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