November 4, 2025 • 53 mins
On the shambling heels of their recent episode exploring the bizarre legendary origins of zombies, Ben, Noel and Max dive headfirst into the cinematic side of the undead: zombie movies. As they discover in today's episode, the film version of zombies or the walking dead has become increasingly distinct from the original folklore version -- and this may have been more a result of social commentary than of any single director's vision.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. It's a spooky time of year,
the most wonderful time of year here on Ridiculous History.
Let's give it up for a super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Coming for you, Max, Max, Are you a halloweeny?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I actually am not?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
What the heck? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
What kind of I mean? I mean, have fun recording
your own damn podcast?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
What kind of costumes have you rocked in the past?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
God, I'm guy shows us to the part of the
Halloween party intentionally very much in like, not a Halloween costume,
one of those. Yeah, I'm trying to get better about
it with it.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I'm not a costumer myself. I'm more of a costume watcher.
I was.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
I was a curmudgeon for much of my life, and
as as I gain into my advanced age, I'm trying
to become less of a curmudgeon. So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Maybe it is man, be yourself, dude, experience Halloween in
your own.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Way, and that is Doel Brown. I am Ben Bullen.
I am a huge fan of costumery and personas. I
don't just restrict it to Halloween. Sometimes you do have
to be a certain different person to get some stuff done.
That could be anything from the social hack of wearing
(01:46):
an orange construction vest to get backstage at places unethical,
but it does work, and it could be something as
ornate as a dragon can costume.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
That's one of the.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Best opportunities for costume watch here in our fair metropolis
of Atlanta, Georgia. This is the follow up to our
earlier episode on the origins of the zombie myth.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Correct and it's a super good primer for this episode,
So do check that one out if you haven't already,
which I bet you have. So we're going to talk
about zombie films today courtesy of our wonderful and spooky
research associate Wren, and we're gonna start off talking about
(02:32):
nineteen sixty eight Night of the Living Dead, the most
iconic zombie film, you know, creator of many of the
zombie tropes that we know and love today, of course
by the incredibly talented filmmaker George Romero. It was a
landmark achievement for not only the horror genre, but the
zombie genre, and that it really created the modern concept
(02:57):
of the zombie as we know it.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Similar to the story of Faust, kind of established the
modern rules for the trope of selling one's soul to
the devil. Night of the Living Dead is responsible for
so much stuff you see in modern zombie fiction and
film today.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Ooh, and if you want a little supplementary spooky episode,
do check out the episode of stuff they Don't Want
you to Know our sister pod about selling your soul.
Ben did some awesome research into that and it's a
lot more nuanced than you might think.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
It's too, Kai Nol, I appreciate it. We do hope
you enjoy that episode as well. And I love the
points that you're raising about Night of the Living Dead
because it's one of those films now where even if
you don't consider yourself a film buff, even if you
don't like horror films, which not all people do, you're
still going to be aware of this. It's unnerving, it's haunting,
(03:50):
it's black and white, it's pretty unrelenting, and it's not
exactly you know, it's not at a frenetic pace. It
is a slower, non action packed horror film.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
And that's true of a lot of older films. Of course,
a lot of younger people watching older films sometimes might
find themselves to be a little bored or just not
move as quickly as they're used to, and that is,
of course a product of the much more frenetic filmmaking
and editing style of today. But you can credit so
many of those old films with establishing those rules and
(04:24):
making some of the rules that were then able to
be broken in interesting ways. One thing that's cool about
Night of the Living Dead is I've been watching this.
You may have watched it as well. Been There's a
series on shutter and I can't remember the name. It's
not particularly compelling name, but it's essentially all of these
clips of the scariest moments from various horror films, and
(04:45):
with a lot of commentary from actors and filmmakers. Some
of the filmmakers whose works are actually featured are in there,
like Fada Alvarez and Andy Muschetti, who's responsible for the
Modern It franchise. But Tom Savini, who was a very,
very incredibly talented makeup affects artist, one of the most
(05:06):
revered in that industry. Maybe comment of when Night of
a Living Dead originally came out, a lot of people
just had black and white TVs, and so they were
used to seeing the news in that stark black and
white and the way Night of a Living Dead is
filmed takes a very cinema verite kind of slice of
life approach to the way it's depicting the action on screen.
(05:29):
And he said that really made it click with audiences
of the time because they felt as though they were
watching something very familiar, like the news, and yet on
screen we're seeing this horde of undead devouring the flesh
of the living.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, it felt very real and not. People watching it
for the first time didn't see it as schlocky or
low budget. As a matter of fact, this film Night
of the Living Dead was quite controversial when it first released,
and it got stuck in a certain genre of theaters
called grind house theaters, the ones that showed really gnarly
(06:08):
stuff because it had gore violence, a lot of unrelenting sadism.
And most film critics who watch this, most of like
the established legit film critics who might have an article
in a trade magazine or a newspaper.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
They said, this was just trash. That's right, but it
also is controversial for some reasons that you may know about,
but if you don't, you might not expect some very
political reasons because of some casting choices. The question, though,
is from Aria's movie was so poorly received upon this
debut by critics, how did it rise to such an
(06:45):
important cult status? You know, in the canon of not
only horror but cinema. Really, I mean it truly is
held up there, and a lot of mega mega letterbox
e type film buffs will often cite nine a Living
Dead as an all time i'm favorites. The spoiler alert
here I already teased the reason largely that it was
(07:05):
elevated to that status is because of politics.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, and to be clear, Night of the Living Dead
was by no means the first zombie film, as we
may have mentioned before, but it is the titular quintessential
zombie film. Peek behind the curtains. Our buddy George initially
didn't call the monsters in his film zombies.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
He called them ghoules.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
In his logic here was that, yes, he took inspiration
from earlier horror films, but he didn't think his particular
monsters fit into the same category of earlier zombies. Because
if you listen to our origin of zombie myths story.
You'll recall that originally zombies were depicted as creatures created
(07:55):
by dark magic by a baucour or a a shaman,
a practitioner of the.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Arts, who could wield control over them, right and employ
them as their sort of demonic minions, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
And romero zombies are different because although they are corpses,
they're re animated by radiation from outer space, not by
dark magic. They also can't be controlled, they can only
be killed, and they are all inherently catabals.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Which was not part of the more voodoo related zombie archetype.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Right, yeah, because the mythological zombies are not themselves undead.
They are living people who have been entranced, right, and
they have maybe been partially dead or mostly dead to
quote the Princess Bride in case they were buried. But
when they're back on the you know, on the right
side of the soil, they're not eating brains. A lot
(08:55):
of it is a metaphor for slavery, and we see
that there are still inherent social commentary pieces in these
zombie stories, especially one considered to be the first actual
zombie movie, Victor Halpern's White Zombie from nineteen thirty two,
even that has statements about American politics.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Absolutely, who are the real monsters? Right? It is almost
the kind of cliche trope that this established. White Zombie
you and may also recognize this as the name of
Rob Zombie's nineteen nineties kind of metal band was based
on William seabrooks bestselling novel The Magic Island, which sounds
fun not scary at all. The Magic Island the book
(09:42):
features a truly sensationalized account of Seabrooks's own explorations in
Haiti during the US's nearly twenty year occupation of that island.
This was spurred by the assassination of Haiti's president in
nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
As you can tell, folks, this film is very heavy
on the voodoo angle, a mischaracterization of voodoo to be fair,
and it is light on cultural sensitivity. I like that
turn of phrase from our research associate Ren. If you
go to Jay Stop Daily and you read some articles
(10:22):
about this, you'll see the following description. The titular Zombie
is an American woman stolen from her husband on her
wedding night by a rival with the help of the
voodoo practicing European plantation owner.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Wait for the name. Oh boy, murder legendary murder legend
if you're nasty right, played by, of course, the iconic
and spooky and quite complex individual Bella Legosi. I'm sure
that you've seen ed Wood, the incredible Tim Burton film
(10:56):
where Martin Landau plays Bella Lugosi, and it depicts this
actor kind of in past his prime, sort of. He
was most well known, I guess for playing Dracula and
he's talking about it. He's got the hand and the
voice and you must be hungarian and then also double
jointed but also struggles with heroin addiction to do. Highly
(11:19):
recommend that film if you haven't seen it, also in
black and white, which is a super hard cell at
the time for Tim Burton, you know. But I think
it's his best film, and it's very uncharacteristic for him
in a lot of ways. It's it's it's still got
his his touches though, for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And I'd love to do an episode just on Bela Lagosi.
Ever at one point that's that will be an interesting
little biopic approach for us. Anyway, this this guy's played
murder has his literal first name. Yeah, he operates a
sugar cane mill, and the employees of the mill are
(11:54):
pretty much all victims he has turned into zombies. They
are created through a voodoo ritual. And here we get
to kind of the political subtext. Okay, so America's military
occupation of Haiti isn't directly addressed in the film, but
the lovebirds are romantic leads. They decide to get married
(12:17):
in Haiti because of the business opportunities available to people
who can invest in the sugarcane trade and sugar plantations.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, and if we're thinking about the cultural context of
the time, Haitians were uprising up against their own colonial
occupiers and a forced labor system called the corvet wherein
a government mandates that benefited the US military allowed the
US military to conscript able bodied Haitians to build infrastructure
(12:51):
across the island without pay. Right. There's a word for that, right.
It's slavery, and it's similar.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
It's slavery by another name, but it's it's also so
similar to the aftermath of the Thirteenth Amendment in the
United States, which created prison right modern prison labor, which
was essentially the same thing. For quite some time, voodoo
was also in the real world outlawed during the American occupation,
(13:19):
which is very strange given that the founding fathers of
our country made such a big deal about the government
staying out of religion.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Well, isn't that also historically interesting? At least we see
rhymes of this throughout history, where an occupying force quashes
the local belief systems, you know, and then of course
it goes underground, and then you start that's where you
start seeing some interesting commingling of cultures a lot of
times because of things being sort of tamped down and
(13:48):
then having to kind of, you know, peak their heads
up and sort of inject themselves back into culture sort
of in a covert.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Way, right through maybe religious syncretism or acquiring new symbols
and secret operations. Yeah, the government, the occupying government, authorized
raids on religious compounds and they would shut down voodoo ceremonies.
They also confiscated artifacts and religious objects, especially drums and drums.
(14:16):
This is a very interesting tangent. So drums in the
US and throughout different parts of the Caribbean could be
used as communicative tools, So it wasn't just a drum
circle for recreation or for spiritual practices. This was also
a way to shut down local resistance to the occupation.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Absolutely, and I highly recommend checking out a website Lecoubrooklyn
dot com and if you can just search for it,
there's an article on there on this blog by Marcus
Schwartz called Rhythm Without End Haitian voodoo drum music. A
little outside the scope of today's episode, but it's got
some incredible images of some of these drums that would
(14:58):
look sort of like you might picture a honga drum
looking with like a long, tubular wooden body and then
an animal skin of some kind stretched across the top
and held in place with rope that you know is
used to kind of tighten it from down the sides
of the drama underneath. And they are often emblazoned with
various symbols and sigils and things like that. So, dude,
(15:22):
do check that out. It's pretty cool. It really goes
into some detail about the history of voodoo drums.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
And White Zombie had another interesting twist when it came
to the promotion of the film. It was trying to
justify Uncle Sam's occupation of Haiti by depicting Haitian people,
the locals as savages from an earlier time, people that
were maybe not quite fully human and could not exist
(15:50):
in the Western world without the help of you know,
oh these benevolent white overseers. So promoters would go to
the local guys having events for White Zombie and again
this is nineteen thirty two, and they would say higher
African American or hire black performers to dress and quote
(16:12):
tropical garments and beat Tom Tom's and just yell all
over the place.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yikes.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
However, if you get past that really problematic promotion and
you look at just the film itself, it does seem
to imply that it is pretty crappy to take away
a person or community sense of agency.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Oh yeah, murder Lesandre is the big bat. You know.
He has depicted as an absolute monster, abusing and taking
advantage of individuals. You know, through this magic. It has
not seen us like a heroic act in any way,
shape or form. It's tough right to straddle that line,
especially in nineteen thirty four. You got to I mean,
(17:01):
the promotion of the film, I would argue, is its
own thing, separate from the intent of the filmmakers. So
let's give that, you know, credit where credits due, But
I would argue that there's a little bit of subtext
that's hidden in the film that is very cleverly done.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, you could even say they're sneaking it under the radar,
right of this, So if we're looking at the real
world occupation, which is a part of American history that
a lot of textbooks don't care to talk about, the
real right, exactly, So, the real world Haitian people, the
(17:37):
locals at this time were always against the occupation. They
were never fans of it, and they would have continual
protests and uprisings and mutinies and strikes. And eventually, in
nineteen thirty four, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt's good neighbor policy,
Uncle Sad Yeah, funny name, especially considering this next decision.
(18:01):
Because of that policy, Uncle Sam officially withdrew from Haiti
while retaining quote economic connections. So that's where private industry
and public policy get really sticky. They figured out a
way for US corporate interests to continue making money, and
then they said the best thing we can do as
(18:21):
a good neighbor.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Is to GTFO. And often is the case with these
kind of withdrawals, it certainly led to a period of
political upheaval and instability that lasted for quite a long time,
with a succession of coups and various problematic leaders. It
is one of those things that colonialists tend to do
when they're just kind of done with a place, They
(18:44):
just sort of lead them to their own devices and
don't really give them the tools to kind of pick
up the pieces and build themselves back up as an
autonomous nation one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
And sometimes that's neglect or its a matter of incompetence
in the occupying force, but often as a pleasant as
it is to admit that is a purposeful that's a
purposeful thing because they don't want a they don't want
this former vassal state to ever become fully independent.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Oh one hundred percent. And it was around thirteen years
that the US kind of maintained that political hold over Haiti,
and that included a lot of those forced labor practices
and suppression of you know, descents, as well as continuing
to force this improved infrastructure that benefited the US much
(19:34):
more than it benefited the locals.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Oh one hundred percent. And make no mistake of the
colonial power of France was also deeply involved in similar
unclean Shenanigans, and it's it's to a point where the
intergenerational consequences of those actions of that state craft reverberate today.
(19:57):
You know, we recently when we were on when we
were on our work crews at True Crime Cruise, some
of us had the opportunity to visit the Dominican Republic
and it was real eye opener, at least when I
was talking with the locals who it was just an
eye opener to hear them talk about the neighboring country
of Haiti because they're on the you know, they're on
(20:19):
the same island, and the difference between the two countries
on almost every level is just stark and disturbing. I mean,
the US created a real life horror story.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
There one hundred percent, and a lot of historians this
is a turn that I just stumbled upon, and looking
up some of the history of the US occupation of
Haiti refer to the legacy of this occupation and withdrawal
as having left dealt rather a psychic blow to the
concept of independence there in Haiti. And then the US
(20:52):
came back in in nineteen ninety four, not necessarily as
an act of egalitarianism, but more so serving stuff again
to restore a democratically elected president. Then, of course they we.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
You know, had a relationship with right, right, And then
we see this kind of interference throughout the US sphere
of influence at the time, in the Caribbean and Latin America.
And so what we're telling you here, folks, is that
a lot of really good horror tells a different story
(21:28):
right and tells it through metaphor. It makes you think
it's not all just the final girl and gratuitous stabbing.
Although that does have a place in these categories of horror.
Zombie films are in particular ripe for this kind of commentary.
If we go just a few years later, in nineteen
(21:49):
forty three, we'll see I Walked with a Zombie. In
this film, we're back in the Caribbean. There's a young
nurse who takes a job caring for a komat host
woman on a fictional island that is definitely not Haiti,
but definitely is Haiti, and she is all of a
(22:11):
sudden plunged into an underground, a cultural underground where the
ghost of slavery haunts the present and voodoo priests are
weaponizing their power to summon the Living Dead, so again commentary.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Well, yeah, and because of her station as a nurse,
you know, caring for folks in the working class, she
is able to kind of mix in with a lot
of the locals and start to really be the stand
in for the audience and kind of being plunged into
that class divide.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, exactly, and she is there to help. So this
is much more nuanced than.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
One could argue. Still a white savior trope a little bit,
but I think it, you know what I mean, It's
it's not egregious. I haven't seen the film though, but
my understanding is that it's not her.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Her intentions at least are pure, which makes her a
better protagonist. So the couple in White Zombie goes to
Haiti because they're getting married and they want to have
an upper class, exploitative agrarian lifestyle. But the nurse and
I walked with a Zombie our character is named Betsy.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Here.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
She is positioned as someone who is yes, white, but
is also working class. So she's there because she has
a job. She's not an investor. She's taking care of
the wife of a wealthy plantation owner. But she is
interacting more directly with black workers with people who are
(23:39):
locals who are descendants of those previously enslaved people, and
that brings to the forefront this class and race divide
running through the film.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Not to mention and rend really Astutey points out that
Betsy is Canadian, which obviously as a country has links
to French colonialism as well.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, that's a really good point there. Her history as
a character is not tied to racial prejudice and slavery,
which makes her unique amid most of the people she
meets in Haiti, and so the film really puts her
in an outsider position, kind of a class of one's own,
making her a lens for the audience theoretically to more
(24:26):
objectively view the cultural complications of the.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Story, which are personified by two very important key symbols
character named Kara four, who is a zombified guard you know,
complete with like bulging eyes, who kind of lurks in
the shadows waiting to be summoned by his master, as
well as a statue known as t Misery, which was
(24:52):
formerly the figurehead of the Holland Families slave ship and
similar tonight of Living Dead. I Walked with a Zombie
was super controversial when it came out. Similarly because of
some of these slightly ahead of their time political critiques, Yeah, yeah,
putting a critical lens up against the narrative that people
(25:14):
were being taught in school and in the press.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
They were looking at colonialism, they were looking at the
consequences of chattel slavery, and they were saying, Hey, I
don't know if there's a hot take, but maybe this
wasn't all on the up and up.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Maybe maybe this wasn't on, Maybe this wasn't quite on.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Maybe this was a swing and a miss historically, So
they didn't gloss over the facts. For American audiences, and
a lot of audiences in the early nineteen hundreds here
on mainland America, they might not have had much of
an opinion on the occupation of Haiti because it was
making some people who were already very wealthy and powerful
(25:56):
more powerful and more wealthy. But the average per in
you know, Oklahoma or something just hears about it occasionally
when they read the paper.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Right, and it wasn't like the top story no either,
no at all.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And this this kind of one thing that's brilliant about
these films, and it shows the power of film is
that it cut through all that pr and all the
propagandistic spins, and it made the local population, or it
gave local populations of Americans the opportunity to really reassess
(26:31):
their country's involvement in a brutal past.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
And it did it so.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Experientially, experientially, and I'm thinking it did it in an
elegant way that wasn't talking down to you.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
It was telling you a story. And it's interesting because,
you know, because of the time and some of the
attention that would have been paid, you know, by powers
that be to films like this, some of that. The
fact that it wasn't heavy handed or overt is probably
a product of the time and them having to be
a little bit crafty about it, you know, and not
(27:04):
come right out and say the quiet part loud. Had
to say the quiet part a little quiet. But it
is clear that I walked with the Zombie did so
a little more aggressively than White Zombie.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah, exactly. And this all brings us back to the
Knights of the Living Dead. Sort of fast forward in
a few more decades. It's nineteen sixty eight. The United
States of America has had a rough go for a
couple of reasons. There were some really good things, there
were some really terrible things. The Civil Rights Act was
(27:39):
passed four years earlier, right in nineteen sixty four, but
racial inequality was still very much a thing, even more
so than today.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
All of this stuff is top of mind because I
mean speaking of experiential this was lived, This was right
in front. This was practically a new Civil War kind
of moment to where there was a huge divide that
was very clear in terms of the folks who were
pro mistreatment of African Americans and the folks who were,
(28:11):
you know, on in their corner. This also all was
roiling around during the Vietnam War, which is its own
you know, bag of badgers, as we say on stuff
they don't want you to know. So what started as
an anti Vietnam War protest at the National Democratic Invention
in Chicago turned into an absolute sh show, all out riot. Yeah. Absolutely,
(28:34):
thanks for the beet theorem X.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
We have we we have to emphasize this, we have
to highlight it and put it in italics for anybody
wasn't around during this time. There were serious questions about
the viability of the United States as a thing. I
think that's astute to point out a possible civil war movement,
(28:56):
but people, for one reason or another, on all imaginable
sides of political divides, A lot of people in different
camps were convinced the US was going to fall. We
saw public figures like doctor Martin Luther King Junior assassinated
while delivering a speech at a hotel balcony in Memphis.
JFK had already been assassinated. His brother, Robert F. Kennedy,
(29:20):
is also assassinated by June of nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
I can't help but feel reverberations with the present moment
that we're living in right now too, and also the
fact that zombies have had another big moment if they
ever really went anywhere. But yeah, to your point, it
is a great way of pointing out some of these
inequalities and some of this like US versus Them mentality
(29:46):
without having to be overtly political about it.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, and just a year earlier, in nineteen sixty seven,
one of the millions of people reading all this terrifying
news is a young guy named George Romero. Now, George
at the time is directing commercials, which is how a
lot of filmmakers get their start. He scrapes and scrounges
and saves to start a grassroots production company called Image ten.
(30:15):
And he does this with a couple of his college buddies.
They don't have a lot of money. They've got like
six thousand bucks. When they decide to produce a horror
movie outside of their hometown in Pittsburgh. They need more
than six thousand dollars even back then, so they go
around to beg and cajole friends and family and other
(30:39):
anyone they can find, really, anyone they can get a
pitch meeting with, and they ultimately raise one hundred and
fourteen thousand dollars for the final film, which sounds like
a lot of money maybe to an individual, but as
we know, is very much not a lot of money
when you're trying to make a whole ass film.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Well, the funny thing, like, I guess it's time to
do it. If we could get a boot inflation calculated
that bad boy.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
Dude, it does add up to about what you would
consider the most modest budget of an indie film today,
which is one million, eighty five.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
And forty one dollars and sixty four cents boop.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Great, Yes, And this here's the twist, here's how they
get all this money, even though they're basically some kids
just out of college. They go to their investors and
they say, hey, if you invest in our film, will
also put you in the movie. So they appealed to
some vanity.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
So even still with this consideration, the budget is tight
and they blow a lot of it renting the rural
farmhouse where they wanted the film to be set.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, it's funny because originally they wanted this to be
much more of an ed Wood Plan nine from Outer
Space kind of fi Cold War era alien picture, you know,
which was much more of a trope at the time,
But because of limitations and constraints, they had to get
a little more creative with it, and in doing that
(32:13):
kind of made a new thing exactly.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, because the makeup effects for aliens can add up
pretty quickly. So here's what they end up with. In
the final plot, the story follows a lady named Barbara.
Barbara travels with her brother to visit her father's grave
and when they get to the cemetery, they're attacked by
(32:36):
a guy in the cemetery. He kills her brother. She
runs in a panic of valid panic and arrives at
a farmhouse, and then she and several other people that
she doesn't know. They end up hiding from this horde
of hungry zombies who continually lay siege to the house.
The hero of the group, the guy kind of assumes
(33:00):
the leadership position, is a dude named Ben and he
is played by a black actor named Dwayne Jones. Everybody
else inside the farmhouse, like the humans, they're all white actors.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah, and I mean you pointed out the whole thing
about Okay, you invest in us, will give you a part.
What a genius structure to be able to do that
and not have to depend too much on people's acting chops.
You just throw them in some pancake makeup and have
them shamble around and go. Yeah. But to that point there,
they had a friend who was of their close group,
(33:37):
the best actor, the best guy for the job. The
fact that he was black had nothing to do with it,
but in the end it made that cultural impact even
more stark.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
This is interesting, right because it feels like, if we're
trying to spin a narrative, we would say Romero and
team were so progressive and ahead of the time. We're
not saying they're not progressive people, and we're definitely not
saying they're bad people, but we do think it's important
to realize the reality of independent filmmaking, which is a
(34:18):
lot of time you look a lot of times you
look around at your friend group and you say, Okay, sorry, guys,
Dwayne's the best actor, So now our movie is political.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, but that's also the thing that's so neat about
art is it can often be a product of happenstance,
those happy accidents that Bob Ross is always talking about.
That's true for music and creating things with limitations, like
if you have every tool in the arsenal, sometimes you
get kind of stemied or a little bit overwhelmed. But
(34:51):
when you're forced to make choices because of a lack
of resources, oftentimes accidentally magic happens. And that's exactly what
in here with Dwayne Jones, who is the guy we're
talking about here, who played Ben, our hero Ben.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, yeah, this guy is this guy is the saving
force a Knight of the Living Dead. And it's interesting
because you know, like we mentioned, at this time, Hollywood
had this thing that seemed almost like a calculated quota
on who could or could not be a lead role actor,
(35:29):
and Sidney Poitier was like the only black actor who
was allowed to be the lead man. So we want
to be clear it is never mentioned. The idea of
race relations here is never explicitly mentioned. It's never a
story point. Nobody gives the Ben character a tough time
about being a quote unquote black guy trapped with these
(35:53):
white folks. In this zombie flick. He plays the entire
role as a unluck key stranger who was stuck in
this house with other unlucky strangers, tried to survive the.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Night, a ragtag band of yes strangers who will become
the allies. I want to backtrack, just ever so slightly
for a quick moment to mention the Hayes Code, which
was you know, often just known as the Code. There's
an era of Hollywood called pre code Hollywood, which is
(36:27):
what the two films we talked about earlier, Fell Under
White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie. The Hayes
Code was established in the later in the thirties and
ended in nineteen sixty eight, which was kind of the
precursor to the Motion Picture Association of America Ratings board,
and you know, our rating et cetera. But it was
(36:47):
essentially a form of censorship that imposed self regulated prohibition
of topics like profanity, graphic violence, nudity, sexual relationships, proper
sexual relationships aka probably interracial you know. So nineteen sixty
eight is actually when that ends. And I'm just wondering
(37:09):
if the lack of this kind of oversight was largely
what led to this film being able to exist. Although
we already mentioned that it was mainly underground when it
came out, so this is probably It's not like when
a thing ends all of a sudden, everything changes, So
I'm sure there was still a sense of this kind
of puritanical, you know, attitude from the audiences and critics.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Right, Yeah, And there's a reason Ben is the leader
the character here, because look, if you rewatch the film,
if you're a horror buff like us folks, you'll notice
that pretty much all the other humans in the farmhouse
are kind of useless and white. Bet is trustworthy. He's
the smartest one. Barbara, our character that the story begins with.
(37:56):
She is in a state of shock for most of
the movie because her brother got killed in front of her.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
He got eaten. Yeah, not cool. It's interesting though, because
the whole starkness of the medium, the black and white film,
and then there's this like central character who's black, everybody
else is white. All of this is not necessarily done
on purpose, but it really makes it read even more
kind of poignantly. You know, the whole thing just feels
really intentional even if it wasn't. But yeah, Ben is
(38:23):
our hero. He's the most competent one of the bunch.
He's more or less single handedly keeping these dumb dumbs
in line and making sure that they don't get eaten.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
So he will do things where he's trying to get
to know other people, and he's asking Barbara questions about
what's going on, What the heck is that outside?
Speaker 2 (38:41):
She's no help.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Get a hold of yourself, right, slap, slap, But he hurries,
He immediately assesses the situation. He tries to board up
the house, he fires a rifle, he lights fires outside.
He tries to keep back this trail of zombies who
have started to discover them. And it's almost like ants
(39:04):
will follow upon other ants. Maybe we talk a little
bit about the other folks there, because right now we've
just talked about Barbara and Bett.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, there's also a middle aged couple who have found
refuge in the house. Their young daughter named Karen, has
been bitten by a zombie. We are, I guess, waiting
to see at this point whether or not that's a
thing where you turn, you get turned, because we talked
about how there is a story point that this was
(39:36):
caused by radiation or some sort of like you know,
anomalists uap phenomenon, very love crafty and like the color
out of space, right, that's another story point. Or probably
he was aware of Romeiro or Knight of the Comet.
You remember that one man I loved The Night of
the Comet. So we're waiting to see if she's gonna turn.
(39:56):
I think it's implied that that is what's going to happen.
We've also got Henry, who's a real till. He's got
a bit of a temper. He's a bit of a misogynist,
and this is really kind of mucking things up and
just bringing bad vibes to the party. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
He's one of those one of my least favorite people
in an emergency or survival.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Situation or an escape room or an escape room, he's.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Just like blustering around, yelling, at people and being better,
thinks he knows better, and all his ideas are terrible
and he has no listening skills, right, And.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
So at one point Ben has to leave the farmhouse
to help other stragglers outside, and Henry just takes it
upon himself to lock him out. Yeah, classic Henry.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
And this is where we get to that point that
I think we wanted to explore a little bit more.
Keep in mind, this isn't the late nineteen sixties in
the United States. When Henry doesn't let the black character
Ben inside the house, they go back and forth. Ben
finally gave entry and he just clocks the crap out
(41:03):
of Henry. He's just had it.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
This did not happen very often at all in cinema
at the time. No, And part of the reason that
this did happen, I think we mentioned the idea that
his race was not a story point, but it goes
even further than that. Romero, talking to NPR, said that
Jones was simply the best actor from among our friends,
and we didn't change the script from when Dwayne agreed
(41:27):
to play the role. Therefore, he plays the entire thing
as a white actor would, and there is no implied
racial limitations, and yet that act as depicted is such
a powerful moment, like that first interracial on screen kiss
in Star Trek.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Yeah, and in nineteen sixties America, regardless of genre of film,
you would not see a black actor punching a white
actor on screen, especially not when the white guys depicted
as a villain. Ben also gets fit with other characters
in the story. When Barbara is having one of her
freak out episodes, Ben does slap her to an attempt
(42:08):
to get her back to life, back to reality. Oh yeah, yeah, a.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Trope in and of itself. Snap out of it woman,
you know, ye whomever.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
And we also know that due to the way race
relations were depicted on screen at this time, black actors
certainly didn't hit female white actors on screen in the sixties,
not even in the context of hey, I'm quote helping you. Eventually, Shockingly,
as we teased, Ben does have to kill the girl caring.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yep, she succumbs to her bite, and he does, you know,
do her a kindness and put her down after she
begins to It's not like he's just doing it in advance.
She goes full zombie and begins to devour the flesh
of her father, which you know, we don't love that guy.
You kind of love to see it getting his come up.
It's a little bit, yeah, but what a terrible way
(43:05):
to go. Now we're dealing with the death of a
child's which is also absolutely shocking for the time.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah, and now you're watching the young eat the old,
which kind of feels like a symbol for generational upheaval
in the US. And then despite again in the context,
the audience is watching a white child's character being killed
by a black character, and to some people in the
(43:33):
audience that was indible, and to some film critics that
was incredibly controversial, even though that's the nature of a
good horror story. Right in the end, our character Ben
is the last human left. He is never infected with
the zombie bug, but when he's trying to finally reach
(43:56):
the authorities, he is shot by a sheriff who they
well Ben might be a member of the living dead.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
And again, it would have happened that way in the
plot even if it had been played by a white actor.
But the fact that it was a black actor and
the police brutality of it all, and it's just, I mean,
so much of this stuff was happenstance, and I don't know,
It's like you have to move so quickly and be
so nimble in an indie film production like this, you
might not even have time to think about how this
(44:23):
is going to have this kind of cultural impact. But
boy did it ever, and it really still reads and
hits today. I know that you're a fan of Jordan
Peele's work, both his comedy work and his film work
and the Breakout. You know, obviously the masterpiece of his
in the horror genre and satire was get Out, which
originally he had written the ending where the main character,
(44:46):
as he's escaping the kind of creepy you know, murderous,
zombifying white families, you know, nightmare home, he gets killed
by police or arrested, but don't remember he gets killed
but instead spoiler alert three two one, his buddy from
the TSA swoops in and saves the day for a
nice little comedic punch at the end. But that absolutely
(45:09):
was a reference, and you're also even expecting that that's
what's going to happen to him. Because of this.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
We should mention the sheriff, a knight of the living
dead who shoots Ben.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
He is a white guy.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Again, the argument is, as we said, that, it just
happened that way because Dwayne who plays Ben, was literal
was literally the best or the least worst actor they knew.
So the film closes with Ben's body being burned on
top of a pile of the living dead, of the
(45:41):
zombies that he had spent the entirety of the story fighting.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Stragic. Yes, so, during the sixties, black Americans were obviously
struggling to prove their worth and rise up in you know,
economically bettering their lot in life in a system that
was kind of designed to prevent them from doing so.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, well said, and we know that. Look, we know
that that was true. Then it's true. Now there's a
reason that final scene of Night of the Living Dead,
with Ben's body atop this pile of zombies, is the
reason it hit so profoundly. Zombie films essentially function as
(46:24):
a time capsule of the audience's greatest political fears. They're
deeper the more you think about them, and you know,
spoiler alert for American history. The US did survive the
nineteen sixties and went on to have other shenanigans in
the seventies, the eighties, and even now in the twenty twenties.
The seventies were a little bit calmer to in some
(46:47):
degrees because yuppies were leading in charge for consumerism. The
country was no longer technically at war. And then you
see zombie movies start to evolve and step with that.
Now you get re Animator, Romero goes back to the
well of the Undead with a Day of the Dead,
which is literally a shopping mall.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Yeah, for sure, and it's excellence. It's it's in color. Obviously,
it is his like really blank check kind of version
of the zombie movie, and it's it's excellent. It is
schlocky as I'll get out. The gore effects are bonkers,
but it does also still have this underlying kind of
commentary social commentary. Then you also have just the utter
(47:30):
shlock of things like Reanimator like you mentioned, and you
know Peter Jackson's Dead Alive for example, the Evil Dead films.
You start to really see this kind of flurry of
spins and twists on that iconic genre that that Romero
created with Don of the Dead, even himself doing a
(47:50):
spin on his own thing with Day of the Dead,
kind of taking it to the next level. Then you
also see Michael Jackson's iconic music video for Thriller directed
by by John Landis I think is his name of
the guy that made American Werewolf in London, which incredible effects,
and again taking some of these tropes and this genre
(48:12):
from the underground squarely into the kind of you know, zeitgeist.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Yeah, and we also see the evolution of things that
are zombie like but are a world away from voodoo,
because in the nineteen thirties, one of the fears that
filmmakers were really drawing from is the fear of other cultures,
right xenophobia, the fear of unfamiliar magic or spiritual practices.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Which is built into the thing from the earliest days,
the whole us versus them mental.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
But as as a scientific progress continues and as society
overall evolves, we see zombies taking an increasingly secular approach
to their origin stories, and we see things that are
you know, not quite zombies, like the villains of Charlton
Heston's Omega Man from nineteen seventy one that's very post apocalyptic,
(49:02):
but the monsters are zombie an all but name, and
of course Night of the Comet Absolute Banger nineteen eighty
four sci fi comedy horror film about I think it's
like a Lady and the main character ends up safe
from a dangerous comet because she falls asleep in a
(49:25):
projectionist booth, but everybody else goes outside to watch the
comet and it turns them into monsters.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Oh man. Yeah, and it also reminds me of just
I mean a lot of this is Frankenstein base. You know,
we've got the Gleam littletro Frankenstein adaptation coming out soon.
But just this idea of an abomination, you know, an
unstoppable other, right that maybe even is of of who
(49:52):
we are in some way, this kind of bastardization of
like what it means to be human. And that also
is a trope that you see in all kinds of
alien invasion movies, like The Body Snatchers and The Blob.
Just this unstoppable force that is going to subsume and
devour us, all right.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Yeah, and then we see kind of a Venn diagram
when we get to other types of undead creatures, like vampires,
who are sort of the honor students of the zombie.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
World, much sexier, much better dressed.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
I've started to get back into the more gritty, the
more gritty depictions of vampirism, like the Strain or the Yeah,
or let the Right One in Love.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Let the Right One in the American version is a banger, actually,
but the original is where it's at.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
And then we also see weird zombie films like Fido
where the zombies are domesticated pets.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, and of course, you know, with twenty eight Days
Later by Danny Boyle, you start to see this evolution
of zombies into these more raging kind of like not
shambling anymore, but like hauling asks, you know, and they're
incredibly muscular and deadly. And of course we just had
the third installment in that franchise come out this year,
(51:13):
twenty eight years later, which I really loved a lot,
and it has a lot of COVID kind of themes,
and again this sort of like what does it mean
to exist in a world like this? How do you
survive like taking that not just from like on the day,
but like much further down the line, and what does
it look like? And how does that then become part
of your culture and part of your traditions? Right?
Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, And there are so many other great zombie films
to name. There's a lot of really good comedy horror
like Zombie Land, Shot of the Dead, and so on,
So we can't wait to explore some of these because,
as we have to say pretty often nowadays, it's.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Always Halloween in America.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Big thanks to our super producer from mister Max Williams,
his brother Alex Williams, who composed this slap and bop
and gosh, is Alex back in town?
Speaker 2 (52:09):
He isn't at the moment. I know he's coming soon.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Okay, yeah, very soon. He'll be back very soon.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Wow, you made it sound like he's outside. Yes, he's
scratching on my door like a zombie. Huge thanks dude.
Our favorite shambling zombiefide creature of the night, Jonathan Strickland,
the Quizzed aj Bahamas Jacobs, the Puzzler.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
Yes, the route.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Dude's that ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you'll love them.
Big big thanks for research associate Renfest.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yes, this one was a banger, as was the previous
zombie related episode that Wren delivered for us, and we're
really enjoying her work a lot. Man. Huge things to you.
Speaker 4 (52:48):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Love talking zombies with you, do it any day of
the week. And also if you'll see you next time.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
Books.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. It's a spooky time of year,
the most wonderful time of year here on Ridiculous History.
Let's give it up for a super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Coming for you, Max, Max, Are you a halloweeny?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I actually am not?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
What the heck? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:50):
What kind of I mean? I mean, have fun recording
your own damn podcast?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
What kind of costumes have you rocked in the past?
Speaker 3 (00:59):
God, I'm guy shows us to the part of the
Halloween party intentionally very much in like, not a Halloween costume,
one of those. Yeah, I'm trying to get better about
it with it.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I'm not a costumer myself. I'm more of a costume watcher.
I was.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
I was a curmudgeon for much of my life, and
as as I gain into my advanced age, I'm trying
to become less of a curmudgeon. So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Maybe it is man, be yourself, dude, experience Halloween in
your own.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Way, and that is Doel Brown. I am Ben Bullen.
I am a huge fan of costumery and personas. I
don't just restrict it to Halloween. Sometimes you do have
to be a certain different person to get some stuff done.
That could be anything from the social hack of wearing
(01:46):
an orange construction vest to get backstage at places unethical,
but it does work, and it could be something as
ornate as a dragon can costume.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
That's one of the.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Best opportunities for costume watch here in our fair metropolis
of Atlanta, Georgia. This is the follow up to our
earlier episode on the origins of the zombie myth.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Correct and it's a super good primer for this episode,
So do check that one out if you haven't already,
which I bet you have. So we're going to talk
about zombie films today courtesy of our wonderful and spooky
research associate Wren, and we're gonna start off talking about
(02:32):
nineteen sixty eight Night of the Living Dead, the most
iconic zombie film, you know, creator of many of the
zombie tropes that we know and love today, of course
by the incredibly talented filmmaker George Romero. It was a
landmark achievement for not only the horror genre, but the
zombie genre, and that it really created the modern concept
(02:57):
of the zombie as we know it.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Similar to the story of Faust, kind of established the
modern rules for the trope of selling one's soul to
the devil. Night of the Living Dead is responsible for
so much stuff you see in modern zombie fiction and
film today.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Ooh, and if you want a little supplementary spooky episode,
do check out the episode of stuff they Don't Want
you to Know our sister pod about selling your soul.
Ben did some awesome research into that and it's a
lot more nuanced than you might think.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
It's too, Kai Nol, I appreciate it. We do hope
you enjoy that episode as well. And I love the
points that you're raising about Night of the Living Dead
because it's one of those films now where even if
you don't consider yourself a film buff, even if you
don't like horror films, which not all people do, you're
still going to be aware of this. It's unnerving, it's haunting,
(03:50):
it's black and white, it's pretty unrelenting, and it's not
exactly you know, it's not at a frenetic pace. It
is a slower, non action packed horror film.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
And that's true of a lot of older films. Of course,
a lot of younger people watching older films sometimes might
find themselves to be a little bored or just not
move as quickly as they're used to, and that is,
of course a product of the much more frenetic filmmaking
and editing style of today. But you can credit so
many of those old films with establishing those rules and
(04:24):
making some of the rules that were then able to
be broken in interesting ways. One thing that's cool about
Night of the Living Dead is I've been watching this.
You may have watched it as well. Been There's a
series on shutter and I can't remember the name. It's
not particularly compelling name, but it's essentially all of these
clips of the scariest moments from various horror films, and
(04:45):
with a lot of commentary from actors and filmmakers. Some
of the filmmakers whose works are actually featured are in there,
like Fada Alvarez and Andy Muschetti, who's responsible for the
Modern It franchise. But Tom Savini, who was a very,
very incredibly talented makeup affects artist, one of the most
(05:06):
revered in that industry. Maybe comment of when Night of
a Living Dead originally came out, a lot of people
just had black and white TVs, and so they were
used to seeing the news in that stark black and
white and the way Night of a Living Dead is
filmed takes a very cinema verite kind of slice of
life approach to the way it's depicting the action on screen.
(05:29):
And he said that really made it click with audiences
of the time because they felt as though they were
watching something very familiar, like the news, and yet on
screen we're seeing this horde of undead devouring the flesh
of the living.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Yeah, it felt very real and not. People watching it
for the first time didn't see it as schlocky or
low budget. As a matter of fact, this film Night
of the Living Dead was quite controversial when it first released,
and it got stuck in a certain genre of theaters
called grind house theaters, the ones that showed really gnarly
(06:08):
stuff because it had gore violence, a lot of unrelenting sadism.
And most film critics who watch this, most of like
the established legit film critics who might have an article
in a trade magazine or a newspaper.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
They said, this was just trash. That's right, but it
also is controversial for some reasons that you may know about,
but if you don't, you might not expect some very
political reasons because of some casting choices. The question, though,
is from Aria's movie was so poorly received upon this
debut by critics, how did it rise to such an
(06:45):
important cult status? You know, in the canon of not
only horror but cinema. Really, I mean it truly is
held up there, and a lot of mega mega letterbox
e type film buffs will often cite nine a Living
Dead as an all time i'm favorites. The spoiler alert
here I already teased the reason largely that it was
(07:05):
elevated to that status is because of politics.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, and to be clear, Night of the Living Dead
was by no means the first zombie film, as we
may have mentioned before, but it is the titular quintessential
zombie film. Peek behind the curtains. Our buddy George initially
didn't call the monsters in his film zombies.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
He called them ghoules.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
In his logic here was that, yes, he took inspiration
from earlier horror films, but he didn't think his particular
monsters fit into the same category of earlier zombies. Because
if you listen to our origin of zombie myths story.
You'll recall that originally zombies were depicted as creatures created
(07:55):
by dark magic by a baucour or a a shaman,
a practitioner of the.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Arts, who could wield control over them, right and employ
them as their sort of demonic minions, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
And romero zombies are different because although they are corpses,
they're re animated by radiation from outer space, not by
dark magic. They also can't be controlled, they can only
be killed, and they are all inherently catabals.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Which was not part of the more voodoo related zombie archetype.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Right, yeah, because the mythological zombies are not themselves undead.
They are living people who have been entranced, right, and
they have maybe been partially dead or mostly dead to
quote the Princess Bride in case they were buried. But
when they're back on the you know, on the right
side of the soil, they're not eating brains. A lot
(08:55):
of it is a metaphor for slavery, and we see
that there are still inherent social commentary pieces in these
zombie stories, especially one considered to be the first actual
zombie movie, Victor Halpern's White Zombie from nineteen thirty two,
even that has statements about American politics.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Absolutely, who are the real monsters? Right? It is almost
the kind of cliche trope that this established. White Zombie
you and may also recognize this as the name of
Rob Zombie's nineteen nineties kind of metal band was based
on William seabrooks bestselling novel The Magic Island, which sounds
fun not scary at all. The Magic Island the book
(09:42):
features a truly sensationalized account of Seabrooks's own explorations in
Haiti during the US's nearly twenty year occupation of that island.
This was spurred by the assassination of Haiti's president in
nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
As you can tell, folks, this film is very heavy
on the voodoo angle, a mischaracterization of voodoo to be fair,
and it is light on cultural sensitivity. I like that
turn of phrase from our research associate Ren. If you
go to Jay Stop Daily and you read some articles
(10:22):
about this, you'll see the following description. The titular Zombie
is an American woman stolen from her husband on her
wedding night by a rival with the help of the
voodoo practicing European plantation owner.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Wait for the name. Oh boy, murder legendary murder legend
if you're nasty right, played by, of course, the iconic
and spooky and quite complex individual Bella Legosi. I'm sure
that you've seen ed Wood, the incredible Tim Burton film
(10:56):
where Martin Landau plays Bella Lugosi, and it depicts this
actor kind of in past his prime, sort of. He
was most well known, I guess for playing Dracula and
he's talking about it. He's got the hand and the
voice and you must be hungarian and then also double
jointed but also struggles with heroin addiction to do. Highly
(11:19):
recommend that film if you haven't seen it, also in
black and white, which is a super hard cell at
the time for Tim Burton, you know. But I think
it's his best film, and it's very uncharacteristic for him
in a lot of ways. It's it's it's still got
his his touches though, for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
And I'd love to do an episode just on Bela Lagosi.
Ever at one point that's that will be an interesting
little biopic approach for us. Anyway, this this guy's played
murder has his literal first name. Yeah, he operates a
sugar cane mill, and the employees of the mill are
(11:54):
pretty much all victims he has turned into zombies. They
are created through a voodoo ritual. And here we get
to kind of the political subtext. Okay, so America's military
occupation of Haiti isn't directly addressed in the film, but
the lovebirds are romantic leads. They decide to get married
(12:17):
in Haiti because of the business opportunities available to people
who can invest in the sugarcane trade and sugar plantations.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, and if we're thinking about the cultural context of
the time, Haitians were uprising up against their own colonial
occupiers and a forced labor system called the corvet wherein
a government mandates that benefited the US military allowed the
US military to conscript able bodied Haitians to build infrastructure
(12:51):
across the island without pay. Right. There's a word for that, right.
It's slavery, and it's similar.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
It's slavery by another name, but it's it's also so
similar to the aftermath of the Thirteenth Amendment in the
United States, which created prison right modern prison labor, which
was essentially the same thing. For quite some time, voodoo
was also in the real world outlawed during the American occupation,
(13:19):
which is very strange given that the founding fathers of
our country made such a big deal about the government
staying out of religion.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Well, isn't that also historically interesting? At least we see
rhymes of this throughout history, where an occupying force quashes
the local belief systems, you know, and then of course
it goes underground, and then you start that's where you
start seeing some interesting commingling of cultures a lot of
times because of things being sort of tamped down and
(13:48):
then having to kind of, you know, peak their heads
up and sort of inject themselves back into culture sort
of in a covert.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Way, right through maybe religious syncretism or acquiring new symbols
and secret operations. Yeah, the government, the occupying government, authorized
raids on religious compounds and they would shut down voodoo ceremonies.
They also confiscated artifacts and religious objects, especially drums and drums.
(14:16):
This is a very interesting tangent. So drums in the
US and throughout different parts of the Caribbean could be
used as communicative tools, So it wasn't just a drum
circle for recreation or for spiritual practices. This was also
a way to shut down local resistance to the occupation.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Absolutely, and I highly recommend checking out a website Lecoubrooklyn
dot com and if you can just search for it,
there's an article on there on this blog by Marcus
Schwartz called Rhythm Without End Haitian voodoo drum music. A
little outside the scope of today's episode, but it's got
some incredible images of some of these drums that would
(14:58):
look sort of like you might picture a honga drum
looking with like a long, tubular wooden body and then
an animal skin of some kind stretched across the top
and held in place with rope that you know is
used to kind of tighten it from down the sides
of the drama underneath. And they are often emblazoned with
various symbols and sigils and things like that. So, dude,
(15:22):
do check that out. It's pretty cool. It really goes
into some detail about the history of voodoo drums.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
And White Zombie had another interesting twist when it came
to the promotion of the film. It was trying to
justify Uncle Sam's occupation of Haiti by depicting Haitian people,
the locals as savages from an earlier time, people that
were maybe not quite fully human and could not exist
(15:50):
in the Western world without the help of you know,
oh these benevolent white overseers. So promoters would go to
the local guys having events for White Zombie and again
this is nineteen thirty two, and they would say higher
African American or hire black performers to dress and quote
(16:12):
tropical garments and beat Tom Tom's and just yell all
over the place.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yikes.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
However, if you get past that really problematic promotion and
you look at just the film itself, it does seem
to imply that it is pretty crappy to take away
a person or community sense of agency.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Oh yeah, murder Lesandre is the big bat. You know.
He has depicted as an absolute monster, abusing and taking
advantage of individuals. You know, through this magic. It has
not seen us like a heroic act in any way,
shape or form. It's tough right to straddle that line,
especially in nineteen thirty four. You got to I mean,
(17:01):
the promotion of the film, I would argue, is its
own thing, separate from the intent of the filmmakers. So
let's give that, you know, credit where credits due, But
I would argue that there's a little bit of subtext
that's hidden in the film that is very cleverly done.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, you could even say they're sneaking it under the radar,
right of this, So if we're looking at the real
world occupation, which is a part of American history that
a lot of textbooks don't care to talk about, the
real right, exactly, So, the real world Haitian people, the
(17:37):
locals at this time were always against the occupation. They
were never fans of it, and they would have continual
protests and uprisings and mutinies and strikes. And eventually, in
nineteen thirty four, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt's good neighbor policy,
Uncle Sad Yeah, funny name, especially considering this next decision.
(18:01):
Because of that policy, Uncle Sam officially withdrew from Haiti
while retaining quote economic connections. So that's where private industry
and public policy get really sticky. They figured out a
way for US corporate interests to continue making money, and
then they said the best thing we can do as
(18:21):
a good neighbor.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Is to GTFO. And often is the case with these
kind of withdrawals, it certainly led to a period of
political upheaval and instability that lasted for quite a long time,
with a succession of coups and various problematic leaders. It
is one of those things that colonialists tend to do
when they're just kind of done with a place, They
(18:44):
just sort of lead them to their own devices and
don't really give them the tools to kind of pick
up the pieces and build themselves back up as an
autonomous nation one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
And sometimes that's neglect or its a matter of incompetence
in the occupying force, but often as a pleasant as
it is to admit that is a purposeful that's a
purposeful thing because they don't want a they don't want
this former vassal state to ever become fully independent.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Oh one hundred percent. And it was around thirteen years
that the US kind of maintained that political hold over Haiti,
and that included a lot of those forced labor practices
and suppression of you know, descents, as well as continuing
to force this improved infrastructure that benefited the US much
(19:34):
more than it benefited the locals.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Oh one hundred percent. And make no mistake of the
colonial power of France was also deeply involved in similar
unclean Shenanigans, and it's it's to a point where the
intergenerational consequences of those actions of that state craft reverberate today.
(19:57):
You know, we recently when we were on when we
were on our work crews at True Crime Cruise, some
of us had the opportunity to visit the Dominican Republic
and it was real eye opener, at least when I
was talking with the locals who it was just an
eye opener to hear them talk about the neighboring country
of Haiti because they're on the you know, they're on
(20:19):
the same island, and the difference between the two countries
on almost every level is just stark and disturbing. I mean,
the US created a real life horror story.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
There one hundred percent, and a lot of historians this
is a turn that I just stumbled upon, and looking
up some of the history of the US occupation of
Haiti refer to the legacy of this occupation and withdrawal
as having left dealt rather a psychic blow to the
concept of independence there in Haiti. And then the US
(20:52):
came back in in nineteen ninety four, not necessarily as
an act of egalitarianism, but more so serving stuff again
to restore a democratically elected president. Then, of course they we.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
You know, had a relationship with right, right, And then
we see this kind of interference throughout the US sphere
of influence at the time, in the Caribbean and Latin America.
And so what we're telling you here, folks, is that
a lot of really good horror tells a different story
(21:28):
right and tells it through metaphor. It makes you think
it's not all just the final girl and gratuitous stabbing.
Although that does have a place in these categories of horror.
Zombie films are in particular ripe for this kind of commentary.
If we go just a few years later, in nineteen
(21:49):
forty three, we'll see I Walked with a Zombie. In
this film, we're back in the Caribbean. There's a young
nurse who takes a job caring for a komat host
woman on a fictional island that is definitely not Haiti,
but definitely is Haiti, and she is all of a
(22:11):
sudden plunged into an underground, a cultural underground where the
ghost of slavery haunts the present and voodoo priests are
weaponizing their power to summon the Living Dead, so again commentary.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Well, yeah, and because of her station as a nurse,
you know, caring for folks in the working class, she
is able to kind of mix in with a lot
of the locals and start to really be the stand
in for the audience and kind of being plunged into
that class divide.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, exactly, and she is there to help. So this
is much more nuanced than.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
One could argue. Still a white savior trope a little bit,
but I think it, you know what I mean, It's
it's not egregious. I haven't seen the film though, but
my understanding is that it's not her.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Her intentions at least are pure, which makes her a
better protagonist. So the couple in White Zombie goes to
Haiti because they're getting married and they want to have
an upper class, exploitative agrarian lifestyle. But the nurse and
I walked with a Zombie our character is named Betsy.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Here.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
She is positioned as someone who is yes, white, but
is also working class. So she's there because she has
a job. She's not an investor. She's taking care of
the wife of a wealthy plantation owner. But she is
interacting more directly with black workers with people who are
(23:39):
locals who are descendants of those previously enslaved people, and
that brings to the forefront this class and race divide
running through the film.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Not to mention and rend really Astutey points out that
Betsy is Canadian, which obviously as a country has links
to French colonialism as well.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, that's a really good point there. Her history as
a character is not tied to racial prejudice and slavery,
which makes her unique amid most of the people she
meets in Haiti, and so the film really puts her
in an outsider position, kind of a class of one's own,
making her a lens for the audience theoretically to more
(24:26):
objectively view the cultural complications of the.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Story, which are personified by two very important key symbols
character named Kara four, who is a zombified guard you know,
complete with like bulging eyes, who kind of lurks in
the shadows waiting to be summoned by his master, as
well as a statue known as t Misery, which was
(24:52):
formerly the figurehead of the Holland Families slave ship and
similar tonight of Living Dead. I Walked with a Zombie
was super controversial when it came out. Similarly because of
some of these slightly ahead of their time political critiques, Yeah, yeah,
putting a critical lens up against the narrative that people
(25:14):
were being taught in school and in the press.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
They were looking at colonialism, they were looking at the
consequences of chattel slavery, and they were saying, Hey, I
don't know if there's a hot take, but maybe this
wasn't all on the up and up.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Maybe maybe this wasn't on, Maybe this wasn't quite on.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Maybe this was a swing and a miss historically, So
they didn't gloss over the facts. For American audiences, and
a lot of audiences in the early nineteen hundreds here
on mainland America, they might not have had much of
an opinion on the occupation of Haiti because it was
making some people who were already very wealthy and powerful
(25:56):
more powerful and more wealthy. But the average per in
you know, Oklahoma or something just hears about it occasionally
when they read the paper.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Right, and it wasn't like the top story no either,
no at all.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
And this this kind of one thing that's brilliant about
these films, and it shows the power of film is
that it cut through all that pr and all the
propagandistic spins, and it made the local population, or it
gave local populations of Americans the opportunity to really reassess
(26:31):
their country's involvement in a brutal past.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
And it did it so.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Experientially, experientially, and I'm thinking it did it in an
elegant way that wasn't talking down to you.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
It was telling you a story. And it's interesting because,
you know, because of the time and some of the
attention that would have been paid, you know, by powers
that be to films like this, some of that. The
fact that it wasn't heavy handed or overt is probably
a product of the time and them having to be
a little bit crafty about it, you know, and not
(27:04):
come right out and say the quiet part loud. Had
to say the quiet part a little quiet. But it
is clear that I walked with the Zombie did so
a little more aggressively than White Zombie.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Yeah, exactly. And this all brings us back to the
Knights of the Living Dead. Sort of fast forward in
a few more decades. It's nineteen sixty eight. The United
States of America has had a rough go for a
couple of reasons. There were some really good things, there
were some really terrible things. The Civil Rights Act was
(27:39):
passed four years earlier, right in nineteen sixty four, but
racial inequality was still very much a thing, even more
so than today.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
All of this stuff is top of mind because I
mean speaking of experiential this was lived, This was right
in front. This was practically a new Civil War kind
of moment to where there was a huge divide that
was very clear in terms of the folks who were
pro mistreatment of African Americans and the folks who were,
(28:11):
you know, on in their corner. This also all was
roiling around during the Vietnam War, which is its own
you know, bag of badgers, as we say on stuff
they don't want you to know. So what started as
an anti Vietnam War protest at the National Democratic Invention
in Chicago turned into an absolute sh show, all out riot. Yeah. Absolutely,
(28:34):
thanks for the beet theorem X.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
We have we we have to emphasize this, we have
to highlight it and put it in italics for anybody
wasn't around during this time. There were serious questions about
the viability of the United States as a thing. I
think that's astute to point out a possible civil war movement,
(28:56):
but people, for one reason or another, on all imaginable
sides of political divides, A lot of people in different
camps were convinced the US was going to fall. We
saw public figures like doctor Martin Luther King Junior assassinated
while delivering a speech at a hotel balcony in Memphis.
JFK had already been assassinated. His brother, Robert F. Kennedy,
(29:20):
is also assassinated by June of nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
I can't help but feel reverberations with the present moment
that we're living in right now too, and also the
fact that zombies have had another big moment if they
ever really went anywhere. But yeah, to your point, it
is a great way of pointing out some of these
inequalities and some of this like US versus Them mentality
(29:46):
without having to be overtly political about it.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yeah, and just a year earlier, in nineteen sixty seven,
one of the millions of people reading all this terrifying
news is a young guy named George Romero. Now, George
at the time is directing commercials, which is how a
lot of filmmakers get their start. He scrapes and scrounges
and saves to start a grassroots production company called Image ten.
(30:15):
And he does this with a couple of his college buddies.
They don't have a lot of money. They've got like
six thousand bucks. When they decide to produce a horror
movie outside of their hometown in Pittsburgh. They need more
than six thousand dollars even back then, so they go
around to beg and cajole friends and family and other
(30:39):
anyone they can find, really, anyone they can get a
pitch meeting with, and they ultimately raise one hundred and
fourteen thousand dollars for the final film, which sounds like
a lot of money maybe to an individual, but as
we know, is very much not a lot of money
when you're trying to make a whole ass film.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Well, the funny thing, like, I guess it's time to
do it. If we could get a boot inflation calculated
that bad boy.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
Dude, it does add up to about what you would
consider the most modest budget of an indie film today,
which is one million, eighty five.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
And forty one dollars and sixty four cents boop.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Great, Yes, And this here's the twist, here's how they
get all this money, even though they're basically some kids
just out of college. They go to their investors and
they say, hey, if you invest in our film, will
also put you in the movie. So they appealed to
some vanity.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
So even still with this consideration, the budget is tight
and they blow a lot of it renting the rural
farmhouse where they wanted the film to be set.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Yeah, it's funny because originally they wanted this to be
much more of an ed Wood Plan nine from Outer
Space kind of fi Cold War era alien picture, you know,
which was much more of a trope at the time,
But because of limitations and constraints, they had to get
a little more creative with it, and in doing that
(32:13):
kind of made a new thing exactly.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Yeah, because the makeup effects for aliens can add up
pretty quickly. So here's what they end up with. In
the final plot, the story follows a lady named Barbara.
Barbara travels with her brother to visit her father's grave
and when they get to the cemetery, they're attacked by
(32:36):
a guy in the cemetery. He kills her brother. She
runs in a panic of valid panic and arrives at
a farmhouse, and then she and several other people that
she doesn't know. They end up hiding from this horde
of hungry zombies who continually lay siege to the house.
The hero of the group, the guy kind of assumes
(33:00):
the leadership position, is a dude named Ben and he
is played by a black actor named Dwayne Jones. Everybody
else inside the farmhouse, like the humans, they're all white actors.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Yeah, and I mean you pointed out the whole thing
about Okay, you invest in us, will give you a part.
What a genius structure to be able to do that
and not have to depend too much on people's acting chops.
You just throw them in some pancake makeup and have
them shamble around and go. Yeah. But to that point there,
they had a friend who was of their close group,
(33:37):
the best actor, the best guy for the job. The
fact that he was black had nothing to do with it,
but in the end it made that cultural impact even
more stark.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
This is interesting, right because it feels like, if we're
trying to spin a narrative, we would say Romero and
team were so progressive and ahead of the time. We're
not saying they're not progressive people, and we're definitely not
saying they're bad people, but we do think it's important
to realize the reality of independent filmmaking, which is a
(34:18):
lot of time you look a lot of times you
look around at your friend group and you say, Okay, sorry, guys,
Dwayne's the best actor, So now our movie is political.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, but that's also the thing that's so neat about
art is it can often be a product of happenstance,
those happy accidents that Bob Ross is always talking about.
That's true for music and creating things with limitations, like
if you have every tool in the arsenal, sometimes you
get kind of stemied or a little bit overwhelmed. But
(34:51):
when you're forced to make choices because of a lack
of resources, oftentimes accidentally magic happens. And that's exactly what
in here with Dwayne Jones, who is the guy we're
talking about here, who played Ben, our hero Ben.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, yeah, this guy is this guy is the saving
force a Knight of the Living Dead. And it's interesting
because you know, like we mentioned, at this time, Hollywood
had this thing that seemed almost like a calculated quota
on who could or could not be a lead role actor,
(35:29):
and Sidney Poitier was like the only black actor who
was allowed to be the lead man. So we want
to be clear it is never mentioned. The idea of
race relations here is never explicitly mentioned. It's never a
story point. Nobody gives the Ben character a tough time
about being a quote unquote black guy trapped with these
(35:53):
white folks. In this zombie flick. He plays the entire
role as a unluck key stranger who was stuck in
this house with other unlucky strangers, tried to survive the.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Night, a ragtag band of yes strangers who will become
the allies. I want to backtrack, just ever so slightly
for a quick moment to mention the Hayes Code, which
was you know, often just known as the Code. There's
an era of Hollywood called pre code Hollywood, which is
(36:27):
what the two films we talked about earlier, Fell Under
White Zombie and I Walked with a Zombie. The Hayes
Code was established in the later in the thirties and
ended in nineteen sixty eight, which was kind of the
precursor to the Motion Picture Association of America Ratings board,
and you know, our rating et cetera. But it was
(36:47):
essentially a form of censorship that imposed self regulated prohibition
of topics like profanity, graphic violence, nudity, sexual relationships, proper
sexual relationships aka probably interracial you know. So nineteen sixty
eight is actually when that ends. And I'm just wondering
(37:09):
if the lack of this kind of oversight was largely
what led to this film being able to exist. Although
we already mentioned that it was mainly underground when it
came out, so this is probably It's not like when
a thing ends all of a sudden, everything changes, So
I'm sure there was still a sense of this kind
of puritanical, you know, attitude from the audiences and critics.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Right, Yeah, And there's a reason Ben is the leader
the character here, because look, if you rewatch the film,
if you're a horror buff like us folks, you'll notice
that pretty much all the other humans in the farmhouse
are kind of useless and white. Bet is trustworthy. He's
the smartest one. Barbara, our character that the story begins with.
(37:56):
She is in a state of shock for most of
the movie because her brother got killed in front of her.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
He got eaten. Yeah, not cool. It's interesting though, because
the whole starkness of the medium, the black and white film,
and then there's this like central character who's black, everybody
else is white. All of this is not necessarily done
on purpose, but it really makes it read even more
kind of poignantly. You know, the whole thing just feels
really intentional even if it wasn't. But yeah, Ben is
(38:23):
our hero. He's the most competent one of the bunch.
He's more or less single handedly keeping these dumb dumbs
in line and making sure that they don't get eaten.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
So he will do things where he's trying to get
to know other people, and he's asking Barbara questions about
what's going on, What the heck is that outside?
Speaker 2 (38:41):
She's no help.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Get a hold of yourself, right, slap, slap, But he hurries,
He immediately assesses the situation. He tries to board up
the house, he fires a rifle, he lights fires outside.
He tries to keep back this trail of zombies who
have started to discover them. And it's almost like ants
(39:04):
will follow upon other ants. Maybe we talk a little
bit about the other folks there, because right now we've
just talked about Barbara and Bett.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, there's also a middle aged couple who have found
refuge in the house. Their young daughter named Karen, has
been bitten by a zombie. We are, I guess, waiting
to see at this point whether or not that's a
thing where you turn, you get turned, because we talked
about how there is a story point that this was
(39:36):
caused by radiation or some sort of like you know,
anomalists uap phenomenon, very love crafty and like the color
out of space, right, that's another story point. Or probably
he was aware of Romeiro or Knight of the Comet.
You remember that one man I loved The Night of
the Comet. So we're waiting to see if she's gonna turn.
(39:56):
I think it's implied that that is what's going to happen.
We've also got Henry, who's a real till. He's got
a bit of a temper. He's a bit of a misogynist,
and this is really kind of mucking things up and
just bringing bad vibes to the party. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
He's one of those one of my least favorite people
in an emergency or survival.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
Situation or an escape room or an escape room, he's.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Just like blustering around, yelling, at people and being better,
thinks he knows better, and all his ideas are terrible
and he has no listening skills, right, And.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
So at one point Ben has to leave the farmhouse
to help other stragglers outside, and Henry just takes it
upon himself to lock him out. Yeah, classic Henry.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
And this is where we get to that point that
I think we wanted to explore a little bit more.
Keep in mind, this isn't the late nineteen sixties in
the United States. When Henry doesn't let the black character
Ben inside the house, they go back and forth. Ben
finally gave entry and he just clocks the crap out
(41:03):
of Henry. He's just had it.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
This did not happen very often at all in cinema
at the time. No, And part of the reason that
this did happen, I think we mentioned the idea that
his race was not a story point, but it goes
even further than that. Romero, talking to NPR, said that
Jones was simply the best actor from among our friends,
and we didn't change the script from when Dwayne agreed
(41:27):
to play the role. Therefore, he plays the entire thing
as a white actor would, and there is no implied
racial limitations, and yet that act as depicted is such
a powerful moment, like that first interracial on screen kiss
in Star Trek.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Yeah, and in nineteen sixties America, regardless of genre of film,
you would not see a black actor punching a white
actor on screen, especially not when the white guys depicted
as a villain. Ben also gets fit with other characters
in the story. When Barbara is having one of her
freak out episodes, Ben does slap her to an attempt
(42:08):
to get her back to life, back to reality. Oh yeah, yeah, a.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Trope in and of itself. Snap out of it woman,
you know, ye whomever.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
And we also know that due to the way race
relations were depicted on screen at this time, black actors
certainly didn't hit female white actors on screen in the sixties,
not even in the context of hey, I'm quote helping you. Eventually, Shockingly,
as we teased, Ben does have to kill the girl caring.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Yep, she succumbs to her bite, and he does, you know,
do her a kindness and put her down after she
begins to It's not like he's just doing it in advance.
She goes full zombie and begins to devour the flesh
of her father, which you know, we don't love that guy.
You kind of love to see it getting his come up.
It's a little bit, yeah, but what a terrible way
(43:05):
to go. Now we're dealing with the death of a
child's which is also absolutely shocking for the time.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Yeah, and now you're watching the young eat the old,
which kind of feels like a symbol for generational upheaval
in the US. And then despite again in the context,
the audience is watching a white child's character being killed
by a black character, and to some people in the
(43:33):
audience that was indible, and to some film critics that
was incredibly controversial, even though that's the nature of a
good horror story. Right in the end, our character Ben
is the last human left. He is never infected with
the zombie bug, but when he's trying to finally reach
(43:56):
the authorities, he is shot by a sheriff who they
well Ben might be a member of the living dead.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
And again, it would have happened that way in the
plot even if it had been played by a white actor.
But the fact that it was a black actor and
the police brutality of it all, and it's just, I mean,
so much of this stuff was happenstance, and I don't know,
It's like you have to move so quickly and be
so nimble in an indie film production like this, you
might not even have time to think about how this
(44:23):
is going to have this kind of cultural impact. But
boy did it ever, and it really still reads and
hits today. I know that you're a fan of Jordan
Peele's work, both his comedy work and his film work
and the Breakout. You know, obviously the masterpiece of his
in the horror genre and satire was get Out, which
originally he had written the ending where the main character,
(44:46):
as he's escaping the kind of creepy you know, murderous,
zombifying white families, you know, nightmare home, he gets killed
by police or arrested, but don't remember he gets killed
but instead spoiler alert three two one, his buddy from
the TSA swoops in and saves the day for a
nice little comedic punch at the end. But that absolutely
(45:09):
was a reference, and you're also even expecting that that's
what's going to happen to him. Because of this.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
We should mention the sheriff, a knight of the living
dead who shoots Ben.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
He is a white guy.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Again, the argument is, as we said, that, it just
happened that way because Dwayne who plays Ben, was literal
was literally the best or the least worst actor they knew.
So the film closes with Ben's body being burned on
top of a pile of the living dead, of the
(45:41):
zombies that he had spent the entirety of the story fighting.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Stragic. Yes, so, during the sixties, black Americans were obviously
struggling to prove their worth and rise up in you know,
economically bettering their lot in life in a system that
was kind of designed to prevent them from doing so.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, well said, and we know that. Look, we know
that that was true. Then it's true. Now there's a
reason that final scene of Night of the Living Dead,
with Ben's body atop this pile of zombies, is the
reason it hit so profoundly. Zombie films essentially function as
(46:24):
a time capsule of the audience's greatest political fears. They're
deeper the more you think about them, and you know,
spoiler alert for American history. The US did survive the
nineteen sixties and went on to have other shenanigans in
the seventies, the eighties, and even now in the twenty twenties.
The seventies were a little bit calmer to in some
(46:47):
degrees because yuppies were leading in charge for consumerism. The
country was no longer technically at war. And then you
see zombie movies start to evolve and step with that.
Now you get re Animator, Romero goes back to the
well of the Undead with a Day of the Dead,
which is literally a shopping mall.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Yeah, for sure, and it's excellence. It's it's in color. Obviously,
it is his like really blank check kind of version
of the zombie movie, and it's it's excellent. It is
schlocky as I'll get out. The gore effects are bonkers,
but it does also still have this underlying kind of
commentary social commentary. Then you also have just the utter
(47:30):
shlock of things like Reanimator like you mentioned, and you
know Peter Jackson's Dead Alive for example, the Evil Dead films.
You start to really see this kind of flurry of
spins and twists on that iconic genre that that Romero
created with Don of the Dead, even himself doing a
(47:50):
spin on his own thing with Day of the Dead,
kind of taking it to the next level. Then you
also see Michael Jackson's iconic music video for Thriller directed
by by John Landis I think is his name of
the guy that made American Werewolf in London, which incredible effects,
and again taking some of these tropes and this genre
(48:12):
from the underground squarely into the kind of you know, zeitgeist.
Speaker 1 (48:15):
Yeah, and we also see the evolution of things that
are zombie like but are a world away from voodoo,
because in the nineteen thirties, one of the fears that
filmmakers were really drawing from is the fear of other cultures,
right xenophobia, the fear of unfamiliar magic or spiritual practices.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Which is built into the thing from the earliest days,
the whole us versus them mental.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
But as as a scientific progress continues and as society
overall evolves, we see zombies taking an increasingly secular approach
to their origin stories, and we see things that are
you know, not quite zombies, like the villains of Charlton
Heston's Omega Man from nineteen seventy one that's very post apocalyptic,
(49:02):
but the monsters are zombie an all but name, and
of course Night of the Comet Absolute Banger nineteen eighty
four sci fi comedy horror film about I think it's
like a Lady and the main character ends up safe
from a dangerous comet because she falls asleep in a
(49:25):
projectionist booth, but everybody else goes outside to watch the
comet and it turns them into monsters.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Oh man. Yeah, and it also reminds me of just
I mean a lot of this is Frankenstein base. You know,
we've got the Gleam littletro Frankenstein adaptation coming out soon.
But just this idea of an abomination, you know, an
unstoppable other, right that maybe even is of of who
(49:52):
we are in some way, this kind of bastardization of
like what it means to be human. And that also
is a trope that you see in all kinds of
alien invasion movies, like The Body Snatchers and The Blob.
Just this unstoppable force that is going to subsume and
devour us, all right.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Yeah, and then we see kind of a Venn diagram
when we get to other types of undead creatures, like vampires,
who are sort of the honor students of the zombie.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
World, much sexier, much better dressed.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
I've started to get back into the more gritty, the
more gritty depictions of vampirism, like the Strain or the Yeah,
or let the Right One in Love.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
Let the Right One in the American version is a banger, actually,
but the original is where it's at.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
And then we also see weird zombie films like Fido
where the zombies are domesticated pets.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Yeah, and of course, you know, with twenty eight Days
Later by Danny Boyle, you start to see this evolution
of zombies into these more raging kind of like not
shambling anymore, but like hauling asks, you know, and they're
incredibly muscular and deadly. And of course we just had
the third installment in that franchise come out this year,
(51:13):
twenty eight years later, which I really loved a lot,
and it has a lot of COVID kind of themes,
and again this sort of like what does it mean
to exist in a world like this? How do you
survive like taking that not just from like on the day,
but like much further down the line, and what does
it look like? And how does that then become part
of your culture and part of your traditions? Right?
Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, And there are so many other great zombie films
to name. There's a lot of really good comedy horror
like Zombie Land, Shot of the Dead, and so on,
So we can't wait to explore some of these because,
as we have to say pretty often nowadays, it's.
Speaker 2 (51:55):
Always Halloween in America.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Big thanks to our super producer from mister Max Williams,
his brother Alex Williams, who composed this slap and bop
and gosh, is Alex back in town?
Speaker 2 (52:09):
He isn't at the moment. I know he's coming soon.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Okay, yeah, very soon. He'll be back very soon.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
Wow, you made it sound like he's outside. Yes, he's
scratching on my door like a zombie. Huge thanks dude.
Our favorite shambling zombiefide creature of the night, Jonathan Strickland,
the Quizzed aj Bahamas Jacobs, the Puzzler.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
Yes, the route.
Speaker 1 (52:32):
Dude's that ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you'll love them.
Big big thanks for research associate Renfest.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Yes, this one was a banger, as was the previous
zombie related episode that Wren delivered for us, and we're
really enjoying her work a lot. Man. Huge things to you.
Speaker 4 (52:48):
Ben.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Love talking zombies with you, do it any day of
the week. And also if you'll see you next time.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
Books.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Noel Brown
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