Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And this is Joe McCormick. And Hey, today we're going
Speaker 2: to be playing an episode that originally aired on February tenth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. This was our Weird House Cinema on
Speaker 2: Let Sleeping corpses Lie aka what was the other name?
Speaker 2: The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue something like that.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, it's a sci fi spin on the
Speaker 1: zombie genre set in rural England. But it's also a
Speaker 1: Spanish Italian co production. It's really really fun. I was,
Speaker 1: of course, recently traveling in the UK and occasionally I
Speaker 1: would see an old church and I was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: a few of these look kind of like that church
Speaker 1: from Let Sleeping corpses Lie.
Speaker 2: That sounds wonderful. Yeah, I remember this movie being just
Speaker 2: filled with beautiful locations and acerbic jerks.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, without further Ado bright In.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: Today's movie goes by many names. It stems from the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventies, and you could easily sort of single
Speaker 1: it out for a few different things. On one level,
Speaker 1: it's very British. It is the perhaps the most important
Speaker 1: British zombie film, certainly of this time period. It's also
Speaker 1: a Spanish Italian co production and has I think no
Speaker 1: actual British people in it. It's also not only a
Speaker 1: horror film, but an eco horror film all true. This
Speaker 1: is also definitely a grindhouse era picture. It was actually
Speaker 1: shown in a double feature with Wes Craven's notorious Last
Speaker 1: House on the Left, which I really a seventy two film,
Speaker 1: but I guess it was still making the round by
Speaker 1: seventy four or just hitting certain markets by seventy four.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, these two films were sometimes on
Speaker 1: the same billing.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to realize where different zombie movies come in
Speaker 2: the course of history, because I think of most zombie
Speaker 2: films as derivative not just of Night of the Living Dead,
Speaker 2: but of Dawn of the Dead, the second film in
Speaker 2: George Romero's trilogy. But of course Dawn of the Dead
Speaker 2: actually didn't come out I think until nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: so like four years after this one. Of course Night
Speaker 2: was earlier, but it's kind of strange how I would
Speaker 2: have said this movie was derivative of Dawn, but in
Speaker 2: fact it precedes Dawn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. It's kind of a I think even
Speaker 1: at the time, a lot of people compared it to
Speaker 1: Night of the Living Dead, and certainly it owes something
Speaker 1: to that film, as pretty much any zombie film that
Speaker 1: came after it does. But yeah, maybe it was a
Speaker 1: little head of the curve on some things as well.
Speaker 1: Now we keep talking about it. We haven't said the
Speaker 1: title of the film yet because you kind of have
Speaker 1: your pick of titles for this film. The again, it's
Speaker 1: an Italian Spanish co production, and the original title in
Speaker 1: both languages translates basically to do not profane the Sleep
Speaker 1: of the Debt, which I guess the international distributors didn't
Speaker 1: go for. They saw opportunities to tap into other areas
Speaker 1: of fear. It was released under a lot of different
Speaker 1: names around the world. The two most common are either
Speaker 1: let Sleeping corpses Lie, which is how we haven't listed
Speaker 1: in the title for this episode. But it was also
Speaker 1: widely distributed as The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, where
Speaker 1: it eventually was widely distributed under that name.
Speaker 2: That is the title that displayed in the version of
Speaker 2: it that I watched, though the screen where that title
Speaker 2: pops up looks very out of place. It like doesn't
Speaker 2: match the the visual style of anything around it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also it's a strange title. A lot of
Speaker 1: these titles are hard to really rationalize because a lot
Speaker 1: of them don't really make sense once you get into
Speaker 1: the plot. There is not a Manchester more in the
Speaker 1: film as an actual setting. We only briefly see Manchester
Speaker 1: at the very beginning of the film, and then we
Speaker 1: go out into rural Britain, and that is where the
Speaker 1: rest of the film is supposed to be taking place.
Speaker 2: Is the city at the beginning definitely supposed to be Manchester.
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be Manchester
Speaker 2: or London.
Speaker 1: It is Manchester, that is what I've read. Yes, all right.
Speaker 1: Other titles that this film had there was do Not
Speaker 1: Speak Ill of the Dead, which which sounds pretty good.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's more or less a translation of the original,
Speaker 1: even though it kind of implies that that what's going
Speaker 1: on here is like the raising of the dead via
Speaker 1: slander or something. It shouldn't come as anybody to any
Speaker 1: surprise to anyone out there that it was also known
Speaker 1: as Zombie three, at least in some markets. And this
Speaker 1: is hilarious because a number of films seem to have
Speaker 1: been released at one time or another as part of
Speaker 1: the very unofficial Italian zombie franchise, including nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 1: Zombie three, which was a Fulci and a Matte film.
Speaker 1: So anything can or could be a zombie movie.
Speaker 2: Wait, now I'm incredibly confused here, because so Zombie three
Speaker 2: would mean this is trying to be a sequel to
Speaker 2: Zombie two, which was the full chief film that was
Speaker 2: not actually a sequel to the original Zombie, which was
Speaker 2: another name for Romero's Dawn of the Dead, which came
Speaker 2: out in seventy eight. But this movie we're talking about
Speaker 2: came out in seventy four and at some point it
Speaker 2: was called Zombie three.
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of the Zombie zo MBI franchise.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I guess this would have to be like
Speaker 2: in like I don't know, later video releases or something, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think so. Now another title that's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun for this one that again doesn't really
Speaker 1: fit the movie is Don't Open the Window. I love
Speaker 1: a good seventies Don't movie, And we're actually gonna hear
Speaker 1: the trailer for Don't Open the Window for that release
Speaker 1: of the film here in a bit, just because it's
Speaker 1: the most, in my opinion, the most amusing of the
Speaker 1: trailers to listen to in a podcast format.
Speaker 2: I don't remember, Okay, So running through these different titles,
Speaker 2: we do I think see a Manchester area hospital as
Speaker 2: a set used in the movie, but it's not really
Speaker 2: set in Manchester. Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead,
Speaker 2: as far as I can tell, has no relationship to
Speaker 2: the plot. Zombie three is hilarious because this movie came
Speaker 2: out before the original Zombie and I don't think there's
Speaker 2: anything about opening a window at all. Can you remember
Speaker 2: any window stuff?
Speaker 1: I mean, people probably look through windows, and maybe there's
Speaker 1: a scene where somebody grabs through a window, but it's
Speaker 1: not it's not the centerpiece of the picture. I don't
Speaker 1: know that any of the Don't movies really had that
Speaker 1: going for it. But when a movie's titles say don't
Speaker 1: Go in the Basement, I feel like that one really works.
Speaker 1: And if oh, well, this is a movie about something
Speaker 1: horrible going on in the basement where horrible things belong.
Speaker 1: But don't open the window. This seems very broad, like
Speaker 1: I'm really just not supposed to open the window again.
Speaker 2: Actually, there's one scene where one character, Katie, escapes a
Speaker 2: zombie by jumping out a window, So if she obeyed
Speaker 2: the title of that version, she would have been killed
Speaker 2: by the zombie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a more fitting title would be don't use ultrasound technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, don't trust science, I think would be the
Speaker 2: correct title here, and in that vein, I'd say let
Speaker 2: Sleeping corpses Lie is probably the most on track of
Speaker 2: all these titles because it suggests that something is being
Speaker 2: done to disturb the dead, like you're kind of meddling
Speaker 2: in some way that you shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the elevator pitch for this one's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: You have youths from the city clashing with authority figures
Speaker 1: and the living dad in rural Britain.
Speaker 2: Strangely, though, the dichotomy set up in this movie is
Speaker 2: not an alliance of urbanity with the youth. The youths
Speaker 2: are from the city, but urbanity, I would say is
Speaker 2: sort of the villain, because that's in this nexus of
Speaker 2: evil things that the movie were probably group together like cops, cities, science,
Speaker 2: the government, and I guess anything that happens in a
Speaker 2: big building.
Speaker 1: And big buildings of course have windows. So let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and listen to the trailer for Don't Open the Window. Akaa.
Speaker 1: Let's sleep in corpses live.
Speaker 4: They tampered with nature and now they must pay the price.
Speaker 4: See the grotesque invade an unsuspecting village. See a hospital
Speaker 4: panic when they old babies go berserk. You see friends
Speaker 4: turn on each.
Speaker 1: Other in a nightly are of Holliday.
Speaker 4: You'll cringe with terror when you see don't open the window.
Speaker 4: Emm's out there, will wait and read it.
Speaker 1: Are see, Now you'll think twice about opening that window, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, I wasn't gonna do it before, but now
Speaker 2: I'm really convinced.
Speaker 1: So before we get going here, you may be wondering, well,
Speaker 1: where can I find this movie under one title or another? Well?
Speaker 1: I streamed the movie on AMC Plus on Amazon under
Speaker 1: the title The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. Shutter has
Speaker 1: it as well, and you can render by it digitally.
Speaker 1: But there's also a blu ray release from sign App's
Speaker 1: Films that features a four K restoration and it looks
Speaker 1: really great. There's a lot of neat extra features on it.
Speaker 1: Now we mentioned a little bit about the locations. One
Speaker 1: thing to keep in mind with this picture is that
Speaker 1: parts of it are definitely shot. There are locations and
Speaker 1: exteriors that are definitely shot in Britain, and they seem
Speaker 1: to have done a good enough job where they use
Speaker 1: just enough of it that, at least in my eyes,
Speaker 1: it feels like Britain most of the time, like they
Speaker 1: are enough establishing shots to establish that. Occasionally though, you
Speaker 1: can tell, like, well, this looks a lot more like
Speaker 1: an Italian horror film. The hills look more Italian and so, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of scenes that were actually shot in Italy. Oh.
Speaker 2: I thought they did an excellent job with the scenery.
Speaker 2: I was fully convinced about the English landscape. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I have no complaints whatsoever about the locations and scenery
Speaker 2: in this movie. In fact, they're pretty, they're gorgeous most
Speaker 2: of the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a really well shot film. So let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and get into the folks involved in it here.
Speaker 1: We'll start with the director. This is Jorge Grau, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen thirty through twenty eighteen. Spanish director probably best
Speaker 1: remembered internationally anyway. I'm not sure about in Spain for
Speaker 1: this picture, but was responsible for various romances and thrillers.
Speaker 1: I think he only did three other horror films, a
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three Countess Bathory film titled The Legend of
Speaker 1: blood Castle, nineteen seventy three's Violent blood Bath, and nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three's Hunting Ground. I think those two seventy three
Speaker 1: films are separate films, but now that I read them
Speaker 1: out loud, it makes me wonder maybe this is the
Speaker 1: same film. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the Bathory Bath, Bathing and blood Thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I could see that, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't have the details in front of I think
Speaker 1: it's two separate films, but they sound a lot alike
Speaker 1: title wise. Now, there are four different names that are
Speaker 1: attributed on the screenplay, too credited to uncredited, that you
Speaker 1: find in a couple of the databases. But one of
Speaker 1: the credited screenwriters is Sandro Continentza, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety six. It Talian screenwriter best known for
Speaker 1: such films as nineteen sixty one's Valley of the Lions,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight's The Inglorious Bastards, not the Tarantino one later,
Speaker 1: but Tarantino was a drawing on that title, nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one's Hercules in the Haunted World, and really just a
Speaker 1: long list of thrillers, action movies, horror movies, comedies and more. Okay,
Speaker 1: the other name is credited is or Solo Costia. This
Speaker 1: is an Italian screenwriter dates unknown, whose filmography includes work
Speaker 1: apparently uncredited work on nineteen sixties Black Sunday and such
Speaker 1: films as nineteen seventy seven's YETI Giant of the twentieth Century,
Speaker 1: which stars Tony Kendall and a King Kong sized YETI.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, this nineteen sixties, that's the Mario Bava
Speaker 2: Black Sunday, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, Oh that's a fantastic
Speaker 2: horror movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I don't know to what degree the screenwriter
Speaker 1: actually worked on it, but there's at least an uncredited
Speaker 1: tagging on that. And then there are a couple of
Speaker 1: other Spanish screenwriters who are uncredited. There's Miguel Rubio and
Speaker 1: one Cobos. Both of those are individuals who, like Rubio,
Speaker 1: did a number of Spanish romance as it looks like,
Speaker 1: and Cobos did various westerns, thrillers, et cetera. Now getting
Speaker 1: into the cast here, it apparently depends on where it
Speaker 1: was released, who got top billing and so. But the character,
Speaker 1: I guess she's one of our two main characters in
Speaker 1: this and that is Edna the city girl, played by
Speaker 1: Christina Galbo. She was born nineteen fifty was a Spanish
Speaker 1: child actor who later worked in various films, a number
Speaker 1: of horror films, but also some dramas in there as well.
Speaker 1: Her credits include the Western from nineteen sixty eight, Twice
Speaker 1: a Judas with klaus Kinski, nineteen sixty nine is the
Speaker 1: House that Screamed, nineteen seventy two is what have You
Speaker 1: Done to Solange? And nineteen seventy five's The Killer Must
Speaker 1: Kill Again. Oh, and then also a nineteen eighty one
Speaker 1: film titled Sober Natural which just looks amazing. It's also
Speaker 1: known as Return of the Poultergeist.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is the verk Beast movie that you shared
Speaker 2: the cover box and the box art with me on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is what a Dutch VHS cover that
Speaker 1: I found here and I have read some reviews that say,
Speaker 1: don't go into this film sober natural expectant return of
Speaker 1: the Poulter, expecting to get this level of insanity, but
Speaker 1: it's it's supposedly interesting.
Speaker 2: Nonetheless, I'm sorry it was so funny because the Dutch
Speaker 2: language on the cover you shared with has this like
Speaker 2: tagline that says zell hit bosa over women, which I
Speaker 2: think means like will evil prevail.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I haven't seen it. I don't know
Speaker 1: how it turns out.
Speaker 2: It might, but it's got the verk beast standing there,
Speaker 2: like clutching some kind of glowing skull over his crotch.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, or like his belly has a ghost in
Speaker 1: it or something. It's it's very intriguing. Yeah. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: actor here, Galbo Christina goalbouh quite good in this It's,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss, it's a role that does limit her
Speaker 1: to a fair amount of screaming and being afraid. But
Speaker 1: you know, so it's essentially kind of a scream queen role.
Speaker 1: But I think she's really good in it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I would say that the acting in this
Speaker 2: movie is good for what the movie calls for, which
Speaker 2: is not very nuanced performances. The roles in this movie
Speaker 2: are painted with a broad brush, but in that capacity,
Speaker 2: the cast is by and large very good.
Speaker 1: Now, our central we kept calling him a hippie, but
Speaker 1: it might be more accurate to think of him as
Speaker 1: a rocker. I don't know. There's a lot to dissect there.
Speaker 2: I've got a note on this later in the plot.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we'll get back to this. But this
Speaker 1: is George. George is played by Ray Lovelocke, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty through twenty seventeen. He was an Italian actor
Speaker 1: and musician. His father was English, his mother was Italian.
Speaker 1: But I'm still doubtful he's doing his own English language
Speaker 1: dubbing in this film, because it's very I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's very over the top, it seemed to me, but
Speaker 1: it could be wrong.
Speaker 2: On this, well, it's very loaded with the vernacular markers
Speaker 2: of British English, so just a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of little you know, like I don't know what you
Speaker 2: call it, a little flourishes, like referring to women as
Speaker 2: birds and stuff.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure on this this might be his
Speaker 1: own voice. I think everyone is dubbed in this film.
Speaker 1: I think this is one of those pictures where they
Speaker 1: didn't have they weren't actually recording the sound locally, and
Speaker 1: then everybody's coming back in to dub it. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if he's doing his own dubbing or not here.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, even if it's just a physical performance,
Speaker 1: he's still pretty good in this. It's so. As a musician,
Speaker 1: he put out a number of singles in Italy and
Speaker 1: Japan in the late sixties and then early to mid seventies,
Speaker 1: and as an actor, his credits include sixty seven's Django
Speaker 1: Kill if You Live Shoot, also Norman Jewison's nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof.
Speaker 2: Oh who does he play in that? Fiddler?
Speaker 1: Let's see, I have to look it up again.
Speaker 2: Okay, let me look it up. Hold on Oh, Okay.
Speaker 2: He plays Fiedka, who is a Christian farmer who is
Speaker 2: the husband married by the third daughter Hava.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's been a I think I saw Fiddler on
Speaker 1: the Roof, this version of it with Topaul in it
Speaker 1: when I was a child, but all I remember is
Speaker 1: just some of the singing.
Speaker 2: I always loved Fiddler on the Roof. I think his
Speaker 2: role in this is sad because when have falls in
Speaker 2: love with Fiedka and they want to get married, that
Speaker 2: this is what Tevia finally like, won't accept and he says, no, no,
Speaker 2: I will not accept it.
Speaker 1: Is there a scene in Fiddler on the Roof where
Speaker 1: someone plays a fiddle on the roof?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, okay, it's at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought, I mean, I had that image of
Speaker 1: my mind, but I was suddenly second guessing myself, Like
Speaker 1: maybe I since I saw it as a kid and
Speaker 1: I remember the title, I would just create the memory
Speaker 1: of toppaal singing on the roof. I need to see
Speaker 1: it again clearly anyway. There are other pictures that Lovelock
Speaker 1: was in, including the nineteen seventy four Romberto Lindsay police
Speaker 1: thriller Almost Human and the nineteen seventy five Jallo film Autopsy. Oh,
Speaker 1: and also in Luccio Fulci's nineteen eighty four musical Murder Rock.
Speaker 2: That's the gory horror musical.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I actually have a blu ray of it,
Speaker 1: but I haven't watched it yet. So at some point
Speaker 1: I'll check that out and see if it's if it
Speaker 1: is something for Weird House, or if it's something just
Speaker 1: for me. We'll see, okay, all right. We also have
Speaker 1: an authority figure in this picture, and that is the
Speaker 1: inspector who is not a rural police inspector like he
Speaker 1: seems to have come in from the city himself because
Speaker 1: he's staying at the hotel. He doesn't have a local residence.
Speaker 1: But this character is played by Arthur Kennedy, not a
Speaker 1: brit not an Italian or a Spanish actor. An American
Speaker 1: actor of stage and screen who won a nineteen forty
Speaker 1: nine Tony Award for his role in the original production
Speaker 1: of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and was a
Speaker 1: five time Oscar nominee. He worked in a number of
Speaker 1: Arthur Miller's Broadway plays as well, and he was in
Speaker 1: such major films of the forties, fifties, and sixties as
Speaker 1: Lawrence of Arabia, Write Victory, Peyton Place, and Champion. He
Speaker 1: worked a lot in Europe later in his career. This
Speaker 1: is the second Arthur Kennedy movie that we've discussed on Weirdhouse,
Speaker 1: because it was in The Humanoid from nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: It was an Italian star Wars ripoff, right, Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the one that had what's his name in it, oh,
Speaker 2: Richard Keel or Kyle Keel.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He plays the titular humanoid,
Speaker 1: I believe.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah, I forgot Arthur Kennedy was in that.
Speaker 1: Well. In this he's just a snarling fascist police inspector
Speaker 1: who has absolutely had it up to here with the hippies. Yes,
Speaker 1: and it's it's difficult to figure out his accent in this.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 1: I must I'm guessing, like, since the film is supposed
Speaker 1: to take place near the Scottish border in what Cumbria,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, maybe he's going for a Scottish
Speaker 1: accent here.
Speaker 2: No, to the extent that he is tempting an accent,
Speaker 2: I think he's going for Irish, not Scottish. But it's
Speaker 2: but why why No, It's almost as bad as Kevin
Speaker 2: Costner and Robin Hood. He just alternating freely between attempting
Speaker 2: an accent and not at all. And in the cases
Speaker 2: where he does actually alter his accent, I do think
Speaker 2: he's trying for Irish, but there are plenty of scenes
Speaker 2: where it's just nothing, not even trying. He has a
Speaker 2: gravelly American voice. I guess it's just his natural voice,
Speaker 2: and he sounds kind of like you imagine the voice
Speaker 2: of William Holden, you know, a kind of rough, gravelly
Speaker 2: core American accent, and I'd say this is what we
Speaker 2: hear at least half the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now trying to figure out the accent itself. Aside,
Speaker 1: I think he is a very convincing screen presence in
Speaker 1: the film. Like you. Again, maybe not the most nuanced
Speaker 1: character of all time here, but just as a just
Speaker 1: as an absolute authority figure villain to menace our our
Speaker 1: freethinking youths or supposedly freethinking youths, I think he's pretty great.
Speaker 1: Like he's just bristling and snarling every time he's on the.
Speaker 2: Screen, basically every scene, he's just decrying the decadence and
Speaker 2: filth of the young and saying, why don't we just
Speaker 2: lock them all up?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Why can't I abuse my power more? If only
Speaker 1: I could abuse my power like a few degrees more
Speaker 1: than we wouldn't have any problems at all. Yeah. Let's
Speaker 1: see some other actors in this of note, Janine Mestri
Speaker 1: plays Katie. Katie West this is the sister of the
Speaker 1: character played by Christina Galbo. So this is Edna's sister Yep,
Speaker 1: she's a major, an important character that kind of brings
Speaker 1: everyone together here. But the actor here was born in
Speaker 1: forty seven, Spanish actor whose work seems to lean more
Speaker 1: historical and more into dramas. But she had a small
Speaker 1: role as a vampire woman in Jess Franco's nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: Dracula movie that had Christopher Lee, Klaskinsky and Herbert Lohm
Speaker 1: in it. Quite a cask, I mean you can guess
Speaker 1: who klows Kinsky played, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, Wade, are you saying not Dracula.
Speaker 1: Not Dragton No, Christopher Lee's Dracula?
Speaker 2: Oh, klaus Kinsey Renfield? Yes, yes, okay, makes sense.
Speaker 1: All right? And then playing Katie's husband Martin West, who
Speaker 1: have Jose Lafonte, Spanish actor with two hundred and four
Speaker 1: almost in two thousand and four, two hundred and four
Speaker 1: varied credits, including nineteen eighty seven's Beaks the movie. Oh
Speaker 1: is that when you've seen what?
Speaker 2: You don't remember us talking about Beaks in the past.
Speaker 1: I don't remind me.
Speaker 2: I think it came up on this show maybe because
Speaker 2: a listener UH asked us what were the worst films
Speaker 2: we've ever seen? And I don't know exactly how to
Speaker 2: answer that. You know, it's hard to put old movies
Speaker 2: on the same scale. You can't consider them all with
Speaker 2: the same criteria. But I think one of the worst
Speaker 2: times I ever had trying to finish watching a movie
Speaker 2: was Beaks, which is a rip off of The Birds,
Speaker 2: but it was like excruciating. It had these high pitched,
Speaker 2: droning synthesizer sounds that were just like needles going into
Speaker 2: your ears. And pair that with overuse of slow motion
Speaker 2: and you can imagine just the nausea and the pain
Speaker 2: of trying to get to the end.
Speaker 1: This was a Renee Cardona junior picture too. All right, well,
Speaker 1: now you've been twice warned to avoid Beaks. We also
Speaker 1: have a character that will become important, Guthrie Wilson, who's
Speaker 1: a tramp. He lives by the river in this rural
Speaker 1: British setting, played by Fernando Hillbeck, who of nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: three through two thousand and nine. I thought Hillbeck was
Speaker 1: interesting in this, and maybe it's more in the way
Speaker 1: he was shot, but he almost has kind of George
Speaker 1: Eastman vibes going on here, very intimidating physical presence. He
Speaker 1: was a Spanish actor mostly a character actor, did a
Speaker 1: lot of work in various genres. One of his biggest
Speaker 1: international credits is I believe he plays like a an
Speaker 1: evil knight or something in Paul Verhoven's nineteen eighty five
Speaker 1: medieval drama Flesh. I guess it's flesh and blood, but
Speaker 1: it's always flesh plus blood, like it's supposed to equal.
Speaker 2: Something equals negative. Fun, I guess because.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's You never really hear it discussed
Speaker 1: a lot, all right, don't anyway, But anyway, I had
Speaker 1: a great Caves, Rudger Howard, Jennifer Jason Lee, Ronald Lacy,
Speaker 1: Brian James. So yeah, fun cast, I love, I love Verhoven.
Speaker 2: I've never seen Oh yeah, yeah I would.
Speaker 1: It's on my radar. Is something I want to check
Speaker 1: out at some point, like as the Paul Verhoven movies
Speaker 1: that that I'm familiar most people are familiar, like It's
Speaker 1: It's It's it's gonna be the RoboCop, It's going to
Speaker 1: be total recall, it's gonna be like that caliber of film,
Speaker 1: which which is great. I mean, those are are perfect
Speaker 1: films in their own way, But I am curious at times,
Speaker 1: like what what are the predecessors to that, you know
Speaker 1: what sort of brought him to the international scene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just haven't seen any of those, all right, we
Speaker 1: also have This is a minor character, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to mention him because he's kind of I kept
Speaker 1: thinking of him as the discount Peter Cushing in this.
Speaker 1: Perhaps a lot of this has to do is just
Speaker 1: the shape of his skull and the way he's presented.
Speaker 1: But vincente Vega plays doctor Dufffield. Dates unknown on the
Speaker 1: two databases I was looking at, but he's been inactive
Speaker 1: since nineteen seventy nine, so I suspect he maybe did.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the actor himself seems to have fairly had
Speaker 1: had a fairly diverse career, and I acted in various dramas,
Speaker 1: even some Shakespeare.
Speaker 2: I can see why you would say Cushing because they
Speaker 2: bring him in to be the kind of thin angular, clinical,
Speaker 2: semi good guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of has a grim demeanor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's almost a good guy in the movie, but
Speaker 2: he can't fully be that way because he's too closely
Speaker 2: aligned with science. This is a major problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this film seems to have some definite opinions about
Speaker 1: science and its overreach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll get to that in the plot section.
Speaker 1: All right. It's worth noting that there are multiple individuals
Speaker 1: that are credited with the makeup and the special effects,
Speaker 1: but Gianetto de Rosi is credited as makeup artist and
Speaker 1: special optical effects here. He lived nineteen forty one through
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, and de Rosi was a big name
Speaker 1: in both Italian and American films, with a noted specialty
Speaker 1: in prosthetic appliances for gory movies. So, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a zombie movie, so you know what that means,
Speaker 1: scenes in which people have parts of their anatomy ripped
Speaker 1: open or ripped off and eaten by bloodthirsty creatures.
Speaker 2: I am not really a gore hound, you know, That's
Speaker 2: not what I usually come to a movie for. But
Speaker 2: the stuff in this movie is good. That there are
Speaker 2: scenes of zombies like pulling people's guts out and chound
Speaker 2: down on them and stuff, and it's quite convincing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean everyone's tolerance level for this is
Speaker 1: going to vary. For my taste level, I felt like
Speaker 1: they gave us just enough for it to be shocking
Speaker 1: within the context of the film without feeling like the
Speaker 1: camera is really lingering too long, either on the effects
Speaker 1: or on the like the intended blood and gore itself. Anyway,
Speaker 1: de Rosi's credits are are pretty robust. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: all over the place, and I'm not even going I
Speaker 1: didn't list all of them here, and I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: read all the ones I listed. But he worked on
Speaker 1: The Humanoid, which we already referenced. He worked on nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties Cannibal Apocalypse, which we've covered on the show. He
Speaker 1: worked on a film I've never seen, but this title
Speaker 1: never fails to make me snicker is nineteen eighties Doctor
Speaker 1: Butcher MD, which I don't know. I just I'm always
Speaker 1: intrigued that there's Doctor Butcher empty.
Speaker 2: But anyway, as well, I like that it's opposed to
Speaker 2: Doctor Butcher, like Masters of Education or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah. He has also worked on Full Cheese,
Speaker 1: The Beyond House by the Cemetery, which we've also talked about,
Speaker 1: Piranha two in eighty one, Conan the Destroyer in eighty four.
Speaker 1: He did the you remember Andre the Giant is in
Speaker 1: that as this like big like statue monster creature. Hmm, okay,
Speaker 1: well he was responsible for the monster effects there. He
Speaker 1: worked on nineteen eighty four's Dune. He was one of
Speaker 1: the people who brought the Guild Navigator to life.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, even though the Guild Navigator doesn't really show
Speaker 2: up in the first Dune novel, but they had to
Speaker 2: get him in the Lynch movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's like, we gotta get get him in there,
Speaker 1: and let's cart him in and it's a great scene.
Speaker 1: I mean, say what you will about that adaptation of Doune.
Speaker 1: It's visually enthralling. Anyway. He has some other lists that
Speaker 1: go on up into into subsequent periods of motion picture here,
Speaker 1: including two thousand and three's High Tension aka Switchblade Romance,
Speaker 1: which was a film I enjoyed when it came out.
Speaker 1: I haven't gone back and watched it again. It's not
Speaker 1: a film that really bears a lot of revisiting, but
Speaker 1: the first viewing is pretty fun and it does have
Speaker 1: some gross gore in it.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I'm just looking at the credits you listed from
Speaker 2: the nineties where he did Dragon Heart, which is that
Speaker 2: Sean Connery cgi Dragon movie. Yeah, man, And then he
Speaker 2: did the he did the Conan ripoff that had Kevin
Speaker 2: Sorbo from TV's Hercules in it.
Speaker 1: Yep. Cole the Conqueror. Yeah, also nineteen ninety eight's The
Speaker 1: Man in the Iron Mask in there. So, like I say,
Speaker 1: he worked on a wide variety of pictures from low
Speaker 1: budget grindhouse affair to maybe even worse stuff than that,
Speaker 1: but then also some big pictures as well. And so
Speaker 1: any of these films, you know, if you check them out,
Speaker 1: well at least they're going to have maybe an interesting
Speaker 1: gut rip sequence in them or something a neat monster effect,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Finally, the music on this one,
Speaker 1: I was really enthralled by. This film has really nice
Speaker 1: sound design and really nice music. And the credit musician
Speaker 1: here is Guliano SORGINI dates. I couldn't find the dates
Speaker 1: for him. I think he's still around though, Italian composer
Speaker 1: and keyboardist whose work in this film is really good.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, it's very creepy and unsettling, definitely electronic.
Speaker 1: This was his first score, and I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of all downhill from here in terms of the
Speaker 1: film quality. The quality of the films he was attached to.
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to list all of these because
Speaker 1: some of these are really skeazy. But he followed this
Speaker 1: up with the scores for a number of Spanish exploitation
Speaker 1: films of the nineteen seventies. Some real trash in there,
Speaker 1: some of it just notoriously so. But the score for
Speaker 1: Sleeping Corpses Lie has been released on various formats a
Speaker 1: number of times, and his non film work is also
Speaker 1: available on streaming sites. Over the weekend, I was listening
Speaker 1: to streaming a record titled Occulto and it is supposed
Speaker 1: to be I believe ten unreleased tracks from his archives,
Speaker 1: so stuff that he was putting together and composing in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies for film that just wasn't used. And
Speaker 1: it's really good stuff. If you like like nineteen seventies cinemas,
Speaker 1: synth and the kind of stuff that would show up
Speaker 1: on a Spanish or an Italian horror picture, then this
Speaker 1: is right up your alley.
Speaker 2: I've been meaning to listen to it. I haven't gotten
Speaker 2: to it yet, but I believe you.
Speaker 1: Well, I just have to say this. If you do
Speaker 1: listen to it, Joe, make sure the windows are shut, Okay,
Speaker 1: don't open the window. Well, should we let Sleeping Corpses
Speaker 1: lie here and just call it an episode? Or should
Speaker 1: we get into the plot of this, and I think
Speaker 1: we should disturb the corpses. Yes, okay, so let's see.
Speaker 1: The movie opens strangely quiet. We come up cold, no
Speaker 1: credits yet, in an art shop full of pieces, both
Speaker 1: old and new, and we've got this handsome, bearded, blonde,
Speaker 1: slightly Robert redfordish looking guy who's closing up. I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe somewhere between Redford kind of a bearded young Mark Hamill.
Speaker 1: Then again, the hair beard combination also kept making me
Speaker 1: think of Kurt Russell, though he doesn't really look like
Speaker 1: him at all in the face. But this is George,
Speaker 1: this is Ray Lovelocke, and he will be I guess,
Speaker 1: one of our two protagonists. So we see him getting
Speaker 1: ready to.
Speaker 2: Leave the store. I guess he's the shopkeeper. And you know,
Speaker 2: we're panting around seeing all this stuff. The store has
Speaker 2: everything from antique fertility statues to cubist paintings of fish.
Speaker 2: And I just noticed when looking back, it goes by
Speaker 2: very fast. But Rob, did you notice there is a
Speaker 2: telephone on the desk and then a clay statue of
Speaker 2: a telephone sitting right across from it. Look at this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did not notice this during my viewing of
Speaker 1: the film. But yeah, there's no denying it. What is
Speaker 1: that for, I don't know. It's one gets the impression
Speaker 1: that these are pieces of art from cultures around the world.
Speaker 1: So maybe this is just a mimicry of a telephone
Speaker 1: from some culture.
Speaker 2: The traditional art of Manchester.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the first telephone. I don't know. Oh, maybe
Speaker 1: so many telephones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So George gets what it gets this ancient looking
Speaker 2: fertility statue, and he stashes it in his bag as
Speaker 2: he's heading out the door. He leaves a sign up
Speaker 2: that says closed for the holidays. And then I thought
Speaker 2: this was funny. We get like an extreme close up
Speaker 2: of the guts of this guy's motorcycle as he is
Speaker 2: driving away. You know, the camera's right up in the
Speaker 2: gears and stuff.
Speaker 1: Now, did you get the impression that he was just
Speaker 1: a shopkeeper at this store or that he owned the store?
Speaker 1: And in either case, does he have a right to
Speaker 1: shove this stuff in a bag and take off for
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 2: This is a good question. I could not tell that
Speaker 2: it was ever answered in the film. Whether he's taking
Speaker 2: the statue because it belongs to him and he plans
Speaker 2: to sell it and that's fine, or if he's stealing it, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: His stories about why he's going into the countryside are
Speaker 1: also hard for me to figure out, because at one
Speaker 1: point I'm kind of like, yeah, yeah, they change. He's saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm meeting some people to fix up a house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we never hear anything else about that. And then it's
Speaker 1: also said that he's taking these things to sell them
Speaker 1: somewhere in the countryside. Yeah, and I'm not sure about
Speaker 1: that either. This has never resolved. Yeah, so in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I'm a little suspicious of George.
Speaker 2: After he leaves the shop, we get a slow zoom
Speaker 2: shot through the space where we see more pieces from
Speaker 2: the collection while these ominous droning sounds and these little
Speaker 2: like hollow hoots and crackles play on the soundtrack, And
Speaker 2: you see a Caesar head and the Holy Grail, and
Speaker 2: then a painting that looks a lot like the post
Speaker 2: for Apocalypse. Now did you notice that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know that you pointed out.
Speaker 2: But right from the beginning. One thing I love about
Speaker 2: this movie is the spooky sound design. It's not just
Speaker 2: the music. There's a lot of just kind of I
Speaker 2: don't know, ambient atmospheric sound effects, kind of droning and worrying,
Speaker 2: as if from distant machines or things coming from underground,
Speaker 2: and these kind of drips and echoing sounds that create
Speaker 2: an ominous feeling. And it's very good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you get that feeling of dread even before
Speaker 1: anything starts dripping blood.
Speaker 2: But then suddenly there's green rings a zooming in through
Speaker 2: the screen and we see red eyes on pale faces,
Speaker 2: and then a title card that looks straight out of
Speaker 2: a PowerPoint presentation. It says the Living Dead at the
Speaker 2: Manchester Morgue. And I'm gonna say this title just does
Speaker 2: not look like it fits the rest of the movie.
Speaker 2: It feels kind of inserted hastily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if we had more time, it would be interested
Speaker 1: to look at additional title cards for this picture and
Speaker 1: see which ones felt the most authentic. But the other
Speaker 1: this one feels very spliced in anyway.
Speaker 2: We follow the shopkeeper on his motorcycle and he's buzzing
Speaker 2: down the city streets in busy traffic. We see roundabouts,
Speaker 2: double decker buses. I was trying to pause it and
Speaker 2: see what the signs on the buses said. One said,
Speaker 2: next stop magnet Building Society, and I tried to look
Speaker 2: that up and didn't find much. I think that might
Speaker 2: be like a name for an old construction firm. But anyway,
Speaker 2: I was wondering, is this supposed to be Manchester? Because
Speaker 2: there are later comments that make me wonder if it's
Speaker 2: supposed to be London, because somebody's saying, oh, the way
Speaker 2: you're dressed, you must have come up from London.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I noticed that as well. I think this they
Speaker 1: did shoot these scenes in Manchester, so that leans one
Speaker 1: to interpret it as Manchester. But who knows. Again, this
Speaker 1: was not a British film but an Italian Spanish co production,
Speaker 1: so even if it creates a convincing vision of life
Speaker 1: and unlife and Britain, and still like from the outside looking.
Speaker 2: So, George is driving around on the motorcycle, but then
Speaker 2: we see some bits of green English countryside, but then
Speaker 2: that intercuts back with smokestacks, heavy industry. We see a
Speaker 2: man in a trench code weaving his way through the
Speaker 2: rush hour crowd, wearing a surgical mask, and they're actually
Speaker 2: a number of images of people wearing masks or scarves
Speaker 2: over their faces. I wondered if this is supposed to
Speaker 2: be about like air pollution, because there are a lot
Speaker 2: of images coming really fast in this sequence, and a
Speaker 2: lot of them seem to me to be highlighting some
Speaker 2: kind of pollution or chemical themes. We see vapor coming
Speaker 2: out of pipes, steam rising from the sewer, nuclear cooling towers.
Speaker 2: We see paper waste and just litter blowing through a graveyard.
Speaker 2: We see dead rats and the gutters, and then there's
Speaker 2: one we just see a guy taking pills.
Speaker 1: Did really shoehorn in it all in there? Like look
Speaker 1: at the modern world? Manchester is a city of just
Speaker 1: at salute urban decay, right, I mean it's just like
Speaker 1: lots of just like black metal things around, like industrial
Speaker 1: buildings where everything is just so grimy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so pollution. A guy's sticking pills. And then there's
Speaker 2: a streaker. I kept expecting to find out what this
Speaker 2: meant later, but it never revisited in the movie. There
Speaker 2: is just randomly a streaker running through a crosswalk while
Speaker 2: cars and buses wait at the light.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, on one level, we can definitely interpret
Speaker 1: this as just peer seventies titillation and a way to
Speaker 1: make sure that people kept watching the movie at this
Speaker 1: time period. In this time period, but within the context
Speaker 1: of the film, I think maybe it's supposed to let
Speaker 1: us know that urban England is also a place of
Speaker 1: sort of gleeful liberation, that yeah, it's polluted and gross
Speaker 1: people are wearing masks, but also, hey, here's a naked
Speaker 1: lady running across the street.
Speaker 2: Okay, I guess so I did not know what to
Speaker 2: make of that. So George makes it out of the
Speaker 2: He's riding his motorcycle through the countryside, and I guess
Speaker 2: here maybe is a good place to come back to
Speaker 2: this flag we raised earlier about what George is supposed
Speaker 2: to be, Like, what subculture or cultural stereotype are we
Speaker 2: supposed to understand George's belonging to, Because, as we will
Speaker 2: find out later, the movie is establishing a clear divide,
Speaker 2: with George on the one side of it and the
Speaker 2: Man on the other side, and George is supposed to
Speaker 2: stand in for a counterculture youth rebellion in some way.
Speaker 2: The police inspector character, who is our main representative of
Speaker 2: the man, obviously hates hippies in particular, which would seem
Speaker 2: to indicate that that's what George is supposed to be
Speaker 2: because they clash. But then again, this is nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: so it's a little late for your classic movement hippie,
Speaker 2: and George doesn't exactly read to me as hippie anyway.
Speaker 2: He has long hair, yes, but he doesn't display other
Speaker 2: hippie v visual cues or clothing, nor any traces of
Speaker 2: like a make love not war kind of personality. Instead,
Speaker 2: he is just a he's more just kind of like
Speaker 2: a middle finger to the world kind of guy. He
Speaker 2: is a disagreeable, acerbic, sexist, leather clad motorcycle driving jerk.
Speaker 2: So what's your take on this? Do you think he's
Speaker 2: supposed to Is it just kind of like, is this
Speaker 2: what the people who used to be hippies are thought
Speaker 2: to have sort of turned into by nineteen seventy four?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So yeah, So on one level, obviously, when we
Speaker 1: think of British biker gangs and motorcycles, we instantly think
Speaker 1: of Psychomania, Yeah, which would have just been seventy three,
Speaker 1: so basically the same time period. He does not feel
Speaker 1: like he would this character would fit in with the
Speaker 1: Living Dead motorcycle gang of Psychomania, though.
Speaker 2: Oh you don't think so. I kind of feel like
Speaker 2: maybe he could be in Psychomania I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't think he can get it. He
Speaker 1: didn't care enough. I don't think this guy cares about
Speaker 1: anything as much as the crew in Psychomania cares about
Speaker 1: killing themselves and living forever.
Speaker 2: That's right, the Psychomania, you gotta be really dedicated to
Speaker 2: mayhem and destruction. And George isn't like that. He more
Speaker 2: just like hates authority and hates institutions and just doesn't
Speaker 2: want to be hassled.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I was looking poking around a little
Speaker 1: on this because I was thinking, well, I guess maybe
Speaker 1: he is technically this sort of British biker stereotype of
Speaker 1: the day, the rocker, not a mod but a rocker.
Speaker 1: And it does seem like motorcycle culture in Britain from
Speaker 1: from what I I was looking at, like you have
Speaker 1: kind of this earlier version of it where it was
Speaker 1: it was seen as quite quite quite this independent and
Speaker 1: refined thing for you to do, like nice people ride
Speaker 1: motorcycles around the British countryside. But then you get kind
Speaker 1: of this influx of the sort of the American motorcycle
Speaker 1: gang culture, and then you get kind of like the
Speaker 1: hippie culture also affects it, and so you kind of
Speaker 1: get this rocker a version of the rocker stereotype, this
Speaker 1: rocker subculture that I guess George is supposed to be
Speaker 1: a part of. That's my best bet. I should also
Speaker 1: add that, as of now, I have not seen a
Speaker 1: British biker film that doesn't have a zombie in it
Speaker 1: or a living dead creature of one form or another.
Speaker 1: So this is something that this is a question that
Speaker 1: might also be answered by just broader exposure to say,
Speaker 1: biking films of the nineteen seventies that are set in Britain.
Speaker 2: Now, wait, I thought we determined that the undead gang
Speaker 2: in Psychomania were not zombies but lyches or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're more like lyitches for sure. Yeah, okay, undead
Speaker 1: but not zombies.
Speaker 2: Okay. But to come back from that tangent, George whatever
Speaker 2: he is, hippie rocker or whatever, he comes up to
Speaker 2: a stop at a full service gas station where there's
Speaker 2: a lady parked in front, parked in front of him,
Speaker 2: and she's getting some petrol and he says, give us
Speaker 2: a fill up, and he runs over to get some
Speaker 2: sweet treats from the pascal stand and I was just looking.
Speaker 2: I love kind of pausing in old movies to look
Speaker 2: at all the I don't know, the ephemeral ads and
Speaker 2: stuff in the windows. And there was one thing I
Speaker 2: found here that was a pin that said it's hanging
Speaker 2: in the windows of the gas station. It says blow
Speaker 2: up a groundhog today, and I was like, what is this?
Speaker 2: But it looks like it was a promotional pin for
Speaker 2: a type of British tires called groundhog tires.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a number of fun moments in this
Speaker 1: when they're poking around stores or there at gas stations
Speaker 1: that occasionally there'll be some some logo or cartoon character
Speaker 1: to catch my eye. There's a pink one that shows
Speaker 1: up later. There's like a pink elephant looking creature.
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't see that one.
Speaker 1: There's something like paraffin or but not paraffin.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, is this what George is going to use
Speaker 2: later to light his axe on fire?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I don't remember it actually playing
Speaker 1: a part in the plot. It was just me noticing
Speaker 1: it on a shelf and thinking it was cool. All right.
Speaker 2: Well, as George is just getting ready to leave, the
Speaker 2: lady in front of him backs upper car crashes into
Speaker 2: his motorcycle wrexit, destroys his front tire. She gets ound
Speaker 2: and says, I'm so sorry. I must be a little tired,
Speaker 2: and well his bike is all busted up and the
Speaker 2: mechanic says it can't be fixed until Monday. So George
Speaker 2: just insists that the lady give him a ride to
Speaker 2: where he's going, which is Windermere, which is the name
Speaker 2: of a lake and I guess probably the area around
Speaker 2: the lake in northern England.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not very easy going, like that's established pretty
Speaker 1: early on. This guy's fussy and bossy and self centered
Speaker 1: and it's not all that agreeable.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He says, like, you'll take me where I'm going,
Speaker 2: It's the least you can do. And then he she's
Speaker 2: just like, well, I guess, and then he says, I'll drive.
Speaker 2: Don't want to go all the way in reverse, do we?
Speaker 2: So the vibes are instantly weird. Yeah, and then she goes, actually,
Speaker 2: you'll be doing me a favor because I have driven
Speaker 2: all the way from London and I'm a little tired,
Speaker 2: and he just says, then go to sleep, and he
Speaker 2: gets in the driver's seat and they drive off, driving
Speaker 2: a car by the way, the approximate size and shape
Speaker 2: of a Galapagos tortoise.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tidy and there's so there's a lot a
Speaker 2: little like character color. While they're driving along, at one point,
Speaker 2: the lady goes to light up a cigarette and he
Speaker 2: just like yoinks it out of her mouth and takes
Speaker 2: it for himself, and they introduce themselves. We find out
Speaker 2: his name is George. She introduces herself as Edna, and
Speaker 2: he goes, you look a little like an Edna. So
Speaker 2: I kept thinking of her as Edna for the rest
Speaker 2: of the film. But we learn about Edna's mission. She's
Speaker 2: up from London to visit her sister who has a
Speaker 2: cottage at Southgate, And while they're driving along, the dude
Speaker 2: starts getting mad at the radio because there is a
Speaker 2: report on there where scientists are talking about how ecological
Speaker 2: problems are exaggerated and there's no reason to get worked
Speaker 2: up about them, and he gets very mad at this.
Speaker 2: He says to Dna, he's like, when we all die,
Speaker 2: only the scientists will survive.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was kind of taken aback that this movie
Speaker 1: would draw this. You know, obviously it's going to draw
Speaker 1: a line between the rebellious youths of the day and
Speaker 1: the aged establishment at the police and so forth. But
Speaker 1: they just go ahead and heap science in with the
Speaker 1: man as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is not unique to this film. This
Speaker 2: movie is sort of one of a type. There are
Speaker 2: other horror movies of this period that have this kind
Speaker 2: of I would say it's a shallow, anti intellectual view
Speaker 2: of science that doesn't really understand what science is or
Speaker 2: what it means. And unfortunately there's still plenty of this
Speaker 2: thinking in the world today. But it sort of thinks
Speaker 2: of science not as a word that refers to like
Speaker 2: the totality of the human effort to understand the world
Speaker 2: through empirical method and rigorous experimentation, but instead to refer
Speaker 2: to a cabal of wicked old men who want to
Speaker 2: do unnatural things with chemicals and radiation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in a way this hearkens back to the
Speaker 1: mad scientists of older films. But yeah, this was definitely
Speaker 1: a period we saw and we've talked about some of
Speaker 1: these ecological horror films. Sometimes it's the ecological horror going
Speaker 1: on is pollution or you know, it's chemical or it's
Speaker 1: certainly radiation, and then sometimes it's it's very distant, it
Speaker 1: doesn't have a face, it doesn't have a mad scientist
Speaker 1: at the center of it. There's more of the sense
Speaker 1: of bureaucracy to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in this movie, I would say, is more like that.
Speaker 2: Like we don't even know the person who invented the
Speaker 2: machine in this movie that will raise the dead. We
Speaker 2: only see some kind of low level functionaries bringing it
Speaker 2: out to the field to implement it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when we see it, it looks nice. It
Speaker 1: doesn't look particularly suspect, but it is modern and shiny
Speaker 1: and ultimately poses a threat. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But again, like I think it's funny that the radio
Speaker 2: broadcast here in the movie is used specifically to introduce
Speaker 2: us to scientists, as like the voices who tell people
Speaker 2: not to worry about ecological problems or pollution and just
Speaker 2: ignore it. The irony being that in reality, like if
Speaker 2: you know about ecological threats like I don't know, like
Speaker 2: how did we find out about ozone depletion, or like
Speaker 2: the human health effects of environmental lad from gasoline and
Speaker 2: other sources. Here it's all like paved over. Like I
Speaker 2: guess if George in this movie met Claire Cameron Patterson,
Speaker 2: he would like call him a twisted old geezer and
Speaker 2: punch him in the face. But it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: we are often made aware of these ecological threats, specifically
Speaker 2: because of the work of scientists. Anyway, get off the
Speaker 2: hobby horse. So back on the journey. There is a
Speaker 2: really funny scene where they get stuck behind a City
Speaker 2: of Manchester mortuary truck and they're weaving back and forth wildly.
Speaker 2: George is driving, of course, and he performs a hideously
Speaker 2: reckless passing maneuver, like driving off into the grass. I
Speaker 2: guess this is to show he's like, he's cool and
Speaker 2: he doesn't play by the rules. And so they're going
Speaker 2: to Windermere. George says it's because he has a house there. Again,
Speaker 2: his story kind of keeps changing, but he says he
Speaker 2: has a house in the country. He says it's away
Speaker 2: from industry and city life and he likes to sit
Speaker 2: there and be natural and listen to the grass grow.
Speaker 2: But this leads to an argument because Edna needs to
Speaker 2: go to Southgate to meet her sister to go to
Speaker 2: her cottage. So they argue, and then eventually they decide, okay,
Speaker 2: he'll take her to Southgate and here is they're going through.
Speaker 2: There is absolutely marvelous scenery. I love the locations picked out.
Speaker 2: I assume most of these are in Britain because they
Speaker 2: look like Britain. I don't know if some of them
Speaker 2: were actually Italian. But for examp, they come across this
Speaker 2: kind of craggy relic of an abbey or something on
Speaker 2: these green cliffs overlooking a road down at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the ravine, and I was wondering. I think some
Speaker 2: parts of this movie were shot at Tintagil, which is
Speaker 2: like a medieval Cornish fortress down in the southwest of England,
Speaker 2: and it might have been the sequence, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there are a number of sequences here where
Speaker 1: it's like lush, green landscape surrounding them and these winding
Speaker 1: isolated roads. Yea, and it's quite beautiful. But of course
Speaker 1: the film score, the sound effects that we hear the
Speaker 1: droning begins to make a suspect that there's something else
Speaker 1: going on here. There's something underneath the surface of all
Speaker 1: of this natural beauty.
Speaker 2: Yes, certainly. Now they get lost, of course, so they
Speaker 2: got to ask for directions at a nearby farm, and
Speaker 2: there's a scene where George he's going to go ask
Speaker 2: for directions. So he leaves Edna in the car, and
Speaker 2: it looks like he has to cross a stream and
Speaker 2: clim i'm a mountain to get to the farm where
Speaker 2: he's going to ask for directions. It looks like it
Speaker 2: is a ways. Oh, and he takes the car keys
Speaker 2: with him because he's just again, he's just gonna being
Speaker 2: a jerk. And Edna is left behind to smoke a
Speaker 2: cigarette and I'm sure get into no trouble whatsoever. But
Speaker 2: at the farm, George goes out. He's looking around the
Speaker 2: place seems kind of deserted, and I love the eerie
Speaker 2: feeling conjured here. There are chickens clucking in the distance,
Speaker 2: but nobody in sight until a weird droning sound comes
Speaker 2: in and George looks up up through the fields up
Speaker 2: the hill and sees a strange red vehicle with what
Speaker 2: looks like people in white lab coats or I guess
Speaker 2: they're in white full body jumpsuits. And so next we
Speaker 2: jump to them. We're going to meet them and see
Speaker 2: what's going on here. The vehicle they're working from says
Speaker 2: that it is the Midland Area Agricultural Department Experimental Section
Speaker 2: these guys will be a recurring theme in the movie Rob.
Speaker 2: Do you want to describe what's going on with the
Speaker 2: ag department scientist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have some a couple of gentlemen here in
Speaker 1: these white jump suits, and I want to say, not
Speaker 1: your space age jumpsuit. They look very you know, blue
Speaker 1: collar in many respects, and the individuals act very you know,
Speaker 1: they're very laid back about it. They're not. They're not.
Speaker 1: They're happy to talk about their work to a random
Speaker 1: dude who just walked up across the field. Uh. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they're They have this big red vehicle that you know,
Speaker 1: it very much looks like some sort of a combine
Speaker 1: type vehicle, except you don't see any any traditional agricultural
Speaker 1: tools on it, So that instantly makes you wonder, like,
Speaker 1: what does it do It doesn't have It doesn't have
Speaker 1: a combine on, it doesn't have any kind of like
Speaker 1: a plow attached to it. And then one of the
Speaker 1: dudes is walking around with some sort of scanning device.
Speaker 1: It kind of looks kind of like a metal detector
Speaker 1: type thing, except with some added dude ads on it,
Speaker 1: clearly monitoring something going on in the soil.
Speaker 2: Yes, it looks like a big sci fi weed whacker,
Speaker 2: and so he's holding it there and George comes walking
Speaker 2: up to everybody and he's like, hey, tell me how
Speaker 2: to get to the Madison place. But they're like, wait
Speaker 2: a second. And the scientist is or at least I
Speaker 2: don't know if these are supposed to be scientists or
Speaker 2: just the guys who work for the scientists. I'm not sure,
Speaker 2: but they they're showing the farmer how to use this
Speaker 2: metal weed whacker thing to do something to either scan
Speaker 2: something or emit rays or something. And George goes, what
Speaker 2: is that thing? And they explain, or the farmer does
Speaker 2: that it's supposed to destroy insects and parasites. He says
Speaker 2: it was simply the Department of Agriculture. And then George goes, oh,
Speaker 2: I'd send it right back where it came from and
Speaker 2: keep the insects and parasites nature's given you. And so
Speaker 2: they argue about it. They say, no, hold on. Now
Speaker 2: they make excuses for it. They're like, it works by
Speaker 2: ultrasonic radiation, not a chemical involved. Love that no chemicals,
Speaker 2: and then they also explain that it is progress. But meanwhile,
Speaker 2: so George is trying to get directions from the farmer
Speaker 2: to the place they're going, and then we see the
Speaker 2: agg Department guys in the background like they're going, like,
Speaker 2: all right, Bernard, let's give it another bash at the
Speaker 2: main rotator.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're good nature, trusting technicians of this machinery that
Speaker 1: they've been sent out to test.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: Now, I don't think it's much of a spoiler to
Speaker 1: go ahead and reveal, yeah, that this is definitely the
Speaker 1: science run amuck that will raise the living dead later
Speaker 1: on in the picture. And I do love the localized
Speaker 1: nature of the premise here, and I think the fecivity
Speaker 1: of it works well with the themes here. Our main
Speaker 1: character will of course put one and two together in
Speaker 1: time and realize that we know what is causing the
Speaker 1: deep ecological unrest here, and we know exactly what we
Speaker 1: need to do to stop it. But is the establishment
Speaker 1: going to let him? Is the man going to let him?
Speaker 1: Or are they just going to accuse him of everything?
Speaker 2: Well, no, because they are allied with science, and as
Speaker 2: we know, science is evil and all it wants to
Speaker 2: do is do unnatural experiments and cause pain and st.
Speaker 1: I do like, so again, you've have a very specific
Speaker 1: origin for the zombie minutes that's gonna come. And I
Speaker 1: like that it's not the old standby of radiation. It's
Speaker 1: not chemical waste. Maybe it's a little early for chemical
Speaker 1: waste cinema, I'm not sure. Electricity is often a frequent
Speaker 1: pick as well, even in pictures from this time period.
Speaker 1: Get some electricity leeching into the ground, and watch out, earthworms,
Speaker 1: they're gonna come for you. But this one is this
Speaker 1: is a picture that involves ultrasound as being the source
Speaker 1: of the unrest. And I'm struggling to think of another
Speaker 1: ultrasound eco horror film.
Speaker 2: I'm sure such a thing exists, but I can't think
Speaker 2: of it. But I also think it's funny that they
Speaker 2: can't just call it ultrasound, because I think that doesn't
Speaker 2: sound scary enough, so they call it an ultrasonic radiation.
Speaker 1: Oh well yeah, and then you do get to invoke
Speaker 1: radiation in the picture as well, so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so you know, they're giving another bash at
Speaker 2: the oscillator, and then there's this ominous humming and whirring
Speaker 2: as the machine spins up and again. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 2: the sound design is very nice and a lot of
Speaker 2: the scary scenes in this movie, there are these various
Speaker 2: types of eerie, throbbing, hooting sounds that seem to come
Speaker 2: from nowhere or from everywhere. Very effective. Meanwhile, back down
Speaker 2: at the car, we're here with Edna or Edna, and
Speaker 2: here's our first zombie attack. It kind of comes out
Speaker 2: of nowhere. She's just standing there in the road, and
Speaker 2: then there is and so there's a nice beautiful stream
Speaker 2: going by, and again I want to emphasize that the
Speaker 2: location here is gorgeous, so every you know, it's this green,
Speaker 2: verdant valley with trees running along the side of the
Speaker 2: stream and an old, you know, stone walled cemetery. And
Speaker 2: then we see suddenly a man just sort of like
Speaker 2: walking into frame in the cemetery and we get a
Speaker 2: close up of him and the pupils of his eyes
Speaker 2: are not round, their star shaped and they're set against
Speaker 2: red irises, and oh, he's coming for Edna. And it
Speaker 2: is very creepy looking. I think, extremely good zombie design.
Speaker 1: I think so too. Yeah, the zombies in this picture
Speaker 1: are not greatly decayed. This is not going to be
Speaker 1: a real what we might think of today as kind
Speaker 1: of you know, the walking dead sort of zombie that's
Speaker 1: that's heavily rotted, and that these contacts are nice. They
Speaker 1: give them this nice otherworldliness to them. And also the zombies,
Speaker 1: I think they're just they're shot well, they're presented well.
Speaker 1: It can be a challenge, evidently you can see this
Speaker 1: in some of the lesser zombie pictures out there. How
Speaker 1: do you make a man stumbling around or even lunging,
Speaker 1: you know, incoherently. How do you make that frightening to
Speaker 1: people who have all their wits about them? How do
Speaker 1: you make them a surprise? How do you make them
Speaker 1: feel terrifying? And this picture, you know, uses a number
Speaker 1: of different tools to really get that across, not only
Speaker 1: a distance and angle the shot, but again that sound
Speaker 1: design which just seems to you know, to resonate and
Speaker 1: also invoke this idea of like sound waves.
Speaker 2: Yes, and hey, I want to be really I want
Speaker 2: to be fair to the people who called this movie
Speaker 2: don't open the window. There is a part here and
Speaker 2: that tries to hide in the car and the zombie
Speaker 2: reaches through the window at her. So okay, I stand corrected.
Speaker 2: There there is a window and the zombie tries to
Speaker 2: come through it, but it's a car window which is
Speaker 2: not what you think of when you hear don't open
Speaker 2: the window.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this was gonna be the inspiration for the
Speaker 1: picture they just got don't hide in the car.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, and that escapes. She meets up with George
Speaker 2: and the farmer. She tries to explain what happened. She says,
Speaker 2: that man he's following me, he tried to attack me,
Speaker 2: but George looks down. There's no one there. They just see,
Speaker 2: you know, the peaceful little ravine, the stream going along,
Speaker 2: And it seems like George doesn't believe her. He's like,
Speaker 2: are you certain, And the farmer hears the description she
Speaker 2: gives it says it's sounds like she's describing Guthrie, the
Speaker 2: tramp who used to sleep down by the river, but
Speaker 2: he drowned recently, so it probably wasn't him. And then
Speaker 2: from here we go on to meet some more characters.
Speaker 2: We meet Edna's sister, Katie, the one who she's going
Speaker 2: to visit, and Katie's husband Martin, who together live in
Speaker 2: a rustic country cottage with a waterfall in the yard.
Speaker 2: This is a nice piece of land. And Martin seems
Speaker 2: to be like an artist and a photographer, and we
Speaker 2: learn that Katie has been addicted to heroin. She's been addicted,
Speaker 2: and Martin is trying to help her quit, but she
Speaker 2: like secretly uses the drug when he's not looking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know where she's getting her drug out
Speaker 1: here in the middle of nowhere, but we see her
Speaker 1: with it, so she does have some.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's like dashing it away and trying to get
Speaker 2: to it in secret.
Speaker 1: Right, And like you say, Martin is a photographer, and
Speaker 1: his particular art photography seems to revolve in large part
Speaker 1: around taking photographs of flowers at night with stupendous artificial lighting,
Speaker 1: so it looks interesting in the picture unless you stop
Speaker 1: to wonder, like, what's going on here? Is all the
Speaker 1: artificial lighting we're seeing in this shot? Is this supposed
Speaker 1: to be his artificial lighting? Or is this movie lighting
Speaker 1: just to make if things look cool? It was kind
Speaker 1: of hard to figure out what they were going for here.
Speaker 2: Did you show Bonnie the scene? Did she have thoughts?
Speaker 1: I didn't show her this particular scene. I mean, so,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like
Speaker 1: this guy's going to a lot of trouble to shoot
Speaker 1: these flowers, Like shouldn't he be. If he wants to
Speaker 1: control the lighting so much, he should just shoot them
Speaker 1: indoors in a studio. And if he's gonna shoot them outside,
Speaker 1: he should make use of natural lighting. But who am
Speaker 1: I to tell Martin how to follow his dreams here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Okay, so Martin is kind of strange looking. Would
Speaker 2: you say? He's got sort of a bird of prey
Speaker 2: face with like metal heavy eyebrows. And whenever I see
Speaker 2: if it's a zombie movie and they introduce a human
Speaker 2: character who is visually striking in this way, I often
Speaker 2: wonder if this person was cast first of all, with
Speaker 2: an eye for what he will look like once he
Speaker 2: inevitably gets zombified, and then rather than being cast for
Speaker 2: the part of the movie where he's a living human
Speaker 2: with lines and not saying he's bad in the part
Speaker 2: where he has lines. But I just look at this
Speaker 2: guy and I think, Okay, they wanted him as a
Speaker 2: zombie and they will get him as a zombie.
Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, He'll spend most of his screen time as
Speaker 1: a zombie. But first you got to make him believable
Speaker 1: as as a non zombified human being, which they, I
Speaker 1: guess mostly do.
Speaker 2: So we find out he and Katie talk and we
Speaker 2: find out Katie knows her sister's coming to visit. She
Speaker 2: deduces that's because Martin is going to try to send
Speaker 2: her to a clinic so that she can get off drugs,
Speaker 2: but she is not ready, and she has a big
Speaker 2: emotional breakdown about this, and that it leads to a fight,
Speaker 2: and so Martin just goes off to do his photography
Speaker 2: by himself. Oh and then meanwhile we cut back to
Speaker 2: George and Edna while they're approaching the house. They're still driving,
Speaker 2: and and Edna's saying like, I'm not mad, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't imagine things, and George just goes methinks the
Speaker 2: lady don't protest too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely does not believe her. I think what he
Speaker 1: says like gout three must have had a twin brother,
Speaker 1: that's all it was.
Speaker 2: No, he hasn't even gotten to that yet. He says
Speaker 2: that later once he starts a little bit believing her.
Speaker 2: At this point, it seems like he doesn't even believe
Speaker 2: anybody actually attacked her. So, like you said, at the cottage,
Speaker 2: Martin is like setting up his camera to automatically take
Speaker 2: pictures of a flower next to a waterfall and with
Speaker 2: all this artificial lighting and so like, what do you know,
Speaker 2: if it's just snapping shot after shots, it's gonna keep
Speaker 2: taking pictures as a zombie attacks.
Speaker 1: Right, how convenient?
Speaker 2: So of course, Guthrie, the tramp zombie shows up. I
Speaker 2: don't know how it beat the car, like he got
Speaker 2: there before the car did.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, they're shambling when they actually go over
Speaker 1: the attack, because they've been just booking it the rest
Speaker 1: of the time, I guess, because you know, we have
Speaker 1: all the zombie action going on at locations in this
Speaker 1: film that are are very isolated, like this is very
Speaker 1: rural Britain, we're supposed to believe here. So yeah, they're
Speaker 1: traveling from one location to another pretty quickly somehow.
Speaker 2: But the zombie shows up. It chases Katie around. Initially
Speaker 2: I think she's trying to do drugs, and then she
Speaker 2: gets startled and the zombie chases her. She escapes out
Speaker 2: a window manages to get away, but then the thing
Speaker 2: comes upon Martin on the banks of the creek and
Speaker 2: it kills him, and just then George and Edna arrive
Speaker 2: to find Katie screaming, and then we cut to the
Speaker 2: next morning and the police are here. They're investigating Martin's death,
Speaker 2: and so the setup of the movie is complete, and
Speaker 2: here we are about to meet I guess our chief
Speaker 2: antagonist other than like science and the zombies created by science,
Speaker 2: and that is our vicious fascist police inspector. I don't
Speaker 2: think he has a name, does He's just the inspector.
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 2: So they're looking at the body and the I think
Speaker 2: the medical examiner is like, I've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 2: Somebody certainly enjoyed themselves here, and the inspector says, oh,
Speaker 2: a sadist, huh. And then the medical examiner goes or
Speaker 2: a lunatic, but he says, one thing's for sure, the
Speaker 2: attacker was enormously strong, because the victims of bones have
Speaker 2: been crushed, every one of them. I don't know about that, yeah,
Speaker 2: but oh and then meanwhile, so the inspector is going
Speaker 2: to go interrogate all of the witnesses, so George, Katie
Speaker 2: and Edna. And on the way to doing that, he
Speaker 2: like pulls aside at one of the cops there and
Speaker 2: he goes, button up. Man, you're wearing a uniform, not
Speaker 2: a pair of pajamas. So he's that kind of guy.
Speaker 2: He's a he's a uniform code guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's He's just a real ray of sunshine, this guy.
Speaker 2: But the interrogation is going on, and Katie is describing
Speaker 2: the zombie who attacked her, and then Edna tells the cops.
Speaker 2: She's like, oh, I was attacked by that same zombie.
Speaker 2: And obviously the inspector does not believe them. But then
Speaker 2: Edna says, why would I invent such a thing? And
Speaker 2: he says, why, it's very simple, miss to back up
Speaker 2: your sister's story. And I was just thinking, okay, wait,
Speaker 2: is this correct interrogation procedure? Are you just supposed to
Speaker 2: like explain your theory of the case directly to the interviewee?
Speaker 1: No, I mean I mean, likewise, is the inspector just
Speaker 1: going to sit there and just consider any wild idea
Speaker 1: that a medical examiner throws out there? Or or later
Speaker 1: on there'll be another scene where somebody just brings up
Speaker 1: an ID and he's like, yeah, yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: Yeah lunatic, yeah yeah, broke.
Speaker 2: All the bones, all of them. I love how this
Speaker 2: will connect later to when somebody tells him about the
Speaker 2: existence of Satanic cults.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, yeah, that's the same. Yeah, So he's just
Speaker 1: he's hard. Nos, he's out to finger somebody for this crime.
Speaker 1: And and he doesn't mind telling you to your face
Speaker 1: like yeah, I think you're I think you're a killer,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah and uh and we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: get you for this one. No escaping me, there's no
Speaker 1: escaping the law and this one.
Speaker 2: And he has several just like brilliant things in the scene.
Speaker 2: One is that the inspector finds that Katie's photographer husband
Speaker 2: had taken naked photos of her, and he's like, explain this.
Speaker 2: It's like, what is the relevance? And here we get
Speaker 2: to the inspector's awesome theory that Katie must have done
Speaker 2: the murder because, as is well known, being addicted to
Speaker 2: heroin gives people superhuman strength enough to crush every bone
Speaker 2: in Martin's body.
Speaker 1: Now, as we're dissecting it here, all of this sounds ludicrous,
Speaker 1: but there is something about the way that it's presented
Speaker 1: in the film, like the authority with it with which
Speaker 1: he presented, and like Arthur Kennedy's character, the inspector here
Speaker 1: is so sure of himself and so sure of his
Speaker 1: his his role in the investigation that everything he says
Speaker 1: is just considered reality, is just considered a considered a fact,
Speaker 1: and the proper interpretation of the evidence before him.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, I am explaining this
Speaker 2: in a matter of fact way to highlight how ludicrous
Speaker 2: it is. But he delivers it with cold cruel authority.
Speaker 2: Oh and then George comes in by the way to
Speaker 2: be like, hey, I'm not part of this. Let me
Speaker 2: get out of here. I've got a house to look after,
Speaker 2: and the inspector like grabs him by the collar and
Speaker 2: he goes, listen, boy, you keep getting on my nerves.
Speaker 2: I'll give you another house to look after, the kind
Speaker 2: with lots of bars on the windows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like he's he's already like physically grabbing him, even
Speaker 1: though he's like, I don't think he's really they've really
Speaker 1: had a lot of time in the picture yet to
Speaker 1: really bump up against each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not at all. And so anyway, the police tell
Speaker 2: George and Edna you can't leave. You have to stay
Speaker 2: in the hotel in Southgate until the investigation is finished.
Speaker 2: And so while they're getting out of there, Oh, but
Speaker 2: George steals the film from Martin's camera, because they think
Speaker 2: if they can get it developed, it will prove Katie
Speaker 2: is innocent. And George says, we better develop it ourselves
Speaker 2: because cops never like to admit that they're wrong, and
Speaker 2: if it shows that Katie is innocent, they'll just destroy it.
Speaker 2: So they go to a place to get the film developed.
Speaker 2: It is a place that is a store called Croceries
Speaker 2: cro ce r I e s maybe that's supposed to
Speaker 2: be a g but if there's a bar on it,
Speaker 2: it is indistinguishable from a serah.
Speaker 1: But these are delightful looking storefronts. You just want to
Speaker 1: go in.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love it, check out the labels, freshly
Speaker 2: made sandwiches. And then they go to the hotel which
Speaker 2: is called the Old Owl Hotel, which has an old
Speaker 2: owl in it. And I so thought this owl was
Speaker 2: going to go berserk and attack somebody in the movie
Speaker 2: due to the ultrasonic rays, alas never happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks impressive though, sitting there in its little perch.
Speaker 2: And when they're checking in, George is again just a
Speaker 2: jerk for no reason. To the hotel owner, He's like,
Speaker 2: I don't want to spend any longer in this place
Speaker 2: than I have to.
Speaker 1: He hates everything. Yeah, I mean, granted he's going through
Speaker 1: a lot in this particular moment, but he was grumpy
Speaker 1: before all this.
Speaker 2: So let me get to the hospital sequence, and there
Speaker 2: are several things to discuss here. One is the Okay,
Speaker 2: so the setup is they find out Katie has been
Speaker 2: taken to the hospital and George and Edna go to
Speaker 2: see her. First is the location. I love the location. Again,
Speaker 2: this hospital looks awesome. It's like a kind of New
Speaker 2: Gothic style.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was ringing this as Barnes Hospital for the
Speaker 1: exteriors anyway near Manchester.
Speaker 2: But let's see, there are a few things to describe here,
Speaker 2: Rob can you can you explain what's going on with
Speaker 2: the cadaver freezer boxes here?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, So we're introduced to these these freezer boxes
Speaker 1: that they're hauling corpses out in and they look very
Speaker 1: space age. Yeah, like it's I guess it's possible that
Speaker 1: this is exactly what what these kind of sarcophagus coolers
Speaker 1: looked like at the time, but they felt a little
Speaker 1: high tech. But the idea here is that, hey, we
Speaker 1: need to move dead bodies across the countryside. We don't
Speaker 1: want them to rot, so we have these special cooler
Speaker 1: for them.
Speaker 2: And so George is looking at one of these things
Speaker 2: in the hospital and doctor Duffield comes across him. This
Speaker 2: is the Peter Cushing kind of guy, and they discuss.
Speaker 2: He's like, what is this and he explains. He's like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: it's a ways to the Manchester Morgue, and so you
Speaker 2: have to put him in these boxes. But doctor Duffield
Speaker 2: says to George, quite a few people leave their bodies
Speaker 2: to science these days. Shall I make a reservation for you?
Speaker 2: And of course George is like, of course not. I
Speaker 2: would not leave my body to science.
Speaker 1: It applies that science is just this ghoulish endeavor and
Speaker 1: all at once is just to desecrate your body for it.
Speaker 1: So sinister purposes.
Speaker 2: Give me bodies so I can do something evil and
Speaker 2: unnatural with them. I'll probably put chemicals on it, probably,
Speaker 2: But this gives way to the aggressive baby to scene.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this was just out of kind of
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. It's one of these scenes where I
Speaker 1: guess in the grand scheme of things, they introduce this
Speaker 1: to further explain how's zombies work in this picture, but
Speaker 1: it ends up just feeling like this sort of side
Speaker 1: pool of just absurdity and weirdness that is, of course delightful,
Speaker 1: the very kind of thing I love in a picture.
Speaker 2: What is the deal with the aggressive babies?
Speaker 1: Well, it's just suddenly and this will I'll make sense
Speaker 1: later on. But all the babies that are being born
Speaker 1: are born super aggressive, and they're so aggressive that like,
Speaker 1: if you get close to one, the baby will bite
Speaker 1: you and draw blood or scratch you and draw blood.
Speaker 1: In fact, doesn't it happen to George, like he gets
Speaker 1: a little too close.
Speaker 2: Well, it starts because one of the nurses gets like
Speaker 2: her eye poked out by a baby, and then the
Speaker 2: doctor is like, come help me, so he just enlists
Speaker 2: this random guy from the hallway to come help him
Speaker 2: with the baby. I guess they're trying to sedate the
Speaker 2: baby because otherwise the baby is ripping people's arms off,
Speaker 2: and they do. And yeah, the baby, I think, like
Speaker 2: attacks George while they're they're trying to get it sedated.
Speaker 2: And they they explained, yes, every baby born here from
Speaker 2: the region around this farm where they're trying out the
Speaker 2: agricultural device, it's just been born with hostility and aggression.
Speaker 2: It's like they're all born bart Harley Jarvis is one
Speaker 2: of the most aggressive babies I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: So, Joe, you have a baby. How strong is a baby?
Speaker 2: They're incredibly strong, but I think not quite as strong
Speaker 2: as this movie depicts. So George goes on to share
Speaker 2: his theory. He's like, hey, wait a minute, all these
Speaker 2: aggressive babies that have been born, they're all from this
Speaker 2: area around where they're trying out the ultrasonic radiation device.
Speaker 2: I wonder if that's making the babies aggressive. So doctor
Speaker 2: Duffield is intrigued, and together George and the scientist or
Speaker 2: the doctor, they go out to talk to the AGG
Speaker 2: Department scientists in the field. The AGG Department guys explained
Speaker 2: to doctor Duffield how it works. They say it works
Speaker 2: by ultrasonic rays. That the rays are used intentionally to
Speaker 2: drive insects mad and make them kill all of each other.
Speaker 2: And it has destroyed They say, it has destroyed every
Speaker 2: insect for a mile radius, which, to be clear, I
Speaker 2: think would not be a good thing.
Speaker 1: No, I mean, imagine the ecological disorder that would erupt
Speaker 1: if you just totally distorted all the insects in a
Speaker 1: given area. Yeah, So in a way, it's kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting concept to roll out in the film, but
Speaker 1: also one that just seems also unrealistically reckless, like the
Speaker 1: scientists involved in creating this strange weapon would have to
Speaker 1: realize that this is incredibly dangerous.
Speaker 2: Well, they say soon they're going to get it working
Speaker 2: up to a five mile radius.
Speaker 1: They're proud. They're like, yeah, there's actually one mile that
Speaker 1: was yesterday. Five miles that is what we're going for today.
Speaker 1: We didn't hear anything you said about making rage babies.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they appeal to him. They say, to the doctor,
Speaker 2: you're a man of science. Surely you understand this machine
Speaker 2: only affects the most primitive life forms like insects, and
Speaker 2: that more evolved life forms cannot be affected. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: sounds very scientific.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 2: Doctor Duffield seems to acknowledge that this machine may be
Speaker 2: what's causing the rage babies, but unfortunately he's like, he says, like,
Speaker 2: it's never wise to exaggerate, you know, they would laugh
Speaker 2: at us. He says that to George, so it's basically
Speaker 2: like he's saying, I am I too, am one of
Speaker 2: the dark envoys of science. So I cannot stop it,
Speaker 2: no matter how much I would.
Speaker 1: Like to, I mean, how many rage babies could there
Speaker 1: be at a given time out here on the side.
Speaker 2: So there's a scene in the croceries store in town
Speaker 2: where they're getting their George and Edna get the pictures developed,
Speaker 2: and then they're like, oh, too bad. The zombie does
Speaker 2: not show up on any of the pictures. And they're
Speaker 2: asking the guy like, could could anything cause someone not
Speaker 2: to appear in a picture? And he goes if they
Speaker 2: were a ghost maybe, And then George says about one
Speaker 2: of the pictures, good thing the police haven't seen this one.
Speaker 2: She really looks like she's about to do him in,
Speaker 2: I guess talking about Katie. And then just hilarious, the
Speaker 2: inspector comes right in. He like walks into the store
Speaker 2: and he's like, got you now, and then he gives
Speaker 2: a speech about all you damn hippies. I'd kill you
Speaker 2: all if I had my way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a wonderful snarling scene from Arthur Kennedy.
Speaker 1: This is the you're all the same, the lot of
Speaker 1: you speech that he gives gives George in particular, mm hmm.
Speaker 2: So oh. But after he leaves, the shopkeeper shows off
Speaker 2: a newspaper that has a picture of the guy who
Speaker 2: drowned of Guthrie. And Edna looks at it and she
Speaker 2: is like, that's him.
Speaker 1: I was taken by the fact that here is the
Speaker 1: local newspaper and above the fold huge pic sure of
Speaker 1: a dead man.
Speaker 2: Yes, very common, Yeah, just of a corpse. And she's like, yes,
Speaker 2: that was him. And George is like, well it must
Speaker 2: have been his twin. Then he must have had a twin,
Speaker 2: and that's what you saw. So George decides to take
Speaker 2: Edna to the cemetery so he can. He says, I'm
Speaker 2: going to cure you of your fancy hallucinations. And I
Speaker 2: think the plan is George is going to make Edna
Speaker 2: look at Guthrie's dead body so that she will know
Speaker 2: that he is actually dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, this is another detail of the picture of
Speaker 1: plot detail that sounds ridiculous, but when you're watching the film, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you don't, I found myself not questioning
Speaker 1: these plot choices. I'm like, yeah, this is the logical
Speaker 1: place for them to go. Oh, of course they would
Speaker 1: go and look for the body.
Speaker 2: It's great. And so they go. They're followed by a
Speaker 2: police officer. By the way, this guy named Craig is
Speaker 2: tailing them and then ooh, so this is this goes
Speaker 2: into one of the big horror actions set piece is
Speaker 2: in the movie, the cemetery scene, which I thought was
Speaker 2: just fantastic, really tense, scary, good staging of a lot
Speaker 2: of the action. I don't know how you felt, but
Speaker 2: I thought this was a great centerpiece of like the
Speaker 2: action horror in the film.
Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely. This is one of those sequences that really
Speaker 1: makes you think about zombie films in general and just
Speaker 1: realize you don't need a whole horde of zombies to
Speaker 1: have an effective nail biting sequence. You just have some
Speaker 1: some internet interesting setting, interesting location, and then you only
Speaker 1: need like one, two, three zombies tops, which is all
Speaker 1: they have going on here as they end up having
Speaker 1: to deal with them in this this basement here that's
Speaker 1: serving as it's not really mortuary, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: wherever they're preparing they're they're casketing the bodies.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, I don't. It seems like it's a
Speaker 2: crypt maybe or something, or it has vaults on the walls.
Speaker 1: It does have vaults.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, so describe that what happens in the cemetery
Speaker 2: scene here.
Speaker 1: Well, obviously, Guthrie shows up. He's been booking it this
Speaker 1: whole time. He knows where his next zombie mauling appointment
Speaker 1: is going to take place, and so he shows up,
Speaker 1: and we quickly learned that these these these create critters
Speaker 1: are pretty indestructible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're impervious to wounds. Guthrie attacks them in
Speaker 2: like the basement of this like the caretaker's house in
Speaker 2: the cemetery. They go down in the basement and they're
Speaker 2: there in the crypt and Guthrie shows up and locks
Speaker 2: them inside and so that they can't get back out
Speaker 2: the way they came in, and he's he's coming at them,
Speaker 2: and George is trying to like stab him with a
Speaker 2: rail or something, but it doesn't occur to harm him
Speaker 2: at all. And then we learn that these zombies, the
Speaker 2: Ultrasonic zombies, can reanimate other corpses by smearing blood on them,
Speaker 2: so they recruit freely from the RESTful dead and turn
Speaker 2: them into the undead. And this was just a whole
Speaker 2: great tense scene. Organ Edna finally escaped by like knocking
Speaker 2: bricks out of a vault wall and climbing up through
Speaker 2: an open grave, and they meet up with officer Craig
Speaker 2: here the police officer, but then the zombies attack again.
Speaker 2: They get chased back into the caretaker's room and have
Speaker 2: to barricade the doors. Eventually, Craig the police officer is
Speaker 2: killed while trying to escape and get help. And in
Speaker 2: the last minute, like our character, seemed doomed until George
Speaker 2: defeats the zombies. He realizes he can by burning them.
Speaker 2: It's the only thing that works.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, this whole sequence is fabulous. Craig the
Speaker 1: cop is so doomed from the moment you start getting
Speaker 1: to know him because he's like, he's like, oh, Georgia.
Speaker 1: After this, you'll realize not all cops are bad. I'm
Speaker 1: a good guy, right, Like, Oh, this dude is getting
Speaker 1: his guts eaten by a zombie. Yeah, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: So the two interesting things about the zombies that are
Speaker 1: revealed in this scene. The first of all, there is
Speaker 1: the ritualistic dabbing of the blood on other bodies to
Speaker 1: raise them as like zombie almost like zombie minions that
Speaker 1: I really liked, and ultimately raises a lot of questions
Speaker 1: that you cannot answer regarding how zombies work in this picture.
Speaker 1: But it's very unsettling in the moment because it's so unexpected. Also,
Speaker 1: we quickly learn that these zombies are tool users. While
Speaker 1: zombies and other pictures might just want to rip and
Speaker 1: bite at you, they're just going to use their claw
Speaker 1: and bite attack. These will actively try and hammer you
Speaker 1: to pieces with a big crucifix.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh, and that crucifix will come back in in
Speaker 2: a minute when the cops arrive on the scene. But anyway,
Speaker 2: George and Edna escape and they run off in separate directions.
Speaker 2: I think Edna is going to maybe try to find
Speaker 2: Katie or something, and George runs off to destroy the
Speaker 2: ultrasonic machine at the Lewis farm. And meanwhile you think, well,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, though, or all the zombies dealt with.
Speaker 2: I think all the zombies we knew about have been destroyed,
Speaker 2: so maybe the nightmare is over. But no, remember Martin,
Speaker 2: Remember Martin, the guy who had the weird look from earlier.
Speaker 2: Looks like the rays have powered him up now, and
Speaker 2: he attacks and he eats some cops. And then George
Speaker 2: arrives back at the agg department guys, and he's explaining
Speaker 2: what's going on, and they, for some reason don't believe him.
Speaker 2: They go like, you talk about the dead walking and cannibalism,
Speaker 2: it's unscientific, man. And then George says, lots of things
Speaker 2: are unscientific and they happen just the same, and he
Speaker 2: grabs a wrench and starts smashing the oscillator on the machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no examples by the way of what all these
Speaker 1: unscientific things that are happening all the time.
Speaker 2: Are I want to know, like, other than the zombies,
Speaker 2: what does he have in mind? But anyway, back in
Speaker 2: the scene at the cemetery, the inspector has arrived and
Speaker 2: he concludes that George is in fact the one who
Speaker 2: killed Officer Craig here and the caretaker and all the zombies.
Speaker 2: So he's like, okay, this guy is he's got to
Speaker 2: be destroyed. Shoot him on site. And then he's like,
Speaker 2: why did they burn the bodies? And there's this new
Speaker 2: creep hanging out. I don't know where this creep came from.
Speaker 2: This guy shows up this late in the movie and
Speaker 2: he's like, oh, inspector, you need to learn about satanic cults.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: So this weird rando shows up to introduce the idea
Speaker 2: of satanic ritual murder into the inspector's mind. It's like
Speaker 2: it's a match made in heaven.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a moment where he's like thinking about it.
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, I hadn't thought about that, But
Speaker 1: then instantly he's in like, I bet that's it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I that's this guy, George. He's awful. He's clearly a
Speaker 1: sex craze, drug using hippie rebel who hates the police.
Speaker 1: So it's just it's just one step beyond that to
Speaker 1: assume that he also worshiped Satan and his carrying out
Speaker 1: unspeakable acts for a black mass. It's also we were
Speaker 1: talking about this little off mic. It's fitting and funny
Speaker 1: that the inspector believes all these things of George, where
Speaker 1: doesn't Actually we never see George do drugs. We never
Speaker 1: see George have any kind of a sexual interest in anybody, like,
Speaker 1: so he's none of these things that he's accused of
Speaker 1: throughout the picture. He just is a rebellious jerk. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, all he really does is like he's just rude
Speaker 2: to people. That's his main character trait.
Speaker 1: As if the film is saying, yes, the youth of today,
Speaker 1: they do suck, but not for the reasons that guys
Speaker 1: like this think they.
Speaker 2: Saund it's just because they're they're selfish and rude, and
Speaker 2: they don't want to be they want to be off
Speaker 2: doing their own thing. Yeah yeah, not because they're all
Speaker 2: in satanic cults. But anyways, so Edna is Several other
Speaker 2: things happen in between here. There's a whole thing where
Speaker 2: Edna gets attacked by the Martin zombie, but she escapes.
Speaker 2: She starts to kind of lose her mind. The agg
Speaker 2: department guys power up the five mile ultrasonic rays. That
Speaker 2: can't be good because then we cut to the hospital,
Speaker 2: the Southgate Hospital, and we see all these new freezer
Speaker 2: bodies awry, so we know there's gonna be a zombie
Speaker 2: rampage at the hospital and there is The police catch
Speaker 2: George and interrogate him in a hilarious scene where they're
Speaker 2: they're telling him, you know what all the satanic murders
Speaker 2: he's been doing in George he protests, he says, I've
Speaker 2: never been to a black mass in my life. Oh,
Speaker 2: because they find the statue, like the antique statue that
Speaker 2: he had in his luggage that he was bringing up here,
Speaker 2: and they pull it out and they're like this obviously
Speaker 2: proves you are involved in Satanic cults. And he says,
Speaker 2: I don't worship that. I just sell things like that.
Speaker 2: And then he says, it's not my fault, serge, that
Speaker 2: Christ and the Saints are out of fashion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a it's a good scene. I like the
Speaker 1: that this that his use of these artifacts, whereas having
Speaker 1: these artifacts on his person, like it's come back around
Speaker 1: to bite him. And now this is evidence being supposed
Speaker 1: evidence being thrown at him by the authorities here.
Speaker 2: Also, though this artifact in no way appears to have
Speaker 2: anything to do with Satan, I guess it's just because
Speaker 2: it doesn't look Christian. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think it fits with what they're
Speaker 1: going for here, Like this is a guy who just
Speaker 1: assumes anything that is a little bit foreign or un
Speaker 1: Christian is just Satanic. Clearly these are these are occult items,
Speaker 1: and George is up to bloody business.
Speaker 2: But the inspector he has like a rage moment and
Speaker 2: he like punches George. He's he's incredibly mad, and he's
Speaker 2: complaining to this other guy, the creep who showed up
Speaker 2: earlier to tell him about Satanic cults. He's like if
Speaker 2: I just had more of a free hand with these criminals.
Speaker 2: And meanwhile, the George he escapes out the window and
Speaker 2: then he runs to the hospital for the final showdown,
Speaker 2: so you basically know what's gonna happen. It's gonna be
Speaker 2: a big zombie showdown with all the characters, and basically
Speaker 2: all of our main characters get killed by the zombies.
Speaker 2: Here there's a great part where George lights an axe
Speaker 2: on fire and he's swinging it at the zombies. That's
Speaker 2: pretty brutal, and at one moment you think, oh, George,
Speaker 2: is he going to be able to save Edna, But nope,
Speaker 2: he when he gets her out of the room where
Speaker 2: the zombies have attacked, she has star shaped pupils now,
Speaker 2: so it's too late. She's already one of the zombies.
Speaker 2: And then in a final brutal twist, George is shot
Speaker 2: by the police. The inspector guns him down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just brutally guns him down, shoots him multiple times,
Speaker 1: and then he kind of like leans over the body
Speaker 1: and says something about how he wishes he'd come back
Speaker 1: to life so he could kill him again in cold blood.
Speaker 1: So just real, real brutal moment there. I mean not unexpected.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the mid seventies, but yeah, in
Speaker 1: the space of just a few minutes, Edna is mauled
Speaker 1: by her own sister and who has become a zombie.
Speaker 1: She becomes a zombie, and then our last protagonist is
Speaker 1: just murdered in cold blood.
Speaker 2: And then we kept it. Basically the only characters who
Speaker 2: are left are the fascist cops. And so the inspector
Speaker 2: is like riding around in a car with his sidekick
Speaker 2: here and the guys like all the papers say you're
Speaker 2: a hero, and he says, the inspector says, justice has
Speaker 2: been a bit slow in these parts. All this permissive
Speaker 2: rot going on. Maybe people will learn a thing or
Speaker 2: two from my example here. And so so what's going on?
Speaker 2: Is he gonna go into a career in politics now
Speaker 2: or something? But nope. We we then see they drive
Speaker 2: past another one of the Agriculture department machines and they
Speaker 2: and the guy comments on it. He's like, oh, they're
Speaker 2: setting up a new one of those now, and it's
Speaker 2: gonna They say, it's gonna rid all of the apple
Speaker 2: orchards of pests. I'm just mad about apples. And the
Speaker 2: cops laugh about this. Ah, apples. But then, of course,
Speaker 2: you know what's gonna happen now that they power up
Speaker 2: another one of these. The Inspector gets to his hotel
Speaker 2: room and the old Owl hotel, and who's there waiting
Speaker 2: for him but the reanimated ultrasonic corpse of George to
Speaker 2: get his revenge, and the Inspector meets his demise and
Speaker 2: gets his comeupance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it almost kind of like Tails from the Crypt.
Speaker 1: Nasty ending. Yeah, the most awful character in the film
Speaker 1: survives to the end but then is killed in horrific fashion.
Speaker 1: And then something is also quite fitting of Ecohar in general,
Speaker 1: there's a sense that the threat is far from over.
Speaker 1: The threat is going to continue to expand it's still
Speaker 1: out there, which you know, isn't just about setting up
Speaker 1: the possibility for a sequel or something, as it certainly
Speaker 1: would would be in subsequent decades, but just kind of
Speaker 1: this idea that like this is just the starting point
Speaker 1: and the problem is going to spread and get bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger.
Speaker 2: We're going to keep getting zombies and keep getting rage babies.
Speaker 1: Rage babies and zombies and insects killing the apples though
Speaker 1: are going to be amazing, we know, that much.
Speaker 2: Though It's funny. I think you could probably come up
Speaker 2: with a more plausible hard science fiction film just about
Speaker 2: what would happen if you literally destroyed every single insect
Speaker 2: within a five mile radius. So that seems like that
Speaker 2: would have devastating consequences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like taking out most of your decomposers and so forth,
Speaker 1: just as one example. I mean, it would be dreadful
Speaker 1: for the environment, dreadful for the apples too. I'm always
Speaker 1: pleased on a film like this shows some restraint because
Speaker 1: this is a film where, yeah, there's some really gory
Speaker 1: moments like the zombie the probably the goryouts are the
Speaker 1: scenes where the zombies eat the cop, and then there's
Speaker 1: a scene where they tear apart a nurse in the hospital,
Speaker 1: and those are very gory sequences. But I felt, at
Speaker 1: least for my taste, they didn't go too far. And likewise,
Speaker 1: plot wise, nobody fights a rage baby. There's not a
Speaker 1: scene we're all good whether rage babies run run wild
Speaker 1: and George has to fight them off with his flaming acts.
Speaker 1: There's some other moments in the film too, where I
Speaker 1: felt like they showed a little restraint with the premise.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and I think above all as even though
Speaker 1: a lot of these plot elements are kind of laughable
Speaker 1: in retrospect, that they are presented with a seriousness and
Speaker 1: a and a commitment to filmmaking that that makes this
Speaker 1: probably one of the more entertaining zombie films I've seen.
Speaker 1: Like the night that I watched this, I just turned
Speaker 1: it on just to check out part of it and
Speaker 1: ended up watching the whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree. I thought this was a fairly
Speaker 2: excellent zombie movie. Surprisingly compelling action and characters in situation,
Speaker 2: and beautiful looking. I like the horror design, but also
Speaker 2: just all of the gorgeous locations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there you have it. Let Sleeping Corpses lie
Speaker 1: aka The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. It's been a
Speaker 1: cult favorite for years, and I understand why. This one's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun, So I definitely recommend it to
Speaker 1: folks who want a bloody good zombie movie. Now, just
Speaker 1: reminded everyone out there here it's stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: Where primary earlier science podcasts and we're pro science. We
Speaker 1: don't think science is the enemy trying to turn all
Speaker 1: our babies into rage babies or anything to that extent.
Speaker 1: In our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We do listener mail
Speaker 1: on Mondays, short form Artifactor, Monster Fact on Wednesdays, and
Speaker 1: on Friday, we set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 1: talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: If you want to see a list of all the
Speaker 1: movies we've covered in the past, you can go to
Speaker 1: a couple of places for that. I blog about these
Speaker 1: at some immutamusic dot com and then if you go
Speaker 1: to letterbox that's l E T T E r bo
Speaker 1: x d dot com. We have as a place where
Speaker 1: people can create accounts and can essentially blog about movies
Speaker 1: and had their own reviews to various movies, create lists
Speaker 1: of movies they want to see or have seen. Well,
Speaker 1: we have an account there it's weird House, and we
Speaker 1: have a list of all the films that we've looked
Speaker 1: at on Weird House Cinema thus far, and sometimes we'll
Speaker 1: have a peek ahead at what's coming along next.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Pauseway. If you
Speaker 2: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 2: on this episode or any other, if you would like
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or if you'd
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