You are listening to Zombie Strains. I'm John, and with me is my co-host Andy and our producer Brad. We're horror movie fans living in what appears to be a zombie world. According to Wikipedia, over 600 zombie films have been released since 1932. And of those 600, 400 of them have come out just this century. Why is that? To answer this question, we're going to follow the shambling zombie path from the beginning, one movie at a time. Welcome to Zombie Strains. In our first two episodes, we watched what we consider our baseline zombie movies. So we each got to pick one. I picked Dawn of the Dead by Zack Snyder from 2004. Andy picked The Girl with All the Gifts from 2016. And what we're trying to do is sort of establish what we think a zombie movie is. So if you haven't had a chance, go back and listen to those two episodes because I think they will be very helpful in understanding some of the stuff we'll be talking about here today. Now though, we're moving into the history of zombie movies and we're going all the way back to the beginning to 1932 with the film White Zombie starring Bela Lugosi. Did you have like flashbacks of Dracula, Andy, watching this movie?

I did indeed, yes.

What year was Dracula?

1931.

1931. So this is literally a year after Bela Lugosi broke onto the Hollywood scene as Dracula, which is interesting.

I don't think I really realized until we watched this that Bela Lugosi was in this. It doesn't seem to have the kind of historic resonance that his Dracula role had.

No, definitely not. It's, I think, I feel like maybe Dracula was a hit and they're like, hey, I got to get Bela in my movie. He's got creepy eyes and he'd be good in a movie about zombies.

And a creepy voice.

And a creepy voice. Thank you, producer Brad.

So yeah, John, before we start discussing White Zombie, I think it's worth talking, providing a little bit of a content advisory guess here. This is obviously a film from the 30s, so you're not going to get the graphic gore or other things that you would expect from a modern zombie movie. However, the elements you do get in this are, I guess, the most positive way to say it would be racially charged content. Yes. But this was filmed in a racist time. And I actually really look forward to discussing the different ways that ideas about race and ethnicity work their way into this film. But the long and the short of it is, this isn't a film that's going to win any racial sensitivity of the year awards. So please be aware of that as we discuss. And I ask for a little bit of grace for me and John. We're both middle-aged white guys. We'll be talking about sensitive things like race and ethnicity. And we ask for a little bit of grace as we do so.

Yeah. Well said, Andy.

Before we get started, Brad, will you walk us through the basic release stats and other info about this film and the era it was released on?

Yes. White Zombie was released on February 24th, 1932. It's directed by Victor Alperin and written by Garnett Weston. The screenplay is based on a book by William Seabrook called The Magic Island. As you mentioned, the only big name star is Bela Lugosi. Other actors in it are Madge Bellamy, Robert Fraser, and John Heron. And interestingly, the coach driver, played by Clarence Muse, I don't know if you noticed in his credit listing, he started acting in 1921 and one of his last acting credits is 1979 The Black Stallion directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Oh my gosh, I did look that up.

So an actor from this 1932 film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Wow, that is amazing.

I couldn't find reliable box office numbers for this. There isn't much out there. It seems to have done well enough that they made money. And the estimated production budget for this was $50,000.

$50,000 whole thousand dollars. So, wow, a couple of things about this movie. And we'll do some cultural context about it. And then we'll do what we normally do, which is talk about the movie and different parts of it. But so it's set in Haiti. Haiti is a country with a rich and complicated history. It's the only country where a slave revolt led to an overthrow of an established government and self-government by the people living on the island. It's really complex. Slavery is a part of this movie, and I think it's important that we mention it. But if you want a good, detailed but not too long history of Haiti, Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast talks about the Haitian Revolution, but he also jumps into the history of Haiti prior to and post-revolution. And that's a good listen if you want to know more. But we're just going to say that much and leave it there. But also, there's voodoo in this movie, Andy, and I think you want to talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, I'm not going to go into too much depth there. But lurking behind this movie is the presence of Haitian voodoo religion.

Right.

And I think before we were recording, John, you were saying that learning about the real world religion of voodoo from watching White Zombie is like learning about Christianity from watching The Exorcist. Right.

Exactly.

But I guess I'll give you a quick summary. So voodoo, I think, would have been perceived by a lot of American and Western viewers as a religion very different from what they had experienced. The voodoo religion, and I should note, that's not actually the term that Haitian practitioners of this religion use for themselves. It is a complicated religion in a similar way that Haiti is a complicated country. It was born out of the interplay between a collection of African religions that came over with enslaved African people, and the Catholic and French Christianity that they encountered once they were enslaved under French colonial rule. It's a religion that doesn't have a lot of the features that we associate, that we often think of when we think Western religion. It doesn't have a central authority figure, like a Pope or a Jesus who dictates what to believe or what to do. It doesn't have a received text or a canon like the Quran or the Bible. But at the end of the day, it's concerned with asking the same questions that most religions ask. What's our relationship to the divine? How does our interaction with the divine affect our lives? How do we get the things we need like health and safety and prosperity? That's lurking in the background of this film, but more specifically in this film, obviously, we're going to encounter the Haitian Voodoo zombies. The Voodoo zombie is kind of like a bogeyman in the way that like Salem witches are to Christianity or something like that, in the sense that it reflects, I think it's interesting to ask what fears and what makes it scary. In Haitian Voodoo, a zombie or the idea of a zombie was basically just of a person that had been separated from their soul, a soulless husk. This soulless husk was controlled by the sorcerer who had made them a zombie in the first place, and it was condemned to obey and serve without question, whatever that sorcerer wanted to do. I think it's pretty obvious what cultural fears fed into this idea. If you imagine what would be scary to an enslaved person in French colonial Haiti, it might have been the idea that what if slavery could extend to control not only your body, but your mind and your humanity itself? And what if it didn't end with death? What if it kept on going forever?

I think that's really well said, and I think why that's important is, is though I think we both agree that this film is just taking the sensational and the sort of most horrific aspects, right, of both the zombie and the voodoo doll, it is the basis for the next, however many hundreds of movies we're going to watch, right? Like I think that idea that you just articulated so well is like a huge part of all of this.

Yeah. And I think as we discussed White Zombie, we're going to see White Zombie is a kind of features a very sensationalized version of voodoo and zombies. But the zombies it portrays are rooted in this Haitian cultural context, right?

Yes.

But by the time we're watching Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead, there is little or no trace of that cultural connection.

But some of the horrific themes persist, right?

Yeah.

Mindlessness, loss of agency.

Well, so one of the questions I had while watching this is, we're watching a zombie movie from the 30s. Yeah. Is this even the same type of thing that we see in a zombie movie in the 2000s? Are we talking about it has evolved so much? I look forward to finding that out.

Yeah. No, that is great. Well, let's get started. The first question I have, and I maybe will throw this out to producer Brad, who is the only person here with a degree in film, by the way. When I looked at this movie, it's 1932. When I look at the makeup and stark lighting, it felt to me almost older than that. I don't watch a lot of movies from 1932, and when I do, or from the 40s, and when I do, there are things like Citizen Kane and The Third Man, which are very polished and highly produced. This movie is not that.

Yeah, it seemed to have a lot of remnants of silent films in terms of big static sets and expressive acting without a lot of dialogue at times.

Yes, there's a lot of scenes in this movie where people are very methodically, like you would never do this in a movie today, like somebody is expecting a guest and he methodically sets out some things and gets himself ready, and there's no dialogue, but he is showing what he's doing to get ready. It's a little strange in that way. And also the makeup, this very, so let's start, it starts when we're in a carriage. There's a carriage being driven through the forest, and in it is a young couple, and this is the thing that struck me right away, is that their makeup is so stark, it looks like they're wearing white pancake makeup with bright red lips, and that's why it seems so sort of old timey to me in a way.

Yeah, the colors are rather striking in this film, I mean, for a black and white film. I mean, the white people are very white, especially Madeleine, the woman, and she's also often wearing white gowns in most of the scenes in this movie.

And in fact, her husband, her fiance at this time, is wearing a white suit.

Yeah, and I want to say also about the experience of watching this movie in the modern time. I mean, so I watched it online on a streaming service, and the quality of the film, the quality is low, as in it's grainy, the audio is bad, like the picture is fuzzy, and I don't know what it would have been like to watch this film when it first came out, would it have been crisper, would the sound have been clearer? But among the things that you get from watching it through this poor quality filter of time, is that things like the skin color and ethnicity become harder to suss out, I think? Yes. I think that had an interesting effect on my viewing of this film, but carry on.

Yeah, absolutely. No. Actually, the one thing I want to say about that is, I think we both watched it streaming on Tubi. This is not sponsored by Tubi, yet. Tubi, call us, we're here for you. But what was so jarring to me is, Tubi has commercials, and this is a short movie, it's just over an hour. But these full-color, bright, normal, modern commercials just jumped up in the middle of this very old movie. It was strange.

Were you getting Dunkin Donuts with brightly colored donuts? Because that's what I got.

Yeah.

It was weird.

So it starts in the middle of, you hear a group of people chanting and you see like some kind of ritual and there's over the credits or under the credits, there is some sort of, we presume, voodoo ritual going on. And into that ritual, once the credit ends, comes a carriage carrying our main two characters, Neil and Madeline, and their carriage driver. And they sort of drive into this crowd which parts for them. And Neil and Madeline are like, what is going on here? Why are these people, what are they doing in the middle of the road? And their driver, what is the driver's name here? Let me see.

I don't know that he has a name.

Okay, so their driver tells them, yeah, they bury people in the middle of the road to keep people from stealing corpses.

And it's explained on screen that they do this because roads are highly trafficked, making it difficult for thieves to steal bodies.

Yeah, exactly. So as that is happening, and as the carriage moves on, we suddenly get this overlay of staring, mesmerizing eyes, which are the eyes of Bela Lugosi. And then the carriage stops. And standing there is a man who is Bela Lugosi, and the driver asks for directions to wherever they're going. And down the hill behind the man come some marching, sort of stumbling figures. And the carriage driver sort of panics and jumps back up and takes off like at a breakneck pace. And when they stop, Neil says, why did you do that? You must up our hair. It was alarming for you to drive that fast through the forest. And this is what the driver says.

They are not men, Monsieur. They are dead bodies. Dead? Yes, Monsieur. Zombie, the living dead.

Coughs is taken from their grave.

For me to work, the sugar mill feels at night.

Oh, that's so good. So Andy, here's the first thing I want to ask you. Were you, I thought, and I literally knew nothing about this movie before we watched it, that what we're going to get is Bela Lugosi's character is sort of a hypnotist that was going to hypnotize people. But they go right into the living dead. Like I was a little shocked by that.

Yeah. And I want to talk also about Bela Lugosi's appearance.

Yeah.

So we first meet him, like you said, he's standing by the side of the road and he walks up and kind of leans menacingly into the carriage. Oh, right.

And he steals her scarf.

Yeah. He grabs this Madeline's scarf. And I'm just curious, what's your impression of Bela Lugosi's character here? This is, we're going to learn shortly. You're going to have to help me with the pronunciation of this. His name is Ligand?

I believe so, yes.

Okay. So yeah, what does he look like, John?

He looks like Bela Lugosi. He's tall and pale and he has a widow's peak. He has this weird beard that is like in two parts on his chin, and he has what looked like caterpillars over his eyes. I always often wondered if those are his actual eyebrows.

I actually wondered the exact same thing. But yeah, to me, he looks like the devil, right? So he looks like a very stereotypical picture of like you're a Faustian devil with a weird mustache or goatee, and just a kind of creepy aura about him. And I want to, you know, it is interesting to me that, I mean, we're, what, a minute and a half into the movie. And the Walking Dead have already been mentioned. And our villain has already made an appearance.

Yes.

But I think his appearance suggests to me like his villainy is going to be in the sort of Faustian bargain sort of villainy, because we're going to find out in a little bit, like the person who really gets the horror going is not Bela Lugosi. It's someone who turns to Bela Lugosi's character for help. And I don't know. I wondered while watching if we're seeing an early iteration of people are the real monsters.

That's a great question. So, so yeah, they get to their destination. They also, somebody comes out of the forest towards them and they become very afraid again, but it turns out to be the priest who is going to marry them, a Dr. Brunner. And they go inside the house, the chateau they've come to. It's really a plantation of sorts and run into the butler, who we find out later is just named Silver, which is interesting. But this house is the house of a man, Mr. Beaumont or Charles Beaumont. And he has allowed them, I'm a little unclear on how they ended up here, but essentially Neil and Madeline have come here to get married. They stopped on a cruise ship in Port-au-Prince and have been invited to this man's house to get married. And I think, I think Mr. Beaumont had a previous relationship with Madeline. Is that your understanding?

Beaumont met Madeline on the ship to Haiti and it was love at first sight for him.

Yeah.

Okay.

He is dangling the offer of a job to Neil.

To Neil.

If Neil and Madeline come and get married at his villa. Which is super weird, by the way.

It's very strange. First of all, kudos to everyone in my generation who learned about the city of Port-au-Prince from the love boat.

So yeah, the priest missionary guy, Dr. Bruner, I thought was kind of interesting in their interactions with him at this point. It turns out he's been here for like 30 years. And they're kind of asking him a little bit, aren't they? About some of the local customs. And he's unwilling to dismiss them. He's got a sort of condescending Western attitude towards it, but he's unwilling to dismiss that there's something going on that maybe defies rational scientific thought.

And he also is suspicious of Beaumont, actually. He's like, why did you decide to come here? For reasons he never really explains, he's a little suspicious of Beaumont. Then what happens next is we cut to Beaumont and Silver, his butler, comes in and says, you know, they're here. Would you like to go down and see them? And at first he doesn't, but he reveals, so Beaumont and Silver then have an exchange where Beaumont asks Silver, like, has the other messenger or guest arrived? And Silver says no, and then gives his boss this opinion.

I wish you'd keep away from that man, sir. He'll make trouble for you. You needn't worry about that. I'm not afraid of him. I'm not easily frightened, sir. You should know that. But what you're planning is dangerous.

What we learn is that Beaumont is planning... He has engaged this stranger, we don't know who it is, to help him win the love of Madeline. He's decided he loves her and cannot live without her. And so something is afoot, though he's allowing them to get married in his house.

There's a scene where he comes out to introduce himself to Neil and Madeline, and he's just full on creeping on Madeline.

Yes, exactly, exactly. And so his supposed guest doesn't show up. They have not gotten married, but they go in to... He invites them in to rest, and then we'll do the wedding in a little bit. And he leaves, and he goes to see Bela Lugosi's character in the sugar mill that he owns. And this is probably... Why don't you tell us about their exchange, Andy? This is the... Not their exchange, but when he walks into the mill, this is probably the only part in the movie that I would consider actually frightening. Do you want to sort of describe this to us a little bit?

This is by far, in my opinion, the most effective scene in the entire movie. So Beaumont arrives at... Is it Lugand? I'm bad at pronouncing French names.

Lugosi is also referred to as Murder, so you can just call him Murder.

Okay, so Bela Lugosi's character is Murder Lugand, or whatever, I'll call him Murder here. So Beaumont arrives at Murder's Sugar Mill, and it's worth noting that sugar plantations were the basis of Haiti's slave-based economy and remained a big presence even after slavery ended.

Yeah, and I have a question about the historical accuracy of a French noble. His name's Beaumont, I think he's supposed to be French, despite the fact that he's clearly American, actually owning a plantation at this point in Haiti, but I don't know enough to dismiss it or confirm it. It just seemed a little weird.

Yeah, I think at different points in Haiti's history, they had different rules about whether White or Europeans were allowed to own land or plantations, but I don't think it's impossible that a Westerner might have owned a plantation here. Not that I think that this film is going for great historical accuracy.

No, no, definitely not. So anyway, sorry, I invited you to describe a scene, please.

He gets to the sugar mill and it's this, it's a grim, creepy sequence. So it's late at night and he follows murder into the sugar mill. And you see that it is full despite the hour of the evening. It is full of silent workers. Most or all of them seem to be Haitians, and they are silently working at this mill. They are turning wheels and hauling sugar and other stuff around. And it's profoundly creepy. None of them are reacting anyway to Beaumont's presence. And they seem so oblivious to everything besides the work that they're doing, that even when one of them falls into a kind of, into one of the pieces of machinery, which is presumably killed, they don't react, they don't slow, they don't do anything. I actually thought that guy falling into the blades was, despite not being, I mean, it cuts away, you don't see any gruesomeness, but I thought it was a really creepy scene.

Yeah, and I don't know if it's due to budget, sort of like the issue that noir films used to have, or artistic choice, but the whole thing is shot in very stark, with heavy shadows and silhouettes, and everyone is dark and barefoot, and it's just, I found this to be probably, yeah, the most effective scene in the whole movie.

And Murder actually kind of is showing off his, I guess you would call these slave laborers, we're going to learn in a second, that they're basically zombie laborers that he is controlling. And he actually, he jokes that he doesn't have to worry about these workers demanding pay, or complaining about long hours. And he actually suggests that Beaumont should use this sort of person, a zombie, at his own plantation.

Yes, and they have an exchange about how Beaumont can get Madeline to fall for him instead. And Bela Lugosi says, well, if you'd given me more time, I maybe could have done a love potion, but there's no time now. And Beaumont's like, I must have her. And Murder, Murder Lugosi says, well, there is one thing. And he sort of gives him this vial of liquid and says, you know, one drop of this in a drink or on a flower and she will be yours. And Beaumont realizes that what Murder is proposing is that he turned her into a zombie.

I was a little confused by what was being suggested in this scene. Beaumont's plan is really vague. He seems to think if he can just get Madeline like alone, for he's like, if you could just make Madeline disappear for a month, that would be enough time for her to fall in love with me. That's not going to happen. So I wasn't sure if the plan here was to kill Neil with poison, but as it turns out, I think the plan is to kill Madeline or to render her into a zombie susceptible state.

Yeah, I think that's what this potion is for. And I think that's borne out by what happens when they come back.

There is a neat scene where Murder says that there is still something we can do as he's about to give Beaumont the poison. He says, there's still something we can do. And he says, the cost is going to be heavy. And he leans over. We don't hear it. And he whispers in Beaumont's ear, presumably, what the price is going to be that Beaumont will have to pay. And Beaumont is horrified. And he leaves in a daze. And it's actually a little unclear if he's going to go along with this or if he's too shocked by the high price that will be demanded of him.

Yeah, what I thought was interesting is in my note, I said, you know, murder whispers to him that he will turn this woman into a zombie. But he doesn't actually say that. And at no time is that said. So I made that leap myself.

I interpreted this. I guessed that he was basically telling Beaumont that the price would be Beaumont's own soul or that Beaumont would become a zombie in the end. What did you think?

I think he was suggesting that he turn Madeline into a zombie.

OK, so it's just horror at what the plan is, not horror at the cost so much.

And I think Beaumont reacts so strongly because he's just seen these other zombies, and they're horrifying.

I think Andy is right because later, Beaumont says, I thought that having you as a zombie, that I would still love you, having you just physically here. But without a soul, I can't love you.

Yes, yeah, that's true.

Yeah, we are being set up for the ultimate like monkey's paw thing here. Beaumont's going to get what he wants, but he's going to realize it is not at all what he wanted.

Yes. So we cut to a little 1932 cheesecake, Madeline, and what I think are her undergarments, though they're much larger than normal undergarments.

Yeah, they would be like formal wear if you wore them out today.

This is a good time to point out that White Zombie was released in what is called the pre-code era of Hollywood.

Okay.

The rating system as we know it started in 1968. From 1934 to 1968, Hollywood films used the Hays Code, which required films to follow strict guidelines to receive certification for release. The pre-code era started in the 1920s when Hollywood became concerned about possible censorship. The studios, with their trade organization, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, created a list of guidelines, not requirements, called the Don'ts and Be Carefuls.

Interesting.

White Zombie was released in this looser era just before the strict Hays Code began.

I did wonder as I was watching it, I was like, is this scene supposed to be really risque?

I think it was.

It is not, but it is kind of interesting to think about it that way.

Yeah. It is Madeline getting ready for the wedding, and they've come back and whatever horror has been proposed by murder, Beaumont is not going to go through with it. But the wedding is about to start and she walks down the stairs in her wedding dress, and at the last moment, Silver sets out like a little box with the poison in it, and Beaumont takes a flower from a bouquet and put some of the poison on it, and then puts it in Madeline's bouquet.

Yeah.

Right? She smells it, and then the wedding begins. I don't even think we have a whole wedding scene, do we?

Not really. The biggest part of the scene is that, as Beaumont is giving her that flower, he is desperately trying to talk her, as she's walking into the wedding, he's trying to talk her-

Into her own wedding.

Talk her out of marrying Neil and into running away with him. I mean, he just straight up pitches it, like, come with me, we can be in Port-au-Prince in 30 minutes, he says. What does he think is going to happen here? But yeah.

Yes.

So then we get a very abbreviated wedding scene, yes.

We get an abbreviated wedding scene. So now we realize that the poison is only part of the plot. So as she takes the flower, we cut to murder Bela Lugosi outside of the house, and there's two candle-lit lanterns, and he puts one of them out and takes one. And what he does is he carves, he takes the scarf that he stole earlier, and in the presence of a really not very good animatronic vulture, carves...

We have to talk about the vulture screams later. Yeah, so go ahead.

The vulture screams. I'm like, what is that supposed to be? But he creates a voodoo doll out of one candle while they're eating dinner post-wedding.

And it keeps cutting from him carving this little voodoo doll in the shape of Madeleine. It keeps interspersing that with cuts back to the wedding. I thought this was genuinely creepy.

Yes. And then he wraps the scarf. And by the way, again, in a modern film, they would be explaining, somebody would be expositioning like, if somebody gets one of your personal items and incorporates it with a voodoo doll, then you're under their will. And like, none of that is explained. I think I am reading all that into it because that's what I've learned about these sort of things from all the Twilight Zones.

I think that's the implication. I think it's suggested that murder, the film made a big deal of him stealing Madeline's scarf or whatever earlier, and here he's using it as part of his ritual.

Yeah, so he then puts that voodoo doll in the other candle and starts tormenting her. But just before that happens, they're having dinner and Neil says to his new wife, what do you see in the glass? They're having a toast and he says, what do you see?

What do you see in the glass?

I see happiness, I see love, far more than you deserve.

Is that all?

No, I see... I see death.

So this is great. This is special effects, cutting edge. She sees Bela Lugosi's staring eyes, looking at her out through the glass. And then, tell me, we both laughed when we saw this, the music was so much.

The music is a lot throughout this whole movie. I don't know when, might as well talk about it now, but I could not discern much of a relationship between what the music was saying and what was happening on the screen at any time.

Yes, yeah, exactly.

But you do get some very dramatic music swells at points like this.

I think the music was not written for the movie.

No.

So I think they grabbed a library and inserted things that fit as best as it could, which is why it's a little disconnected at times.

Yeah, there's some things in this movie that are pre, what we think of. There's nobody credited with the movie, and in fact, I think the writer's credit doesn't say screenplay. I think it says dialogue and something. It's a different, it just feels like a different time. But in any case, as soon as she says that Neil comes over and she comically collapses in his arms and dies, as far as Neil can tell.

I thought she just swooned or something. This is a kind of a silly looking sequence, but yeah.

She flops backwards in this hilarious way.

And he seems to realize that she's dead though, like as he's holding her in his arms. Right? It's hard to say.

And this all comes about because of the spell that Murder, Bela Lugosi's character was casting. And I think the next thing we see is Neil going out and getting drunk in despair. Is there something I'm missing there?

Not really. So this is sort of the close of the film's first act, I think.

Yes.

And it ends with a picture of a burial ceremony for Madeline. Right? That's right. It confirms, okay, she didn't just faint as I thought she had. But she appears to have full on died. Right?

Yep.

And could we pause here for a minute, John, to ask a couple of kind of broader questions about this movie so far?

Yeah, please.

Here's some things I thought that were interesting, that were starting to dawn on me when we reached this point in the movie. First of all, this is a movie about Western White people.

Yeah.

Right? Going into this movie, I really didn't know what to expect. I had very grim expectations for how the portrayal of the Native Haitians would be and the portrayal of their religion. What I did not expect was this movie was going to be about basically these White people scheming against each other. It just made me, as I thought about it, I don't know what you think about that, but I think if you look at the history of Haiti, the history of Haiti itself is a history of Western White imperialist powers playing out their dramas and their games using Haiti as maybe a backdrop or a tool from time to time. But in a way that sort of centers what they're doing, even though they're on the island of Haiti, surrounded by millions of Haitian people that don't really play anything more than a side role in what's happening to them. What do you think about all that?

There's a couple of very small roles. There's the carriage driver at the beginning, and then later they do seek out a Haitian wise man, who by the way is like, who is not in any way like what you consider like a witch doctor sort of person. But other than that, it's all white.

I have notes we're going to have to talk about that guy when we get to him, because I have a lot to say about that guy.

But yeah, it's almost no, it is all this drama, this story about this couple and the jealous man. I'll say at this point, I don't even know why murder is here. I think he tells us a little bit later, maybe we'll get to that. But yeah, I don't know. You're right. It's this drama of all these people played out against a backdrop that we barely mentioned.

I did read one. I read a couple of pieces about White Zombie getting ready for this discussion. At least some film critics believe that Bela Lugosi's character Murder is supposed to be of maybe mixed ethnicity.

Like he might be a Creole.

Yeah. I don't know. I mean, the film doesn't say that. I would say from watching the film, that's not the conclusion I would draw. But that would complicate in an interesting way, what's going on here.

Yeah. It's interesting. And I, because there is, well, this is us getting into the history, but the history of the Haitian Revolution, everything is not clean. Some Creoles did own slaves and did not want there to be a result. Like it's complicated. So yeah, I don't know. But that's a good question.

But I don't want us to get too much in the cloud. So let's get back. So we've just seen Madeleine Buried and our brave leading man is about to start off act two by.

Getting drunk. Wasted in a bar. Now I will say I also enjoyed this scene quite a bit. It feels like the 1932 version of special effects, cause he's alone in a room at a table drinking, but you see these silhouettes. You never see any other actual people in the bar, but you see these silhouettes in there dancing and talking and laughing and it's all sort of driving him mad and he sees a vision of Madeline on the table, like a ghostly vision of her.

Yeah, I really liked this scene. He's basically having a breakdown in the middle of a crowded restaurant or something or a crowded bar. And all around him, you see the silhouettes of people having a great time. They're dancing, they're having energetic talks, but he himself, unnoticed and unassisted by anyone, is just is having a physical breakdown.

And the scene ends with him with another ghostly protection of Madeline sort of on the silhouette of another patron. And he sort of stumbles to her and realizes that she's not really there and is sort of just forlorn and doesn't know what to do with himself. But in the meantime, Bela Lugosi and Beaumont are heading back to Madeline's tomb because Murder and Beaumont are going to basically raise Madeline and she will become Beaumont's creature. And I also like this scene quite a bit because what you have is the outside of the tomb, Murder, Beaumont and a bunch of Murder zombies. And Murder gives this speech about how he became the powerful sorcerer that he is and how he sort of turned all of these people who had crossed him or been his enemies into his servants. So this is a great speech right outside of the crypt.

I took them, just as we will take this one. But what if they regained their souls? They will tear me to pieces. And that, my friend, shall never be.

So I like this speech, and it's sort of the only sort of motivation that that murder has in this, right? That he is ambitious and wants to control everybody else who wronged him.

Yeah, he's a spiteful person. He's taken revenge on everyone who crossed him. I really like that. There's one of the people is his old master, and there's like a rival magician, and then some looks like some officials that maybe were hassling him.

Yes.

I do think it's interesting that this conversation provides like the seeds of hope that the zombie condition might not be irreversible, because he does does reference the possibility, like if they ever were to quote regain their souls, right? They would. Right. And so we don't know what process would be required to regain a soul. But we're already thinking like, okay, there might be hope for Madeline, or at least I was.

Yeah, exactly. And so they take out Madeline's body. But as they're leaving, Neil comes running up and they have to run away from him. And he looks in the tomb and they escape. And then I think we cut to Neil going to Dr. Bruner's office.

Yes. I like, I don't know how intentional it was, but there's a kind of neat shot where Neil kind of comes across the open grave. And it really feels to be like a sort of parody of the Easter Resurrection scene, where he's standing in front of this open tomb. But it's bad news, not good news.

There's also a wonderful shot in here where it is the reverse, like the footman of Beaumont had buried her in this tomb, and now these zombies are carrying her out. They play a scene in reverse, which I actually think is pretty good.

But then afterwards, he meets up with Dr. Bruner and they have sort of the what's going on and what are we going to do about it talk.

Yeah, exactly. And Bruner is dismissive of the fact that zombies may actually be dead, right? He sort of explains that, you know, they're not really dead, they're just in a trance or they've been put in a state where they appear to be dead, and that it's not actually the living dead, at least according to Dr. Bruner.

It's worth noting that some of sort of the legends around Haitian or Voodoo zombies, there are people throughout history that have claimed to have been zombies, through not by being killed and becoming undead, but by being drugged into a state of sort of total submissiveness or mindlessness. So in this movie, I don't think that connection between zombies and corpses is 100%.

No, there's some ambiguity here, and this has me curious because I think that occasionally, other people have approached zombies with this theme in the future. I'm thinking mostly of The Serpent and the Rainbow, which I think is a Wes Craven movie starring Bill Pullman, which is more mystical and about drugs, and I think the tagline for that movie was Don't Bury Me, I'm Not Dead Yet. But I think that we will run into some movies in the future that are more about, not about corpses rising, but more about this uncertainty of the state, if that makes sense, whether you're alive or dead.

There's a neat little historical moment. Bruner and Neil, while they're talking about zombies, Bruner pulls out some documents of Haitian law, which have some laws that seem to have made for the purpose of preventing people from stealing corpses and turning them into zombies. Those laws are written in French, and this is actually a weird little historically accurate thing until very recently, like the last 50 years, Haitian laws were all in French, and that often, for much of Haiti's history, it meant that its people could not read them.

That is really interesting. And so it sort of sets up, Bruner is sort of the wise expert here.

He's kind of like a Van Helsing-ish type person, right?

He does have that feel to him. So I made a note here, there's some weird mask declarations in the doctor's office. I think this is their idea of decorating it like native decorations, but it doesn't quite work.

Yeah, I think they're going for that kind of orientalist, exotic, like, yeah, it's a little gross.

So now the rest of the movie sort of proceeds on these two tracks, right? Neil and Bruner are going to try to find Madeline, right? And bring her back. Neil has this hope that maybe she's not really dead, as explained by Bruner. And in the meantime, we see the first shot of Beaumont in this castle, which I assume is Murderer's Castle. I don't think it's Beaumont's castle. I was actually a little fuzzy on where they were exactly.

I think this is Murderer's Castle. It's not explained why he has a castle in addition to the plantation where we saw him earlier. But it's like a very gothic, creepy looking, ruined castle.

Yeah, exactly.

It's on a cliff side. You know, it's very hammer horror.

It looks like another castle that Bela Lugosi had recently been in. Yes. And but Beaumont is trying to engage with Madeline. She's there playing the piano. And he is trying to talk to her and tell her how much he loves her. But he's had this realization that this is not what he wanted. He got a Madeline who is not responsive, who can't return his love. And he sort of realized, he tells us all that he's made a horrible mistake. I actually love this bit of Madeline playing the piano masterfully, where she just sort of stares off into the distance.

She's not looking down at her hands or the keys.

Or the music.

Yeah. But she's playing a technically masterful piece on the piano, which is so interesting to me, like that in this idea of the zombie, they're not stupid or brainless. It's just that they lack any sort of volition or will. Here's a zombie that is playing a complicated piano piece perfectly, right?

Yeah. Now it becomes clear, and as he's expressing his regret, it becomes clear that murder has his own plans. Right? And he's trying to also poison Beaumont. He tries to trick Beaumont into a toast, where he will also be poisoned and become a zombie. And Silver stops him dramatically. There's a big quote unquote fight scene. I think he smacks it out of his hand with a serving tray.

He tries to, yes.

Yes. However, butt murder summons his own zombies.

This scene made me laugh out loud. The murder is handing. So they have this exchange where Beaumont's expressing his regrets. And out of nowhere, murder is like, why don't you have a glass of wine?

Yeah, let's celebrate.

Yeah. He picks up a glass of wine to give Beaumont. In the weirdest way you've ever seen anyone pick up a glass of wine, he clutches it from the top.

From the top.

He basically did everything but say out loud, I'm putting something in your drink.

Can we stop and talk about Bela Lugosi really quick? Because I think he's a fascinating character. I don't want to talk about his whole film history, but I think there is this idea in the 1930s that he is actually, I believe he's Hungarian, he is actually considered very handsome and very exuding a animal magnetism that I never quite got, but there's something about him. He's not, I don't think supposed to be purely evil and ugly. I think he's supposed to be devilishly handsome like the devil or Dracula, and that's part of his charm.

I think so. A tremendous amount of this movie's screen time is closeups of Bela Lugosi staring at the camera.

Yes, he's making his eyes really wide and bringing his eyebrows close together and staring at the audience, which I think itself is supposed to be scary, though it's not scary to me in this day and age.

It's really theatrical in a stage play sense. I don't really think it works in film, but I could see this really exaggerated facial expression on the stairs, working really well on a stage.

Right. Poor Silver gets thrown in the river. Beaumont gets turned into a half zombie. We found out more about this later, but while that's happening, Neil and Brunner are trying to find Neil's friend Pierre, who's going to help them find the place that they need to go to. They have this interesting exchange where Neil goes off to find a place to camp or something, and Brunner is like, well, he's gone, you can be straight with me. Tell me about this mountain. You wanted to talk a little bit about Pierre when they found him. What do you think about this scene?

Well, and again, I guess this is trigger warning maybe for some racially sensitive stuff here. Is Pierre is a White actor in Blackface?

I believe he is. Okay. He is counseling. When they find him, he's counseling a farmer. He's giving the farmer a charm for his cow.

Yeah, they come across him and he's performing what is maybe presented as like sort of his regular day job, like helping people resolve their Monday and everyday issues.

Yeah, exactly.

And yeah, I looked this guy up. It's a British actor named Dan Crimmins. I was flabbergasted that they already have a talented Black actor at the beginning of this movie. Like, why would you for the role of Haitian voodoo priest, why would you put a White guy in Blackface? It's just, it was really off-putting.

It's really off-putting and I'm sure we're not done with that sort of thing.

Yeah.

You know, this happens through the 60s, right? We're right up to Ricardo Montalban playing a Japanese man. But yeah, it's weird and jarring and deeply unfortunate. But Pierre does have a line about where they need to go.

My people are afraid of the mountain. Why? Because it is called the Land of the Living Dead.

Well, have you ever been there?

I am the only man that ever came from there alive. There is an evil spirit man that is called Murder.

So that's where we figure out we're going to the right place. But I think the piece of information we get from Pierre is, you can get unzombified, and he knows because it happened to him.

Yes. Right around this time, Neil gets sick or something? I thought this was such a strange storytelling thing to introduce.

Yes. So he ends up lying down on a beach where Brunner goes somewhere to do something. I'm not sure.

Brunner heads into the castle, I think, and Neil's just left out on the beach being sick or something.

Yes. He has a vision of Madeline. Again, top-notch special effects. There's a split-screen effect here. I'm curious, and this is not a film studies, like deep film history podcast, but some of the choices they make about lighting and editing, it feels like a bunch of people who haven't quite figured out how movies work yet. They're still discovering how to make a good movie, which I think is interesting. So, for example, the split-screen here doesn't really work, whereas the weird choices in the bar with the silhouettes does work. It's interesting to see what is working for them and what doesn't.

I agree. This part where he seems to be having a visual of Madeline, I just found visually confusing. I wasn't sure what was supposed to be going on.

Or why it's even here. Maybe it's because the movie was too short, but I feel like he does end up eventually in the castle, right?

Yes. I didn't understand why he didn't just go in with Brunner. The whole point of this seems to be to separate him and Brunner, so that they arrive at the castle separately. Yes. I mean, it does pay off a little bit later, but it's a weird choice in the moment. This is as good a time as any to talk about the vulture screams.

Vulture shows up again.

Throughout this movie, Bela Lugosi's character has been associated with vultures. There's often a vulture in the area. In this scene, I don't know how to describe, you start to hear these human sounding screams. It sounds like someone is just screaming into the mic, and it cuts to a vulture, and we are led to believe that this vulture is looming over and screaming. I do not know what a vulture sounds like. I went on YouTube to try and find, do vultures really make that noise? Because it is, I will tell you...

It's the loudest sound in the movie.

It is loud. That is some effective horror. It sounds like a human screaming. So kudos, whether that's a real vulture or just a person yelling into the mic.

It reminds me of those over dramatic screams that you would hear in radio dramas back in the 30s. Yeah.

My other favorite sound cue is whenever they're in the forest, the sound of the forest is just a bunch of frogs.

Sometimes with drums in the background for no reason.

Sometimes with drums, but mostly just frogs. So in any case, Neil wakes up, he's had this vision of Madeline. So we know Brunner has gone to the castle. We cut to the castle and there's Bela Lugosi and Beaumont. And Beaumont is partially zombified, but not completely. He seems to have some free will and Bela Lugosi is commenting on this. Like he's only halfway zombie. He's never seen this before. We also get a scene where the maids are like with Madeline and they kind of can't bear to touch her because she's become a zombie.

Yeah, one of the maids threatens to leave, but then she's warned that like, if you leave, he'll catch you and he'll zombify you.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So you sort of get a sense of the terror that murder has over his own people.

I liked the sequence of Beaumont slowly turning into a zombie. I mean, murder is sitting at the table with him. I mean, just like gloating at him and watching this, him slowly fight to retain his humanity, but it's a losing battle. I thought that was a pretty effective thing.

And Bela Lugosi says to him, you're the first person to be aware of what is happening to them, which I think is interesting. Yes. Also, I'd like to point out in this scene, Bela Lugosi is wearing his dinner outfit, which looks almost exactly like a Dracula outfit, right? It's like a black jacket with a white shirt and tie, and yeah, he's dressed like that.

And this is a very Dracula castle. There's narrow stairs and shadows and big gigantic cavernous rooms that they're in. It's very gothic.

Yeah. And there's all these staircases, but there's no railing.

Yes.

I feel like I'm in the Death Star or something. There's all these high places with...

Yeah. I had the same thought and I had made the same Death Star thought too. Who designed this? Like this is the mortality rate living in here must be like 50 percent.

But Neil comes in, he's swooning, he's dark, he's sick, he makes it to Bela Lugosi, but then passes out on like a couch or something. So I actually wanted to talk about this scene because what happens here is, murder, Bela Lugosi's character makes Madeline in her zombie form, pick up a knife and sort of walk up to Neil, and he is basically instructing her to kill him. So just to do a flashback to our first episode, I sort of talked about my Four Pillars of the Zombie movie, none of which we've really seen so far, except we are seeing the first one or what I think is the most important one, which is your loved one is a zombie turns against you. And that is what is happening here with Madeline and Neil. Madeline is going to stab him to death. Now, she's obviously not a crazed thirsting cannibal zombie like the ones we're used to, but she has been taught to turn on her loved one by this.

I wondered if the scene in Romero's Night of the Living Dead where the girl stabs her mother to death was like an homage to this scene.

Oh, maybe. We'll have to remember that when we get there.

It strikes a similar note.

Yes, but this is why we found out it's important that Brunner and Neil have come separately, because Brunner reaches from behind and grabs the knife out of her hand, I believe.

And can we talk for a minute about Neil and are they... Here is Neil's heroic arc in this movie. He stands by while Beaumont, like, hits on his wife. He goes into a drunken stupor for the middle act of the movie, and then he gets sick and swoons throughout the final act. Are they trying to subvert him as the hero, because he does diddly squat that is useful in this movie? Are they doing something clever or no?

I don't know, or if that's a thing of the time, because I think the person who's interesting in this movie, despite the fact that she's a zombie, is Madeleine, right? Like, her journey is way more interesting than it is, because she has that moment where she can sort of still feel him and calls to him as she's a zombie. And it's almost like she is her own architect of her own freedom. She is calling Neil and Brunner to that. Like, it's weird, but yes.

I do want to praise the Madeleine actor, who, I mean, on paper, she does not have much to do, except sit around and be a victim. But you can imagine that you see her fighting to do little things like smile or just resist murder's influence in a way that works pretty well, I think. But yeah, she's doing more work than anyone else in this scene.

So then we have a battle of wills where Bela Lugosi is trying to get Madeleine to do this, and he does this weird thing with his hands, which I guess is how he issues commands to his zombies.

I kind of like this simply because it was weird and I'd never seen it before.

Yeah.

Well, it's also on the movie poster, it's highlighted.

That's right, it is.

Because the poster on the bottom, it says, with the zombie grip, he made her perform his every desire and you see his hands doing that clenching gesture.

Oh, okay.

I think that's such a titillizing statement that has very little to do with this movie, but yeah.

So there's a battle of wills and Neil saves Madeline from falling off a cliff and Bela summons his zombies again, but then Brunner knocks him out, punches him or something and when he's unconscious, Madeline wakes up and his zombie servants jump off the cliff.

They liming off of the cliff. It's kind of fun, actually.

Yeah. And so Madeline sees Neil and sort of returns to herself. However, then murder, Bela Lugosi, wakes up again and she becomes a zombie again. So it's almost like the mesmerism argument again, right? Like as long as he's conscious and alive, she's under his sway. Yeah. But then Beaumont in his redemption arc, pushes murder over the edge, killing him and that awakens Madeline completely and frees Beaumont as well.

I liked this shot where Beaumont sneaks up on murder. Murder has incapacity to the heroes and it looks like he's about to win. But for you see the shadow of somebody else sneaking up behind him and you don't realize it's Beaumont until Beaumont kind of glitches out. But it's that we've seen it, I think, in one or both of the movies we've already watched that horror shot of like something behind you is coming up and you don't notice it.

Yeah. And so they're going to kiss. It's going to be the end of the movie. But then actually we forgot to mention that Bruner has a catch line that I guess is funny. Whenever anything important is happening, he asks for a match. He's got this big pipe, like this big old-fashioned like Sherlock Holmes style pipe and he's always asking for a match. So he interrupts the final kiss asking for a match and then that's the end of the movie.

I think the way that the movie ends with that quote, you can tell everyone in the movie was like, oh yeah, we've got a killer line for the ages.

Because that's how he's introduced. Then he does it twice when he's explaining to Neil about how it's really not the living dead, it's a form of mesmerism or whatever. Then that's it and then that's the joke.

Maybe there's an alternate timeline where instead of memorable lines like, frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn, we're quoting this guy, it's sad, right?

Frankly, Scarlett, I'd really appreciate if you had a match. Yeah. That's the end. Then here's the thing that surprised me. You want to know what surprised me? Yes. We've seen the credits for the actors at the beginning, but it says United Artists. United Artists went out of business, what, Brad, in the 90s, 2000s?

They're still around.

They're still around.

They're part of MGM, which is now part of Amazon.

Yeah. So I was like, hey, I recognize the name of that studio. It's United Artists. I used to see that in the 80s movies in the theater.

The Bond movies all started with the UA logo.

That's right. That's right. So I don't know, Andy, what do you think of, can we talk about this movie? I don't know if there's anything more you want to say about it, but I'm kind of eager to talk about how it set our expectations for the movies we watched so far.

Well, I will say this was not the movie I expected it to be. I was not really looking forward to watching this because I was pretty sure it was going to be a terrible, just racist garbage. I thought it would be unpleasant viewing. So I was a little surprised that it works. And I don't think... Yeah.

I texted you. You were like, I got to watch this movie. I'm like, you know what? It's surprisingly watchable.

I don't know if the movie is doing it on purpose, but this is a movie you could make the case that this movie is saying some interesting things about its subject matter underneath this very heavy layer of sensationalist voodoo and magic. I found it, honestly, I enjoyed watching most of it.

So from the zombie context, like the only sort of one of my... It's not a calamity. So my four pillars that I sort of threw out at the beginning, which I think will be eroded as we go, but we're a calamity, right? We're contagious, loved ones turning against you and tough moral choices, right? And the only one that's really here is the brief moment where Madeline turns against Neil, those loved ones turning against you. The rest of those aren't really here. I mean, you could argue calamity because it's clear that murder has a bunch of people under his thrall and that's horrific, but it's not like an end of the world's calamity.

It's a very small scale drama that's playing out for the most part, right?

Yeah, about a couple in love and people who are trying to stop them from being together. That's kind of what this movie is about. And I don't really know where murder came from or what he wants, but he's suitably creepy and feels like a villain, but it's also a human agent that is causing the zombification. It's not some unknown virus or fungus or something.

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, I mean, I think he doesn't need to have a back real backstory or motivation because he is he is just the mechanism that Beaumont, a regular person, used like he makes an evil choice and it's a murder provides the mechanism by which that happens. But I mean, I mean, obviously, the villain in this movie is is murder, right? But he's just doing what Beaumont asked him to do, even if in a Faustian bargain sort of way that Beaumont's not going to wind up happy with. So I do see traces of that. Like the problem isn't the zombies, the problem that the bad guy, the monster here is not the zombies, it's the people.

Right.

I don't know if that's a unique enough to zombie movies to be a pillar of the zombie genre, but I see it in this movie.

Yeah, I do too. So I'm glad we watched it. I think I think it was more. It was closer to the modern zombie movie than I thought it would be.

Yes.

I think I said this earlier, but the fact that you have not a horde, but you do have a large amount of shambling mindless people who attack people and are scary. That is kind of what zombie movies are about now. They're not the focus of the movie, the focus is on these relationships in Madeline, but they're there and I can see how we got to where we are in some way from this sort of simple beginning.

I agree. Do you think that our listeners, like zombie movie fans, should go out of their way to watch this, John, or are they safe skippers?

I'm going to say yes. I think it's so important. And because I was so surprised by how clearly it articulates the sort of zombie and the living dead, I'm going to say yes. I think it's got the downsides we talked about, but...

And it's only an hour long.

And it's only an hour. That's the delightful point.

We've all spent an hour watching much worse films. Let's be honest.

Yes.

All the heroes survive in this film, too.

Oh, that's right.

Three main people, Dr. Brunner, Madeline and Neil, they all survive. And Beaumont, who has an arc where he's bad, you know, sacrifices himself to kill murder at the end. So even he does something good.

That's right. Now, Silver dies.

Yeah, we didn't talk about the fate of the butler, Silver. But yeah, that was actually kind of a neat scene. Murder paralyzes him with his magic or his will, his his eye stare, and has his zombies come in and pitch him into the water, which I thought was kind of creepy. But yeah.

So last question is Andy, would we survive this movie? Would you?

I would survive this movie because I wouldn't get involved in any of this nonsense to start with.

Right. It feels like a series of choices that we just wouldn't make, right? Like, hey, we met this guy in the ship and he invited us to come to his plantation and get married there. Like, because he offered my husband a job, I would be like, no, that's okay. Thanks. We'll just stay on the ship.

Maybe to be a little bit more specific. I mean, this isn't a movie where there is a threat to the populace. It's a movie about very personal grudges and choices. It's not like the zombies are menacing a local town or something like that. The people in danger here are the people that have let themselves get pulled into this little web, and they're all reaping the consequences of their choices, whether it's Neil letting himself be bribed by a job offer into this sketchy situation or Beaumont unable to be normal about his love for Madeline. These are people making choices and then suffering the consequences, I think, of those choices. And so I would make better choices, so I would survive this movie.

And don't forget that this is still the Great Depression. So maybe the idea of a free wedding at some guy's plantation is enticing.

Right. Right.

Well, I have to say, I mean, I remember how much it cost to have a wedding. I mean, maybe if someone had come to me with the right offer, I might have done. All right.

So, okay. We're ready to talk about what's next?

What's next?

Zombie fans?

Yes.

What's next? Okay.

Next, we're going to watch Maniac from 1934. It's also known as Sex Maniac. It was retitled to gain attention, which I think helped its box office. And if you could both look in the chat, you can click on a link and see the poster. John, if you could read the poster.

This is something else.

True and authentic, nothing withheld. Sex Maniac, a subject seldom discussed. Strange loves exposed. Adults only, no one under 16 admitted. What are the dangers of desire? What wrecks romances? The truth about love, fearlessly told. Hear dynamic sex lectures, plain facts about secret sins. Is that, are we sure this is the next zombie movie?

Yeah, is this a elaborate prank on us, Brad? I have to say, this feels like they all brainstormed taglines for this movie. And instead of picking the best one, they put all 15 of them on the movie poster.

I'm getting a reefer madness vibe, like a moralist reefer madness vibe out of this movie.

But note that the man in the poster looks like a zombie holding a collapsed woman.

Yes, yes. Who's in her underwear, so.

Well, I don't know what we've gotten into with this podcast, but I'm already having regrets, but I guess.

So, yes, next episode, we will be discussing Maniac or Sex Maniac, depending on your streaming service. So please join us then. You've been listening to Zombie Strains. We'll be back in two weeks to talk about another zombie movie. If you enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment and rate us on your podcast app of choice. Tell a friend, post on your socials. This will help like minded people find our show. See you next time on Zombie Strains.