Welcome to zombies trains the podcast where we watch all the zombie movies in chronological order. This week from nineteen fifty eight, the Schlachfest. Woman eater starring Vera Day.

No, I see people I find that in pictures. What do you call them? Zambi, is there something? Zambi, what does Zambi? Just what is a Zambi? Well, a Zambi? There's the bill list. There's the being dead. There's a living dead. Here's the numbers. Zambi is a Zambi's. No, I mean it's the thing. Because a Zambi has no will of his own. He's wrong. What is wrong?

Hey everybody, I'm John. I'm Andy. I'm Brad. You know, producer Brad, like not two pat ourselves on the back too hard, but that that intro gives me joy every time I hear it. It does. So it just makes me smile. Cause I remember it's all from, for people who don't know, it's all from clips from movies we watched in season one. And so I can recognize all the voices. Belly goes to you and everybody else is very fun. It's very good. Brad, you did a good job. Thank you. But that's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about the film from woman eater, by the way, which is the poster says woman eater and every listing on the internet says the woman eater. And and every form I went to, which we're not that many, to discuss the film, it says there's no the in the title. It's woman eater. I'm like, that's an interesting thing to die on, held a die on, but hey, whatever works. So I think we need to pause for a second, John, you visited forms about the movie woman eater. Well, I might have read some comments on a blog post. Okay. All right. Is that okay? Which is a not a great idea either. I had this picture of this like Colt fandom of this movie and that was going to blow my mind. But yeah, I should have played that up. I missed that some is that. You haven't been to the woman either Wikipedia, it's humongous. It's the most active form I've ever been in. No, it's not nobody cares. Yeah, except us. We have to care. It's our job. Yeah, so this movie is interesting in so many ways. And I'm curious to see how we're going to talk about it today. But you want to do any trigger warnings before we get too far into it? Yeah. So this may be how to couple of things I want to point out to our dear listeners. So this movie has some pretty stereotypical depictions of, I would say, Amazonian tribes people, pretty par for the course for these sorts of movies if you've been following along in this podcast. I think we're gonna unpack this, or at least I have this hunch we will, John, as we get discussing the movie, but this movie has a lot in it related to the general topic of the sexualization of women in horror films. And specifically, when they're in jeopardy, and how that becomes exciting now, we're not prudes, so we're not gonna ignore it, but we do kinda wanna talk about it, because it's the birth of this trope in the fifties is where this trope really gets going and it's a staple throughout horror films to this day and it's a little weird but we'll talk about it. Yeah so we're certainly not going to get real graphic about it but you know if you if you are zombie family has some little zombie little ones who like to listen to the podcast I guess just be aware. Yes absolutely. All right, then over to Brad for historical context behind this film, how it was made, who is involved? The woman eater, three words, or woman eater, two words, or woman eater, all one word appears on posters, all three of them. So when someone in the fan formed the clears definitively, that it is one way or the other, I don't know how they get that, because I've seen it all three ways. Would you excuse me, I have to go back to that comment and reply to it right now, it'll just be like, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Can we sick our listeners on them? Yeah, seriously. I'll post the URL in the show notes. So, womanator is a British horror film released in April of nineteen fifty-eight. In the UK, it was released in the US on June seventeenth nineteen fifty-nine. In the UK, it was released on a double bill with a Swedish film called Blond in Bondage. Yeah, that's a, that's a clue. Yes. Yes. You know where we're going with this. In the UK, woman eater was rated X, which limited the audience to ages, sixteen and up. And I can't find any notes on the US. What I didn't see a code certificate with it on the poster. And it's not listed on the databases for the code. So I don't know if it's restricted or not in the US. And we're still, but just to remind everybody, we don't get the current rating system that we're all familiar with till, in sixty eight. So we've got a little ways to go. It's still coming. Movies from nineteen fifty eight include South Pacific. Gigi Cat on a hot tin roof, vertigo and the defiant ones. or movies included several science fiction horror theme films like Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman starring Alice and Hayes, who we saw in our last film, Zombies of Moritown, The Blub, The Fly, and Frankenstein, nineteen seventy, nineteen fifty-eight saw the release of Dracula, the first hammer film that starred Christopher Lee as Dracula. Oh, wow. There's a wide variety of horror films in this year. There was an American Dracula film called The Return of Dracula. And in Mexico, the third film in the Aztec Mummy series, the robot versus the Aztec Mummy was released. Can we, okay, next podcast? Aztec Mummy series. Maybe I'll do it as bonus content. I'm just saying. I think we just need to do a podcast on the podcast we want to do. Yeah. Because we're stacking a lot. Is the Croninburg fly a remake of that? Yes. Yes. Yes. Is the original good? I think you'd like it. Yeah. No, it's not. I mean, it is. It's fascinating, but like, like, you know how Jeff Goldblum's character turns slowly into the fly. Yeah. Like, this guy turns part by part, but like, in one scene he has like a fuzzy black hand, and then like he's just got the head of a fly, but he's wearing like a suit, like it's not. It pushes the boundary. But it's still horrific. When you're in the kid in the seventies watching in a Saturday afternoon, it caught your attention. It sure did. I think more so than the woman eater does. Yeah, we shouldn't. We're about to talk about the woman eater. We should not be knocking the pretgal effects of other films. Guino Cohen produced in Charles Sanders directed woman eater. Together, they made sixteen low-budget films with titles like Jungle Street girls, naked fury, kill her gently, and the man without a body. Yeah. You know, I hate to say it, but the name Guito immediately said, oh, this guy's this guy's some sort of creep, which I'm sorry to say to any Guito's out there. This is old thinking, but it was the nineteen fifties. He's a battalion descent and he started off in the film industry. He bluffed his way into subtitling films. He said he knew how to do it. The third season, Forty, he did it for a company and then he worked his way up to producing. Yes, he hustled hard for his art, which is female exploitation films. This is art in this case. But anyway. Oh, you should see what he did in the seventies. Oh dear. I have a run going to see that bread. I'm very nervous. No, they don't fall into the zombie category. They fall under the British comedy soft core genre. Oh, that's a different podcast. I'm not as excited about getting to it. And we're less interested in doing that podcast next for sure. Brandon Fleming wrote the screenplay and he wrote two films with Cohen and Sanders, dangerous afternoon, and there's always Thursday. George Colores plays Dr. Moran. Colores started his acting career on the British stage in nineteen twenty-six. He met Orson Wells in nineteen thirty-six, and Wells asked Colores to be a charter member of the Mercury Theatre. He played Mark Antony and Caesar, Wells' adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and the Mercury Theatre's first production. Colores had a part in Wells for a film, Citizen Kane, and later he was in Doctor Who, a Clockwork Lawrence, Papillon and Murder on the On Express, where he played one of the few innocent people on the train. Yes, in the nineteen seventy four version of it. Citizen Kane to woman either man. Yeah, I guess a job's a job. But he's at least the star of this film. He is, and he did, he was like a successful working actor for a really long time. Yeah. Peter Forbes, Robertson plays Jack. He has forty eight roles across five decades, and I almost fell into a deep James Bond rabbit hole when researching him. Uh-oh. He was in the Bond movie Thunderball, though uncredited. He was one of the numbered specter agents reporting to Bellowfeld at the giant conference table, and I found a whole online discussion about who played which agent, and if none of them are credited, how do you know what number they are? And I stopped reading before I got to sidetrack. Yeah, I had to show for recording today. I'm saving this for later, but we have, I think each of us went down a deep internet rabbit trail. I went very different one. I went down one on this movie that I'll reveal to you when it comes up in the actual. Yeah, but yeah. Marpessa Dawn is credited as the native girl. She was born in Pittsburgh. She moved to England as a teen than France, and she was most famous for the nineteen fifty-nine film Black Orfias. She played Euridisi in the film won the nineteen fifty-nine Palm Door and the nineteen sixty Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. All right. And Roger Avan plays the constable. And I believe he's only in the very end when there's one constable. You see from the back, he runs upstairs to search the house. He has around a hundred fifty nine credits. And I counted at least fifty four of them are policemen, constable inspector, sergeant, security, et cetera. And in a hard day's night, he plays the policeman chasing Ringo. That's awesome. That is all I have on woman eater. Andy, when I tell us what's going on in the world in nineteen fifty eight. Yeah, so listeners, at this point, I'm probably pretty tired of me and John going on about Cold War Politics during this part of Heachpod guest episode where we talk about the historical context into which these films are released. So, and I also don't think this film, if I were looking for cultural connections, I don't see a lot of kind of the usual Cold War themes in this one, but I do see a lot of cultural connections to what's going on. I guess, firstly, so this is the, there is some big stuff happening in the sciences this year. This is the year NASA starts up, but the first US satellite explorer one is launched. But I think we'll find more to reference in the cultural events of the late fifties. So billboard introduced the top one hundred chart. I think this year or hereabouts. And But mostly what I wanted to say is this is the era of a lot of transgressive music that is pushing boundaries and upsetting people and exciting people. So this is the we are smack in the era of Elvis Chuck Berry Jerry Lee Lewis, little Richard, a buddy Holly, and I mean, you can just go on and on with the now considered classic acts that were disrupting in various ways what people expected to hear when they turned on the radio. So this, not transgressive at all, but this is the year one of my favorite songs was released. This is the year that Tom Dooley by the Kingston trio is really a time of big fan of the Kingston trio, but they're kind of outliers compared to these other much sexier musicians. Yeah, and then they became like a premier folk act in the sixth decade. Yeah, for sure. Now you didn't mention Brad's favorite artist from the nineteen fifties, which is the big bobber. Oh, okay. That's a little misleading count. So that's really what I wanted to say is I think the way this film Lears and tidilates and shocks feels connected to the kind of broadening cultural movements of the time. So I'll just leave it with that. Yeah, it's interesting. We'll talk about it because it definitely is one of the things we love about horror, right, is that it's transgressive, that's sort of one of its jobs. And the way this film does it is to sexualize and victimize and threaten women, which is a huge horror trope, and it just looks so weird to our modernize, but we'll talk about it more as we go through it. Yeah, absolutely. So hey, before we launch into our full discussion, let's take a quick revisit of this movie poster, John. All right. This is one of our more lurid posters I would say for sure. I'll describe it quickly and then if you have any comments, please feel free to fill in. So woman eater, this is this iteration of it has that all as one word is in a scary font across the bottom. We have the tagline. It moves. It breathes. It kills. The something devil tree. What does that word? The hideous devil tree. It is indeed pretty hideous. Yes, but not in the way they intended. So we have a lot of sort of suggestively threatened women on this poster. I would say one is being groped by the devil tree in question. Another is being groped by, I think that is Tang from the film of our alleged tribesmen from the Amazon. And then we have our, I guess, this film's version of the zombie master leering in from the side as well as and a slightly older woman that this movie is going to try to convince us is like a a decaying spinster, but I think looks about like she's like thirty three years older something. So you know what though? Like I think that's supposed to be very day but the illustration so this is all illustrated and none of the illustrations actually look like anybody in the movie exactly. But but so I think that's supposed to be uh is it Sally? Is that her name? I don't know. I would have guessed that's Margaret, but it's very hard to tell from these. Yes. Yes. No illustrations are so bad you can't tell, basically. Anything else you wanted to call out about this? So this is a brightly colored poster. I will say that. It's like kind of eye catching for sure. Any general comments about it? The only comment I would make is it does say X-Certone there. So this is the British poster for sure. Yeah. Well, in that case, I think it's time we've delayed long enough to start discussing woman eater. And we begin that by having John in this case, give us a sixty second overview so that our listeners don't get lost in all the riveting detail and the rich layers of plot that this movie has that will be discussing. You know what, this film plot-wise is incredibly simple. So what happens in the beginning is two, is men are discussing their latest adventures at the, and I am not making this up, the explorers club. And within thirty seconds, convince another person to go on a journey to the Amazon. because they've heard about a previous explorer who died of their injuries there but had uncovered something fascinating. Travel to the Amazon and witness a ritual where a woman is fed to a tree. They're horrified by this, but we quickly jump back to England five years have passed and one of the explorers is brought this tree back to his house in Downton Abbey. and is feeding women to it in an effort to get the serum out of it that he can convince can be used to bring the dead. back to life. And the plot of this film is him loaring some women to get eaten. People suspecting him, but not quite figuring it out. And at the end, there's a big chase to save our main character Sally, which we do at the end, but not until after she her shirt gets ripped by the woman either tree. So I think that sums it up pretty well. I think so. I think you've nailed all the important parts for sure. Yeah. I'll mention a couple of things. The other two main characters here are Tanga who is the practitioner who plays the music and knows how the tree works and knows how to extract the serum. He comes back and lives with Dr. Moran, our main villain hero. And the other character is Margaret the housekeeper who was in love with Dr. Moran and sees that something is going on, but she doesn't know what it is. who wouldn't fall in love with Dr. Man, ran really. I know, what a handsome devil. One of the weird things about this movie is not only do we have this sexualization and sort of threatening a women and that's supposed to be exciting, but the men in it are just such jerks. Like when Margaret is proclaiming her love to Dr. Moran, he's like, you are a waste of time. I'm like, who likes any of these people? Anyway, that's another story. And Sally has this boyfriend that's a mechanic that gives her a hard time. I think, yeah, it's just weird. But anyway, I want to start at the beginning with the adventure in the jungle. Can I start at the very very beginning? Because after a long hiatus, our drums over the opening credits are back. The drums return, the dramatic music now. There is a high pitch singing voice that is not a fairman. Right. But if you tell me they hadn't dropped a little fairman in the mix there, or weren't trying to imitate the sound of a fairman with a human voice, You know, I think that's what's going on. It's an eerie siren like kind of uh, singing that happens whenever the tree is about to eat. Oh, yes. Yes, exactly. Um, so we cut to this explorers club quickly. We hear about somebody who went on an adventure. They died. They want to follow in their footsteps. So Dr. Moran convinces somebody to go with him. I forget that character's name that doesn't matter because he's going to be dead in like ninety seconds. His name is Carling. Okay. I don't we need to we need to respect these characters, John. We shouldn't vanish people who died for their art. Did you like the very like national treasure style map that the guy left leading them to those that Yeah, I kind of loved it. So, all right, this is the rabbit hole I went down. Let's start with my rabbit hole. And then we can come back to your rabbit hole later. So this would be considered what we call adventure cinema, right? Like people going on a question and adventure in exotic land. We still do this today with movies. But there was a genre film that we've kind of missed because it doesn't often have anything to do with zombies, and this is the thing that has been around for a while, and we've seen a couple of them, but it explodes in the fifties, and that is the jungle movie, right? This is actually a genre, right? King Solomon's mind, African Queen, you can include other things like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, all of these are set in a massive, the stone. Oh, man, it's in the stone. All these are set in exotic locations in environments that are threatening to sort of, you know, middle-class Western people who are threatened by the environments. And then it has this tinge of exoticism about it too. Like, you remember when we were talking about Voodoo in the early days, Andy, and we were sort of saying, well, one of the reasons Voodoo became popular in these movies as a scary thing is because the U.S. was fascinated by it, right? That we occupied Haiti for a period of time. And so myths and legends from Haiti filtered back and there, of course, garbled and everything in the movies we made. But this fascination with exoticism was huge and it couldn't have been huge than in the last nineteen fifties. So we sort of skipped that because we've only seen a couple of those movies, but it's definitely a thing. Is this making any sense? It is. That is very interesting. Yes. And with that, unfortunately, comes, you know, the stereo typing of, you know, native people. It's not the kind of thing we would do today, but it's all over these movies where, you know, then, in fact, there's a conversation in the native language we're coming up on, which is just, it's literally sounds like they didn't even try. It's just babbling. And they, yeah, it's really bad. But that whole scene can be summed up by Dr. Moran here in our first clip. I was with Ashbe when he died last month. He saw everything he said was true. He says as a tribe in the depths of the Amazon jungle, their remnants of the Incas. He says that they have a miracle working due to that can bring the dead back to life. We've heard yards like that before. Well, he got a few bearings, a rough location. He made a map. I've got it. I'm going there. Thanks for coming with me, Colin. interesting adventure. So that's all to say, uh, Moran goes to the jungle. He takes Carling as their hack. This all happens in the first two minutes in the movie. Yeah, I noted this, too. We like who needs character development or motivation like Like, just, yeah, we're just in and out. I feel like we are searching for a middle ground between like Ghostbreakers or scared stiff taking an hour to get for the adventure locations. And this movie getting there in like, ninety seconds. So yeah. Did you notice the economy of when he entered the building? It said explorers club that plaque is all you needed to know about everyone in the room. That's right. You're absolutely correct. I'm sorry to, I missed that brilliant filmmaking. John, did you peg the plane that they take? I did, I just wanted it. It was a by plane. Yeah. Like, I don't know what kind of plane it was, but I don't think you can land a by plane. There were two planes. The first plane was, it was not a by plane and then it switched to a by plane. I got confused. I'm letting you all down. You know what? I'll do corrections next episode. No, I'll tell you what kind of planes they were. I promise. I can't wait. Yeah. So in any case, they're venturing through the jungle. They hack through some foliage and come upon a ceremony where a woman is being sort of mesmerized by Tango, our native character, playing the drums. And shortly, she's going to be fed to a woman eater, the devil tree. Now, Carling unfortunately decides that it's his moral duty to stop them. So he jumps out. from the jungle. Dr. Miranda's not. He's calling himself. So the editing in this movie is weird. He jumps out before anything menacing has happened. I guess maybe he sought before we the viewers were able to notice it. But it was kind of a weird. It looked to me like he was just so upset at these native people like singing and dancing that he just lunged out to stop them. Yeah, and every native stereotype is here. There's some big guy with face paint and he's holding a snake and another guy playing the drums and all that thing. All that stuff. And he jumps out and they throw a spirit through him and he dies and Moran hangs back and then we see the woman fed to the tree. And then what happens, Andy? Well, then we get a title card saying five years later in England or something to that effect. And we are in we are we the viewer. I'll use the plural here are desperately confused because it opens in like what looks to be a sewer. Why don't you describe where we are taking? Our car drives up. I was joking about Downton Abbey, but picture Downton Abbey when you think about this English manor house that he drives up to. He goes into the house. Then we cut to a dungeon. with tango playing the drums and a mesmerized woman there. And then we cut back up to the manor house where Dr. Moran is like writing a letter. But I didn't know that that was the same place at first. Like there's no connection between the Dungeon and the rest of the house. Yes, it's very interesting. Eventually we will learn that this is like a dungeon laboratory that Moran has that's connected to his English manor house. But it's profoundly confusing to actually watch. I figured that out eventually. Yeah, it's very strange. So this is our first kind of we're settling in and we're getting a real look at Dr. Moran who is the villain of this film that also kind of its protagonist. Yes, so now that we're back, it's five years after his terrifying Amazon adventure where he saw a woman being fed to a tree. What are your impressions of him? What's his screen presence? What kind of a villain is Dr. Moran? He's a mad scientist, but he's so sort of flat and he just seems irritated all the time in order to mean like, yeah, tired of everybody. But what happens next is he's always wearing a suit and tie. He's always telling people like, oh, you're overreacting. There's nothing going on here. He goes down to the basement. Well, tanga is about to feed this woman to the tree. And he watches mesmerized. And when she's screaming and being eaten by the tree, like his eyes light up and tank a smiles. And these two men are clearly enjoying the suffering of this woman. It's very strange. But also, like we were saying earlier, it's sort of like the kickoff of this trope, which is so essential to horror movies from this point forward. You know what I mean? Yeah, there is something a little unnerving about these scenes where they shove a screaming woman into the tree. It was not like, it's not graphic or anything, but I don't know, I would just say, what they do. What they do is they choose, well, she's screaming and being eaten, they choose to linger on Moran's and tango's faces. And they're clearly smiling and in Moran's case, it feels like he's experiencing pleasure. You know what I mean? So it's very creepy, but He's a mad scientist and he has to justify what he's doing. So as she's being eaten, this is the story he tells himself. Okay, so this might be my favorite one of my favorite bits. We talked about all these movies being about new technology. However, when he extracts the serum, he's going to inject it. into a heart that he's trying to bring back to life. And he injects it into the heart and it starts beating in Andy. He uses a highly tuned piece of laboratory equipment to test the heart. What is it called? It's called a pulsometer. Yes, I prefer the term pulsometer because it sounds good for you. But pulsometer works too. But yes, so he literally has a device that measures heart beats. And he's eagerly watching the heart as it comes back to life. But no. the heart fails. Yeah, so it starts to beat and then it dies way. All right, trivia quiz. What was the last movie in which a gigantic heart where played a central role like this? All right, so that the the wrong answer is maniac. No, that's the right answer. I thought we had one since then. Maybe that was a was a rain. The frozen dead have a heart and a jar. They did, but they didn't have one the size of a human torso like this movie and maniac. I do. That's true. Also, that's nineteen sixty six. So we we jump to head and that can our jump jumps ahead continue to curse us because this is Andy's right. Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of, but it's that's nineteen sixty six. So Yeah, is it we're saying that tanga is appears to be one of the native tribesmen from that from the Amazon. Is that right? Yeah, he definitely is. I think he's like the keeper. I think we saw him in that first scene. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. And whether this is all going on, he is playing Andy's favorite thing, the the food who drums to mesmerize the the women. In fact, beating those video drums is usually the start of the ceremony in which a woman is pushed into the tree. Right. So much so later in the movie, I guess, starts excitingly beating the drums when Dr. Moran, in fact, does not intend to kill them as I guess it's not funny, but it's a thing that made me go. But it also made me wonder how we are also going to be asked to believe that no one in the manor house can hear this frantic drumming, which I think is next door or directly beneath the manor house. So there's some real sound thing going on. Yeah, Margaret. Well, he does. Chlorist, I say he has a large iron door and you want to know what's behind it later in the film. So maybe the other door blocks sound. Yeah, who knows behind a curtain? I think it's buying a curtain so that I don't have to put the iron door prop in his office. He just goes through the curtain and then he can be in this. He can be in the dungeon set appearing as if he's just come through the iron doors. It's what Brad would call a efficient filmmaking, right? It's a lean filmmaking process. But at the end of this failed experiment, I mean, yes. In mad scientist fashion, he says, you know, next time it'll work, next time. Yes. This failure is not going to stop him. from capturing more women and feeding them to the tree. Yes. Now, I'd like to say a couple of things about this. First of all, we get to sense that there's some tension between Dr. Moran and Tanga. Like, Tanga seems to be sort of sneering at him like you stupid Western scientists. You don't understand the power of what you're doing. you know, I understand it kind of, that's the feel I get, right, which plays out later in the movie. It does. Yes. So I want to, I don't want to brush past the next few scenes. I'm just going to sort of describe the man and you, you pump the brakes when you want to dig into something because I'd like to get to, to more sort of the central part of the film, but the next morning a police officer rides up on his bicycle, like you do, and I start asking about a missing woman. I think we're led to believe that this is the woman who is sacrificed to the tree. Dr. Moran plays a cool. This does bring up a frustration I have with this movie. It took me a while to get everybody's names because as people are introduced, they introduce themselves like English people introduce themselves, which is to say they mumble their names. And so I was like officer who, Dr. Who, like I didn't know what his name was until twenty minutes later when I heard was Dr. Moran again. You know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. So about this, I wanted to say so this is, I think this is our first movie where we have seen semi-competent police work. Yes, these police, they do bungle something that I'm going to go into when we get to it later. But for the most part in this film, these police seem interested in solving the crime and they are applying basic logic to help them solve the crime. I mean, they're trying to find out what happened to this woman who disappeared. And we know that Dr. Moron has kidnapped her and fed her to the tree, but they do not. And I was just a blown away by the like, uh, acceptable level of police work in this film. Yeah, because you're thinking of voodoo man where uh, the guy was like, well, women keep this around here all the time. I think it was voodoo man, but yes, yeah, exactly. Uh, we do meet one other character around the other, the other, the other tense relationship and that is Margaret the housekeeper. So we don't know why, but she glares it everybody and seems to disapprove of Dr. Moran and seems stressed out and we don't know why yet. Yeah. So the only line I want to pull from here, which I don't have a clip for is he asks if he's seen anyone and he says as a scientist, I'm more interested in things with six legs than two. So that's his. That is specifically when it's the stress. He and the policeman are commenting on how hot the missing woman was. Yes. Look at a picture of her. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And her picture is like a studio headshot. So I would like to pay this film a compliment, which is like the screenplay isn't brilliant. But what it does competently that horror movies often struggle to is it does have a through line of plot that you can follow. It goes from A to B to C with visual storytelling that makes sense. So just as an example, the policeman is leaving He rides past a sign that says, fun fair this weekend, and we zoom in on the sign. And so then we cut to the fun fair, which is like a carnival here in the US, and we know where we are and why we're here. Like we don't know why we're here yet, but it all makes sense. And I hate to say that that basic function of screenwriting is so lovable, but like, we don't see a lot of it in our film watching. Yes, you know, I get it. And it's time to meet kind of our true heroes of the film, right? Yes. So we cut to the fun fair. There's a booth in the Barker is saying, hey, come right in. I've got beautiful women. You can see them inside and it's kind of a tent scene where like he's trying to guilt men into going in and the men are all embarrassed. But dancing on the stage with him to a lure of customers is a blonde woman with short hair who's wearing like a hula skirt and doing a very poor, who let dance style thing. And this is Sally and she's our heroine. So let's let's pause you already mentioned it, but what what made me stop here and go down an internet rabbit trail. Oh, is this it? All right. Tell me. So yeah, it's it's Sally's here. Yes, this is so this is the first movie where a woman has had that we've watched their woman has had really short hair except in Fulu Island the woman who is coded is gay Claire also had short hair oh interesting I didn't I didn't I didn't remember that one, but yeah this sent me down a rabbit hole a rabbit trail just of a looking at like fifties hair styles. So because we're going to meet another woman later in the film who doesn't stick around long because she's fed to the tree who has a similar short haircut. And so I went I found a we can put it in the show notes. I found a blog that talks about like vintage fashion and so I think these are the it these hair styles are the are Italian cuts. which are popularized by Italian actors and they are kind of like a midpoint between like a pixie cut and like a poodle. Oh, interesting. So I think this is supposed to project a lot of like youthful energy. Gotcha. Okay. Anyway, there's my, my tedious little sidetrack. No, I love that. How much time did you spend on that? More than I more than I maybe more than I spent watching woman either I could see why you'd want to do that though. Well, you know, maybe so I want to camp on this a little bit more and because I want to talk about I want to talk about the character of Susan or Sally Sally. So, you know, we've one of the things we've been asking at the end of season two is like are we seeing younger protagonists? Are we seeing a change in the sort of hero in these movies and for sure compared to the past movies? I mean, we have a woman who, uh, so she not to sound weird about it, but she shows a lot more skin than, um, the most of the female protagonist in movies that we've watched today. For sure. I mean, it's all pretty modest by modern standards, but she's got this like short hair. She's got a trashy job, which I was trying to think you know, almost all of the heroes men and women in these movies have been, you know, kind of professionals they've had like I can't think of any movies where both of the protagonists because we're going to meet meet her Jack soon to be boyfriend soon have these like what you would consider really trashy disposable jobs. Even even jobs that aren't very reputable maybe. So I just thought that was quite a shift from the earnest professionals that we have seen and almost all movies today. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think what's interesting is there's a couple of interesting things here. So one is regarding the sort of risky nature of her clothes, I was also doing a little research into, to sort of fifties movies in general, and one thing that a different fashion blogger than yours, sorry, Brad, we're secretly turning this into a fat from my history podcast into a fashion podcast. Was that like, it was not uncommon four starlets to to show skin to where risk a close to appear in magazine layouts with their short hair and their risk a close but that is not how anybody else dressed like the the the styles of the day is still pretty buttoned up relative to what we're seeing in the movies which I thought was interesting interesting yeah but what what that maybe think is we are so we're we've got a couple things going on here and this is This is a theory on my part, and I, it feels right to me, but I'll let you comment on it, right? Women are more independent than ever, right? We talked about this in our fifties episode, but women had gone to work. Well, well, we're two is going on. They've come back from the factory. There's somewhat dissatisfied that they had these independent lives. They got a whiff of that independence on our sort of being pulled back into being homemakers. So we have an urge to be more independent on the part of women. This is the start of feminism. So we have those women in our movies, but The moreality of these movies is often to say, if you are an independent woman who has a loose job and underdresses, then we're going to punish you by submitting you to horrors. You know what I mean? So there's a moral push and pull going on here, right? Like women are reaching for more independence. They are saying, hey, I can wear whatever I want. I can do whatever I want and pulling back against that is yes, you can't look at the consequences of your actions. Does that make sense? It does. And I mean, to this day through the decades, horror has always had this tension between being a genre that is about transgressing and upsetting and disturbing and being a genre that has a really strong moralizing tone to it as well, right? Like it shocks you and then it punishes. It shocks you with someone who's doing something exciting, but then it punishes them for it. Yes. I think of a movie we didn't watch, but we talked about last time was a tag of the fifty foot woman, right? Yeah, it's a story about a woman who was a socialite who had substance abuse problems, an abusive husband, her quote unquote friends, were cruel to her. But when she runs into the alien spaceship, she becomes this empowered powerful woman She grabs her husband, she kills him and then she gets killed by the power lines. Like she couldn't be allowed to live after all that happens from a societal moral standpoint. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, thanks for indulging me there. I do think this is important though. I'm not just trying to- No, I think you're right. Yeah, I think there's a change going on here, and I have a feeling it's going to get more egregious as we perceive. Well, and just to sort of steal in your point, we went from having like in Valley of the Zombies, having a young professional engaged couple who were both scientists and lab technicians as our heroes to a woman who dances in a carnival show and a mechanic as our who lives with his mom who lives with his mom above the garage of the of the gas station. They just got a garage in England, but yes. Speaking of which, let's beat Jack. You want to tell us about Jack. So in a kind of funny scene, this movie does not have a lot of humor, but he's playing the gamer. You shoot the little pellets at the targets and try to win prizes. And he can't keep his eye on the game because he is watching Sally dance. But just by luck he keeps getting top scores on his markings is shooting a world literally not looking and he ends up winning a teddy bear which he gives to Sally when she's on break. This scene sets the tone for the relationship where in Jack is just a huge jerk to Sally. He gets her fired because he starts a fight with her boss as she's telling him stop, stop. you're making it worse. Yeah. And then he ends up punching the boss out because the boss was like insulting Sally or something like that. Well, she is saying, please stop. And it's a good time for their interactions for the rest of the film. You know, both Dr. Moran and and Jack here like I like I'm not calling out all English people just English people in the nineteen fifties like like manner generally condescending in these movies but these guys are just mean like when Margaret later is having a meltdown about her feelings he's like stop it you're being ridiculous like yeah but all the time like turned up he says go to your room he says yes so it's sort of an infantillization of these women and the things they're feeling but they want us to see them they want us to see Margaret's anguish and jealousy you know an event so yeah absolutely So what happens next is Sally goes to the garage because Jack has given her his address. And she's as I've been fired as your fault. He says, I feel bad. I think the doctor up the street may need some help. His housekeeper is old. Like, like, she's thirty-five or something. And so he convinced her to go up there with him, try to get a job. The doctor says yes. And they do another experiment, not with another woman, but they're extracting more serum from the treat of try again. And again, it does not work. Yeah, so just to summarize. So Sally now has a job as Dr. Moran's, like, a live-in housekeeper. Yes, exactly. So he has this second living housekeeper, second to Margaret. Yes. Yeah. She's going to be the subhousekeeper, the assistant housekeeper. So then Dr. Moran goes to London. And in an interesting twist, so this is interesting. His goal is to find another woman to feed to the demon tree, right? He's just walking on the streets of London. It looks like a handheld cam. It's very sort of, I don't know, you know, not like actual footage, but it feels very loose and rough compared to the rest of the stuff. So on the Wikipedia page for this film, there is a quote by a filmmaker saying, claiming that this sequence was them just hiding the camera and shooting the scene in a real crowd. That doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah, I was watching for it and you can see people looking at the camera like you can see them noticing the camera sometimes in a way that you wouldn't if this were like a more professional shoot. Yes. I will say it work. It works. It works. I think this is some of the the better shot sequences of the film. or the more intriguing. Yeah, and yeah, like who's got time to get a permit and close down a street to shoot your movie when you can do it for a tenth of the price and just sneak around. So hide behind the open car film people. Yeah, exactly. So interesting thing about the woman he's like, so first of all, he's actually solicited by a prostitute when he gets to the sort of crap part of town and he's like, no, no, no, no, thanks. too. Yeah. Two women come up to him and he just brushes them off and then he starts following another woman who goes into like a sort of speak easy to style bar. She has a fight with her boyfriend and he picks her up and gives her drug cigarettes to sort of inhibit her judgment and get her back to the house. Did you have any thoughts about this whole business? He has no charm. And yet he's convincing this woman to go back to his house. It's so strange. This was really strange. So he's trying to pass himself off as like a talent scout. I think that's the only way anyone would ever agree to like talk to this person for more than thirty seconds. Yeah, she does say to him like are you a TV talent scounder or whatever? Oh, no, but like, but maybe he denies. Okay. Yeah, but he doesn't say what he is or what he's doing. He doesn't. There is, I mean, it's not really funny, but when he gets her back to his manor house, he's kind of, she's kind of drugged from the cigarette. So she's a little zoned, but not entirely unconscious. And she is resisting him as he's trying to shove her into the house. And he says in like this, a grieved voice, you don't trust me, don't you? Or something that's like, well, no, we do not trust you. That is in fact the linchpin of this scene. Can I just contrast this with another recent film, which is the Revived Monster, where a very similar thing happens? But they resolve it through character and it's actually interesting and tense. And here it's just like he's trying to show her through the basement door. Like there's no, yeah. This woman also has an Italian cut hairstyle. Listeners, go look at this movie and tell me if I have that correct. My wife thought it maybe was a pixie cut, but I think it's like in Sally's case, she does have longer hair in the back rolled up and tight to the back of her head. So there's more, but it looks like a pixie cut from the front for sure. As he abducts this woman, he takes her in the basement, tanga drugs her. He goes back upstairs, but Margaret was waiting up for him. And she is angry with him and his shenanigans. And here's the conversation that they have. Margaret, why aren't you in bed? You come back. Another of your little temporary absences. Did you have a nice time with whoever you were with? I'm not in the mood for a scene. I suppose now I'm only a housekeeper. I've no right to ask questions. None would ever. Leave me in this place for days and nights. There's something wrong in it. I know there is. The talking nonsense. You're overroar. Why didn't you go back to your room? Haven't you even a little bit of feeling left? I've told you a hundred times that all that silver between us. Now you'd save yourself a lot of pain by accepting. Ever since you came back from that horrible journey, five years ago, you've been different? Yes, you're right, Margaret. I've changed. I believe you're doing something wicked. So they sort of lay out the plot. I didn't really understand to this point that he, that when he came back as when the whole, I mean, I guess I understood it, but like it was just, it wasn't obvious. But him and Margaret had feelings for each other, but you can see what a jerk he is. Like, yeah, he's just, just jerks to the, yeah, I don't know another way to say it. But I guess his so markets, the only character in this movie, they get to do some real emotional acting. And so I actually, although these scenes are pretty Winston-Ducing, given how misogynistic Moran is, I thought that the scenes with him and Margaret tended to be the most genuinely tense ones in the film. For sure, for sure. So we jump back to the lab. The drums come back. You know that thing that you can do in a movie by increasing tension by concealing your creature. to make it seem more terrifying. They don't do that, and they probably should have. Because they have, they have been doing it up to this point. Yes. They have been asking about very wisely, not ever, giving us almost no shots of the devil tree in action. But the point of this scene is that they feed that tango feeds the woman he's just abducted from the bar. And here we get Dr. Moran justifying his existence again. What was the life compared to what I'm doing to the world? It's turning death into life. Death into life. Yes, there's that mysterious siren song in the background, the very alluring sound for sure. So, you know, at this point, Sally goes back to talk to the mechanic. You know, we, we have to talk about the tree because we haven't talked about the tree. Let's talk about the tree. You're right. We get this, we get this gratuitous sequence where the tree grows this woman for a long time. But this is our first like extended sequence of seeing this evil tree that eats women. So, John, do you want to take a stab at describing it? It's so hard to describe, because it's not a tree. It's like a tall bush, and it has like arms kind of like an octopus, but they're clearly just human people with their arms like inside the tree. And they're not even, they're not even that, because they don't really only like two of its limbs are articulated. The rest are just like straight out like stiff as boards. I think they are just boards that they're like wagging back and forth. Yeah, okay. I believe that and it's just shaggy and all the tension from this creature comes from the actress reacting terrified. Nothing else is really happening there. It has two, it's two like articulated arms are kind of like, I don't know, like worm like or they have like, yeah, pinchers exactly at the end. Or something at the end. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, this is a, this is a, you know, a sea movie, you know, from the fifties. Yeah. And I don't know if this is the worst, special effect we've seen on this podcast, but I don't know. Those, those, those kind of words plants in the water in, uh, who do island were pretty bad. This would be a very funny Halloween costume, like if you made it yourself. It's less impressive as like the central terrifying dread-inducing centerpiece of this film. That is a great way to say it. And of course, we get Tang and Dr. Morin leering and being excited that the woman struggles again, which again is that tension we've been talking about. So we go back to the mechanic. Sally's thinking she wants to leave. There's a whole bit here where we just sort of go and wrap it cycle like like he's going to send away Margaret. He wants Sally to become the full-time housekeeper. Jack wants her to quit the job. She wants to quit the job. She's creeped out by the place. Margaret accuses him of being in love with Sally. And then the sort of big tension here is she gets so frustrated with jealousy. She grabs the knife on his desk, which by the way, was set up earlier in the movie in a conversation with the police officer. Again, send my competent screenwriting. She grabs the knife and tries to kill him. but he kills her instead. How did this scene play out for you? Like the jealousy and rage of Margaret was surprising to me, but also kind of well done? So yeah, so I actually liked to scene. I fully expected that Dr. Moran was going to murder Margaret. And I thought him saying, oh, I'm going to fire Margaret so that you, Sally, can be my new housekeeper. I thought that he was going to murder Margaret and then say that, yeah, I fired her and she left. But instead, it's Margaret who actually instigates it. It's like in kind of her frustrated jealousy. She tries to kill more on a new overpowers. And then, um, so I don't know. I mean, I kind of liked it. Yeah. I mean, the word kind is maybe doing a lot of work in that sentence, but it was fun. Yeah. Um, can I just do a little bit of back feeling here? We, uh, Jack has proposed to Sally at this point. Uh, to that's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. That's sort of glossed over the two weeks. Uh, yeah. I want to mention it because the proposal comes in a scene where he has done nothing except insult Sally for not knowing about car mechanics. I got to not exaggerating it all for not he literally says like she's like, I don't know anything about car mechanics. He's like, well, I don't want a woman who's to mechanically inclined, and then he proceeds to Barathe, as he does car repairs, and she's helping him and she's doing it wrong. And then he immediately proposes. It's just the most bizarre thing. I also want to mention, so our police, we've been getting the occasional glimpse back at our police. We even have a detective, brown low, who is on the case. And we see them kind of closing in on Dr. Moran using what I would call kind of convincingly professional. Strap techniques. We have to say they call back to the to Rio where he's supposedly traveled so they can get information and that person calls back during the investigation. So we do see them putting together the pieces and they do a little I don't I don't think we have seen much of this type of police work in the film so we've watched but they do a little of what you would almost call like a modern like kind of crime scene forensics thing for where they are checking out where the body lay and then they've found a scrap of cloth, you know, that's a clue and this is the direction it looks like the body was dragged like that sort of thing. So it's a little bit of kind of like, you know, more modern police investigation type of stuff here. The one this is going to be another little a little side Andy pet peeve the the one area of the police really botches at one point they go to search dr morons house because they're kind of sort of suspicious yes and uh... so i just got to say uh... i have had my house searched by the police and they didn't give me the option of telling them where they should search i'm just saying that because that's what happens in this maybe he says like Yeah, well, why don't you go search, you know, these, these barns or sheds or something out? Like, why don't you search as actual properties? And so you're about seven feet from his sewer dungeon lab. But yeah, anyway, way to bury the lead, why would your, why was your house search, Danny? Oh, that's a whole, that's a whole story. I did nothing. I did nothing wrong. I am innocent. Okay. All right. But I don't have any plan in your basement, do you? No, no, no. No, it was, it was, I mean, I don't know, our listeners. want me to share this sort of to you. And if you don't want to, that's fine. No, it's fine. I was awakened in the moonlight by police who had gotten a false report of a crime that is like a weird crime that I think literally they had the wrong house or someone or else someone was doing some weird troll. Yeah, so of so they came in it's like four in the morning and they searched the house and then when they realized it was just a false alarm they left. It was wow. It was weird definitely weird. That is for sure weird. Okay, but they did but you know I wasn't thrilled with my encounter with the police, but they did a better job of searching my house than these guys do have searching Dr. Moans. That's the whole point of my story. I get to I guess. Yeah. So, all right. So we are back towards the climax of this film, right? Yes. So Margaret's dead. She's in the basement. Sally's going to stay one more night there. She doesn't want to, I don't know. She doesn't want to arouse suspicions or something. I don't quite understand. She said she's going to leave. Dr. Murray is trying to talk her out of it. And then he says, and then they have this conversation where he confesses something. I did not expect. I won't listen to any more of this. I'm going. Listen to me. I love you. I love you the first time I've asked for you. I know I'm much older than you, but it's happened many times before. That's why I took you in. And that's why you're not going to leave this house. You can't stop me. No doubt you've heard of men who give their lives to bring something to the world. Well, that's what I've done. I'm going to be a shame as the greatest man on earth. And you're going to share that greatness with me. You must have often wondered what's behind that iron door. I'm going to show you. Come here. Yeah, so we get more men telling women that whatever they're thinking or saying is not valid and dragging them around to tell them what to do. Which there was actually a pretty tense scene here before that exchange. Sally says I'm going to leave and then she decides she's going to leave like right now, not like tomorrow. Yeah. And so there's a pretty tense scene where she's like hastily packing. And at that point, Dr. Moran has not explicitly really threatened her, but you really do feel that this like panicky feeling like, oh, she better get out of their quick. I want to credit this film when it occasionally manages this successfully produced an emotion that isn't kind of sneering from me, so. Yes, yes. So we've sort of got an interlocking tension, pads of tension as this film is wrapping up. And also, I mean, what this movie should have had is, is Sally going iron door? What do you mean? Oh, you must mean that like drape that's hanging. Yes, exactly. Exactly. So now it's sort of a race against time. Jack was sort of waiting for Sally. Sally was going to spend the night and then come down and see him, but she doesn't show up. The police are figuring things out in the background. Jack goes to the police, but this is all set against the latest experiment, which is not feeding Sally to the tree, at least not yet. The first part of the experiment is he's taking the serum. He's been talking about bringing the dead back to life this whole time. And conveniently, he now has a dead body. So he is conducting this experiment on Margaret's body. And John, we are at the zombie part of this movie. We finally reached the zombie part of this movie. We get shots of the pulsometer or the pulsometer. If you put a pulsometer, that's yes. And he injects the serum. We don't see that it's Margaret. Well, we know. And then that same tension isn't going to work. Is it's not going to work? Margaret sits up. She's clearly mindless and savage. She gets up and she starts clawing her way or walking. It's not this dramatic, but she starts walking towards Sally. But then eventually the serum fails. and she collapses to the ground, but in this scene, what does Dr. Marin notice about Margaret? Yes, well, we don't know exactly what Dr. Moran, or Moran, I can see why you'd say that. He's talked about bringing the dead back to life, but he has not really explicitly said what he means by that exactly. This is a zombie movie, so going in, I assume he was trying to, you know, raise our typical kind of solace, will powerless walking husks. But in fact, it seems that Dr. Moran was under the, Moran was under the impression that This ritual in the serum would restore someone fully back to life, body, and mind. And so he is distraught when Margaret is revived as a soulless, homicidal husk with that doesn't speak. It doesn't seem to have much free will. It doesn't. respond in any way. He's horrified because this isn't what he wanted. He wanted a, he wanted to conquer death not to bring back, you know, I think the way he phrases it is, you know, this is only half. This is only half. This is the body, but I wanted the mind too. Yeah. And as this is happening, Tango is kind of sneering at him, like looking as if he's, he's, he's tricked the doctor. The doctor realizes this. We're near the end of the movie. And here's what he says to, here's the argument that they have. Buddy, a mind. Don't people kill me. They gave me a half a secret. A secret not for you. No. No. No, the body. No brain. The brain for us only. The brain for us. No brain for you. Yeah, and this may be quite sad. So can I just say I actually love this plot twist? Yeah, I think it's genuinely unironically great that Dr. Moran has been getting fooled by what I have to imagine is a tribe that he must have stolen their their idol from them, right? I mean, they can't have willingly done this. No, so the center of their worship. Yeah, so the idea that tanga here has been biting his time knowing that purposely not telling the doctor everything is actually kind of delightful. Yes, I do like that. And then we quickly run towards the end tanga attack Sally tries to feed her to the tree. It's just really an excuse to get her shirt torn so we can see some skin. It's very blatant. I laughed out loud when I happened. I think we are entering that era of horror film. Yeah. First sure. Tang and the doctor fight. The police come in there looking through the house. They can't find it. However, Dr. Moran sets the tree on fire. And as he's fleeing the dungeon, Tanga throws a knife and kills him by stabbing him in the back. Then the movie actually ends, we get Jack does rescue Sally, but the end of the movie is not that. The end of the movie is Tanga on his knees weeping in front of his flaming devil tree, not knowing what to do and then the movie ends. I think it was suggested that he was being burned with it, right? That may be. He might have thrown himself into it. Yeah. Yeah. The camera sees him through the flames. Yes. So Tang are going down with his what they call his jujube, but with his idol. Yeah. And no need for like any sort of wrap-up. That's the, I mean, that's dead. Yeah. And like that's right there. All right. Yeah, I know need to find out what happened to anyone else. Yeah, that's it. People are dead. So I want to get to the questions. However, I do want to point out that one thing that's happening in these movies is they're getting a little, um, I think you use you and I were talking about a horror novel earlier and then use you use the expression that has teeth. right like it has sharp teeth meaning it's sort of gritty or realistic or unafraid to show dark things and our movies are getting more like that right in this movie Margaret dies the doctor dies tango dies Sally escapes but that we haven't seen a lot of body counts up to this point we'll get to that when we get there but our horror movies are becoming well more like horror movies Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. This movie, I think it's appropriate that we kind of look down on the sort of crafts sexualization and victimization of women in movies like this. But it also does feel like we are starting to see some movies that I mean, part of the horror genre is allowing yourself to be a little shocked and upset by stuff. And so in the last couple of movies we've started to see, I think, you know, some pretty brutal kills. Yeah. And this one, the kills aren't brutal, but they are tinged with the sort of sexualization that does make them uncomfortable. And in that sense, kind of effective horror. Yeah. All that I'm not saying that's the e-enotemy. This feels like the grandfather of like the teen slash or film in a weird way. Yeah. Like, eventually we're going to get to where the whole point of the film is to get teenagers take off their closing, then get killed horribly well, they're having sex. Like, this is like the start of that. This feels like a direct path. Yeah, I have wondered, I think I mentioned this when we talked about zombies with Morita. When we are going to make that transition where you're going to horror movie, like looking forward to the kills, you know, right, right. Right. And because, you know, by the time eighty slash movie's came along, those movies are almost entirely about setting up inventive. ways to be murdered, right? Yes, for sure. And that's what people remember from those films and that's why you go to see it, right? So we're not there yet, but we are certainly walking in that direction. For sure. All right. Let's do the questions, Annie. All right. John, in this movie, is there a hero party? There is. Now, the question I have is, is it more than just Sally and Jack? I don't think we count Margaret there. What do you think? I think Margaret's a pretty intriguing side character, but she has her own motives that are quite separate from the R-Hero's Jack and Sally, who most who's motivation is mostly just to stay alive. Yes. How does the party do? They actually survive, but it's just kind of lock. It's all the villains who end up killing each other. Yes, is there a zombie hoard in this movie? There is not. We just get Margaret as a reanimated zombie though. There's a suggestion that that you could create more zombies with the serum. That's the whole point of the thing. So yeah, but no, how are zombies destroyed or killed in this film? Well, so here Margaret just dies because the serum is only half effective. She doesn't die, but she loses energy. So I think the implication is that is that they're hard to kill, but it doesn't matter because, you know, Tanga is saying, if you use your science to improve the serum, you're not going to get what you want at some point in the movie, and that's what happens. The serum is insufficient to keep the zombie going. Yep, I think that's well put. He's the world threatened. I don't think so. Not on a personal level, sure, but not the world. Yeah. What's the kill count in this movie and how does it stack up against previous movies? Hey, you know, can I just say I'm excited? We're at, we're at the stage where we can start reliably having kill counts. I know that's another part of the, so we've got the two two women who were killed, the two nameless one who were killed. We've got Margaret. we've got tanga and we've got the doctor so and there's the adventure at the beginning so i count six okay yeah so i think this is one of our more deadly movies yeah for sure in the in the genre we've been hanging out in absolutely yeah Okay, unless you count the guys that all got blown up inside of that beat graph airplane, but we're pretending they weren't in there with that was like a dozen people, but we'll skip over that since everyone in that film seemed to think they were going to be just okay. I'm not going to count those. What type of zombie strain are we looking at here with zombie Margaret? This is a good question. They are math scientists created zombies, but I don't know that they're science created because they're also mystical. They're a combination of scientific and mystical math scientists zombies. Yeah, so there is an interesting little exchange that we didn't mention where Dr. Moran is talking to Tango while he's working on a serum. And he says that he is trying to improve on the serum. So I do think, you know, we have this familiar situation going all the way back to revenge or revolt of the zombies, where revolt had the serum created where the mad scientist was angry because his science couldn't replicate what the natives just seemed to inherently be able to accomplish through magic. I think that's always been an interesting thing here, I will say that there doesn't seem to be much that's magical about this process. No, I mean, it's just a serum that the tree, I guess, exudes in some way. But Tango feels the drum playing in the mystical elements are important to getting the serum to happen. You know, there is some other stuff like the women are either being induced into a trans state by the drums or they're just being physically drugged or combination of both. But all that to say, I think you are right about this strain of zombie. Yeah, for sure. Are there any new strains or zombie firsts that we want to call out here? I don't think so. I think Margaret being reanimated as mindless is first ish, but not really. It's serum based zombies, you know, I don't think there's anything really radically new here. What do you think? I don't think so. I will. I will say that the the setup of this film is kind of interesting. Because the the devil tree is not like a monster that is actively going out and killing people is a source of nature. You would think maybe from the poster of this movie that the tree is like, whatever, slowly moving around attacking people, hiding in people's gardens. I find it, you know, the tree is just like part of the process for getting to what the movie considers the real horror, which is the zombie, this zombie state, I think. Correct. Yeah. So. The notes I made for first that you guys said were competent police were. Yes. Which is the first. Okay. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I'll accept that. And then the reskay at horror. So the ripping of the top. Yeah. I'm exposing the bra at the moment of horror near death. That's new. I think that's the first. I think that's worth noting as well. Yeah. It's just not a zombie first. It's not zombie specific, but it's. the movies we've seen. It's new. Yeah, and I do think I do think this is our first like genuinely different protagonist pair as far as like their their age and their experience and their, you know, their their jobs and stuff. For sure. For sure. Okay, John, let's talk about your four pillars of the zombie genre. John, is there an apocalypse in this movie? I know there is not unless you're a native person in the Amazon in which case your idol has been stolen by some Englishman. Is there a contagion in this movie? not really you have to get injected with the serum you first to be killed by some other means and then you have to be injected with serum so now yeah these uh these zombie serum movies are I mean they're like a cousin to the infected zombie infection but but they're not they've not made that jump quite yet yeah it's not like yeah it's they're both a scientific idea right one is a sort of viral or or, you know, a viral transmission, this is a serum that you make and inject in somebody. There are similar ideas, but it's not a contagion because one zombie can't give it to a human, you know. Okay, do we have tough moral choices in this one? I'd say no. Like I just, it's just again bad choices by bad people, largely. Yeah. Either great. And do we have loved ones turning against you? You know, I'm gonna argue that Margaret coming back. She doesn't go after Dr. Moran. She goes after Sally, but that's what we're talking about when we talk about loved ones turning against you. It had become mindless and evil and go after you in a shocking way that you didn't expect. So yes. But Moran killed Margaret, and she loved him. Who's the real monster here? Yeah. Yeah. There is, you know, part of, I think what we want out of this pillar, loved and turning against you, is that somebody that you knew in life and had a relationship with, even, it could be a hostile relationship like Margaret and Sally's. You know, that is, you know, when in that person comes back, and there's no trace of that relationship anymore. It's just, you know, this mindless, hummusidal antagonism. I think that's here. So did the movie poster sell this accurately? I'm going to say yes, despite the fact that none of the people in the poster looked like the people in the movie. Yeah, I think it effectively communicated to your kind of watch a Schlokfest of Schlokfest with women getting their close to one that was communicated by the movie. I know I have some questions for you. Yep. So we had talked in the fifties episode about themes that we might see in fifties movies. There's a couple here that I want to talk about, which is You know, paranoia, is that a major theme in this movie? I feel like Dr. Moran is paranoid, but I think he's just weird. Like, and it's not paranoia against somebody in particular. I agree. So at the very beginning of this movie, we didn't mention it, but someone in the adventures or explorers club mentions that Dr. Moran has a family taint So it's kind of suggested that like madness runs it in his family. So I think he's just like an insane mad scientist. I think you're right. They do mention at the beginning and I've completely forgotten. Now a cousin theme though to paranoia that you and I mentioned in reference to the fifties is this idea of kind of dark secrets and hypocrisy. I want to suggest that this movie very lightly touches on that. There is So I think just the introduction of things like there are prostitutes in this movie is I mean, just by having them in the movie, I think this movie is doing a little bit of like, hey, this is like what really is going on that we all know is really going on that all of these other movies like kind of brush off and don't put on the screen for sure. So I hate to say that's a bold artistic choice, but also the Barker at the beginning who's trying to convince a lot of married men to come into his tent to ogle the women he has in there. So this scene goes on for kind of a weirdly long time and he goes from man to man trying to convince them to come in and basically the gist of it is you know you want to come in here and look at these pretty ladies. You know why I won't tell your wife that sort of thing, right? And so I think that is unfair comedy. It's not really funny, but I think that the intent is comedy. Yeah. I do think that is a scene that we wouldn't have seen in like the forties. Correct. I agree. Well, that leads me to my next question, which is this idea, which I think are linked together in this movie. Is it challenging conformity, you know, our heroes, are they doing that and how have they changed from the previous movies? We already talked about that, but that's some it up for us. So our heroes are not do not conform to what I would say like the societal idea of productive young people. And I think that is interesting and noteworthy. Yes, Jack. I mean, there's nothing wrong with being a mechanic, but the way it's presented here is that Jack is kind of this I mean, he's living with this mom and working on cars and his mom's garage. It's not suggested that this is like a real serious career. He's on that more of a thing that he is doing because it's there. And Sally, I mean, she has this kind of degrading trashy job as a carnival booth girl. And you know, when she is fired from that, uh, if she doesn't even seem particularly phase, then she quickly moves on and finds another just sort of low level. Let's less degrading on the service at least job as a housekeeper. I think this is similar to the prostitutes being here and that the movie is this movie is able to say you know these are the actual people you know in your life right yeah like your friends you and your friends look more like this then they look like the accomplished professional heroes of these other movies you've seen and so i well i I don't want to, again, I don't want to get this movie more credit than it deserves, but I do see that as challenging that a little tension with the conformity. What do you think? Yes, I think so too. And one thing you mentioned in that episode was like more diverse heroes, it could be you could measure that in a lot of ways, but one of the ways you mentioned was social class, right? And clearly our heroes here are of a quote unquote lower social class. then Dr. Moran or even the heroes in, again, valley of the zombies, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in all of our past movies, you know, this is one of the first where the heroes have been the, the quote, servants, rather than the people with the servants. Yeah, for sure. Descients and sci-fi take on a bigger role in this movie. Not really. I, you know, this movie is is not venturing very far outside the Frankenstein type of boundary. I don't think I don't think so. Do you agree? I agree. What about leaving sort of those local Caribbean roots and moving into the broader world? I mean, I feel like that's happening here, but is it kind of like we just want new exotic cultures to bring in or is it something else? Yeah, well, it's interesting that Voodoo is not really mentioned. No, they mentioned juju once towards the end, but you know, this movie does not make any effort to identify what these people are doing as Voodoo, which is good because that wouldn't make any historical sense. Uh, yeah. I mean, on the one hand, this is another movie where white people go into a quote, exotic place and get into trouble because of what they find there. But it's still, it has a little bit more of a, um, I don't know, like a cosmopolitan feel to it than some of those past films I had. Right. Um, it is interesting, you know, that, that this, I think sometimes about which of our movies, they go to the exotic place and then they have their adventure there. But this is one of a couple where they go to the exotic place and then they bring something exotic back to our comfortable home environment. It causes trouble when that intersects with like regular American life. And that feels, I don't know what that means exactly, but I, it feels like a little bit of a shift. Yeah, I agree. Okay. So that means we just have our final wrap-up questions, John. Yes. First of all, is this a zombie movie or is it a movie with zombies? I'm going to say it's a movie with zombies, because it's really about Dr. Moran's descent into evil, you know? I had a great. I mean, it's really about a misogynistic serial killer. Yeah. All right. Is this a movie you recommend generally? And is it a movie you recommend to our zombie-loving fans? So generally, probably not. However, I will say like if you like Schlocky-Fifty horror movies, like just because of the sort of change in tone we're starting to see as a general horror fan you might get something out of it is what i'll say uh for zombie fans i think there's less there i think we spent most of our time talking here about the precedents it sets for horror in the future and less about the innovations in zombie film you know what I mean I agree I did you know I've been a lot on a limb and say this movie was fairly enjoyable to watch yeah you know one I mean one of the secrets of these shlaki you know boundary pushing films is that you know they are they're entertaining right and yeah I mean I think it's worth discussing and interrogating all of the things that make them entertaining but at the end of the day I thought this is a pretty good watch I guess far as I move is pretty exciting I did like the I did like, you know, that the tree is kind of dumb in the movie, but I did like the idea of the tree and it being transplanted to America and then try, but you know, getting there. Well, it's England, but yes. Right, right, right, right. Say it, yes. All that to say a very soft recommend to horror fans from me probably a no-for zombie fans. Yeah. There's just not really very much. I agree. All right. Okay. And then, John, would you and I survive in the zombie world of woman-eater? We probably would, because we're not women. Like, that's the reason I shouldn't laugh, but I know. Right. Like, we're chuckling here about the sexism in this movie because it's so blatant and we're uncomfortable, but yes, that's the reason we would survive. Yeah. I get no point is Jack threatened or is like any harm positioned towards the right. Jack. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that we would we would be fine and And I think most of the people I hang out with would not get entangled with with a weirdo like Dr. Moran correct. Yeah So that means it's time for the scariest part of the show and that is when bread reveals to us what we are watching next to bread so get to us move that chassis over to me. So it's time to go back to nineteen fifty nine all right Oh, yeah. Okay. This looks pretty gnarly. I can use that word. And it has a great title. What's the title of this movie? The title is the four skulls of Jonathan Drake. That is a good title. Okay. And we have, yes, that's a good title. We have a big blue face. There's either missing an eye. His strings are hanging out of his mouth or maybe his mouth is supposed to be so shut or something weird. Yeah. It's kind of cool though. We got a mad scientist over here with a bunch of skulls. Yeah. Not a bunch for. Oh, okay. Sorry for skull. I would consider for a bunch, but And then we have a very modestly dressed woman in danger, which will be nice. And then an idyllic scene of like a, in the back, a little scene with a farmhouse on a tree. No, it's not a farmhouse. It is a really bad illustration of a graveyard and an open casket. Okay, is that all right? I dramatically misread that one. I'm going to blame the poster creators though. Yeah, you should. This is not a great poster, but I do love what it says across the top, which says written, produced and directed to scare the daylights out of you. Banana in tiny words. Oh, this is exciting. In tiny words under the title, I had to zoom in to read it. Yeah. It makes this startling claim your money not refunded if you faint. Oh, all right. I love a movie that makes a bold promises like this. I'm I'm down for this. I think we've had this one on a radar and I think we've been thinking that I don't know anything about this movie. But that title rules. So yes it does. All right everybody. Thanks for listening and we will be back next episode with the four skulls of Jonathan Drake. You've been listening to zombie strains. 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