Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamm. Hi, I'm Christian Seger. Last
Speaker 1: week we lost several key individuals. Oliver Sacks died, Wayne
Speaker 1: Dyer also passed away. Yeah, I wasn't familiar with that
Speaker 1: until you sent it to me. Yeah, as I was
Speaker 1: inundated with stuff about Oliver Sacks rightly so, and when
Speaker 1: we posted that on our social media accounts, it kind
Speaker 1: of went I guess the kids call it viral. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then rule of three, which really a thing. It's
Speaker 1: all about our observation of events happening. But in this
Speaker 1: case we did get a big number three. Yeah. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Wes Craven passed away on I believe it was Sunday night,
Speaker 1: probably Sunday afternoon his time. But I was unaware of this,
Speaker 1: as probably most of the public was. But he was
Speaker 1: battling with Can's sorry had um brain cancer? Yeah, brain
Speaker 1: cancer um yeah, which yeah, I don't think that had
Speaker 1: been a public knowledge yet. But yeah, well it's really unfortunate,
Speaker 1: um because you know, as as many of you out there, no, Robert,
Speaker 1: Joe and I are are big horror fans. We grew
Speaker 1: up watching Les Craven movies. I'd say that they were
Speaker 1: probably more than a little responsible for my weird idea
Speaker 1: of how high school was going to go. Yeah, yeah that,
Speaker 1: Like even if you didn't see any of the Craving films,
Speaker 1: and I have to admit for a long time I
Speaker 1: didn't see them, but even then, you'd go into the
Speaker 1: video stores and there's Freddy Krueger on the wall, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a thousand feet high. Like the cultural residence
Speaker 1: of his work was just unavoidable. In the the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties, everybody knows who Freddie Krueger is, even if
Speaker 1: they've never seen any of the Nightmare in Elm Street movies.
Speaker 1: I would I would have to think, right, they at
Speaker 1: least know that he's that guy from those slasher movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's an American cultural ion, arguably an international cultural icon. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. In fact, when I lived in Singapore as
Speaker 1: a kid, that was when I saw The Nightmare in
Speaker 1: Elm Street three D addition and it was very big
Speaker 1: over there. Oh, I thought you're gonna because I know
Speaker 1: there are various like there's an Indian, Oh is there
Speaker 1: there's like an iteration film. Yeah. No, we used to
Speaker 1: buy bootleg versions over there. Uh, and that was I
Speaker 1: had the three D one. So I'm looking through his filmography.
Speaker 1: I kept seeing films that, oh I never saw that,
Speaker 1: but it was everywhere, and I feel like I feel
Speaker 1: like I've seen it. Other times it would be a film,
Speaker 1: you know, like Swamp Thing, where I enjoyed it as
Speaker 1: a kid, but later on I realized there was more
Speaker 1: to the comics. So I don't know that I really
Speaker 1: love any particularly So I don't know that I actually
Speaker 1: am in love with any particular West Cravean film, but
Speaker 1: my world wouldn't be the same without. Yeah, I felt
Speaker 1: the same way exactly that he definitely put a stamp
Speaker 1: on the horror genre. But at the same time, I
Speaker 1: don't know that I except for the movie we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about today, which I have a personal fascination with,
Speaker 1: I don't know necessarily that any of his movies were
Speaker 1: classics for me. You know, My Maory in Elm Street
Speaker 1: is a interesting story, uh, and and clearly grabbed the
Speaker 1: attention of the world when it came out, and however
Speaker 1: many sequels there were, But I don't know that I
Speaker 1: would put it in like my top ten horror movies
Speaker 1: of all time, you know, Um, and I generally anger
Speaker 1: the world by saying that I actually liked the remake
Speaker 1: more than I like the remake too. Yeah. I saw
Speaker 1: that in the theater and I thought it was pretty
Speaker 1: well done. Um and uh. I laughed out loud at
Speaker 1: the kid wearing the Joy Division shirt. That was the
Speaker 1: only part in the movie where I think, I, like,
Speaker 1: I broke character from watching a horror movie. There's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, this teenager. When was that movie like two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen or something like that. It was relatively recent,
Speaker 1: and this kid was wearing a Joy Division shirt to
Speaker 1: signify how Gothy and and and Darky was. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I thought it bought it, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I would buy it if it was set in the
Speaker 1: seventies or eighties and he was wearing a Joy Division. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't really know how much how
Speaker 1: into Joy Division that could be me as well? Right
Speaker 1: that with all these biopics about Ian Curtis and stuff,
Speaker 1: maybe they're a lot more popular than I think they're.
Speaker 1: You know, it turned out though that Craven, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more to him than just the horror films. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a fascinating guy. Yeah. He earned a master's in
Speaker 1: philosophy and writing from John Hopkins, uh and after a
Speaker 1: brief stints in academia, he returned to the movie industry.
Speaker 1: He started out as a sound editor. I think he
Speaker 1: worked under pseudonym on an adult picture more than one,
Speaker 1: that was what I was reading. Yeah, apparently he did
Speaker 1: a lot of work in a pornography. I think mostly
Speaker 1: as like a sound editor, maybe doing some directing work.
Speaker 1: But I believe that there's a documentary about the infamous
Speaker 1: Deep Throat movie and he had some involvement with that,
Speaker 1: though he won't reveal what it was, but probably on
Speaker 1: the technical side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, but yeah, fascinating guy.
Speaker 1: He I mean, he worked his way up the ladder
Speaker 1: in academia, taught for a while, uh, and then just
Speaker 1: dropped everything because he had an opportunity for to do film.
Speaker 1: And you know, you see why after you look at
Speaker 1: the bulk of work for his career. I mean he
Speaker 1: really put his all into it. Yeah, twenty nine films
Speaker 1: that he directed. That's not getting into stuff that he produced.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean he was a successful filmmaker. And
Speaker 1: that's I mean, it's especially commercially like even the film
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about today, despite some of the problems had,
Speaker 1: you know, it worked with the critics and it brought
Speaker 1: in a profit. Yeah, certainly. And he Um, you know,
Speaker 1: especially when you think about like I think it was
Speaker 1: like sort of the seventies was when he was doing
Speaker 1: that work with adult films. And then his first real
Speaker 1: like horror film was Last Tough on the Left, I believe,
Speaker 1: And that is a movie, first of all, that is
Speaker 1: a movie that is I think would probably be in
Speaker 1: most people's top five top fifty horror movies of all
Speaker 1: time it least in terms of the gruesome impact that
Speaker 1: it had on the industry and so kind of an
Speaker 1: infamous video nasty huh. And he just came right out
Speaker 1: of the gate with that and then was so successful.
Speaker 1: He just rolled into making one successful movie after another.
Speaker 1: You know. Um, Last House on the Left, that is
Speaker 1: a movie that really is upsetting to watch. Um, I
Speaker 1: as a horror fan, UM, sort of forced myself to
Speaker 1: watch both that and the movie. I spit on your
Speaker 1: grave that they're both two films that I know. I
Speaker 1: know what's up in him, and I just not my
Speaker 1: It is not for me either, but I felt like
Speaker 1: I should understand why it wasn't for me. And they
Speaker 1: are really really difficult to watch. But um, I'm I
Speaker 1: have not seen it. But the remake of Last House
Speaker 1: on the Left came out a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of curious about that because it had
Speaker 1: this very strange cast for the plot of the movie,
Speaker 1: people who you wouldn't expect to do that kind of thing, Like, um,
Speaker 1: the kid from Breaking Bad was was in Um, what's
Speaker 1: his name, Aaron Something. I can't remember his name now,
Speaker 1: but um, and uh, Garrett Dilla Hunt, you know that guy,
Speaker 1: he's in it as well, and Ricky lind Home And
Speaker 1: I was just like, wow, this is the strangest group
Speaker 1: of people to put together to remake this utterly like
Speaker 1: trashy horror film, you know. Um, so I'm curious about it.
Speaker 1: Another one that I've always really thought it was kind
Speaker 1: of funny is Deadly Blessing. Have you ever seen that one?
Speaker 1: I don't think I've seen this thing. I read about it.
Speaker 1: It's another one of his early ones. It's I can't
Speaker 1: remember if they're Quakers or Amish or if it's just
Speaker 1: like a fictional version of of that kind of religious community.
Speaker 1: But there it's a horror film set within that kind
Speaker 1: of community, probably early eighties, um, and it's just utterly
Speaker 1: bizarre and kind of silly in some spaces. I think
Speaker 1: that's something you could say about almost all of West
Speaker 1: Craven's films, is that they have a sort of sense
Speaker 1: of self awareness that is making fun of themselves. Of course,
Speaker 1: he also directed What Music of the Heart? I haven't
Speaker 1: seen that? Yeah, yeah, that and that one that one
Speaker 1: actually had an Academy Award nomination? Is that right? Wow?
Speaker 1: Meryl Street I believe was nominated for it. And that
Speaker 1: was a serious film about you know, about music and
Speaker 1: school and kids and all. Um. I don't think he
Speaker 1: ever got to make one about bird conservation, but that
Speaker 1: was of course one of his big passions in life too.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, yeah, define that actually conservation lines up with
Speaker 1: a lot of horror guys. Did you know that the
Speaker 1: writer Robert Aikman was a big conservationist in England. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's an interesting character. So. But but related to this, uh,
Speaker 1: In order to get into kind of the space for
Speaker 1: talking about the science behind Serpent and the Rainbow today,
Speaker 1: I really I've never seen Wes Craven's People Into the Stairs,
Speaker 1: So I watched it last night, and man, I wish
Speaker 1: I had seen that at a younger age. It. Um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the perfect like intro to horror
Speaker 1: for a kid. It's very much just like a dark
Speaker 1: fairy tale. Yeah, there's you know, there's more going on
Speaker 1: and meets the eye. Your parents are not who they seen,
Speaker 1: you know, and there's a there's a gump living in
Speaker 1: the basement, you know that your standard stuff. There's all
Speaker 1: kinds of crazy stuff in it, but it's basically a
Speaker 1: kid's film with like occasional over the top violence thrown
Speaker 1: into it. Uh structure. Yeah, yeah, essentially I loved it. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I hope that you know, um, I guess
Speaker 1: with his passing that he gets a little bit more
Speaker 1: attention for some of the movies like that that he
Speaker 1: was really invested in. You know, that was one of
Speaker 1: the ones that he wrote and directed and kind of
Speaker 1: shepherded all the way along. That's the one that I
Speaker 1: seem to recall that the mother and father and that
Speaker 1: are are supposedly patterned on Ronald and Nancy Reagan. So
Speaker 1: there's like is there some at least mild political um
Speaker 1: statement to view. I could see that. I could see
Speaker 1: that for sure. Yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic out there. If
Speaker 1: you haven't seen it, I recommended, uh, you know, even
Speaker 1: if you're not into you know, really gory horror movies.
Speaker 1: It's not particularly gruesome in that way. It's especially by
Speaker 1: today's standards. I'd say it was. It's about as scary
Speaker 1: as a modern day Doctor Who episode. Um, but it
Speaker 1: is grim for sure. But um, today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about this movie that he came out with the
Speaker 1: n And when I saw the trailer for this on
Speaker 1: actually like the commercial for it when I was a
Speaker 1: little kid, the commercial alone scared the pants off of me.
Speaker 1: I was so terrified of this movie. And it's called
Speaker 1: The Serpent and the Rainbow, and it's based on an
Speaker 1: academic book by a guy named Wade Davis. And so
Speaker 1: we thought, with West Craven passing away, we wanted to
Speaker 1: do some kind of tribute to him. But also the
Speaker 1: science behind Wade Davis's uh anthropological look at Haitian society
Speaker 1: and Voodo culture UH is just fascinating and there's interesting
Speaker 1: stuff going on with the biological and chemical science in there.
Speaker 1: But there's also some really interesting stuff going on with
Speaker 1: the battles in academia over this work as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, just right off the bat, it's it may
Speaker 1: strike some people with weird. It certainly did me when
Speaker 1: I first read about it, that you have an academic
Speaker 1: publication and it's adapted into a horror movie and the
Speaker 1: title is the same, because I mean, that's uh and
Speaker 1: that's telling and we'll get into that. So should we
Speaker 1: do like a breakdown of what this movie is about first? Yeah? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: let me see if I can, if I can summarize
Speaker 1: this and you help me out along. It's been fifteen
Speaker 1: years since I've seen it taught on TNT Monster Vision
Speaker 1: with Joe Bob Britty. Oh yeah, well I saw it
Speaker 1: more recently than that. I rewatched it when I was
Speaker 1: on Netflix last year. But so, The Serpent in the
Speaker 1: Rainbow is a very loose fictional adaptation of Wade Davis's
Speaker 1: trip to Haiti to investigate what's known as zombie powder. Basically,
Speaker 1: the idea here was that um so that the idea
Speaker 1: was that a medical company supposedly approached Wade Davis about
Speaker 1: using said zombie powder as like almost like a anesthetic
Speaker 1: I guess when performing surgeries. Yeah, and and uh, we
Speaker 1: have the details on that that we'll we'll we'll get
Speaker 1: into later, but yeah, it has potential medical application, and
Speaker 1: the film itself kind of goes way beyond that in
Speaker 1: that the character who's supposed to be based on Wade Davis,
Speaker 1: I don't think they even call him that in the movie.
Speaker 1: I think he has like a totally different name. He
Speaker 1: gets enmeshed in both the Haitian Revolution and this kind
Speaker 1: of like very stereotypical, a kind of culturally insensitive depiction
Speaker 1: of voodoo UM in which people are being buried alive
Speaker 1: and then brought back from the dead as these sort
Speaker 1: of mindless slaves. Yeah. I mean, especially in the time
Speaker 1: period um voodoo is an in Haitian culture in general
Speaker 1: is just right for for exploitation. Yeah, absolutely. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I think of James Bond, was it The Living Daylight? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was either that or a Thunderball, But yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: this is the air. Yeah. The depictions of voodoo culture
Speaker 1: that we grew up with were very insensitive com to
Speaker 1: kind of kind of what I don't think a movie
Speaker 1: like that could get made today. Um, but I do
Speaker 1: still just because of the time I grew up in
Speaker 1: I sort of had this personal affinity for it because
Speaker 1: it scared me so badly. Um it really. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I was just came out in eight, so I was eleven. Uh.
Speaker 1: Probably wasn't the target audience for this, but you know, uh,
Speaker 1: it really got its hooks into me, you know, And
Speaker 1: I've always held it up as one of those movies
Speaker 1: over the years that can just even now, it's kind
Speaker 1: of silly when you rewatch it. The stuff isn't actually
Speaker 1: all that scary, but there's something about it that still
Speaker 1: resonates with And it was a major studio relief. So
Speaker 1: even if you didn't see it in the theater and
Speaker 1: you weren't the target audience, you definitely saw the advertisements
Speaker 1: and you were a TV watching household, and if you
Speaker 1: went to the video store it was a thousand. It
Speaker 1: was prominent. Yeah. So okay, let's you know, we've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about West Craven. I know our audience is
Speaker 1: probably more interested in the science of this, so let's
Speaker 1: dive into that. So first of all, we're stepping away
Speaker 1: from the movie here and we're talking more about Davis's work.
Speaker 1: He did a cultural ethnography of the sort of beliefs
Speaker 1: around Haitian culture and this zombie folk lore. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about zombie without any here zo m b I
Speaker 1: that's how it's spelled in that culture. Um, let's let's
Speaker 1: dive into that and then we can get into the
Speaker 1: research and kind of what he came up with. This
Speaker 1: is early eighties. I want to say. Two, here's an
Speaker 1: interesting fact um long long before Davis looked into this um. Actually,
Speaker 1: Zora Hurston, American folklorist, anthropologist and author of Their Eyes
Speaker 1: Were Watching God in nineteen thirty eight, after doing some
Speaker 1: work in Haiti and in Jamaica. She was one of
Speaker 1: the first who suggest that there could be a material
Speaker 1: basis for zombies, for the zombie phenomenon. And so what's
Speaker 1: kind of interesting about that is that's before the zombie
Speaker 1: horror phenomenon really caught hold of America's interest in the
Speaker 1: When did white zombie come out? I am not not
Speaker 1: really clear on the time, but the Night of the
Speaker 1: Living Dead was the latest sixties early seventies. That's the
Speaker 1: one that really yeah, put it in hyper drive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is she's kind of taking a look at
Speaker 1: the reality of this beyond myth before it's really grabbed
Speaker 1: the cultural interest. Davis, on the other hand, he comes
Speaker 1: in well after it's entrenched in our culture. In fact,
Speaker 1: I mean I would I would say that it's arguable,
Speaker 1: like it's not like Davis exposed this culture and he
Speaker 1: was the first one to do it, and people told
Speaker 1: him what was going on and sent him down there.
Speaker 1: He was funded by people. But um, basically the idea
Speaker 1: is that Haitian zombies aren't what we think of as
Speaker 1: zombies today. Right, So if you're thinking Walking Dead, the
Speaker 1: TV show out there, that's not what this is. Uh.
Speaker 1: The way that it's considered in this culture is that
Speaker 1: they are quote the living dead, which is a little different.
Speaker 1: I know it sounds the same at first, but they're
Speaker 1: undead slaves and there's a certain kind of vood on
Speaker 1: priest that I believe it's pronounced boker um that can
Speaker 1: perform this ritual and it it's seen as a sort
Speaker 1: of sociological punishment. Actually, um, so in that religion that
Speaker 1: there's this concept at least this is how Davis presents it,
Speaker 1: that human bodies contain two types of angels. Is what
Speaker 1: he calls them. One is the Big Good Angel and
Speaker 1: the other is the Little Good Angel. The little Good
Speaker 1: Angel is essentially the essence of our individuality, right, it's
Speaker 1: your I guess soul uh and Davis actually in his
Speaker 1: text referred to it as quote the governing thought, memory,
Speaker 1: and sentiments of a person. However, if anything were to
Speaker 1: happen to that before you physically die, you might become
Speaker 1: a zombie. And that supposedly this ritual is the the
Speaker 1: voodoo priest taking the little Good Angel out of you
Speaker 1: and enslaving you as such. Yeah, it seems to definitely
Speaker 1: play into just humans trying to figure out what's going
Speaker 1: on with cognition, what's going on with identity in cases
Speaker 1: where say, you know, there's been an injury and an
Speaker 1: individual is clearly not in their own head, like what
Speaker 1: happened to the person that you were physically you know,
Speaker 1: what's the link between the mind and brain? Like? Essentially,
Speaker 1: this is the voodon h take on the mind body problem. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: In fact, the idea is that when you die, the
Speaker 1: big Good Angel is the one that goes to heaven.
Speaker 1: The little Good Angel actually like sticks around for a
Speaker 1: couple of days, roughly three days, and as such, some
Speaker 1: relatives will sit by the grave side of their loved
Speaker 1: ones for that many days because they feel like they're
Speaker 1: still there and they you know, need to be with
Speaker 1: them that part of their personality, the individual part of them.
Speaker 1: And that definitely I can see where that would play
Speaker 1: into mourning for the dead, because you're you're struck by
Speaker 1: this dichotomy of that's the person that I loved and
Speaker 1: the person I still love but they're not there, but
Speaker 1: they still but I still feel this connection to this
Speaker 1: body exactly right. Uh. And so what's really important about
Speaker 1: Davis's research is that it's a combination of looking at
Speaker 1: the biology that's going on here with this what we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about as zombie powder, as well as the
Speaker 1: cultural resonance that's here and how that plays into the society.
Speaker 1: So the first thing that's important to understand that he
Speaker 1: states is that becoming a zombie is a loss of
Speaker 1: individuality that is worse than death. So this is a
Speaker 1: punishment that they they use for breaking the largest taboos
Speaker 1: of their community. Right, It's a It's also seen as
Speaker 1: a form of social control. So maybe you're a criminal,
Speaker 1: or maybe a rapist or something like that something that
Speaker 1: is affecting the community, right, and so the Voodoo priests
Speaker 1: subsequently enslaves you as such to take that problem away
Speaker 1: from the community. Yeah, a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 1: you you know, seeing a lot of Caribbean cultures and
Speaker 1: uh and and and also in the vood and religion
Speaker 1: is that, of course you have a mix of of
Speaker 1: of African belief systems mingled with some Christian beliefs systems
Speaker 1: and uh. Ian davis is follow up book, Passage of Darkness,
Speaker 1: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie. He argues that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: getting into what you just just said that it it
Speaker 1: ties into a long history of secret societies, uh that
Speaker 1: stretched back to the earliest days of slavery, societies that
Speaker 1: carried with them more of an emphasis on African beliefs
Speaker 1: that carried with them. Uh some of this uh you know,
Speaker 1: this folkloric pharmaceutical knowledge. Uh. And this was especially the
Speaker 1: case with escaped slaves such as the Maroons who lived
Speaker 1: deep in the mountains sort of had their own outsider
Speaker 1: culture that they established. And that it's here especially that
Speaker 1: you would see zombie powder used as a means of
Speaker 1: punishing individuals who who broke with tradition, broke the broke
Speaker 1: their their laws, and and of course all punishment, all
Speaker 1: capital punishment, is essentially symbolic. But the symbolity of this
Speaker 1: is very potent um. It's been an escaped slave culture.
Speaker 1: In the same way that you would here it argued
Speaker 1: in American culture that capital punishment is a deterrence. You
Speaker 1: could argue the same thing here, right that you the
Speaker 1: last thing that you would want to do is have
Speaker 1: your individual reality taken away from you and be under
Speaker 1: the thrall of somebody else. So subsequently that would keep
Speaker 1: you from doing bad things. So there's two things I
Speaker 1: want to note here before we go on. The first
Speaker 1: is that I think that Davis is a really fascinating
Speaker 1: individual because of this sort of cross disciplinary approach that
Speaker 1: he took to this study. Now I know that that's
Speaker 1: part of what tweaked certain scholars the wrong way in
Speaker 1: the eighties and made them upset with him, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about that as well, uh, But but I think
Speaker 1: that it's an interesting approach and I'm glad that he
Speaker 1: did it to at least sort of set a standard
Speaker 1: for other people to do the same thing down the road.
Speaker 1: But maybe a little more carefully with their methodology. The
Speaker 1: second thing is that we have to say that all
Speaker 1: that stuff that we just mentioned about voodoo culture, it
Speaker 1: has been heavily criticized. At least Davis's interpretation of it
Speaker 1: has been as just being a complete misrepresentation, and that
Speaker 1: it's something that as a person who just kind of
Speaker 1: came in and visited the culture for a number of
Speaker 1: years and then went and wrote this book, that he
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily understand all the complexities of it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean he was he was a young buck jumping out
Speaker 1: into the world and uh, and a lot of the
Speaker 1: criticisms I was looking at they often referred to him
Speaker 1: as in Indiana Jones, and not not in a favorable lights,
Speaker 1: saying that like, here's a here's this young rock star
Speaker 1: with a crazy hat. He's going out and he thinks
Speaker 1: he's doing important academic work, but he's not. He's just,
Speaker 1: you know, he's just he's a little reckless, is the idea.
Speaker 1: And based on what I was reading about his second
Speaker 1: book that I mentioned, the pathogeist darkness, yeah he uh,
Speaker 1: he apparently calmed down a lot by that point or
Speaker 1: refined himself, became more in keeping with the expectations of
Speaker 1: of his academic critics. Yeah, this is a good opportunity
Speaker 1: to sort of get into a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what happened with Davis in the following years. He's a
Speaker 1: fascinating individual. National Geographic has given him the title Explorer
Speaker 1: of the Millennium. That's a pretty awesome title. Uh So,
Speaker 1: as as you would expect from the title, he's still exploring,
Speaker 1: going all around the world. He's an ethnobotanist and an anthropologist.
Speaker 1: He's gone everywhere, Polynesia, Tibet. He just does tons of
Speaker 1: similar studies to this one that he started off with
Speaker 1: in Haiti. And in fact, my understanding is that he's
Speaker 1: been working on some kind of four part documentary for
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, and uh that showcases various
Speaker 1: cultures from around the world and sort of how, um,
Speaker 1: how human nature evolves in these different ways. Yeah. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: even though the Indiana Jones thing was used as a
Speaker 1: as a as a dig at him um early on,
Speaker 1: like really, who else has call and he's the Explorer
Speaker 1: the Millennium? Well and and and that's the other thing too,
Speaker 1: when I think about the Indiana Jones application, right, like
Speaker 1: like remember those scenes in the Indiana Jones movies where
Speaker 1: he would like go back to the college and he
Speaker 1: would be in his stuffy suit and like about to
Speaker 1: teach class or whatever, and all the students were fawning
Speaker 1: all over him. But like you get the sense that
Speaker 1: Davis doesn't really have that part. Davis doesn't like go
Speaker 1: back and like climb into a tweed suit and hold
Speaker 1: office hours. Maybe he does so. Originally Davis was actually
Speaker 1: a Canadian firefighter, but then he moved on and went
Speaker 1: to Harvard University. And while he was at Harvard studying,
Speaker 1: he would apparently this is ac cording of the research,
Speaker 1: he just often visit Columbia, the nation Columbia at the
Speaker 1: school and study cocaine and hallucinogen. So you get an
Speaker 1: idea of where his interests lie right away. I think
Speaker 1: this is like a late seventies uh. In nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: this was when the sort of quote unquote Serpent and
Speaker 1: the Rainbow storyline started to come together. He was funded
Speaker 1: by something that was called the Zombie Project, that's it's
Speaker 1: real title, via the Botanical Museum at Harvard and the
Speaker 1: Americans U, sorry, the American National Science Foundation, and there
Speaker 1: were some others in there as well. Um, I think
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly correctly from reading some of the research,
Speaker 1: that he might have had some private interests in there
Speaker 1: as well. Um. Basically, the idea is, like what we
Speaker 1: said earlier, they wanted him to go and find out
Speaker 1: what was up with this zombie powder so that they
Speaker 1: could potentially use it to revolutionize surgery. So Davis goes
Speaker 1: down there, and let's see, so he first gets funded
Speaker 1: in seventy five and he publicly hypothesizes about zombies in
Speaker 1: eighty three. So he's down there for roughly eight years,
Speaker 1: back and forth kind of doing research understanding the culture. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's an eighty three that he publishes something and says,
Speaker 1: you know what, the zombie thing. It's a real thing.
Speaker 1: It's not just a myth, and it can be explained
Speaker 1: both by science and cultural analysis. And this is Davis's
Speaker 1: idea of how it works. This is how he broke
Speaker 1: it down essentially. So it starts it's off with what
Speaker 1: we just talked about, the cultural belief in zombies as
Speaker 1: part of the culture. Right, you have to be in
Speaker 1: that culture and truly believe, you have to have faith
Speaker 1: that that will work. And that's how society has run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this ties into a lot of what we've mentioned before
Speaker 1: about the paranormal experience. Um, anyone can have these sort
Speaker 1: of these strange hallucination experiences or or some sort of
Speaker 1: altered state of perception. But then how does how do
Speaker 1: you make sense of it? And then that's where you
Speaker 1: have to turn to your whatever cultural scripts are available. So,
Speaker 1: like the individual who sees lights in the woods, depending
Speaker 1: on where you are in time, where you are in
Speaker 1: the world, you might interpret Thosese fairies as aliens, as ghosts,
Speaker 1: as um or as just people with flashlights looking for
Speaker 1: you in the woods. Right, it's whatever narrative is available
Speaker 1: to you to understand it. That's what culture is, essentially,
Speaker 1: it's how we understand the world. Yeah, so let's put
Speaker 1: put yourself in that situation. Then you're a part of
Speaker 1: that culture and you have complete faith that voodoo priests
Speaker 1: have the ability to make zombies or make you the
Speaker 1: living dead. All right, then here comes the biological factor.
Speaker 1: So Davis hypothesized that victims were given two types of powder.
Speaker 1: The first he called the before powder, and this was
Speaker 1: what rendered the victims helpless and paralyzed them. So they
Speaker 1: seemed lifeless. Okay, So the idea here is that like
Speaker 1: they're given this powder and it seems like they just died,
Speaker 1: like their their body slows to a crawl, and their
Speaker 1: their neighbors all think and family think of this person
Speaker 1: just passed away. Right. Davis collected eight samples of this
Speaker 1: particular powder, and he claims that they all contained the
Speaker 1: following ingredients human remains, tree frogs, worms, toads, and the
Speaker 1: last and this is a really important one for fish.
Speaker 1: I feel like the rest of the stuff is more
Speaker 1: or less garnish. It's really the puffer fish, I think, um.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because puffer fish contains something
Speaker 1: that's called tetro dotoxin. Uh. If you've ever had Japanese
Speaker 1: foo goo fish, have you ever had that before? I
Speaker 1: have not, but I've watched the Simpsons though they do
Speaker 1: it on there. Yeah, I've seen video of people, you know,
Speaker 1: like doing it as kind of a dare thing before.
Speaker 1: But it's apparently cuisine that's prepared. Uh. This fish also
Speaker 1: has tetra to toxin and when you eat it, it
Speaker 1: provides a warm, euphoric sensation, but sometimes it can result
Speaker 1: in mild paralysis. And I think sometimes it's even worse, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's a neurotoxin, and researchers have looked
Speaker 1: to it as a potential pain management drug to aid
Speaker 1: in chemotherapy. According to a two thousand thirteen study from
Speaker 1: John Thuer Cancer Center, by blocking the sodium channels, tetro
Speaker 1: dotoxin limits the conduction of pain signals to the central
Speaker 1: nervous system, offering relief from pain related to damage caused
Speaker 1: by chemotherapy. And and so, yeah, it's it's making you
Speaker 1: feel less. It making me feel like you're you're fading
Speaker 1: out of this world, names your senses. And so I
Speaker 1: think Davis's hypothesis was that given enough of this stuff,
Speaker 1: but in the appropriate doses, that you would appear to
Speaker 1: be dead but not actually die. Yeah, Like it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty deadly in the pupper fish because it's it's used
Speaker 1: as a deterrent against predators. In that study that I
Speaker 1: was just citing, they said it's just a fraction of
Speaker 1: the dosage that you would get from eating a popper fish.
Speaker 1: So just to show you how powerful just a just
Speaker 1: a small amount of it would be potentially enough to
Speaker 1: dull the pain. And so this is an interesting little
Speaker 1: side note from one of the readings I did about Davis,
Speaker 1: but apparently one of his colleagues was the one who
Speaker 1: pointed this out to him and said, have you ever
Speaker 1: read the end of the James Bond novel Doctor No?
Speaker 1: And Davis was like, no, I haven't, and he said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, uh spoilers for Dr No, which is what
Speaker 1: like fifty sixty years old. But m James Bond gets
Speaker 1: stabbed with a blade that's coated in tetra to toxin
Speaker 1: and it seems like he dies, but in fact, the
Speaker 1: tetra to toxin just makes it seems like makes it
Speaker 1: seem like he, uh, he's dead, when he's actually just paralyzed.
Speaker 1: The main thing I remember from reading that book is
Speaker 1: that Bond fights the giant squid at the end, which
Speaker 1: I always level anytime anyone anyone charges that a Bond
Speaker 1: film gets a little too silly to say, hey, and
Speaker 1: there in the original Doctor notebook he fights a giant.
Speaker 1: We certainly should do some science of James Bond down
Speaker 1: the road, maybe when what is it Specter? Maybe when
Speaker 1: Spector rolls out? Okay, so that's the before powder and
Speaker 1: Davis's theory here the after powder. He never collected any
Speaker 1: of it. He doesn't know what's in it, but he
Speaker 1: from his cultural studies, believes that it's out there and
Speaker 1: his belief is that it contains deta. Now, Detera also
Speaker 1: is commonly known as the zombies cucumber, and apparently this
Speaker 1: is something that was used in West Africa UH to
Speaker 1: induce stupors, violent hallucinations, and sometimes death. And the idea
Speaker 1: is that slaves brought it over from Africa to Haiti
Speaker 1: and that deterro was now grown there and he saw
Speaker 1: it as being something that was you know, also used
Speaker 1: to sort of continue this appearance of death. Yeah, Deterra
Speaker 1: has been used for centuries in various cultures as both
Speaker 1: a poison and hallucinogen UH and deteria intoxication typically produces delirium.
Speaker 1: So we're looking at a complete inability to differentiate reality
Speaker 1: from fantasy. And that's that's frank delirium as UH as
Speaker 1: as contrasted to just typical hallucination, UM can cause hyperthermia,
Speaker 1: it can cause excessive heart rate, bizarre possibly violent behavior. UM.
Speaker 1: It can also result in a painful photophobia that can
Speaker 1: last several days and pronounced amnesia is also another commonly
Speaker 1: sided effects, so you can easily see how all of
Speaker 1: these uh could play into the experience of being the
Speaker 1: walking enslave dead right exactly. So you've got the cultural
Speaker 1: uh sort of base to this recipe, and then you
Speaker 1: add in the tetra to toxin which paralyzes you, and
Speaker 1: then you throw in the de toura aspect, which could
Speaker 1: potentially be a strong enough hallucinogen to to really confuse you.
Speaker 1: Um have you ever played the follow up video games
Speaker 1: before that? I think you can get to toura in
Speaker 1: that as like an ingredient that you use to make like, um,
Speaker 1: like a some kind of healing recipe or something like that.
Speaker 1: But if I remember correctly, it also kind of makes
Speaker 1: you have hallucinations. I remember getting into the weeds a
Speaker 1: bit on the whole recipes for things. Yeah, it's incredibly complicated,
Speaker 1: but they've somebody over there has done their research. Uh So. Yeah.
Speaker 1: People criticize Davis's research though, they say this is faulty,
Speaker 1: and here's why. First of all, the Sky was probably
Speaker 1: talking to some unreliable subjects while he was over there,
Speaker 1: people who were taking advantage of of his lack of
Speaker 1: knowledge and probably spinning stories. For him or just looking
Speaker 1: for media attention. Yeah, I mean he's also exploring something
Speaker 1: that is essentially magic and fantasy that's tied up in
Speaker 1: mythology and folklore, and so there's a lot of gray
Speaker 1: area there between reality and fantasy. Yeah, exactly. And there
Speaker 1: was a really kind of almost means spirited accusation that
Speaker 1: his data was falsified about the tetra to toxin and
Speaker 1: that he had purposefully uh exaggerated the levels of tetra
Speaker 1: to toxin that were found in the powders that he
Speaker 1: brought back from Haiti, and in some cases might might
Speaker 1: have even lied. And there's you know, he obviously rejects
Speaker 1: those claims, and uh, you know, it's never been proven
Speaker 1: or anything, but there's been studies since on on this
Speaker 1: particular phenomenon, these powders and whether or not they have
Speaker 1: you know, particular effects that could help in medicine. So
Speaker 1: I don't know necessarily that I buy that he made
Speaker 1: up the tetra to talks and stuff. Yeah, that seems
Speaker 1: that maybe going a bit far, especially considering you know,
Speaker 1: where his career has gone since then. Like this doesn't
Speaker 1: strike me as a as a guy who would have
Speaker 1: intentionally done that. Yeah. So, like I said, there's been
Speaker 1: other studies. They're pretty interesting. They break down all of
Speaker 1: the various components that are in the powders and what
Speaker 1: they could do um. But one of the studies that
Speaker 1: I read took a very measured look at these components
Speaker 1: also discounted the whole zombification aspect. They said, this is
Speaker 1: either a combination of um mistaken identity in which like,
Speaker 1: somebody actually dies and then they think they see like
Speaker 1: their cousin but it's not them or something like that,
Speaker 1: or just plain mental illness and that they just there.
Speaker 1: Their cultural understanding of mental illnesses is different than ours
Speaker 1: and they don't realize how it's affecting the person. But
Speaker 1: so far, we don't have that really conclusive study where
Speaker 1: someone rounds up a bunch of people who believe in
Speaker 1: zombies and then just poisons the hell out of them.
Speaker 1: What happened. One of the things that I'm curious about
Speaker 1: is I have to admit that, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: have a deep understanding of Haitian culture. So I'm curious
Speaker 1: if now, almost forty years later, if a lot of
Speaker 1: these cultural touchstones still hold residents indeed, and like to
Speaker 1: what extent has the balance between the traditional folkloric beliefs
Speaker 1: and Catholicism shifted. Um, yeah, it would be interesting to
Speaker 1: see a modern revisitation of this topic. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it would be interesting as well. I suspect, given the
Speaker 1: stigma around it, that most graduate students are going to
Speaker 1: be advised to avoid it by their by their you know,
Speaker 1: faculty mentors. But um, you know, who knows, maybe Davis
Speaker 1: will influence somebody else to go do a similar study.
Speaker 1: Right now, He's put that zombie thing behind him. He's
Speaker 1: mainly known as an ecological campaigner. He's sponsored by National
Speaker 1: and Geographic, so you actually tend to see like articles
Speaker 1: or kind of essays and stuff like that by him
Speaker 1: in in that GEO. He's gone a number of Ted talks,
Speaker 1: so he's out there. He travels around. Uh and like
Speaker 1: I said earlier, he's working on this multipart documentary about
Speaker 1: the diversity of cultures and human belief in the world,
Speaker 1: which I think could be amazing. I actually wonder because
Speaker 1: the thing I read about said this in I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if it's since been finished and I just missed it.
Speaker 1: So if it's out there and you've seen it, let
Speaker 1: us know, because I'd love to see it. So all right,
Speaker 1: so we've laid out sort of the Wade Davis scientific
Speaker 1: explanation for the Serpent in the Rainbow how to make
Speaker 1: a zombie. Here's your formula, right, uh, and we're we're
Speaker 1: doing this in honor of West Craven. I love that movie.
Speaker 1: He passed away this week and so this is sort
Speaker 1: of in memorium to him. So let's talk about how
Speaker 1: this movie was made. Yeah, it's a god, it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's a fascinating story. It's hard to find like
Speaker 1: any real just definitive sources on it because when you
Speaker 1: get into the you know, the troubled history of various films,
Speaker 1: unless you have like a clear cut documentary case, such
Speaker 1: as with Apocalypse Now, there's just a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: almost its own folklore regarding what happened and what went
Speaker 1: wrong and what eventually went right. And it is worth
Speaker 1: mentioning that ultimately, like this film worked because it was
Speaker 1: budgeted at ten million, those seems to have come in
Speaker 1: around US about a seven million in the end. You
Speaker 1: never hear that anymore right now. I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: that was because of budget cuts or Craven just being
Speaker 1: really you know on his game, I suspect budget cuts. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it was, but even then it was set to
Speaker 1: be as big as film to date. So this was
Speaker 1: this was a big deal for Crave. And this is
Speaker 1: after Nightmare in Elm Street. Yeah. So my two key
Speaker 1: sources here, there's a book Tutle West Crave in the
Speaker 1: Art of Horror by John Kenneth and the other sources
Speaker 1: Joe Bob Briggs, who shared a lot of who introduced
Speaker 1: you to the movie in Yeah, and actually he shared
Speaker 1: a lot of this. Uh the well, just like the
Speaker 1: mythology of the making of this film on a Monster
Speaker 1: Vision on TNT back in the U. This is the
Speaker 1: late nineties, I believe. And he has all the scripts
Speaker 1: for those available on his website, which will link to
Speaker 1: on the landing page for this episode. But he, uh,
Speaker 1: he laid it out like this. So you have this
Speaker 1: guy David Ladd, and he acquires the rights to David's book.
Speaker 1: He shows it to West and West Craven loves it.
Speaker 1: Not only does he side decide that he wants to
Speaker 1: take the gig, he also wants to actually travel to
Speaker 1: Haiti and make it even though, according to Briggs, no
Speaker 1: American movie had been filmed within the borders of Haiti yet,
Speaker 1: if my understanding is correct, at that time, Haiti was
Speaker 1: in the middle of a civil war, I believe. So yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so I mean it was it was not a play
Speaker 1: when when when Craven said this, a lot of people
Speaker 1: were like, I don't know, if you really want to
Speaker 1: shoot in Haiti, why don't you shoot in the Dominican public,
Speaker 1: And he said, no, we're going through them. I'm in
Speaker 1: love with the material. I want to make it authentic
Speaker 1: and I care about it. Let's go to Haiti and
Speaker 1: do it. All right, I'd like to pause right there,
Speaker 1: just I love this movie, but I don't know that
Speaker 1: authentic is how I would describe its depiction of Haiti.
Speaker 1: There's some pretty over the top cartoonish depictions of the
Speaker 1: culture over there. But okay, And so they go to
Speaker 1: Haiti and U and it's it's apparently just a kind
Speaker 1: of a troubled suit shoot from the get go, because
Speaker 1: the crew is constantly either sick from food poisoning and
Speaker 1: various problems with food and water, or they're just they're
Speaker 1: dealing with just extreme heat. So the environmental concerns are
Speaker 1: are pretty rough. It's it's environmentally a pretty rough shoot.
Speaker 1: And then they're kind of sandwich between the Haitian military
Speaker 1: and the locals for most of it, and they're trying
Speaker 1: to to use the locals. There's a scene there, I
Speaker 1: believe it's the opening scene with a big funeral procession.
Speaker 1: They used two thousand extras Haitian extras. That scene is terrifying.
Speaker 1: That's the scene that sticks with me the most at
Speaker 1: anything in that movie. We'll see then the authenticity paid off,
Speaker 1: but they also, of course had to pay off the
Speaker 1: extras and um. According to Briggs, one of the problems
Speaker 1: here is that it's you're not dealing with one agent
Speaker 1: for all two thousand of these individuals. There are various representatives.
Speaker 1: So this guy here, he represents fifty of the extras,
Speaker 1: this guy represents a hundred, and all of these different
Speaker 1: representatives keep trying to renegotiate the terms, especially as the
Speaker 1: shoot continues and they realize, hey, these guys are gonna leave. Um,
Speaker 1: let's see if we can, you know, make the most
Speaker 1: out of this, because it's the paying gig, but it's
Speaker 1: also it's it's gonna go away. Sure, and I would
Speaker 1: imagine that bartering is probably a natural part of that
Speaker 1: culture too, Yeah, I would imagine so. So they so
Speaker 1: each time they bring these up, the representatives bring this
Speaker 1: up and occasionally threatened strikes um, the producers raise their
Speaker 1: their pay a little bit to keep them hat p um.
Speaker 1: And then meanwhile the army is saying the Haitian army
Speaker 1: is saying, hey, we can sit in troops. But Craven
Speaker 1: and Company really don't like that idea because it's already
Speaker 1: kind of a hostile situation. The last thing you need
Speaker 1: is you know, potential blood bath. So yeah, for all
Speaker 1: the like you know, uh mothers in the eighties and
Speaker 1: nineties who are against West Craven and being a horrible
Speaker 1: influence on their children, I think that was probably a
Speaker 1: wise decision on his way. He wasn't, as I guess, um,
Speaker 1: interested in capturing you know, violence for violence's sake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so they turned on the army. They continue to
Speaker 1: deal with these various leaders that are hit him up
Speaker 1: for for more cash, and then one day the leaders
Speaker 1: come to the product production office and they say they
Speaker 1: want more money that night or they're going to riot.
Speaker 1: And so this apparently escalates into like a scene where
Speaker 1: David Lady acquired the rights and his servings producer on
Speaker 1: this He's standing on top of a car talking to everyone,
Speaker 1: to the two thousand of these individuals with a bullhorn,
Speaker 1: and they all have rocks ready maybe to pummeling with,
Speaker 1: and he's urging them. Not Voriety promised them that the
Speaker 1: money will will be there, and that's part of the
Speaker 1: problem too. They don't have the money. They're having to
Speaker 1: ship the money in from Miami so that they can
Speaker 1: pay off everybody. Um. And meanwhile they're saying they're realizing,
Speaker 1: all right, we've been here a month. This is not working.
Speaker 1: Let's get out. So they're trying to get everybody out
Speaker 1: of the country to head to the Dominican Republic to
Speaker 1: finish the remaining three months of of shooting. UM. So,
Speaker 1: do you think that this was just a money issue
Speaker 1: or do you think that the Haitian extras that were
Speaker 1: involved in this film had any sense of the kind
Speaker 1: of exploitation their culture is receiving at the hands of
Speaker 1: this film. I have a feeling and it's just kind
Speaker 1: of an unbalanced situation. I mean that may have played
Speaker 1: into it. I get the I get the impression it
Speaker 1: was more of an unbalanced situation with with some some
Speaker 1: problems with representation on the part of the locals. Uh
Speaker 1: an intention obviously between the government and the Haitian people. Certainly, okay,
Speaker 1: so they get most everybody out, but three people had
Speaker 1: to stay in the production office essentially just barricaded in
Speaker 1: there until every last villager was paid. And even weirder,
Speaker 1: and this is like super like I'll say that this
Speaker 1: is doubly alleged, but according to John Kenneth, Craven was
Speaker 1: nearly forced to drink pigs blood in a voodoo ceremony
Speaker 1: to appease the rioting extras. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: believe that. I could not find another source to even
Speaker 1: mention that, and Joe Bob didn't mention it on Monster Vision,
Speaker 1: so I have my doubts. But it sounds a bit
Speaker 1: over the top. You'd think that would be a story
Speaker 1: that Wes Craven would tout as well, you know, something
Speaker 1: he would definitely want to include on the DVD extras. Also,
Speaker 1: it seems like they're their main concern was, Hey, we
Speaker 1: want to be paid for our work, not so much.
Speaker 1: I think the directors should drink pick yeah. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: so they get out of hay Eve a head of
Speaker 1: the Dominican Republic. And I also want to point out
Speaker 1: that also allegedly you had four individuals who who had
Speaker 1: problems with curses or potential um insanity, like one guy
Speaker 1: had to be sent back to the States. Apparently it
Speaker 1: was raving paranoid for a few days. These were American
Speaker 1: production members. Yeah, wow, okay, Yeah, And of course I
Speaker 1: don't know to what extent. That's just like you got
Speaker 1: food poisoning and you know, you're in a different care
Speaker 1: you're in a super stressful situation and you just kind
Speaker 1: of snap. Yeah. And Craven has apparently claimed before that
Speaker 1: one of the local priests put a curse on him.
Speaker 1: But again I don't know to what extent that's just stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how many horror movies have you heard that about?
Speaker 1: I'm sure what's about to come out there? Green Inferno
Speaker 1: from by Eli eli Roth. Yeah, that that's a movie
Speaker 1: that looks like it has a very similar but probably
Speaker 1: modern treatment of of another culture. And I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: surprised if eli Roth tells p Pole that he was
Speaker 1: cursed by somebody, It would not be surprised that if
Speaker 1: he has not been cursed by by some sort of
Speaker 1: a voodoo priest in the past, even before he did this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, thumbs up to that video. But but anyway,
Speaker 1: so various issues in Haiti, and then they finally get
Speaker 1: to the Dominican Republic, and when first of all, they
Speaker 1: arrived there and the archbishop shuts down the production for
Speaker 1: three days because he says it's he decided it was
Speaker 1: sacrilegious to make this kind of a movie on Easter weekend.
Speaker 1: And then like a final blow, one of the Dominican
Speaker 1: production assistants filed a lawsuit against the producers, and under
Speaker 1: Dominican law at the time of the lawsuit was filed
Speaker 1: against the foreigner. They arrested the foreigner and they went
Speaker 1: to jail to the case went to trial. So the
Speaker 1: producers were put under essentially house arrest, and according to
Speaker 1: Joe Bob had to spread a little cash to actually
Speaker 1: get out of the situation. Now you see why people
Speaker 1: want to film in Atlanta so badly. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: not just the tax breaks, there's no military tribunals are
Speaker 1: putting under house rest, I mean, and you know he
Speaker 1: didn't have to allectedly had a good crew, he didn't
Speaker 1: have to deal with like insane Marlon Brando or anything.
Speaker 1: So you hear stories like this, or you watch The
Speaker 1: Heart of Darkness, the documentary about Apocalypse now, and it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder, like, why does anybody try and make
Speaker 1: a film because you're gonna have to go through this
Speaker 1: horrendous process and in all an attempt to make some
Speaker 1: sort of product that resembles your original intention. Yeah, it's right, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's always a matter of compromise. Yeah, that is fascinating.
Speaker 1: I have to just imagine that Craven was so passionate
Speaker 1: about the material. Uh. I wonder too if Wade Davis
Speaker 1: was even part of the production, like if he was
Speaker 1: on set at all. I don't think he was. And
Speaker 1: I know that he distanced himself from the movie when
Speaker 1: it came out, you know, obviously because there's spoilers for
Speaker 1: Serpent the Rainbow. But I believe the movie ends with
Speaker 1: his care or summoning like a panther spirit or something
Speaker 1: like that to beat the voodoo shaman that he's fighting.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember remember that. Oh yeah, there's some
Speaker 1: real silly stuff that goes on in there that is
Speaker 1: clearly has nothing to do with Davis's uh scientific and
Speaker 1: anthrop logic studies of Haiti. So there you have it.
Speaker 1: The Serpent in the Rainbow, Zombie Powder, a troubled production history,
Speaker 1: and uh you know, our tribute to Wes Craven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I would love to hear from you the listeners,
Speaker 1: let us know. You know, did West Craven have a
Speaker 1: particular impact on your viewing on your childhood maybe as
Speaker 1: he did ours? Or is there something about the story
Speaker 1: behind the Serpent in the Rainbow that you know of
Speaker 1: that we missed. I know that there's a lot more
Speaker 1: out there regarding Davis's research and research that's been done
Speaker 1: since then on these particular powders. So I'm curious if
Speaker 1: anybody has new information for us that we could share
Speaker 1: in a future listener mail episode. Yeah, and should we
Speaker 1: do an episod it on the Hills? Have I? That
Speaker 1: sounds good. That's another one where I enjoyed the remake
Speaker 1: um and wasn't too crazy about the original. I think
Speaker 1: he was involved in the remakes, he produced it, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I thought that it was pretty solid. So there
Speaker 1: you have it. Hey, As usually, you can always check
Speaker 1: us out at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the mothership. That's where you'll find the landing page
Speaker 1: for this episode with all those links we mentioned, links
Speaker 1: to the some of the studies as well. You'll find videos.
Speaker 1: You'll find blog posts as well as links out to
Speaker 1: our various social media accounts. Right you can get in
Speaker 1: touch with us on Twitter, Tumbler, and Facebook, and on
Speaker 1: all those channels we are blow the Mind. Or you
Speaker 1: can just write to us the old fashioned way at
Speaker 1: blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
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