Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and Hey, this is a fun one for you.
Speaker 1: This was I think one of three or four different
Speaker 1: Florida movies that we did back in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: including the likes of Frogs and Zat you know, the
Speaker 1: Bloodwaters of Doctor z. But this is the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven picture shock Waves. This one is indeed about Nazi
Speaker 1: zombies emerging off the coast of Florida and attacking people
Speaker 1: in the ruins of a huge Florida hotel. This is
Speaker 1: one that really creeped me out when I saw it
Speaker 1: on TBS back in the day. I think it was
Speaker 1: TBS anyway, and I think it holds up pretty well.
Speaker 1: So this is a fun discussion. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back to complete our
Speaker 3: trilogy of Florida movies. Now recently on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 3: we looked at the movie Frogs starring Sam Elliott, which
Speaker 3: is about as Florida as a movie can Get and
Speaker 3: then we also recently discussed the movie Zat, which is
Speaker 3: about a man who dreamed he was a catfish and
Speaker 3: then turned himself into one, though didn't really look like
Speaker 3: a catfish, but just sort of like went around settling
Speaker 3: grudges and getting revenge and semi catfish form. And it's
Speaker 3: more Florida again. This time it's going to be Florida
Speaker 3: Nazi zombies.
Speaker 1: That's right. We're going to be looking at the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven film shock Waves. I believe it was actually
Speaker 1: filmed in nineteen seventy five, so it's still a few
Speaker 1: years later than our two previous Florida films, but it
Speaker 1: is very much a product of the nineteen seventies, and
Speaker 1: it is I should make it clear here. It's actually
Speaker 1: supposed to take place on a Caribbean island, but it's
Speaker 1: very much filmed in Florida, and I think it's ultimately
Speaker 1: a Florida movie to its core. It has elements in
Speaker 1: common with our previous two picks, but it's also doing
Speaker 1: its own thing.
Speaker 3: You know. I think it's fitting that we discuss our
Speaker 3: final Florida movie today because I have to be honest
Speaker 3: and say I am running like, right now, my gas
Speaker 3: tank is full of sand. So Rob, I hope you
Speaker 3: can bring the life to inject into this podcast today.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do my best, all right, All right,
Speaker 1: Well I have my tea here, so I hopefully that
Speaker 1: will invigorate me as well. Okay, So, yeah, this movie
Speaker 1: has things in common with both zat and Frogs, but
Speaker 1: it's very much doing its own thing because for starters,
Speaker 1: it's a zombie movie. Furthermore, it digs into two different
Speaker 1: sub genres of zombie movies by being both an aquatic
Speaker 1: zombie movie and a Nazi zombie movie. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's pretty early in either of these subgenre traditions. And
Speaker 1: I think you could also make a strong case that
Speaker 1: this is this film might be the true trend setter,
Speaker 1: if not one of the key trend setters, for both.
Speaker 3: You know. I think I've said on the show before
Speaker 3: for that, of all the different types of creatures in
Speaker 3: horror movies, I feel like, on average, it's zombie movies
Speaker 3: that are the most often trying to say something with
Speaker 3: the story they tell. You know, the zombies, for some
Speaker 3: reason just lend themselves quite well to cultural commentary. This movie,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's trying to say anything.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think it is. I think you can
Speaker 1: lean into we'll discuss you might be able to lean
Speaker 1: into it a little bit and draw maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit of nuance from it. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: this is a film that just wants to scare you
Speaker 1: and have some creepy stuff going on in it, and
Speaker 1: and it ultimately succeeds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a I would say a
Speaker 3: success on the front of stylish horror movie, and that
Speaker 3: the creatures look creepy, and you spend a lot of
Speaker 3: this movie just looking at them. They're just like popping
Speaker 3: up out of the water, popping up from behind roots,
Speaker 3: kind of like you might open a drawer in the
Speaker 3: kitchen and there's one of these zombies in there and
Speaker 3: it's just looking up at you with those goggles. And yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what it does. It does it well, and I
Speaker 3: give it all all credit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we'll talk about the zombies in this film
Speaker 1: a bit more now. Now on the zombie front, on
Speaker 1: the Nazi zombie front, rather, there are only a handful
Speaker 1: of cinematic predecessors to this movie. There's nineteen forty three's
Speaker 1: Revenge of the Zombies, which had John Carodine in it.
Speaker 1: Who's also in this film that involved a mad scientist
Speaker 1: trying to create zombies for the Third Reich?
Speaker 3: But Wadiams hasn't it, hasn't it been proven that John
Speaker 3: Carodine is actually in all films ever made?
Speaker 1: Just about Yeah, well, we'll do a proper breakdown on
Speaker 1: Kerodine in a bit. But he's come up before, because yeah,
Speaker 1: he has a tremendous filmography.
Speaker 3: Well wait a minute, I challenge you name a film
Speaker 3: John Carrodine was not in. You can't do.
Speaker 1: It within his lifetime. Or well, he was actually in
Speaker 1: some films outside of his lifetime, which fu get we'll discuss.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there was also a nineteen sixty six film
Speaker 1: called The Frozen Dead which at thaw Nazis zombies in it,
Speaker 1: and there are a handful of other films that also
Speaker 1: involved Nazis in the occult as part of a general
Speaker 1: trend in science fiction and horror, as well as new
Speaker 1: age and conspiracy thinking. Because the filmmakers behind Shockwaves they're
Speaker 1: pretty upfront about citing a nineteen sixty book titled The
Speaker 1: Morning of the Magicians as a prime influence. So this
Speaker 1: I think We've briefly discussed this book before, talking about
Speaker 1: like ancient alien stuff before, but this was a popular
Speaker 1: book in conspiracy theory circles. Remains popular in conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: circles because it entails just a whole host of their
Speaker 1: favorite topics like UFOs and Nazi occultism and so forth.
Speaker 3: Though it's funny we think about the I don't know
Speaker 3: the occult Nazi sub genre as a I don't know
Speaker 3: the special remit of sort of obscure drek in the
Speaker 3: film world, but it's easy to forget that some of
Speaker 3: the most mainstream movies ever got into this territory. This
Speaker 3: is what Indiana Jones is about. It's all like occult
Speaker 3: not stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Raiders the Lost Arc is the biggest Nazi occultist
Speaker 1: film of all time. And later on you had to
Speaker 1: Gaielmo de Toro's hell Boy got into the same territory,
Speaker 1: but that was that was a little bit later. Initially,
Speaker 1: like Shockwaves was was a big trendsetter. There's a film
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty called Zombie Lake that I think was
Speaker 1: a French Spanish production that was I think heavily inspired
Speaker 1: by Shockwaves, if not just kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: very very much followed in its footsteps, because you went
Speaker 1: on to see people like Joel Schumacher get involved in
Speaker 1: the Nazi zombie subgenre, like two thousand and nine Blood Creek.
Speaker 1: You see it in all sorts of video games. So
Speaker 1: it's become something that that sci fi and horror is
Speaker 1: really latched onto. And I think a lot of that
Speaker 1: probably has to do with just the simple formula of
Speaker 1: taking you know, human evil and supernatural evil and combining them,
Speaker 1: taking traditional movie villains and traditional movie monsters and combining them.
Speaker 1: And maybe if you're, you know, daring to get a
Speaker 1: little contemplative, you might say, you know, the fear of
Speaker 1: re emergence of a dreadful and destructive ideology, plus the
Speaker 1: just the obvious metaphor of reanimated corpses.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean that would be an interesting thematic resonance,
Speaker 3: though I don't think I can honestly say that this
Speaker 3: movie seems like it had that on its mind.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, that would that would be
Speaker 1: an add on if you just think too hard about chockwtz.
Speaker 3: Right, if you were to try to make an intellectually
Speaker 3: curious zombie Nazi movie, that would be a good direction
Speaker 3: to go with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, but I should mention on the aquatic zombie front.
Speaker 1: Aren't a lot of films that may be come to
Speaker 1: mind in this category. There's nineteen seventy nine's Zombie from
Speaker 1: Lucio Fulci, which had a pretty tremendous scene with an
Speaker 1: underwater zombie, a shark and I think a snorkeler. It's
Speaker 1: been a while since I've seen Zombie.
Speaker 3: It's best remembered for the zombie fighting the shark, and
Speaker 3: I think the zombie wins. I think it like bites
Speaker 3: the shark and Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1: Well it is called zombie, not sharks, so that makes sense.
Speaker 1: But that was seventy nine.
Speaker 3: Now I can't stand by that. Sorry, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a draw, I don't know. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: that came after shock Waves. A film that came before it,
Speaker 1: but just barely was The Ghost Gallleon from nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: That was one of Amando Diasario's Blind Dead films. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've seen any of these, Joe. They're
Speaker 1: they're pretty low budget and they have a bunch of
Speaker 1: undead templars engaging in generally they're just chasing people down
Speaker 1: and killing them, but in this particular one, they're engaging
Speaker 1: in some beach in underwater horror.
Speaker 3: Oh well, so the undead templars connects to a thing
Speaker 3: I was going to ask you about, which is I
Speaker 3: was trying to think if there is something else like that,
Speaker 3: you know, because there are tons of these Nazi zombie movies,
Speaker 3: if there's something else like that, like a group of
Speaker 3: like it's all zombies, but they're united by something they
Speaker 3: had in common in life, maybe like they are certain
Speaker 3: type of soldier. And I really couldn't think. I could
Speaker 3: think of tons of Nazi zombie movies, but couldn't really
Speaker 3: think of many other examples. So it makes me think
Speaker 3: that what's attractive about this subgenre is not that it's like,
Speaker 3: oh they are you know, they all have this in
Speaker 3: common and then they become undead. It's the specific historical
Speaker 3: resonances of the Nazis. And I think that's I think
Speaker 3: you're exactly right when you say it's probably as simple
Speaker 3: as what's the evilest human thing you can think of
Speaker 3: and then just make it supernatural?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think so, And it remains a winning formula,
Speaker 1: Like now more so than ever.
Speaker 3: But anyway, the templars thing here, you said that would
Speaker 3: be one counter example. Okay, here's something else. This is
Speaker 3: like they're all templars and now they're templar zombies.
Speaker 1: Yes, and maybe there's some other examples out there in
Speaker 1: the film world I'm just not aware of. So if
Speaker 1: they're if there's something like maybe there's are there zombie
Speaker 1: Samurai films? I don't know, nothing's coming to mind, but
Speaker 1: maybe I'm missing something obvious.
Speaker 3: Are there zombie Chicago Bears or like a specific sports team.
Speaker 1: A zombie that sounds like it could be like a
Speaker 1: good sort of field goally movie, you know where it's
Speaker 1: like there's nothing in the rule book that says a
Speaker 1: team of zombies can't take to the field and try
Speaker 1: to win the Super Bowl. And then it happens, and
Speaker 1: it's magical for everybody.
Speaker 3: You producers out there, we're just feeding your gold day
Speaker 3: after day. I know I'm going to send us the checks.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the elevator pitch for this film.
Speaker 1: It's pretty simple. Aquatic Nazi zombies left over from World
Speaker 1: War Two rise from the deep in the Caribbean to
Speaker 1: hunt down tourists through a desolated beach resort in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with Peter Cushing. Yes, Peter Cushing just happens to
Speaker 3: be in the mix.
Speaker 1: All right, let's have some of that trailer audio.
Speaker 4: You are now in the deep end of horror, shock
Speaker 4: waves once they were almost human. You mean to say
Speaker 4: that what we all saw out there is just a mirage.
Speaker 4: It was a minor underwater disturbance, the hot sky acting
Speaker 4: on Nicole Current, coming from a mile down below. Something unknown,
Speaker 4: something unforeseen, something unspeakable, lives below, and it lives to destroy.
Speaker 4: They have risen.
Speaker 3: All right, So who directed this thing?
Speaker 1: This film was directed by Ken Viderhorn, director and writer,
Speaker 1: and while this was his big breakout film, he went
Speaker 1: on to direct a number of genre features, including Eyes
Speaker 1: of a Stranger, Return of the Living Dead two, Dark Tower,
Speaker 1: which I believe is a haunted skyscraper movie. I haven't
Speaker 1: actually seen it, and he also directed seven episodes of
Speaker 1: Freddy's Nightmares, as well as A House in the Hills.
Speaker 3: I think I have seen Dark Tower. I think somehow
Speaker 3: I just found that on the internet one night and
Speaker 3: put it on and it was pretty bad. Return to
Speaker 3: the Living Dead two I haven't seen, but Return of
Speaker 3: the Living Dead one is one of my favorite comedy
Speaker 3: horror movies. That movie is near perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dan O'Bannon on that one. Yeah, that's a great one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I've heard that the second one is still
Speaker 3: I've heard it described as still pretty fun, but sort
Speaker 3: of taking the premise of the first movie to a
Speaker 3: kind of Looney Tunes elevation.
Speaker 1: All right, now, I mentioned Viderhorn. It was one of
Speaker 1: the writers. The co writer on this was John Kent Harrison,
Speaker 1: who enjoyed quite a writing and directing career after this,
Speaker 1: though not a lot of stuff that I'm personally familiar with.
Speaker 1: But his credits include nineteen ninety nine's You Know My
Speaker 1: Name starring Sam Elliott, as well as a bear named Winnie,
Speaker 1: which I think it's like a Winnie the Pooh or
Speaker 1: it's a maybe it's a biopic about the creator of
Speaker 1: Winnie the Pooh. It starred Michael Fassbender as Winnie the Pooh.
Speaker 1: Michael Fassbender was in I think he was in a
Speaker 1: Nazi zombie movie, the one directed by Joel Schumacher by
Speaker 1: the way, Okay, as well as Stephen Frye. I was
Speaker 1: also in that Wow. Yeah. Also responsible for the Courageous
Speaker 1: Heart of Irene Sendler starring Anna Paquin. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: guy went on to do a lot of stuff and
Speaker 1: is still active.
Speaker 3: Did the writer of Shockwaves write mister Hollands Opus.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But that's like the sort of
Speaker 1: genre of film that he seemed to have gone on to.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: All right, well let's talk about the cast here top billing,
Speaker 1: and we've already mentioned him. Peter Cushing is in this.
Speaker 1: He plays SS Commander no given name for this character.
Speaker 1: They're light on names, that's right.
Speaker 3: He never says his name, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yep, doesn't introduce himself.
Speaker 3: Also, I don't think he even tries a German accent,
Speaker 3: does he. I don't recall one.
Speaker 1: You know. It's a little it's a little German. It's
Speaker 1: it's very clearly identifiable as Peter Cushing. It's Peter Cushing,
Speaker 1: like germaned up ten percent.
Speaker 3: Okay, apology for misremembering.
Speaker 1: So Peter Cushing, of course lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four. He's a legend. This is Hammer's Doctor Frankenstein,
Speaker 1: this is Star Wars Grand Moth Tarkin, enthusiastic war gamer
Speaker 1: and the man with the sharpest cheekbones and the biz
Speaker 1: he can.
Speaker 3: Use multiple parts of his face as an ice pick.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I used to own the Blue Underground DVD of
Speaker 1: this film and somehow lost it. But I remember in
Speaker 1: the various extras on that they talked to some of
Speaker 1: the cast members on this and they talked about working
Speaker 1: with Peter Cushing, and like everybody else, it seems they
Speaker 1: just had nice things to say about him. He was
Speaker 1: just like a total professional, super nice. And I think
Speaker 1: the only even slightly negative thing is like is one
Speaker 1: of the actors said something to the effect of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he showed up and he was He just had all
Speaker 1: his lines memorized and he was so professional that he
Speaker 1: made me feel like a little crappy for not being
Speaker 1: as on top of things as he was. But yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody seems to have loved Cushing.
Speaker 3: That's something I'm always kind of curious about when you
Speaker 3: hear those little things about which actors memorize their lines
Speaker 3: in which one.
Speaker 1: Stone Yeah, cushion was. I think he was one of
Speaker 1: yea with total pro like. He doesn't matter what caliber
Speaker 1: of film it was, he showed up and he did
Speaker 1: the job all right. Did we mention you we did mention.
Speaker 1: John Carrodine is in this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He has the distinction of playing the only character with
Speaker 1: a last name really place. Yeah, he plays Captain Ben Morris.
Speaker 3: I don't say really because I am surprised nobody else
Speaker 3: had a last name. I'm surprised because I didn't remember
Speaker 3: him having one.
Speaker 1: Now, but maybe that was one of his demands. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'll do it, but you've got to give me a
Speaker 1: last name. I'm not playing a character with just a
Speaker 1: first name or no name. You leave that to Cushing.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's kind of grizzled in this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah. This is another film legend, certainly a
Speaker 1: horror screen legend. He was in any and everything from
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty to nineteen ninety five, yes, seven years after
Speaker 1: his death. A little film called Jacko that I think
Speaker 1: you've seen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't even know how to describe that one.
Speaker 3: It's like a It's an mega grade direct to video
Speaker 3: Halloween themed movie that has him in scenes where he
Speaker 3: is not on screen with anybody else because I think
Speaker 3: the footage his footage in the movie appears to have
Speaker 3: been shot approximately seventeen years before the rest of the film.
Speaker 3: Otherwise it's got like Linea Quigley and a bunch of
Speaker 3: teenagers running around getting attacked by this thing with a pumpkinhead.
Speaker 1: I think, okay, sounds like a winning concept. So yeah, Kerodeine,
Speaker 1: he was in a lot of Indian horror films, but
Speaker 1: we have to remember he was also in the Grapes
Speaker 1: of Wrath. He was in Stagecoach, he was in The
Speaker 1: Ten Commandments, which also featured Vincent Price. Speaking of horror icons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course John Carrodine was also notable as the
Speaker 1: patriarch of the Carrodeine family, the father of David Keith
Speaker 1: and Robert Carrodine, who all carried on this tradition of
Speaker 1: being in you know, all different sorts of films, but
Speaker 1: also doing a good job. Like Krodine is always John Canary,
Speaker 1: He's always watchable.
Speaker 3: I was really hoping he would sing a song in
Speaker 3: this one, though, like you couldn't even do so. He's
Speaker 3: done the Night Train to Mundo Fie. He could he
Speaker 3: not come up with a you know, the Island of
Speaker 3: those shock Waves. It seems like they should have put
Speaker 3: in the effort.
Speaker 1: I've I've I've either read or remember from the digital
Speaker 1: I'm not Digital Underground Blue Underground DVD, that that he
Speaker 1: did all of his stunts in this, which don't really
Speaker 1: amount to a lot, but he was seventy one years
Speaker 1: old at the time and like he did like all
Speaker 1: the physicality that was asked of him in this, so
Speaker 1: oh so quite a.
Speaker 3: Trooper at the part when you see his dead body
Speaker 3: under the glass as they have they like ride a
Speaker 3: glass bottom boat over his corpse and he's there shirtless
Speaker 3: with his hair swinging around in the water. So that's him.
Speaker 3: That's yeah, yeah, okay, so yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: All right. The so that they these guys get top billing,
Speaker 1: you know, because they're the horror icons and they're the
Speaker 1: ones you want to put on your horror post here.
Speaker 1: But the real star, like our lead and our main hero,
Speaker 1: is the character Rose, played by Brooke Adams born nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine.
Speaker 3: I love Brook Adams. Brook Adams is in one of
Speaker 3: my all time favorite horror movies, the nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 3: remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which you've never
Speaker 3: seen is just excellent, just one of the best ever made.
Speaker 1: This is the Philip Kaufman win Yes, yes, yeah, So
Speaker 1: at the time of Shockwaves. She was an Indian TV actor,
Speaker 1: though she had appeared uncredited. I think a very bit
Speaker 1: role in nineteen seventy four is The Great Gatsby. But her, yeah,
Speaker 1: her career took off after Shockwaves. Maybe because of Shockwaves,
Speaker 1: I don't know. She was in Terrence Malix Days of
Speaker 1: Heaven the following year. You already mentioned Body Snatchers. She
Speaker 1: also went on to star opposite Christopher Walken and David
Speaker 1: Cronenberg's adaptation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone. She was
Speaker 1: in The Stuff The Unborn, and she did a whole
Speaker 1: lot of TV work. And it's a bit of trivia.
Speaker 1: She's been married to actor Tony Shaloub since nineteen ninety ten.
Speaker 3: Oh, I had no idea. Yeah, Broke Adams is great.
Speaker 3: She's got that great screen presence of the kind of
Speaker 3: just instantly likable always.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. She checks off all the major boxes for female
Speaker 1: lead in the seventies horror film in this while also
Speaker 1: like having that extra you know, bit of charisma and talent.
Speaker 1: You know you could it's not surprising that she went
Speaker 1: on to be in all these other things. You know.
Speaker 1: There's sometimes just the way she delivers certain lines in
Speaker 1: this that might otherwise be throwaway lines. She's able to
Speaker 1: inject a certain amount of nuance or comedy into it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So who's our mustache for the movie?
Speaker 1: Oh well, this is Luke Halpin playing Keith. Halpin was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen forty seven, a handsome fellow with a
Speaker 1: maximum mid seventies mustache, and his main claim to fame
Speaker 1: prior to this is that he played the character Sandy Rix,
Speaker 1: a child in the nineteen sixty three film Flipper opposite
Speaker 1: Chuck Connors, and then played the same role in the
Speaker 1: TV show to follow, though in this the TV show
Speaker 1: did not have Chuck Conners and a dolphin. It had
Speaker 1: Brian Kelly and a dolphin. Fun fact, Brian Kelly has
Speaker 1: a single executive producer credit on IMDb, and it's for
Speaker 1: Blade Runner. But anyway, it happens good in this. I
Speaker 1: liked him. Yeah, maybe it's his mustache. I don't know.
Speaker 3: We can call him the Mustache Runner from here on out.
Speaker 3: I always thinking he's very seventies. To me, he looks
Speaker 3: like one of the members of Still Water, You know that.
Speaker 3: He looks like he just lost four cases of beer
Speaker 3: playing cards with Humble Pie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, he's got a certain I mean
Speaker 1: he's no, he's no Sam Elliott, you know, but but
Speaker 1: he has he has a certain laid back mid seventies
Speaker 1: style to him that it works well on the film.
Speaker 1: And and he's he's he's also decent at at bringing
Speaker 1: across a certain level of fear and anxiety that becomes
Speaker 1: absolutely necessary in a film like this.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, the rest of the cast just sort of is
Speaker 3: rounded out mostly by these people playing tourists who are
Speaker 3: zombie fodder.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and I'm not sure how many of them
Speaker 1: are necessarily worth spending a lot of time on, but
Speaker 1: they're all pretty good in their role. You have this
Speaker 1: guy Fred Butch I believe it is. I lived thirty
Speaker 1: five through twenty twelve. Yeah, plays the character Chuck. This
Speaker 1: is a guy who had various roles in eighties movies,
Speaker 1: including Cocoon and Caddy Shack. And he looks like he
Speaker 1: was in another Florida movie, this time of slasher titled
Speaker 1: Nightmare Beach from nineteen eighty nine that Romberto Lindsay was
Speaker 1: involved in and that also featured Michael Parks and John Saxon.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I was thinking of Chuck in this movie
Speaker 3: as Bacardi Man. I didn't know what his name was,
Speaker 3: so I just called him Bacardi Man the whole time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has a signature look, often shirtless, sometimes just
Speaker 1: in tidy white. He's running around on the deck of
Speaker 1: a ship. He's great because he's kind of like you.
Speaker 1: You always have to have your your array of characters
Speaker 1: from detestable to likable or lovable, and he's nicely situated
Speaker 1: in the middle. You know, you don't really hate him,
Speaker 1: but he's You're not going to be that disappointed when
Speaker 1: a zombie kills him.
Speaker 3: He also has a seemingly out of character freak out
Speaker 3: toward the end of the movie. That's pretty amusing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, but then we also have like this angry,
Speaker 3: aggressive nerd character named Norman.
Speaker 1: Yes, Norman is great, played by Jack Davidson born nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six. This actor did a lot of small parts
Speaker 1: in films, including eighty seven's The Secret of My Success
Speaker 1: eighty three is Trading Places. In this he is a
Speaker 1: used car salesman on vacation with his wife Beverly, and
Speaker 1: oh man, he is not satisfied and he will be
Speaker 1: speaking to your manager.
Speaker 3: Yes, he exudes not satisfied with my service. That is
Speaker 3: his personality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Beverly is great in this too, played by DJ Sidney,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't really in much beyond this.
Speaker 3: Oh, and then there's also Dobbs. He's like Bacardi Man
Speaker 3: number two. This movie has multiple Bacardi men.
Speaker 1: Dobbs is your straight Bcarardy man, though he is going
Speaker 1: to drink the Baccardi straight, no no mixers, no ice,
Speaker 1: and he will have it for breakfast. He plays our
Speaker 1: the dive boats alcoholic cook and I guess like sort
Speaker 1: of general like boat guy played by a Cola based
Speaker 1: actor Don Scout who lived nineteen twenty three through two
Speaker 1: thousand and four. And even he's good and this is
Speaker 1: kind of a you know, a throwaway role, I guess.
Speaker 1: But he's he's amusing, He's this. Yeah, just this, this
Speaker 1: alcoholic boat guy who you know is not going to
Speaker 1: make it far into the film. But he is also
Speaker 1: not you know, you're not he's not hateable.
Speaker 3: He has an interesting death scene we'll get too later on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just a small role. But there's a fisherman that
Speaker 1: shows up early on, played by the actor Clarence Thomas
Speaker 1: who lived thirty four through two thousand and nine. An
Speaker 1: actor and according to IMDb, which again can sometimes be incorrect,
Speaker 1: but IMDb claims he was the first African American Florida
Speaker 1: Branch president of the Screen Actors Guild from two thousd
Speaker 1: to two thousand and two. So there you go.
Speaker 3: Now, there's one reason I know you must have wanted
Speaker 3: to do this movie, which is it has an electronic score.
Speaker 1: Yes, as far as I'm concerned, one of the and
Speaker 1: I think this is essential for my understanding of the
Speaker 1: Florida movie. But yeah, one of the true stars of
Speaker 1: this film is Richard Einhorn because he is responsible for
Speaker 1: Shockwave's tremendous score. I think it's absolutely top shelf composed
Speaker 1: and performed by contemporary classic musical composer Richard Einhorn.
Speaker 3: So this is not an Italian composed score, but I
Speaker 3: would say it feels Italian to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it definitely has some of those vibes going on.
Speaker 1: It's it's worth that a lot of electronic music in
Speaker 1: the genre score world, they come from individuals who, in
Speaker 1: some cases they were largely self taught, or they came
Speaker 1: up playing for and working with bands. Einhorn, however, was
Speaker 1: a graduate of Columbia University where he studied electronic music
Speaker 1: and composition under the of some individuals that are apparently
Speaker 1: major names in that field of not just popular electronic
Speaker 1: music but like classical composition and electronic music, like Vladimir
Speaker 1: Yusuchevsky and Mario david Offsky. And Einhorn went on to
Speaker 1: compose such works as The Origin and opera that was
Speaker 1: inspired by Charles Darwin's life and work with lyrics by
Speaker 1: poet Katherine Barnett.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Another composition, Voices of Light, was inspired by the Silent
Speaker 1: Joan of Arc film, and you can find this particular
Speaker 1: piece of music on Spotify and various other streaming sites.
Speaker 3: Buddy also did some trash horror.
Speaker 1: Movies YEP, including ultimately several Viderhorn movies. He did Eyes
Speaker 1: of a Stranger as well as he also did the
Speaker 1: influential nineteen eighty one slasher film The Prowler.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that was when we talked about. When I
Speaker 3: was a guest on Movie Crush with Chuck Bryant and
Speaker 3: several of our other friends from the office, we talked
Speaker 3: about slasher movies that one's not I mean, there really
Speaker 3: are no slasher movies that are like really good movies.
Speaker 3: Maybe Halloween or something, but that one's just in terms
Speaker 3: of slasher style, it's got a lot going for it.
Speaker 3: It's got a very menacing looking killer in terms of
Speaker 3: the costume, which is similar to what this movie really
Speaker 3: has going for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely menacing looking adversaries. Now, Einhorn also did Let's
Speaker 1: See Blood Rage, Dead of Winter, The Dark Tower, but
Speaker 1: he also composed the scores for, in particular the score
Speaker 1: for nineteen ninety one's Closet Land. This starred Madeline Stowe
Speaker 1: and Alan Rickman, and Philip Glass was involved as that
Speaker 1: as well as creative musical supervision, and from there he
Speaker 1: also did various work for documentaries and art films. Now, interestingly,
Speaker 1: Einhorn lost his hearing at the age of fifty seven,
Speaker 1: and there's a twenty eleven New York Times article that
Speaker 1: details how the use of a hearing allowed him to
Speaker 1: enjoy live music again. So if you're interested, I recommend
Speaker 1: looking that article up and reading it. It's quite it's
Speaker 1: quite breath tacking because it gets into the technology a bit,
Speaker 1: but also just talking to Einhorn about how, you know
Speaker 1: he'd lost his hearing, he thought that he'd never be
Speaker 1: able to enjoy live musical performances again. And then he's
Speaker 1: trying on this loop and he went to see Wicked,
Speaker 1: I think, or something like that, and he said, I'm
Speaker 1: not even a fan of musicals, but the experience reduced
Speaker 1: him to tears, you know, because he was able to
Speaker 1: hear this again. So it's a really great read that's inspiring.
Speaker 1: Now the score for Shockwaves again, in my opinion, I
Speaker 1: think it's absolutely great, legitimately jarring, deeply disturbing. I think
Speaker 1: Shockwaves would have ultimately been an interesting film with a
Speaker 1: different score, but I'm not sure it would have really
Speaker 1: succeeded to the level that it does because Einhorn just
Speaker 1: fills the picture with sonic dread that makes everything else
Speaker 1: work ten times as well as it would otherwise. There
Speaker 1: are bits where he bleeds in the audio of like
Speaker 1: Chance from the Third Reich, and there are also some
Speaker 1: really unsettling nature sounds as well, underwater reverberations. There's this
Speaker 1: disturbing shrieking sound at one point. So the music really
Speaker 1: really keeps you on your toes.
Speaker 3: Let's hear some of it now.
Speaker 1: I don't think the score is officially available anywhere in
Speaker 1: digital form. Sadly, you may be able to find some
Speaker 1: unofficial streams, but Waxwork Records has it out on vinyl,
Speaker 1: and I'm again I'm not a vinyl collector. I don't do,
Speaker 1: not have a record player, but this looks absolutely splendid
Speaker 1: because it's remastered and it's available in Seafoam Green. The
Speaker 1: actual record is Seafoam Green, and then it has some
Speaker 1: custom art on the front and on the back and
Speaker 1: some new liner notes. So any vinyl fans out there,
Speaker 1: if you're interested, check this out, and if you already
Speaker 1: own it, tell me what it is like.
Speaker 3: Oh, I may have to order this one. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: has good art, all right.
Speaker 1: I guess a couple of more connections here in passing.
Speaker 1: Alan Ormsby was born nineteen forty three is responsible for
Speaker 1: the special makeup we see in the picture of these
Speaker 1: Nazi zombies, and while he worked special makeup in a
Speaker 1: few films previously, including Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things,
Speaker 1: he also wrote that film and actually served as a
Speaker 1: screenwriter for many years, with credits that include Paul Schrader's
Speaker 1: Cat People, the nineteen ninety one horror anthology film Popcorn,
Speaker 1: The Substitute starring Tom Behringer and its various sequels, which
Speaker 1: I think we've talked about and confused it with other
Speaker 1: films on that previous episodes of Weird House.
Speaker 3: I think, on reflection, I have not actually seen that movie.
Speaker 3: I just find it conceptually funny because it's Tom Barringer
Speaker 3: looking so stern.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I think that's the only thing he does
Speaker 1: in it. But then also Ormsby has an additional story
Speaker 1: material credit on Disney's animated version of Mulan, So yeah,
Speaker 1: strange connections on this one. But yeah, the death Cord
Speaker 1: troopers in this do look very creepy with the goggles
Speaker 1: and the model pale flesh and wet seaweed like blonde hair.
Speaker 3: This is one of those movies that knows it has
Speaker 3: a great looking monster and so they just show it.
Speaker 3: You know. It reminds me of the story about the
Speaker 3: production of the first Friday the Thirteenth movie when they
Speaker 3: had oh, what's his name, who's doing the blood the
Speaker 3: makeup effects, Tom Savini, Tom Savini doing the makeup effects,
Speaker 3: and they realized the makeup effects looked so good. They
Speaker 3: were like, wellet we got to put those more on screens.
Speaker 3: They's just play it. Up. You get the sense that's
Speaker 3: what was going on here. I suspect the zombies in
Speaker 3: this movie ended up looking creepier than the director might
Speaker 3: have hoped, and so we end up just seeing them
Speaker 3: a lot.
Speaker 1: Well, let's get into the plot breakdown for this film.
Speaker 1: Let's explore shockwaves.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, this is one of those movies that starts
Speaker 3: with a Texas chainsaw massacre style grim voiceover before you
Speaker 3: get any action or meet any of the characters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wants you to know this really happened, or
Speaker 1: to a certain extent.
Speaker 3: The following is a true story about Nazi zombies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'll just go ahead and read it verbatim
Speaker 1: real quick, you know, in a creepy voice. Shortly before
Speaker 1: the start of World War Two, the German High Command
Speaker 1: began a secret investigation into the powers of the supernatural.
Speaker 1: Ancient legend told of a race of warriors who used
Speaker 1: neither weapons nor shields, and whose superhuman power came from
Speaker 1: within the earth itself. As Germany prepared for war, the
Speaker 1: s s secretly enlisted a group of scientists to create
Speaker 1: an invincible soldier. It is known that the bodies of
Speaker 1: soldiers killed in battle were returned to a secret laboratory
Speaker 1: near Koblin's, where they were used in a veryvariety of
Speaker 1: scientific experiments. It was rumored that toward the end of
Speaker 1: the war, Allied forces met German squads that fought without weapons,
Speaker 1: killing only with their bare hands. No one knows who
Speaker 1: they were or what became of them, but one thing
Speaker 1: is certain. Of all the SS units, there was only
Speaker 1: one that the Allies never captured a single member of.
Speaker 3: This is not a true story.
Speaker 1: No, this is not true at all, but it does.
Speaker 1: It sets the stage, and you know you're going to
Speaker 1: see all the soldiers in the photo again in an
Speaker 1: altered form. And if you weren't paying attention, don't worry.
Speaker 1: Peter Cushing will come around later in the film and
Speaker 1: he'll basically tell you everything again.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You get a second exposition dump which somewhat varies from
Speaker 3: the narration at the beginning, which makes you wonder if
Speaker 3: Peter Cushing is maybe lying a little bit, or I
Speaker 3: don't know, or maybe I don't know, maybe I'd only
Speaker 3: perceive the differences anyway. So we start off with a
Speaker 3: fishing boat rescue. There are some fishermen who were out
Speaker 3: on the high seas and they spy a small boat
Speaker 3: adrift and they pull alongside to help, and we get
Speaker 3: some more narration, not by the John Laraquet style narration
Speaker 3: from the beginning, but instead from Brook Adams. And she's
Speaker 3: lying there in the boat, and you hear her saying
Speaker 3: in voiceover, I don't know how long that dinghy floated
Speaker 3: around with me lying in it. All I can remember
Speaker 3: was the sound of the water slapping against the side.
Speaker 3: Then I heard the engine sound getting closer. That was
Speaker 3: when I realized I was still alive. And it's Brook
Speaker 3: Adams in the boat, delirious with terror. She is helped
Speaker 3: onto the fishing boat by the captain of the fishing boat,
Speaker 3: and she tries to tell her rescuers what happened, but
Speaker 3: she seems like she can't speak. She's just sitting there
Speaker 3: kind of catatonic. And she says in the voiceover that
Speaker 3: it's only now that she remembers. So we immediately cut
Speaker 3: to the past and now we're on a pleasure boat,
Speaker 3: I guess. So we're not on the boat. We see,
Speaker 3: like you know, Brook Adams is diving around a reef
Speaker 3: with flippers and the diving mask, and she says it
Speaker 3: was the second day on one of those small dive
Speaker 3: boats that takes you around the islands. The engine had
Speaker 3: broken down for the second time. And yeah, immediately you
Speaker 3: noticed something about the boat that I noticed too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, small dive boat is not how I would I
Speaker 1: would describe this. This looks pretty big. I've been on
Speaker 1: some dive boats and they were all smaller than this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a large boat, but it is. It
Speaker 3: is a large boat, and it is a struggling boat.
Speaker 3: We have a struggle boat here, chugging around in the
Speaker 3: water as best it can. But they do communicate that
Speaker 3: this boat has seen better days. And then no fooling around.
Speaker 3: We have Carodine. We immediately get Carrodine, as often happened,
Speaker 3: So Carrodine, there were like two captains of the ship.
Speaker 3: Or Carodine is the captain maybe and still water boy
Speaker 3: with the mustache is the first mate. Maybe, but he's
Speaker 3: like steering the ship and John Krodine just choose him
Speaker 3: out a lot. But as often happens, when we first
Speaker 3: meet John Carodine in this movie, he walks on set
Speaker 3: looking and sounding like he just ate three jars of
Speaker 3: ca right before he came onto the camera, he's just
Speaker 3: he's just briny and dyspeptic. From word one. Absolutely, he's saying, like,
Speaker 3: keep at half speed, no sense putting strain on a
Speaker 3: crank shaft. And uh, there's immediately conflicts between them because
Speaker 3: I guess you know, you got you got your old
Speaker 3: cap'ain and you got your young captain. And old cap'n
Speaker 3: is dressed like he's in some kind of auxiliary naval unit.
Speaker 3: This is, of course Carodine, and young cap'n looks like
Speaker 3: seventies rock and roll. You know, he's been playing cards
Speaker 3: with humble Pie and now he's out here not taking
Speaker 3: his responsibilities seriously. And there's just some glorious chewing out
Speaker 3: that goes on at you know, John Carodine's saying, it's
Speaker 3: north northwest, not northwest, you slob. We must have accurate
Speaker 3: navigation the sailor's best friend. And oh, and he goes
Speaker 3: into this speech about how you can't be a good
Speaker 3: captain just by being good looking. It's his ability to
Speaker 3: navigate that makes him a good captain. Also, did you
Speaker 3: notice that so during the boat piloting scenes. There's a
Speaker 3: problem that I notice in a lot of movies, which
Speaker 3: is an implausible amount of characters who are used to
Speaker 3: doing something talking about what they're doing, you know, So
Speaker 3: they're just saying back and forth to each other steer
Speaker 3: one sixty five and keep her steady and that kind
Speaker 3: of thing. But they're standing right next to each other.
Speaker 3: It just feels like the kind of thing that they
Speaker 3: wouldn't need to say out loud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like even if this is the first day they've
Speaker 1: worked together, and yeah, even though you have the you know,
Speaker 1: clearly the elder captain here, you know, trying to instruct
Speaker 1: the younger seventies guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now immediately we get some spooky underwater stuff. We
Speaker 3: start seeing these shots of a sunken submarine, and it's
Speaker 3: weird because in some ways, I would say this movie
Speaker 3: is for the most part, not stylistically anything to write
Speaker 3: home about in terms of photography and all that. But
Speaker 3: there they were like a select number of underwater shots
Speaker 3: and shots of the zombies that are actually very stylish
Speaker 3: and cool. And some of the underwater footage here where
Speaker 3: they capture schools of fish sort of darting around back
Speaker 3: and forth in unison, and the synchronized swimming patterns in
Speaker 3: the wreckage of this submarine. We see at the bottom
Speaker 3: of the water. That's all great stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in its best moments, this film feels like a
Speaker 1: traumatic dream in the best way possible for a horror film.
Speaker 3: But okay, so something spooky is under the water. The
Speaker 3: music lets us know, you know, as we're going around
Speaker 3: this wreckage there's something wrong with it, something supernaturally wrong.
Speaker 3: And then something happens with the sun. Everything turns orange.
Speaker 3: This is not really explained, and I didn't really get
Speaker 3: what was going on, but suddenly there's just an orange
Speaker 3: filter on the camera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, and I don't know how much of
Speaker 1: this is me reading into it knowing you know that
Speaker 1: they were high on the morning of the Magicians when
Speaker 1: they put this together. But I think this is like
Speaker 1: some sort of a solar phenomenon, or there's some sort
Speaker 1: of like like because later we keep hearing from them
Speaker 1: about how the compass isn't working anymore, you know, and
Speaker 1: clearly it's had some other weird effects on their surroundings.
Speaker 1: So perhaps it's kind of again, maybe kind of Texas
Speaker 1: Chainsaw MASc here in a way like that film opens
Speaker 1: up with this implied astrological disorder, and maybe here we're
Speaker 1: getting a more overt astrological disorder.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you know Saturn is in retrograde or something,
Speaker 3: and that's when the zombies wake up from the bottom
Speaker 3: of the ocean. I see. So then we start meeting
Speaker 3: the other characters. We get to meet Norman and his
Speaker 3: wife Beverly, and they're arguing about whether the captain knows
Speaker 3: what he's doing, and there's great like Norman decides he's
Speaker 3: going to go up and help the captain steer the boat. Norman,
Speaker 3: as I said earlier, is a cranky, aggressive nerd.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a joy to watch, but he is such
Speaker 1: a such a complainer, Like he just can't wait for
Speaker 1: yelp to be invented so he can properly review this
Speaker 1: dive company.
Speaker 3: This guy's he's a terror at restaurants. He gets cashiers
Speaker 3: fired everywhere he goes. Yeah, but on the way up
Speaker 3: to chew out the captain, he meets Biccardi Man who
Speaker 3: I think his name is Chuck, who is more laid back.
Speaker 3: Bacardi Man is making a house of cards, one might
Speaker 3: say a bunker of cards, and his characteristics when we
Speaker 3: first meet him, or that he's got his shirt unbuttoned
Speaker 3: several more buttons down than Norman does, so you can
Speaker 3: tell he's cooler. And he just drinks rum and chills out.
Speaker 1: Yep, just having having rum and coke and stacking cards.
Speaker 3: And then of course we meet Dobbs, the cook we
Speaker 3: already talked about, who takes his Bacardi straight, unlike Chuck,
Speaker 3: who likes his with Coca cola. And Dobbs is sort
Speaker 3: of Coleridge's ancient mariner. He's got strong, unhandbeat graybeard loon energy.
Speaker 3: Oh and then they all meet up for dinner. And
Speaker 3: so during this dinner you're supposed to be paying attention
Speaker 3: to the dialogue because John Carrodine and Norman get into
Speaker 3: this big blow up about I don't know about whether
Speaker 3: the ship is seaworthy or not, I think. But the
Speaker 3: main thing I couldn't stop paying attention to was this
Speaker 3: old school can of craft grated parmesan cheese on the table,
Speaker 3: and the can looks blue. Now that product is decidedly
Speaker 3: in a green can, and I was trying to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 3: were these cans blue in the eighties or the color
Speaker 3: is screwed up on the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or I get well, this would have been seventy five,
Speaker 1: so maybe they were blue in the mid seventies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the seventies, okay, or.
Speaker 1: Perhaps that astrological disorder. One of the things it did
Speaker 1: is it flipped the colors on the graded parmesan cheese cannon.
Speaker 3: Products are blue now yeah, yeah, reverse polarity, and also
Speaker 3: change the color of graded parmesan canisters.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. But let's get back to Norman's mutiny here.
Speaker 3: What is Dobs serving that with? Though he's got the
Speaker 3: graded parmesan on the boat, did he make it Italian food?
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean, we see his kitchen later and
Speaker 1: it is awful looking, like it's just it's got like
Speaker 1: just it's pin ups, like plastered to the wall, like
Speaker 1: like just like a fixed in place with bile or something,
Speaker 1: and chewing them and then just like junk all over
Speaker 1: the floor. It looks like there has been some just design.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe the idea is supposed to have been
Speaker 1: at that point there's been like rough seas, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. It just looks it looks gross.
Speaker 3: He lights the burner on his stove with old playboys.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But as I was saying earlier, Norman does not like
Speaker 3: the way Carrodine is running things, and he I think
Speaker 3: he basically literally proposes a mutiny, Like he talks to
Speaker 3: the other he's trying to talk to the other tourists
Speaker 3: into taking over the boat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're They're like, what you were gonna take over?
Speaker 1: He's like, now we'll have one of these other people
Speaker 1: do it. They're idiots, but they can do it, Like
Speaker 1: he's he's just awful to have.
Speaker 3: He's just like, we'll have daubs drive the boat.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And this seems to be a reaction to quote what
Speaker 3: happened earlier and some unspecified story that Dobb's allegedly told
Speaker 3: about spooky doings out on the ocean, But again, what
Speaker 3: actually happened earlier, like the sky turned orange? But I
Speaker 3: don't get what happened that it is they're reacting to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, just sort of general Bermuda triangleness occurred.
Speaker 1: You know, this guy went weird, the sun went weird,
Speaker 1: compasses aren't working. Maybe they felt weird as well. I
Speaker 1: don't know.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a great scene where Brooke Adams is
Speaker 3: she supposed to be married to Biccardi man.
Speaker 1: No, oh, it may not be completely clear in the
Speaker 1: early stages, as we're trying to feel out these characters,
Speaker 1: but it becomes clear that yeah, they're not married.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay, but she After this, it's like the
Speaker 3: middle of the night and maximum mustaches driving the boat
Speaker 3: and Brook Adams comes up to talk to him and
Speaker 3: it's great. So it's like nighttime out on the ocean,
Speaker 3: and we find out from this conversation that he likes
Speaker 3: to be alone up here and he doesn't know where
Speaker 3: they are. Oh. But then their little moment is interrupted
Speaker 3: because a ghost ship comes out of the dark and
Speaker 3: slams into their boat. Yeah, and so they argue about this.
Speaker 3: John Carodine does not believe it. He's like, oh the
Speaker 3: ghost ship, huh, I bet you believe in fairies too.
Speaker 3: But then they find a bunch of damage on the
Speaker 3: hull and they shoot a flare out into the dark
Speaker 3: and there it is. And this is a good creepy scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because what's going on? Where did this ghost
Speaker 1: ship come from?
Speaker 3: But then in the morning, all kinds of problems. In
Speaker 3: the morning, the boat is beached on a mysterious island.
Speaker 3: Captain Carrodine is just gone, and so everybody has to
Speaker 3: go ashore until they can get the ship free of
Speaker 3: the shoal that it has run aground on. Oh and
Speaker 3: then I mentioned this moment earlier, but while Norman and
Speaker 3: Beverly are being rowed ashore by Keith, they're being rowed
Speaker 3: ashore in a glass bottom dinghy, which I've never heard
Speaker 3: of before. I mean, I've heard of glass bottomed boats,
Speaker 3: but those usually tend to be have more passengers. I think.
Speaker 1: I guess it's because since this is supposed to be
Speaker 1: a vacation boat, they have a glass bottom boat on hand.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's effective because yeah, they're they're moving right along,
Speaker 1: and then there's Carradine's corpse just bobbing up against the glass.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's bubbling in the water right, praying to Mundopi.
Speaker 3: And so anyway on the island, Bacardi man climbs a
Speaker 3: palm tree, he sees a building and so they're like, okay,
Speaker 3: that's where we're going. So everybody hikes through the jungle
Speaker 3: to reach this building, which is a sort of classic
Speaker 3: Caribbean or Florida kind of Spanish opulent style.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I want to mention real quick, this is
Speaker 1: pretty fun because this is this is this hotel that
Speaker 1: we visit here is very much a real place in Florida,
Speaker 1: this ruined hotel. They apparently paid something like two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars to rent the entire thing for the picture,
Speaker 1: but it was It was subsequently fixed back up a
Speaker 1: few years later and is known as the Biltmore Hotel.
Speaker 1: It's in Coral Gables, Florida, just outside of Miami, and
Speaker 1: you can look it up online. You can go to
Speaker 1: build More hotel dot com and see it. It is.
Speaker 1: It's super fancy. The story here, according to Jason Scott
Speaker 1: Degan at golf Pass, that's where I always go to
Speaker 1: get my shirts, my stories about sets in seventies zombie movies.
Speaker 1: It opened in the twenties and was the sort of
Speaker 1: fancy Florida destination for the likes of al Capone and
Speaker 1: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But then it was converted into
Speaker 1: a hospital in nineteen forty two, and it remained one
Speaker 1: all the way through nineteen sixty eight, and then it
Speaker 1: was just empty for more than a decade, and that
Speaker 1: was during that time, that's when they filmed Shockwaves there.
Speaker 1: But then Coral Gables had it renovated and it opened
Speaker 1: back up in eighty seven, entered private ownership in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, and I checked earlier. If you want to
Speaker 1: get a room there, it's like two hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: eight dollars a night or something like that. That probably changes.
Speaker 1: Don't quote me on that if you're planned to stay there.
Speaker 1: But the point is they rented the whole thing when
Speaker 1: it was a ruin, for the duration of the filming
Speaker 1: for just two hundred and fifty bucks. And so there
Speaker 1: are gonna be some scenes in Shockwaves where they're in
Speaker 1: like some sizable hallways and you see some columns and
Speaker 1: a big fireplace in the background. It's fun because you
Speaker 1: can pause the film and then you can go grab
Speaker 1: your computer and you can look up current photos and
Speaker 1: you can see like those same places that are now
Speaker 1: super fancy and ritzy and colorful and just you know,
Speaker 1: done up like a fancy golf course hotel. And I'm
Speaker 1: looking at that, I'm like, oh man, how many people
Speaker 1: are walking through that and they don't realize that Peter
Speaker 1: Cushing was here.
Speaker 3: You know, this was a Shockwaves no idea. They've never
Speaker 3: been on the Shockwaves tour. I was thinking, so, okay,
Speaker 3: if they had wanted to go a true direction, then
Speaker 3: with this hotel, instead of the you know ss zombies direction,
Speaker 3: they could have embraced the fact that this was where
Speaker 3: al Capone and Franklin D. Roosevelt came. So they could
Speaker 3: have zombie I guess prohibitions like liquor smugglers, and then
Speaker 3: they could have what I don't know, zombie members of
Speaker 3: the Spillion Conservation Corps.
Speaker 1: I guess dead and zing as well does it. But
Speaker 1: it could have changed the course, like that's that's of
Speaker 1: of of media, that's where we would we would have
Speaker 1: in video games now it would be uh, you know,
Speaker 1: zombie Bootlegger video games. That would be the big craze.
Speaker 3: I can maybe be interesting, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know anyway in this film though, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: place looks it's just an effective Florida ruin, And I
Speaker 1: think it's one of the things that makes that helps
Speaker 1: make the movie work is that this is this is
Speaker 1: like the ruined splendor of Florida, which you inevitably encounter,
Speaker 1: you know, examples of you know, you can't have you know,
Speaker 1: coastal tourism exist in a place without things following and
Speaker 1: falling into disrepair and becoming kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: mysterious or half mysterious ruins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a good setting. And I would say
Speaker 3: this moment is also where the movie shifts gears and
Speaker 3: and it goes into what it remains actually for the
Speaker 3: remainder of the movie, mostly, which is shots of zombies
Speaker 3: lumen goggle zombies. Again, there's excellent costume and makeup design
Speaker 3: because it's pretty simple. They're just in these old uniforms
Speaker 3: and they've got kind of messed up looking skin, and
Speaker 3: then they have these goggles and the goggles. The goggles
Speaker 3: are just bottomless pits. It's really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it all comes together to make a very evocative
Speaker 1: adversary here. And at first they just seem to be
Speaker 1: scouting things out like they've been They've clearly been awakened
Speaker 1: and now they're scoping out the joint.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile, our tourists wander through the old hotel Bacardi
Speaker 3: man and Dobbs, who is also swinging Baccardy, They find
Speaker 3: a tank full of fish. Are these frogfish? Like your
Speaker 3: checklist for Florida movies? It has tanks of fish in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure off hand what this was.
Speaker 1: Maybe scorpion fish, but either way, it's got some big
Speaker 1: zat energy going on and I love it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: Dobbs it becomes clear has this this never ending supply
Speaker 1: of booze on his person. He pulls out the largest
Speaker 1: flask I've ever seen in some of these these scenes. Like,
Speaker 1: it's not a hip flask, it's like a leg flask.
Speaker 3: It's like a backpack flask.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But also at this point it's Cushing time. So they're
Speaker 3: they're wandering around. Oh, I think they somehow come across
Speaker 3: a like a there's like an old phonograph that starts
Speaker 3: playing warped, creepy music, and everybody comes and finds that thing.
Speaker 3: And they're standing in this big hallway and then from
Speaker 3: out of somewhere you get you get Cushing voice, kind
Speaker 3: of nasal Cushing voice, disembodied eternal, saying why have you
Speaker 3: come to this place? And they say where are you?
Speaker 3: And he says, I am near but also far.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so from this conversation, let's see, they explain how
Speaker 3: they got here. Cushing tells them he can't help them.
Speaker 3: They explain the ghost ship that rammed their boat. Actually
Speaker 3: it is a long wrecked ship that's out on the reef.
Speaker 3: And then this was pretty funny Cushing just freaks out
Speaker 3: at this news, and then you see him and he
Speaker 3: learns the name of the ship and he just sort
Speaker 3: of busts out running through the forest to go look
Speaker 3: at it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of an interesting twist on what you might
Speaker 1: expect in a lot of these films, where I mean,
Speaker 1: not too big of a twist. I guess there's always
Speaker 1: this idea that the mastermind or the mad scientist involved
Speaker 1: in a scenario is going to be consumed by his
Speaker 1: own creations. But there's never even any idea, like even
Speaker 1: a pretense that he has control over these things, like
Speaker 1: he's afraid of them as everyone else from the get go.
Speaker 1: He just has a little more information.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, So he goes out there to look at them.
Speaker 3: He clearly is he's shaken. Meanwhile, the tourists establish camp
Speaker 3: within Hotel SS. They just like go into a room
Speaker 3: and they start getting pillows and after we get comfy, yeah,
Speaker 3: they get comfy, and oh and then there's this great shot.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 3: Most of what's the best about this movie is just
Speaker 3: good creepy shots of zombies with in goggles doing creepy stuff.
Speaker 3: One of my favorites is this moment that's coming right
Speaker 3: up where the zombies have like these little cubicles of
Speaker 3: coral that they appear to be sleeping in. They're like
Speaker 3: laying down horizontally in these little boxes around the reef.
Speaker 3: And there's one scene where one of them reaches up
Speaker 3: from below the water and grips the part of the
Speaker 3: reef that protrudes. It's very cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again this is one of those things like
Speaker 1: imagery from a dark dream.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But anyway, we're forty minutes in and I think
Speaker 3: we've just officially reached the zombie attack part of the movie,
Speaker 3: and that defines the rest of what goes on. There's
Speaker 3: two main things that happen from here on out. It's
Speaker 3: zombies being creepy looming looking at you with the goggles,
Speaker 3: and zombies grabbing people and killing them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's pretty effective because you have basically two
Speaker 1: locations go well three, I guess there's the surf and
Speaker 1: out in the water there's the sort of Florida coastal jungle,
Speaker 1: and then they are the ruins of the hotel. And
Speaker 1: in all of those the the Death Corps troopers here.
Speaker 1: They man, they just they move around in very interesting ways.
Speaker 1: They're not like shambling zombies. They're very deliberate and slow
Speaker 1: and stealthy, like when they stalk and hunt their prey
Speaker 1: in this and it's it's it's very unsettling.
Speaker 3: There is a moment where the cook Daubs he goes
Speaker 3: out to get supplies to cook food for everybody. I
Speaker 3: don't know what he plans to cook it on, but
Speaker 3: he does that, and I guess he's coming back with
Speaker 3: food supplies from the boat and he gets attacked by
Speaker 3: a goggle beast. But the attack is interesting. The goggle
Speaker 3: beast does not grab him. Instead, it menaces him until
Speaker 3: he falls to his death in a pool of sea urchins.
Speaker 3: And I think that is a first and only for me.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever seen pit of sea urchins
Speaker 3: otherwise used as a murder weapon movie.
Speaker 1: I winced when I saw this. It's been a while
Speaker 1: since I've seen it, so I'd forgotten about this scene.
Speaker 1: But I certainly have been around sea urchins, and you
Speaker 1: know sometimes when I'm in the water with them, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you have that in the back of your head. I
Speaker 1: don't want to touch that. I certainly don't want to
Speaker 1: fall on it with my face like Dobbs does. So
Speaker 1: this one gave me the all overs.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, and then it's funny with everybody discovers that
Speaker 3: Dobbs has died. When Brooke Adams puts on the bathing
Speaker 3: suit and decides to go swimming in this fetid pond
Speaker 3: full of sea urchins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's hot, it's hot out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but she just she literally bumps right into him.
Speaker 3: So he's all mangled laying there in the reeds and
Speaker 3: she back strokes into him and then yeah, freaks out. Whoops.
Speaker 1: This movie has more finding of drowned characters than any
Speaker 1: other film I've seen, but it's very well done, Like
Speaker 1: each discovery is horrific. And even though like all the
Speaker 1: kill I think all the kills in this film are bloodless,
Speaker 1: but they're still they tend to be disturbing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, they're disturbing because of the atmosphere, the music,
Speaker 3: the you know, the goggles and all that. It's, yeah,
Speaker 3: you don't need blood be to be disturbing. In fact,
Speaker 3: I was actually just talking about this with with Rachel
Speaker 3: not too long ago, about how when you go back
Speaker 3: and watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it's surprising how little blood
Speaker 3: there is in it.
Speaker 1: M M yeah, yes, it's definitely similar energy in this,
Speaker 1: but there's.
Speaker 3: Even less in this than there is in that. But anyway,
Speaker 3: so everybody goes back to the hotel, and in the meantime,
Speaker 3: I don't know what to make of this. Suddenly they
Speaker 3: go back to the hotel and there's stuff there that
Speaker 3: I don't remember seeing the previous time, which is that
Speaker 3: like Cushing has like swastika crap hanging up. He's like
Speaker 3: he's like put up Nazi decorations since they were last
Speaker 3: in his area. Is is that what we're supposed to understand.
Speaker 1: I thought it was maybe just a section of this
Speaker 1: big hotel that we hadn't seen yet, But yeah, he
Speaker 1: has it decorated with a billion mirrors, which I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's some sort of anxiety about things creeping up
Speaker 1: on him, like his own creations here or and then
Speaker 1: he has the Nazi flags up. But this is all
Speaker 1: we see of his life here. There's no mad science
Speaker 1: lab or anything. There's no even inclination that he's been
Speaker 1: up to anything the past, you know what. Ever, since
Speaker 1: the end of the Second World War, he's just been
Speaker 1: hanging out here in this ruined hotel, just doing nothing.
Speaker 3: What's he eating, what's he surviving on that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. He's not doing great though, I mean
Speaker 1: he looks.
Speaker 3: Really shabby, Yes he does.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever seen Peter Cushing and short
Speaker 1: sleeves before, but he's got these raggedy short sleeves and
Speaker 1: a kerchief tied around his neck. I mean he looks
Speaker 1: he looks shipwrecked the whole time.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. I did not notice the Cushing
Speaker 3: short sleeves. But you're right, and that is a defined
Speaker 3: I mean Cushing. Cushing is somebody who needs a jacket
Speaker 3: and tie. That's part of who he is. But here
Speaker 3: is here we get our exposition dump. Should we have
Speaker 3: exposition dump music that plays every time we get to
Speaker 3: that part of the plot. I don't know, Seth. I'll
Speaker 3: let you decide that anyway. But exposition dump Cushing is
Speaker 3: now explains everything to them. He's hanging out with Norman
Speaker 3: and Chuck and these goobers.
Speaker 1: And he's very succinct though, like he doesn't mess around.
Speaker 1: There's no gloating. He just tells it like it seems
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts from his exposition dump. It is
Speaker 3: you are dumb you should have left. Now you will die.
Speaker 3: Allow me to explain. I was an SS commander in
Speaker 3: World War two. I commanded a group of aquatic zombie
Speaker 3: SS troops that could live underwater without ever having to surface.
Speaker 3: And then there was one part I wanted to quote
Speaker 3: because it was so weird. He says, we created the
Speaker 3: perfect soldier from street hoodlums and thugs and a good
Speaker 3: number of pathological murderers and sadists. We called them the
Speaker 3: Totin Core. The Death Core creatures more horrible than any
Speaker 3: you can imagine, not dead, not alive, but somewhere in between.
Speaker 3: And then he starts complain about how they wouldn't obey
Speaker 3: orders and couldn't be controlled. But he says they made them.
Speaker 3: They just like tried to get pathological murderers and sadists.
Speaker 3: And then he starts complaining about how they would not
Speaker 3: obey orders and could not be controlled. And at the
Speaker 3: end of the war, Cushing came to this island, I guess,
Speaker 3: to escape justice, and he sank the ship containing the
Speaker 3: Death Core, And somehow in the past couple days the
Speaker 3: ship unsank and the Death Corps are now on the loose.
Speaker 3: Oh Andy pulls out his Luger, and he says, now
Speaker 3: I want you to leave. If I see any of
Speaker 3: you at all, I will shoot on site.
Speaker 1: Yep. And they're like, okay, fair enough, gotcha.
Speaker 3: So then Cushing he starts running around. I couldn't quite
Speaker 3: understand what it was he was trying to do at
Speaker 3: this point, but he goes out waiting in the water,
Speaker 3: and then did you understand what he was trying to
Speaker 3: do at this point?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So my read on this, and it could be incorrect,
Speaker 1: is that is that I think ultimately that he was
Speaker 1: trying to distract them, trying to distract the death core
Speaker 1: because even though he's like, you guys are dumb. I
Speaker 1: told you how to get away and you didn't, and
Speaker 1: now you're just gonna die, like all of us are
Speaker 1: going to die. There there are a couple of lines
Speaker 1: where he admits some level of responsibility for all the
Speaker 1: deaths that have occurred because of these things, and so
Speaker 1: there's kind of a sense, but not like a super
Speaker 1: like Hammy sense, but there's this I kind of got
Speaker 1: a sense that he was he was trying to distract them,
Speaker 1: because he's like calling to the death cores and he
Speaker 1: always he can't control them. So the only alternative seems
Speaker 1: to be that he wants to distract them away from
Speaker 1: the others so that they can possibly escape and live.
Speaker 3: It's harder to buy him as remorseful given that he's
Speaker 3: still hanging up swastika flags where he lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not like, I'm not saying he's a he's
Speaker 1: not a character you feel for, but that that that's
Speaker 1: the only thing that makes any sense within the context
Speaker 1: of the plot, you know, because I otherwise, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: just I can't think of anything else. The listeners, if
Speaker 1: you've seen the film and you have an answer to this,
Speaker 1: let us know. But I think that's what they were
Speaker 1: going for.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, eventually, so he's running around all over the place
Speaker 3: and at some point he stops and lays down next
Speaker 3: to a pond to drink some stagnant giardia water, and
Speaker 3: a zombie just reaches up out of the water, pulls
Speaker 3: him in, drowns him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good scene, good end of Cushing.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, the tourists are trying to escape on a boat
Speaker 3: that Peter Cushing has told them about. It's just like
Speaker 3: a little rowboat. And there was a really funny scene
Speaker 3: of Norman the aggressive angry nerd carrying around his suitcases
Speaker 3: while he's trying to get in the boat.
Speaker 1: Ye, he still has all of his baggage. He's ready
Speaker 1: to climb on this tiny boat with several other people,
Speaker 1: and of course they call him on it. They're like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing?
Speaker 3: I know several of us have died, but I still
Speaker 3: have five suitcases I need to bring with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then when they tell me can't bring him,
Speaker 1: he like throws them any tantrum. He's kind of like, fine,
Speaker 1: like I'm mad, I'm mad, don't get to keep my suitcase.
Speaker 3: One of the bags he's bringing with him looks like
Speaker 3: it's a folding one of those bat you transport suits in.
Speaker 3: So he's got like formal wear with him. Yeah, he's
Speaker 3: going to need that tuxedo after they escape. So anyway,
Speaker 3: they're trying to escape on a tiny row boat. This
Speaker 3: part I thought had some pretty cool shots of them,
Speaker 3: like paddling around through these mazes of mangrove roots while
Speaker 3: the Goggle boys are lurking beneath and all around spying
Speaker 3: on them. This part I thought was creepy. Yeah, yeah, oh,
Speaker 3: but then it just turns into a parade of errors. Mishap.
Speaker 3: After mishap, they run into a mud bank. They have
Speaker 3: to try to run the boat out of it. Beverly
Speaker 3: falls out, people go after her. Rose gets knocked out
Speaker 3: of the boat. That roses Broke Adams and then eventually,
Speaker 3: after a bunch of screwing around, the boat floats away
Speaker 3: under sail with no passengers. Whoops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so now they've really failed. Well they failed for
Speaker 1: the second time here because now there's nothing they can
Speaker 1: do but run back to the hotel.
Speaker 3: Right, So there are various chases now, everybody's running around
Speaker 3: in different places. Norman gets attacked in the water and
Speaker 3: killed by by Norman. Brooke Adams gets chased, but there's
Speaker 3: a there's a cool moment where she manages to kill
Speaker 3: one of the zombies by knocking its goggles off. Here again,
Speaker 3: do you understand what was going on here? So the
Speaker 3: goggles come off and then somehow it's face like rapidly rots.
Speaker 1: I think it's like they're susceptible to the light, Like
Speaker 1: if the light gets in there and the sunlight gets
Speaker 1: in their eyes, it destroys them. And you know, we
Speaker 1: were also told that they draw their energy from the
Speaker 1: earth itself, So I think that's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I guess that we have all those scenes of them
Speaker 1: like in the water, walking along on the bottom of
Speaker 1: the seafloor. Like it's nothing. Like they have some sort
Speaker 1: of supernatural connection to the earth, some sort of warped
Speaker 1: pagan magic that was co opted by the baddies.
Speaker 3: Okay, that would make sense anyway. Meanwhile, back at the hotel,
Speaker 3: so the remaining tourists, Chuck, Keith, Beverly, and Rose, they
Speaker 3: decided to hole up in a refrigerator overnight by locking
Speaker 3: the door hiding in there, we get to watch the
Speaker 3: zombies walk in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, not like your refrigerator in your house, right,
Speaker 1: but a big one, a big walk in freezer thing.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't have power, so it's not like cold,
Speaker 3: but there is that. We get to watch the zombies
Speaker 3: wrecking the hotel. They're just like smashing mirrors and everything.
Speaker 3: And then inside the fridge, this is the moment I
Speaker 3: mentioned where Chuck has this kind of out of character
Speaker 3: freak out. He just starts ranting and screaming and hyperventilatings hyperventilating.
Speaker 3: He's saying, let me out, I'll take my chances. Maybe
Speaker 3: he's clusterrophobic or something, I guess, so, Yeah, but it's
Speaker 3: revealed he's got a flare gun. He starts pointing the
Speaker 3: flare gun at people and he accidentally shoots it. I
Speaker 3: think this blinds Beverly. And it's during the scene where
Speaker 3: they like all have to run out of the refrigerator
Speaker 3: because Chuck has shot this flare gun inside it that
Speaker 3: I noticed finally that Keith is wearing bell bottoms, and
Speaker 3: I suppose he has been the entire movie.
Speaker 1: Oh but of course, of course he has. Makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3: So then we're into endgame basically, like Chuck is running around,
Speaker 3: he's showing off his muscles and he's trying to fight
Speaker 3: back against the zombies. But he falls into a pool
Speaker 3: and he gets killed by zombies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he effectively close lines one of them. Yeah, then
Speaker 1: they get him and that pool death scene is pretty horrifying.
Speaker 1: Now again, the sort of vacation world ruins of this place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Keith and Roe is actually successfully hide till morning,
Speaker 3: I think inside a furnace. They like open this metal
Speaker 3: grade and hide in there, and then in the morning
Speaker 3: when they come out, they find Beverly dead in a
Speaker 3: fish tank, and they find Chuck dead in a pool,
Speaker 3: So then it's just to escape mode. It's you know,
Speaker 3: they're trying to escape in a boat. Keith doesn't do
Speaker 3: so well either. He gets dragged out of the boat
Speaker 3: multiple times, and eventually we get yet another sighting of
Speaker 3: a corpse through the glass bottom and it is only
Speaker 3: Brooke Adams who makes it out, but even does she
Speaker 3: Really Like the other Florida movies we've watched, this one
Speaker 3: has a downer ending where really nobody wins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, real gut touch of an ending, because first of all,
Speaker 1: everyone except Rose has been murdered by the Death Corps,
Speaker 1: like everybody except well the fishermen and his son. At
Speaker 1: the beginning, they're going, yeah, ok, yeah, they're doing right,
Speaker 1: but everybody else dead. And even though she survives being
Speaker 1: adrift at sea for days without water, she's obviously left
Speaker 1: terribly traumatized. And the account that she's been writing down
Speaker 1: in her journal. There's this really awesome scene there at
Speaker 1: the end where the camera pans around and we see
Speaker 1: she's been writing. We assume she's writing the narration, she's
Speaker 1: writing her story, but then we see that her journal
Speaker 1: is filled with nothing but nonsensical scribbles. So you have
Speaker 1: this this very classic weird horror ending, as our protagonist
Speaker 1: has survived physically but not mentally from a brush with
Speaker 1: supernatural horror.
Speaker 3: This is actually extremely close to the ending of Zat,
Speaker 3: where it seems like all of the human characters who
Speaker 3: are not catfishified are either dead or there's one who
Speaker 3: was apparently saved but now just wants to march into
Speaker 3: the ocean.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess the thing is that at least you
Speaker 1: feel good for doctor Leopold because it's like, well, doctor
Speaker 1: Leopold won, he got what he wanted, and I guess
Speaker 1: it's good for the fish. But in this like nobody
Speaker 1: really wins, like the I mean, I guess the Death
Speaker 1: Corps wins, but they don't really want things. They just murder,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's just it's kind of a nihilistic
Speaker 1: ending but feels, you know, honestly nineteen seventies, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of It also reminds us a little bit
Speaker 1: of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where in that our final girl
Speaker 1: gets away but she's like laughing maniacally. There's a sense that,
Speaker 1: yeah that perhaps she has not survived completely survived physically
Speaker 1: but not you know, mentally or emotionally.
Speaker 3: Oh well, I guess you could read it that way,
Speaker 3: But then again, I don't know. I can scarcely think
Speaker 3: of a movie ending where the protagonist escaping danger is
Speaker 3: as arctic and feels as rewarding as the end of
Speaker 3: Texas Chainsaw Massacre. True, like when she gets into the
Speaker 3: truck and gets away at the end of TCM, Like
Speaker 3: that is probably like the biggest, like just absolutely visceral
Speaker 3: in the body sense of relief I can think of
Speaker 3: in any movie I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: You're right it, really it does feel like a victory
Speaker 1: at the end of TCM, like she has gotten away.
Speaker 1: Leather Face is defeated and gets it. In this though, yeah,
Speaker 1: the baddies for the most part didn't get it, and
Speaker 1: she's in kind of a sad state. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a like I say, I got punch of an ending,
Speaker 1: but one that feels, you know, on message. For this film.
Speaker 3: We don't get to see the Death Corps doing chainsaw
Speaker 3: ballet on the beach like we do with the Leather Pace.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's say Florida movie checklist. We had
Speaker 1: Florida ruins, we had oppressive Florida wilderness, we had marine
Speaker 1: life and tanks. We had electronic music, and we had
Speaker 1: a dark ending. So really the only things we're lacking
Speaker 1: that were present in previous movies are well, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say shots of animals in the wild, but we
Speaker 1: do have some fish scenes early on, so see urchins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just yes, the urchins are in there, just maybe not
Speaker 1: as much wildlife as we saw in Frogs certainly or
Speaker 1: in Za. And also we don't have an ecological message.
Speaker 3: That's true this one. Uh, those two movies both, even
Speaker 3: if it was maybe not super well articulated, Yeah, they've
Speaker 3: got an ecological message. I don't think this movie really
Speaker 3: has any message at all. Yeah, none that is intended.
Speaker 3: If it is, it's just like, don't create a death core.
Speaker 3: You do not screw around with making undead superhuman Nazi soldiers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or properly research your your your scuba outlets before
Speaker 1: you have gone a vacation. But yeah, this one I
Speaker 1: think is pretty effective. I remember seeing I think I
Speaker 1: saw the last maybe thirty percent of it on TBS
Speaker 1: or TNT back in the day, like all during the
Speaker 1: day at my grandparents' house and was really creeped out
Speaker 1: by it. And it's a it's actually It's a great
Speaker 1: horror movie to have seen during the day because most
Speaker 1: of the action takes place in the day. Like it,
Speaker 1: it makes daytime in Florida horrifying, you know, effectively horrifying.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be dark in Florida for you
Speaker 1: to be afraid.
Speaker 3: Actually, this violates a lot of rules about movie monsters. Usually,
Speaker 3: I think movie monsters are better when seen, less when
Speaker 3: kept in the dark more, you know, following the Jaws rule,
Speaker 3: like if you're going to finally see the monster, you
Speaker 3: want to wait towards the end of the movie to
Speaker 3: do it. This movie, no is just putting its monsters
Speaker 3: front and center, tons of screen time, showing you all
Speaker 3: the time. Much like that, actually, but very different from Za.
Speaker 3: The monsters look very menacing in this and that actually
Speaker 3: works better when you see a ton of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And in fact, there's one scene in particular
Speaker 1: where I think we've effectively killed one of them at
Speaker 1: this point once you pull the goggles off, and then
Speaker 1: we still see there's so many and I mean chalk
Speaker 1: it up to a good film. I was when that happened.
Speaker 1: In my recent reviewing of it, I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, Like I felt my heart sink. There were
Speaker 1: so many of them, even though I knew what was
Speaker 1: going to happen.
Speaker 3: I wonder what those goggles actually were were They were
Speaker 3: like welding goggles. What do you think that was they
Speaker 3: were wearing.
Speaker 1: I don't know. They looked familiar, but I don't know
Speaker 1: where I've seen them before. But good find costuming department
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, good job, all right. So you're probably
Speaker 1: wondering where can I see Shockwaves? Well, I mentioned that
Speaker 1: I used to own it on Blue Underground on DVD
Speaker 1: from Blue Underground, and I think it's on Blu Ray
Speaker 1: from Blue Underground as well. I misplaced it over the years,
Speaker 1: but it's really good. It's got a lot of good extras.
Speaker 1: It's a great restoration of the film. I think to
Speaker 1: a certain degree, there's a certain seventies graininess to this
Speaker 1: film that I think is essential, Like I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to see it into fine a quality you know it needs.
Speaker 1: That's seventies ness to it. But yeah, the Blue Underground
Speaker 1: edition is nice, has some fun extras. You can also
Speaker 1: rent it digitally, buy it digitally most places, and if
Speaker 1: you want, if you if you want to find like
Speaker 1: a sort of a loophole to get it. I have
Speaker 1: noticed that if you do a free trial of the
Speaker 1: full Moon Entertainment channel, like you can get through like
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime, you know, like a seven day trial, you
Speaker 1: can you can watch shock Waves through that channel.
Speaker 3: There's a Charles Band app now.
Speaker 1: I guess it's an app. Yeah, it's at least it's
Speaker 1: an Amazon Prime channel, and I think you can get
Speaker 1: it on. It's probably on like Roku and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not superversed in all that, okay, but
Speaker 1: but yeah, there's there are some ways to see this
Speaker 1: if you don't if you don't want to, you know,
Speaker 1: straight up rent or buy it or pick up that DVD,
Speaker 1: but subscribe.
Speaker 3: To band Tube.
Speaker 1: I didn't check too B to see if it was
Speaker 1: on two B.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah I didn't either.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, you were talking about the look of this movie.
Speaker 3: One thing, last thing I have to say I realized
Speaker 3: is the look of this movie is a blue can
Speaker 3: of craft graded parmesan cheese from the seventies. That's what
Speaker 3: the esthetic is.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, Well, on that note, we would love
Speaker 1: to hear from everyone out there about your memories, especially
Speaker 1: you know from older listeners. Your memories of craft cheese
Speaker 1: canisters of the mid nineteen seventies. When did it change?
Speaker 1: Why did it change? Did it change? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Have you seen this movie? Did you see it on
Speaker 1: TVs back in the day when you were a child
Speaker 1: and when we're partially traumatized by it like me, or
Speaker 1: you know, did you check it out later? Let us know.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you and you just in
Speaker 1: general about other films we've done on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: films you think we should cover in the future, or
Speaker 1: like a lot of our listeners, just continue to write
Speaker 1: in about Sean Connery's accent and Highlander and to what
Speaker 1: degree it makes sense and what kind of backflips we
Speaker 1: have to do mentally to have it make sense.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on episode or any other, to
Speaker 3: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,