?

No, no, honey. There aren't any such people. That's only a scenario writer's nightmare. I know I wrote one once.

First of all, Ralph sounds like a huge dork. I think that's the first time we've heard Ralph's voice because I didn't want to quote him, but he's like, well, Sally, man, man, man. But I would also like to say that becomes important later. But this is sort of our only mention of zombies in zombie movies.

Other people, several characters in this movie, including Ralph's fiancee, have been just bagging on what a worthless loser Ralph is at this point. So he's a Hollywood sap.

Yeah, I don't feel that bad for him.

Yes.

But the important plot point here is when Dr. Marlowe is there, he's examining Stella and we see it later. He reaches behind her ear. What he does is he takes her earring and he uses it to lure her back to his dungeon.

Okay. I missed that part. And then I just didn't really understand what was going on later.

Yeah. So he takes a personal. Later he takes, or maybe at the same time, he takes one of Betty's gloves and he does the same trick on her later. So we are establishing like if you have a personal object of the person, you can summon them with your mystical zombie powers.

I feel so dumb because this personal object thing has been in other movies all the way back to White Zombie. I was genuinely confused why the camera, like later on, is just lingering on a women's glove. Because I missed where he snatched it. Okay.

Well, they don't bother to explain it at all, but he does it with an earring and with a glove.

This movie is just too smart for me, I think, is the problem.

Yeah. Well, the weird thing is it's really focused. It's like next plot point, next plot point, like there's no deviation. So for the next, say, 20 minutes of this movie, I feel like this is again something we don't have to really get into. But after Stella disappears again, Ralph and Betty go and look for her, and that involves going to Dr. Marlowe's house. So there's one scene in here that I did want to mention, where they go to Dr. Marlowe's house, and the sheriff goes there too, but I'm really more interested in the scene where they go there. And he has a portrait of his wife above the fireplace. And Betty makes a comment and he says, oh, she died 22 years ago. And then she wanders into the roof, she wanders down the stairs.

The wife does.

The wife, Evelyn, the dead one. And they look at her, and there's this painful scene where they're like, they look at her, and then they look at the portrait, and then they look at her, and they look at each other, and they're like, hang on a second, isn't she dead? Like, okay, okay, I got it.

Got it. The thing that amused me about the scene is what's her name. Betty seems to figure it out right away, but Ralph, and she's like mouthing to Ralph, like you can see her mouthing, as if like he's the dullest, dullard in the world. And like, it made me laugh.

There's no hero in this movie. I think we were complaining about like, you know, like a lot of the heroes we've had who are just these square jawed, unemotional, uninteresting dudes. There's nobody like that in this movie. Ralph's kind of an idiot. And during the climax of the movie, he gets knocked out for the whole thing. Like, yeah, so it's just, we were complaining about these square jawed heroes, and now I kind of want one back.

Yeah, so I'll give this movie a little credit and imagine that it is trying to be a little subversive. I suspect it probably isn't, but I'll think it is. So yeah, so they spot the allegedly dead wife, and so they still don't figure it out. Figure it out.

No.

Carry on, John.

And then they go to get a cup of coffee to talk about it. I think this is when Betty's glove gets lifted.

Okay.

And that's when Dr. Marlowe uses the glove to summon Betty. So when Ralph comes back from the bathroom, Betty is gone, she's taken the car, and he goes out to the parking lot, he says to a guy, did you see a woman leave in the car? And he's like, yes, she just drove off. So he gets this guy to help him. Long story short, Dr. Marlowe is going to use Betty. He thinks Betty has the affinity with his dead wife, Evelyn, and he's going to conduct the ceremony. So I'm making this sound more exciting than it is, but it's a race to Dr. Marlowe's house to save Betty before her essence can be put into Evelyn. But it's so boring. Like, is there anything you want to pick out of this, Andy? I just want to, I kind of want to get to the end.

Yeah, no, I think you can skip all the way up to Ralph makes his stumbles upon the like underground layer.

Yes. And we get more shots of John Carradine's Toby playing the bongo. It's not even a bongo drum. He's just playing the drums. The other sort of henchmen is playing the drums. They just sort of stare off and it's ridiculous. But Gregor, the other henchmen, this is his big moment in this movie. Ralph bursts in on the ritual. So the ritual has started, right? Just like before, Betty is now seated across from Evelyn. All the zombie women in white robes are standing there. Stella is one of them now. The ritual starts, Ralph bursts in and Gregor punches him in the face and knocks him out.

Just instantly knocks him out. He just drops.

But then the sheriff comes in and I believe he shoots. And so what happens is Evelyn starts to wake up, but the sheriff shoots Dr. Marlowe.

Yes.

And as he's dying, his wife wakes up from her slumber and looks at him, and we get this exchange.

Richard.

Evelyn, my darling. Where are you? Soon. We will be together.

Am I a total sap? I'm getting a little tingly about this scene.

I feel bad for Bela Lugosi here. If you're a sap, then I'm a sap too, John, because I thought that this worked. I guess listeners tell us if you're laughing out loud at that scene or not. But it felt, it landed. It's one of a handful of things that works in this movie.

And you know what's interesting is he is a sympathetic villain, which I think we see a lot of in modern movies. Like one of the big things about, say, Black Panther was that we would say, Killmonger, he kind of has a point, right? Like maybe he's not wrong. I feel like obviously Dr. Marlow is in the wrong here, but what he wants is just, you just feel bad for him. And I think when you hear about Bela Lugosi's kind of broken life, like he got married five times, but like couldn't keep it together. Like, I don't know, all of this, all of it just sort of landed on me. And I was like, oh, poor Richard. Yeah.

And knowing this is one of his last films, right? Is that right, Brad?

He lingered on for about 10 more years.

Oh, was he? Okay.

Yeah.

This had the feel of like a swan song. Like, It really does.

I think we get him at least twice more, but yeah.

When that happens, I thought it was kind of effective. And like when Marlo dies, Evelyn instantly just like collapses back.

She collapses.

Dead for good this time.

Yes. And all the zombie women wake up.

Do they though? Because I was looking. So Stella are the ones we know wake up. And yes.

Oh, I just assumed it was all of them, but they just show Stella.

I think we're supposed to assume it, but the movie does not provide us evidence. As far as this movie is concerned, those other women are just still lifeless husks.

But and then we get like a denouement. Do I even want to say denouement? We get our we get our screenwriter going back to work.

This and like this came out of nowhere.

This came out of nowhere. So I would like to actually describe the scene. So he goes to work. He turns in a script. The name of the script is Voodoo Man. And his boss says, I'll read it. And then as he's leaving, this is the very end of the movie. Ralph's boss says to him, who do you see in the as the Voodoo Man? And this is what Ralph says.

There you are, boss. There's your horror story.

The Voodoo Man, eh? Is it any good?

Well, I don't know about that, but don't tell me it couldn't happen because it did, didn't it, honey? It certainly did. And another thing, I'm starting my vacation right now. See you in two weeks. Come on, honey.

Bye. Who do you see play the part of the Voodoo Man?

Say, why don't you try to get that actor, Bela Lugosi? It's right up his alley.

What? The end. Was your mind just blown by that, John?

Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool couldn't have done better with a fourth wall breaker.

Kids, next time Deadpool looks at the camera and makes a fourth wall breaking joke, just know that Voodoo Man did it first and best.

That's right. That's right. And it was about Bela Lugosi. I kind of love that. I'm sorry. I don't know the history of fourth wall breaking movies, but I found that delightful in a strange way.

I found that genuinely delightful as well. If anything, it felt like a little too good of a gag for this movie.

Yes, because all other attempts at humor in this movie are so painful.

Well, the rest of the movie is just so... I mean, I don't exactly want to say bland, but it's just by the numbers.

Yeah.

There's very little room for craft or idiosyncrasy. It's just one scene after the other just moving the plot along. And it's just funny that of all the movies we've watched, this is not the one I would guess we would find a fourth wall breaking meta joke.

Yeah, absolutely not. So we should talk about this movie. From a zombie standpoint, like he says there are zombies and the women who participated in the experiment but failed are mindless.

And they're described as zombies.

But they don't do anything. They just obey commands and stand around.

Yeah.

I don't know. Do you want to go through the questions? Is there anything else you want to say before we sort of get to the meat of our discussion?

Fourth wall break, I can answer that it seems to be early, it was mostly in comedies. Laurel and Hardy, the Marx brothers, they always look at the camera for sympathy for what was going on. So to me, it's like this was supposed to be a comedy to this film.

Yeah, but it's not funny at all. I can see the sheriff being funny, but all of the humor bits in here are lifeless.

Interesting. Well, yeah, I do have some more thoughts, but I think they'll come out if we move into our questions. So I'm going to go through our standard list of questions for you, John, and let's use this to unpack, particularly what's going on with the zombies in this movie. So is there a hero party in this movie?

Not really. I mean, Ralph and Betty are trying to solve the mystery and rescue Stella, so I suppose they're the hero party?

Yeah. And how does the party do? Does everyone survive?

Yeah, everyone survives. Assuming the other poor abducted zombie young ladies snap out of it, everybody survives.

So yeah, Stella gets zombified, but this is another movie, like several others we've seen, where the zombie state is something you can be brought back out of.

Yeah. And it's weird that they're described as zombies, but I think the wife is actually the zombie because she's actually dead.

Yes. So I think this is interesting. So one of the questions we ask is what strain of zombie are we dealing with here? So let's skip up to that one. Because first of all, I think this movie is a little inconsistent, but I do think that it's inconsistent in a telling way. We really have two types of being in this movie described as zombies. Both of them are of the willpower-less, are a person who's been stripped of their willpower.

Right.

But one group of them are alive, which is consistent with some of the zombie movies, with zombies are living people stripped of willpower. But Evelyn is dead, which is consistent with other zombie movies we've watched. Do you, what do you make of that?

I feel like we've almost gone backwards. Like, like zombies are just mentioned, but they're almost irrelevant to the plot. Bela Lugosi is turning these women into zombies, but he's not, he doesn't want to make them zombies. What he wants is to steal their essence to bring his wife back to life. And the zombies are almost like a byproduct.

Yeah, in that sense, it reminds me of our last episode, Frozen Dead, which, well, that's coming in the 60s. But that was another movie where the type of zombies we think of when we think zombie is like a failed byproduct of an attempt to get people to come back fully cognizant from the dead.

So, yeah, this is weird because we don't have Voodoo. We don't have, we have a mesmerist and we have a mad scientist. And they're kind of the same person.

But there's no mention of how the zombies are preserved. Like there's none of them. So it doesn't really even take a stand on like, is this a scientific thing or a mystical thing? I guess more mystical. The beginning of this movie teases us with what looks like it's going to be like a mad scientist movie, I thought, with Bela Lugosi's like remote viewing machine. And there's a couple of like mad science shots where you see like mad scientist lab paraphernalia. But then that's just kind of dropped. And then the interaction with the zombies is of the mystical varieties.

Agreed.

This movie either isn't interested or just didn't care to give us much detail about what they're talking about with these zombies.

Exactly.

They do say when Lugosi, when Marlowe is talking to Stella that my understanding of death far exceeds yours. That's why my wife is 22 years dead and still here. But they never explain how or why.

Well, I think, I mean, the thing that struck me most about these zombies is like, zombies still aren't scary. They haven't.

No, they seem like victims.

Yeah. They are still sad victims to be pitied.

Yes.

And I mean, I am really interested in when that changes, but it hasn't changed yet. And this feels along with several of the movies we watched, like they have some sense that they have a good movie monster here somewhere. They have a good successor to like The Vampire or The Werewolf, but they haven't figured out what its hook is and what really makes it terrifying. And so, as a result, it's just not scary.

Yeah, I think the part that's supposed to be scary is seeing someone you know and love become mindless and helpless, which I think is a part of modern zombie movies, but not like, but they're not, but you're right, they're not scary. They're just helpless and part of his evil machinations, you know?

Yeah. So, hey, let's talk about, let's go quickly through your pillars. So, we always ask how a movie stands up against some sort of John's pillars of a zombie. So, let's see. Is there an apocalypse or kind of a threat to the world?

No, not even a little bit. There's a, no, I'm going to say no.

This is like an awful lot of the films we watch. This is another, you know, local, very local problem based entirely around the, like, you know, the weaknesses or failings of a few individuals, right? Right.

And we don't even know the locality.

Right. Is there contagion?

No, you have to get turned into a zombie through a complex ritual.

There's still no sign of the zombie contagion.

Yeah.

Which I would have.

One zombie creating another zombie.

It seems like such an integral part of what makes zombies scary. And maybe that's what they're going to figure out that makes them scary.

Yeah.

Yeah. Let's see. Are there tough moral choices?

So I don't think so. Again, it's a mad scientist making a bad choice. He's choosing to expend all of these people's life essences for his own gains, which are sympathetic in this case, but that hasn't changed, I guess.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. And lastly, does this movie feature love the ones turning against you?

Not really. Stella is sort of alien to Ralph and Betty when she shows up at their house. So that's a little scary. And it has that vibe, but they're not violent. They don't do anything to you.

Agreed. There is the tiniest sliver of this in Marlowe's relationship with Evelyn. There is... I don't think Evelyn was going to turn on Marlowe, but they do wring more pathos out of that relationship than past movies we've seen, I think.

I agree.

Let's see. And so, John, would you and I survive in this zombie world?

I mean, again, I feel like we'd have to get drawn in. Now, I guess Marlowe presents more of a threat than some of the other zombie things, because he could abduct somebody and force you into his world in a way like the people in I Walked with a Zombie can't force you into their world. You know what I mean? Yep. I think so, because nobody else dies.

He might be able to get me with his fake detour thing if I'm not driving by myself and my car runs out of gas or whatever, but I don't know. It requires a lot of setup for that to happen. It's not likely to be the case. And John, do you recommend this movie to our zombie-loving listeners?

It's a tough one. I am compelled by Bela's performance here, but it feels again like a bit of a dud. I don't know. What do you think?

No, that's exactly my feelings. I don't think this is very interesting as a zombie film.

No, I don't think so.

It doesn't really do anything new with the idea of zombies, and it sort of muddles the handful of clear ideas that have emerged from the past zombie movies we've watched.

Yeah. Like we just recently with Revenge of the Zombies, we had the idea that they could be unstoppable if their brain isn't intact. You know, like, it felt like we were getting little clues and little breadcrumbs towards current zombie movies, and this doesn't really offer it.

Yeah, this feels like treading water at most as far as like the evolution of the zombie genre. I do think if you like Bela Lugosi, you know, I think that would be the one reason that would make this worth seeking out. I think because, I don't know, you heard me and John admit to being kind of strangely affected by a couple of his scenes.

Yes, but also if you don't want to be strangely affected, there's a rift tracks.

Yes, they're affected a different way. All right, well, once again, it's time for that part of the episode where John and I nervously turn our gaze over to producer Brad, who is about to unveil the movie we're watching next.

Next, we're going from 1944 to 1945 to see the movie Zombies on Broadway. And here's the poster.

Whoa. It's well Bela Lugosi's in it. Yeah.

So just looking at the poster, does this look like a comedy to you, John? Yes. It does to me too.

There's people making funny faces. So let's describe it. I'll answer that yes. Describe this poster to me, Andy.

Yeah, so the top of the poster, we see what I suppose are zombies, but I would say they look more like ghouls or something, holding an unconscious woman in a yellow dress, and they're emerging from some jungle scene. And then on the left side, we have what I assume are three lead actors. We have their heads. Bela Lugosi is doing kind of an over-the-top, his creepy zombie master stare. And then I imagine that's Wally Brown and Alan Carney below him making kind of goofy faces.

Oh, and did you recognize the name? So it's with Anne Jefferies. Did you see the name after that?

Sheldon Leonard. Hey, he was in Wanga, right?

Yeah, he was in Wanga.

He was the blackface plantation owner.

Love interest of Leely.

Yes, I have to say, I do like the illustration on this poster. Like, I enjoy a good drawing.

I like those zombies up top. It would be interesting if these zombies look different than the ones in all the movies we've seen so far, because there's not been a lot of visual variation in them.

So I'm guessing this is a comedy, though. So we'll see how that goes.

Yep, stay tuned.

All right. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next episode for Zombies on Broadway. 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.