March 7, 2025 • 60 mins
Fictional disease outbreaks have haunted our screens for nearly a century, revealing far more about our society than any microscopic villain. From class warfare aboard a cholera-stricken ship in 1939's "Pacific Liner" to the eerily prescient "Contagion" that rocketed to popularity during COVID-19, pandemic narratives capture our deepest fears and societal fault lines.
What makes these stories uniquely terrifying is the invisible nature of the threat. Unlike floods or fires that can be seen and avoided, disease spreads silently through our communities, creating a special kind of paranoia. Our fight-or-flight responses falter against enemies we cannot see, and pandemic films brilliantly exploit this universal vulnerability.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I could go down a rabbit hole about Cupid, but I
will not.
Please do not.
I will not.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Move along, Gentlemen .
Let's broaden our minds.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Are they in the proper approach pattern for
today?
Negative, negative.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
All weapons Now Charge the lightning field.
Ebola it's kind of a big deal.
I'm more of a fan of theMutamba virus personally.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Oh, from Outbreak.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's like Ebola, but not so that everyone who watched
it didn't really know whatEbola was and we're just kind of
misled.
Which?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
is so sad because the Ebola outbreak in Africa was
conquered.
It was sort of defeated becausewe didn't have this science,
skepticism, bullshit that wehave now, and there are movies
about that, actually that we'regoing to talk about.
About the science, skepticismor the Ebola, about how we came
together to defeat Ebola.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Okay, well, that's one thing about all these movies
is that there's a lot aboutcoming together and bettering
humankind as one, which I don'tknow if that plays out in
reality.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
You're right, but that only applies to a certain
era.
After that era, it's the exactopposite.
Okay, okay, let's get into it.
Yeah, welcome back to DispatchAjax after all that.
I'm Skip.
I'm Jake.
Is it all that cock smoke inthere?
I'm Jake.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Is it all that cock smoke in?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
there.
Oh, it's the Bird Bola-demicvid.
That sounds like a sci-fioriginal from like 1999.
Bird Bola, rock and Rolla byGuy.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Ritchie, think of snatch, but a lot of coughing.
I got a bowl in my snatch Lockstock and two smoking jabs.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
So today we decided to do an episode about.
Originally, I wanted it to bemulti-tiered.
We were going to talk aboutpandemics, epidemics and disease
in media, which would havemeant comic books, movies, video
games.
What have you?
Books, obviously Books.
Who reads?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
books I don't read.
Reading's for nerds.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, exactly the kind of nerds that would solve
epidemics.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
What do they know?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
But honestly, books and films are the the only real
rich genres that these thingsappear in.
You have some in comic books,but they're not.
There are some glaringstandouts, but not a lot.
There isn't a lot, there's likefive you could really get into
yeah, and really there's not alot said no, or about those?
(03:04):
And the ones that do saysomething.
It's stuff that's already beensaid, just kind of modernized,
like why the Last man?
That whole thing has been donelike a thousand times in movies.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And, let's be honest, it's not really about the
pandemic.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
No, it's about a society that's changed because
of the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Right, which is something that I wanted to get
into, because, so the reason wedid this was because I had COVID
and Jake was sick.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, I had a norovirus.
Norovirus Pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That's not great.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, not fun.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
It's caused specifically and only by
inhaling fecal matter.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Hey, don't tell me, I live my life.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It's pink eye, but in the gut.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
My guts are already pink, right.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Why hasn't there been pink eye in the movie?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
All right, Googlebot.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It was Wes Graven's last project before he died.
He didn't quite get it done.
It was also starring CillianMurphy.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Bruce Pink Eye from 2008.
No, really, really, pink Eye isset in a small town in upstate
New York, in a prison-like,dilapidated, insane asylum where
secret drug testing has goneinexplicably wrong.
Patients are dying and sick andtwisted.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
What the fuck does that have to do with Pink Eye?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Raging homicidal lunatics.
All hell breaks loose.
One patient escaped deformed,angry and far beyond insane.
That sounds like 12 Monkeys,but okay, he brings death and
terror to an unsuspecting townand everyone in it through fecal
matter.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Really Does it say that?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
No, I added that because it's more entertaining.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
You'd have to be throwing your shit around like
an ape a la 12 Monkeys for thatto really do it.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I might watch that.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Well, the things that you'd watch, though.
I mean, it's a low bar, and,speaking of low bars, this is
our show and we're going to talkabout, in this specific
instance, films that deal withepidemics, pandemics and disease
.
What Did you hear?
Something new?
Or was that funny?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
No, no, I'm just I was like I was looking at the
director of Pink.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Eye, what else?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
he done and I came upon something called Weed Gees
and I was like what the fuck isWeed G's W-E-E-D-J-I-E-S
Exclamation point?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
A phonetic version of like a Ouija board Kind of, but
it's more.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
I think it's like if the Ghoulies did drugs.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I don't even know where to begin with that I know,
so from the perspective of theghoulies, no, or how they act.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I believe the ghoulies.
So they're doing a Ouija board.
And what kind of drugs theseghoulies come because they're
all the pot, energy or somethingand they're just out running
amok.
It's like little ghoullygremlins but with weed oh, we
(06:13):
weed, weed.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Oh, okay, weed geez.
Okay, look you and I willintentionally watch a lot of bad
stuff.
I don't even know if that fitsour criteria.
Yeah, this looks more like ohGod, what is like Ginger Dead
man I was literally going to saythat, and Evil Bong the later
(06:35):
incarnations of Ginger Dead manversus the Evil Bong Like Ginger
Weed, dickhead or whatever thefuck it's called.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Because they have other ones after that.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
All right, google, ginger, weezy, dickman and also
Metallica.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Oh man, weegee's looks pretty bad, no shit,
Pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Does it have our friend the albino ghoulie?
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I wish.
I think it might be a cut above.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
By the way, I hadn't told you, but I have Named Disty
our mascot.
Well, because I couldn't callhim Ajax, because that's you
know.
Wait, disty Dispatch Ajax,wouldn't it be Dispy?
Does that sound better to you?
I don't know.
Yes, okay, well, sound betterto you?
I don't know.
Yes, Okay, well, fine, then usethat.
(07:27):
I don't know.
I'm just not calling him Ajax,even though we probably should,
now that I think about it.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, call him Ajax.
All right, ajax, the albinoghoulie.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
We have discussed this informally, but now
formally, that is our officialmascot, ajax, the albino coolie
from Tales from the Dark Side.
Right, I forgot, I totallyblanked on it.
It's Tales from the Dark Side.
Yeah, yes, tales from the DarkSide.
Yes, thank you, jesus Christ, Ioverthought it.
I was like, oh God, pleasedon't be for monsters, don't be
(08:02):
for monsters.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Okay.
So then I went down the DannyDraven director hole.
Oh the crow.
No, this is the guy who didWeed G's.
He also did Crypts K-R-Y-P-T-Z.
Oh my god, when aspiringrappers Times Square.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
T-Y-N-E-Z.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
S-K-W-A-R, fuzzy Down and Licorice L-I-K-R-I-S-H.
Cross paths with stripperStesha.
They follow her in MysteriousTrip Club where sexy ladies are
really vampires in disguise.
Damn, that sounds baller.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
It actually sounds like a really tame premise,
considering the buildup ofpeople that are in it.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Oh, licorice.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Oh, that's what you got Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Vampire leader Kulada finds out that Times holds the
key to the Bloodsuckers' worlddomination in this urban horror
film that plays likequote-unquote vampire strippers
in the hood no end quote.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
No end quote.
It's just open-ended, so youcan add your own to it.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
It's just cut.
I don't think there was anybodyediting this particular.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Well, maybe it was on purpose, maybe you were
supposed to add your owncommentary, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
A commentary, perhaps commentary, I don't know, a
commentary perhaps.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Well, I don't think a comma would fix those problems,
but uh, maybe it's common therapper.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I need commentary.
Wow, that's what.
Yeah, so what's this episode?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
okay, yeah, because I could go down that rabbit hole
and talk about bones for like along time, but we're not going
to do that.
So to be moderately serious forhalf a second, the phenomenon
of epidemic disease has been apart of the human experience
since the moment we beganorganizing into permanent
communities millennia ago.
We know this not just from thefossil record, but thousands of
(09:59):
years of documentation, throughart, music, literature, anything
that we leave behind thatexpresses the state of the day.
By February 9th 2022, accordingto the World Health
Organization, confirmed cases ofthe novel coronavirus known as
COVID-19.
In case you guys had missed allof this, have you heard about
(10:20):
this?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I've heard about the novella coronavirus.
Is that similar?
Way shorter, A little shortermaybe?
Way shorter A little?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
shorter, maybe Way shorter, and the Stephen King
version better than his normalstuff.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Is there like a short story coronavirus?
Maybe I'd rather do that one.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
So this had reached 397 million infections and the
death toll was 5.75 millionworldwide.
This is by 2022.
The raw numbers will be muchhigher because technically, it's
not over.
In December 2019, when thepandemic was thought to have
(10:57):
begun officially, stevenSoderbergh's Contagion was the
270th most watched WarnerBrothers film.
Not just film, warner Brothersfilm.
This is according to BuzzFeed.
By May of 2020, it was thesecond most watched.
The COVID-19 outbreak presents arare opportunity to examine
(11:19):
whether pandemic filmsaccurately reflect the
collective zeitgeist of humansociety.
Pandemic films accuratelyreflect the collective zeitgeist
of human society in the face ofa disease outbreak, its
responses, its course of action,its failures and its foibles?
Or is there a disconnect?
Truth is, the reasons why wefind these stories compelling
(11:44):
and important are likely bothobjectively simple and, at the
same time, head-scratchinglycomplicated.
On one hand, pandemic orepidemic tales are simple to
explain.
Through the lens of innatesurvival instincts, they portray
forces of nature like awildfire, a flood or a tornado.
The disease spreading isunrelenting, overwhelming and,
without significant effort andor opportunity to run and hide,
(12:04):
unbeatable.
However, the thing that makesthem a unique source of awe and
terror is that a disease isinvisible.
Its hidden nature automaticallyputs us on our heels in ways
more complicated than othernatural disasters.
Transmission is often confusingor without evidence-based
science.
(12:24):
Panic-inducing Combat diseaserequires a different type of
decision-making and rationalplanning than we're used to.
Our first reactions are, bynecessity, different than our
fight-or-flight instincts whenconfronted by a threat more
visibly tangible.
Fundamentally, to even get tothe point where a disease is an
(12:45):
epidemic means our guardrailshave failed, our fail-safes have
collapsed and now our sense ofsafety and normalcy are gone.
In this case, the dramatictension comes from how we deal
with these overwhelming odds.
It's kind of like a KobayashiMaru test.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Except there's no way to cheat the plague.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
But with plagues sometimes there's a way to win.
It's kind of like a KobayashiMaru test, Except there's no way
to cheat the plague.
But with plagues sometimesthere's a way to win.
It's a push.
Yet for some the appeal ofthese stories are more nuanced.
It can tap into the modernsense of ennui that there's
something wrong with the worldand it's irreparably broken.
Salvageable only by tearingdown the world as we know it.
Salvageable only by tearingdown the world as we know it.
(13:28):
Or it lies in the anxiety inknowing that whatever stability
the modern world enjoys isfleeting, that the end of life
as we know it is very fuckingnigh.
To quote 28 Days Later.
Some recognizing that thefollies and failures of
humankind are responsible andretribution will come through
either secular or spiritualmeans, others see it as
cautionary tale and call toaction In any event we are often
(13:51):
drawn to its genre for thereasons unique to it.
According to the paper howPandemic Films Help Us
Understand Outbreaks by Zhao LiSong et al, futurist scholars
have identified six broad themesfor films set in the futures
that could be appliedspecifically in this case to
pandemic films Growth and Decay,threats and New Hope, waste
(14:15):
World, the Powers that Be,disarray and Inversion.
There are the macroscopicscenarios of destiny of
humankind, that is, scenarioarchetypes In Growth and Decay.
In growth and decay, collapseand decay of social order and
living conditions areaccompanied by the excessive
power of monopolisticcorporations.
In the powers that be, after acatastrophic event, totalitarian
(14:38):
or dictatorial regime gainstight control over its citizens.
In Waste Worlds, a global-scalecatastrophe brings the world
back to a pre-medieval or tribalstate.
In Threats and New Hope, anapocalypse threatens the very
existence of humanity.
Humankind is saved throughheroic and collective efforts.
(14:59):
In Disarray, human societydegenerates into a chaotic
situation due to problems suchas crime, social unrest, poverty
, war, famines or pandemics.
This is something that zombiefilms lean heavily in,
especially Romero in Night ofthe Living Dead.
His whole thing was comment onracism, sexism, homophobia, the
(15:20):
whole gamut.
In Inversion, a new agent, suchas an alien species replaces
human beings to dominate theEarth.
Most pandemic films belong tothe disaster thriller genre.
In the eyes of this paper, theyresemble the image of Threats
and New Hope.
This corroborates that pandemicfilms are representative of
(15:40):
common social imaginaries.
End quote.
They do go on to say quote ascollective imaginaries, pandemic
films reflect people's fear ofinfectious disease outbreaks and
envision where and how they mayoccur, including their dire
consequences, the complexity toidentify causes, the
difficulties to find treatments.
Some depiction may be based onthe social context, the time and
(16:05):
place, when and where the filmsare made, which is just kind of
films.
According to the medicalhistorian Nancy Tomas, there
have been two periods of germpanic in American popular
culture.
The first one occurred between1900 and 1940, and the other
started in 1985 and is ongoing.
(16:25):
The public awareness andconcerns on disease outbreaks
are shaped by news andentertainment, including films,
and by collaborations amongsocial groups, including
scientific researchers,politicians, activists,
journalists and advertisers, fordifferent social, political as
well as economic interests.
End quote.
Now, this is one of the lasttimes we will quote this paper,
(16:47):
because it goes off the railslater.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of good information there.
It just does not.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
It's not cohesive, it doesn't give you a fucking.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah, it doesn't elucidate a grand answer for a
lot of this.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Which is what it states that it sets out to do.
But whatever, that's, yeah, thefirst germ panic between 1900
and 1940, infectious diseaseswhich had troubled human
societies for millennia, such asthe plague smallpox yellow
fever, tuberculosis, stilloccasionally led to outbreaks.
Subsequently, medical scienceand understanding made huge
(17:22):
strides in the middle of the20th century.
This actually is one of thereasons that the Allies won
World War II, because the Nazisweren't willing to believe in
germ theory as much and thescience behind as the Allies
were.
The Allies helped introduceantibiotics into treatment of
soldiers, and that made a bigdifference, as it turns out.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
That's interesting.
As more Nazis are getting inpower now, germ theory is being
pulled back.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
It's almost like those two mindsets go hand in
hand Weird.
This led to the second germpanic, which includes AIDS,
ebola and drug-resistant strainsof older bacterial diseases,
generating a new viral panic.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I would also add to this man-made diseases.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I'm about to get to that.
Oh, sorry about that.
No no, no, no, my thing doesn'tmake sense except in my head it.
New knowledge or fantasies ofgenetics, the human immune
system and human natureinteraction have been shaping
popular perceptions of emergingdisease, with no effective magic
bullets against them.
Now subheading, when I saymagic bullets, that's not to be
(18:32):
confused with the film DrElric's Magic Bullet from 1940,
in which a German physician,pre-nazi, developed the first
synthetic antimicrobial drug,606, or cell vericin.
This film describes how Elricbecame interested in the
properties of the then-newsynthetic dyes and had an
(18:53):
intuition that they could becomeuseful in the diagnosis of
bacterial diseases.
If you've ever watched the cutscenes from forensic files or
something like that, you'llunderstand what I'm saying.
After this work met withsuccess, elric proposed that
synthetic compounds could bemade to selectively target and
destroy diseased-causingmicroorganisms.
(19:14):
He called such a drug a quotemagic bullet.
This film very specificallydescribes how in 1908, after 606
attempts, he succeeded incuring syphilis.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, this is a movie based on a real person yes,
these kinds of things do happen.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
They're not common in this genre but they do happen,
and there are several of them.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
It's also funny that this guy and his synthetic dyes
it's like the same thing thatMel Gibson just talked about on
Joe Rogan about methylene bluewhich I mean originally was a
dye used in factories to dyeclothes.
But people are now drinking it,thinking it, I don't know,
alters mitochondrial actions orsome shit, as one of the new
(20:01):
ivermectin adjacent cancer magicbullets I really wish that
everyone involved in that entiremindset had just listened to
trump and injected bleach atthis point.
I really wish they had just doneall.
Could have just stared at thesun while injecting bleach they
did drink bleach that was thing.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
That's unfortunately still a thing.
A lot of people still do that.
Several people have gone toprison for selling watered down
bleach as a medical curativePeople have gone to prison for
putting that on their childrenand using that as health care.
Yeah, that's really fun.
So this commentary doesn'tnecessarily include the use of
chemical weapons in World War I,for instance, since those are
(20:41):
strictly poisonous gases.
So I didn't really.
The use of biological weaponsor germ warfare do become an
emergent subject after World WarII and closer to the peak end
of the Cold War.
In film generally, dates aremore fluid, as the depictions of
the first proposed germ panicthat we cite earlier are
(21:01):
scattered throughout the decades.
They still come up, actually.
So it's not like it's unique tothat period, but it was more
concentrated in that period.
Oh shit, I don't know why.
I said that because I actuallywrote that line down.
They're more concentratedwithin these time periods, but
not necessarily exclusive.
I ad-libbed the line that Iwrote.
Okay, it's almost like it wasmeant to be.
For instance, the movieCounterblast from 1948, in which
(21:25):
a Nazi physician continues withplague, and I think this is
interesting because this kind ofparallels Magic Bullet, because
it's a German physician.
I mean, throughout the latterpart of the 19th century and the
first part of the 20th century,austria and germany, bohemia
they were all known as theintellectual capitals of the
(21:46):
world.
But the nazi scientists pushedback against actual
evidence-based and and researchscience, but they were willing
to just throw whatever at the,at the wall, and see what stuck
yeah, I mean there's a lot ofresearch, quote-unquote science
going on, but but with no actualoversight or a scientific
method.
It was just like let's see whathappens when I stick a thing in
(22:07):
this guy's eye.
That's not how science works,but they all thought they were
brilliant.
So a former nazi physiciancontinues with plague
experiments after the end of thewar.
Now, nearly every decade sinceworld war ii has released a
small number of bioweapon films.
This was probably the first, atleast the most prominent.
(22:28):
The interim period betweenthose two germ panics that we
referred to earlier sawfantastical depictions of
epidemic disease, often fromaliens or coming from the other,
or they were man-made.
I'm quoting again from Song etal.
Both the USA and the formerSoviet Union secretly developed
their biological weapons duringthe Cold War period.
(22:49):
In the 1960s and 70s, the civilrights movement, protests
against the Vietnam War, theassassinations of John Kennedy
and Martin Luther King Jr I'mgoing to throw in there Malcolm
X and Fred Hampton the oil priceshock and following inflation,
as well as the Watergate scandal, added to the enduring shock
and controversy in Americansociety, as well as to a deep
(23:12):
distrust toward the government,particularly among youth.
During and after the VietnamWar, the scientific community
and the public were more awareof biological weapons programs.
The above historical contextmay explain the theme of
deceitful leaders, slashgovernments, secretly developing
bioweapon programs.
(23:33):
End quote.
That is true.
All that having been said, wewould be remiss to not
(23:56):
acknowledge that these films asoften blatant critique, or
sometimes in support of American, slash Western capitalism.
In fact, I think it's one ofthe most important things to
note about these, and there's alot of other academic research
that supports this.
In 1939's Pacific Liner, which Itried to watch but you cannot
(24:18):
find.
It's not streaming, it's not onInternet Archive.
There are physical places whereyou can watch it Right, but
online nearly impossible.
But in this movie, a stowawayand by the way, a Chinaman, one
of them, eh, yeah exactly hasinfected the crew.
Oh, it's on Mubi.
I looked on there and it saidit wasn't available.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Well, I don't know, I don't have Mubi, so, but it
shows it.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
A lot of places have like a placeholder for it, but
when you go on there and try andwatch it, it's like no, you
can't see it, it's not there.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, I don't know, maybe, Maybe you can.
Yeah, I guess.
I guess, that's a weird thingto tell people in this.
Are you saying it doesn't fitwith the whole ethos what we're
talking about?
Hey, listen to Mel Gibson.
(25:12):
Hey, take your ivermectin andgo watch Pacific Liner.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
You're a hydrochloric win.
Yeah, which, by the way?
Hydrochloric win?
It's like a weird mashup of aSpider-Man villain and Harley
Quinn.
I don't know they just gotshipped.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Is that what happened ?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
And the Floronic man?
I don't know.
Yes, they did, it's all slashfiction.
So, yes, a Chinaman infects thecrew of the SS Arctis with
cholera, while the passengers,who are all obviously upper
crust, remain oblivious.
The ship's doctor and nursework to control the infection
and heal their patients, whilethe engineer, who's a disease
(25:49):
skeptic, keeps the stokers attheir jobs, filling the ship's
boilers with coal to make thebest time to San Francisco,
ostensibly to not upset thefirst class passengers.
Above the engineer,appropriately named Crusher,
keeps the working class of theship in line, literally working
(26:10):
them to death.
But because of the science andevidence skepticism of the
working class as portrayed here,they turn on the doctor and
nurse for implementing aquarantine sanitation protocols.
And the weird thing is theyweren't even as upset about the
quarantine as they were abouthaving to wash things.
From everything I've read inthis, they're like I don't want
to have to wash shit.
(26:30):
It's like what are you talkingabout?
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Well, I think it's a different time in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Isn't that exactly how President Garfield died?
His doctor like refused to washany instruments.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
No, it was an abundance of lasagna.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Well, it did happen on a Monday yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
His remains were shipped to Abu Dhabi.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
so Hmm, in a big package with way too much tape
Inside was Solomon Grundy.
They turn on the doctor andnurse for implementing
(27:11):
quarantine sanitation andinoculations which make the crew
temporarily ill.
Between the medicalprofessionals and the layman, if
you get, let's say, a vaccineor something equivalent and it
makes you sick temporarily, theydon't understand that that's
different than actually beingafflicted with the disease
(27:32):
they're curing you of.
And so there is this weirddisconnect there and it's
portrayed prominently in thismovie because they do get
temporarily ill and then thinkthey're dying, but because other
people that were sick beforethey were inoculated did just
die.
They just assume that I don't.
They just come up withsomething that can some sort of
(27:55):
conspiracy as to.
That's why it's happening.
The medical professionals onboard, the doctor and the nurse
even trick the engineer Crusherinto getting an injection which
infuriates him and he getsreally upset.
Crusher then retreats toisolation along with the other
ill crew, causing everyone elseto assume that he's died.
The remaining crew, who arestill alive and relatively
(28:15):
healthy, decide to mutinyagainst the doctor, just as
Crusher and many of the otherones they thought were dead
reappear.
It turns out that the medicineworked and those treated were
healed.
Wow.
It's almost like it's a crazyone-to-one.
It's like a cause and effect.
Order is then re-establishedand the arctis arrives in san
(28:35):
francisco two hours ahead ofschedule and all is well now.
This film does suffer from a lotof studio interference, but
mostly about the ending of themovie being more positive.
I think they were relativelyhands-off until that, and the
film does pull back from a lotof biting commentary that it
could be making, and that's whyit's one of the reasons that
(28:56):
this movie is not well known.
It wasn't even all that wellreviewed even at the time,
because it didn't.
People watching it could seewhat they were going for and
what they were reaching for, butit never quite got there.
They were kind of hamstrung bythe powers that be.
So some of the glaring themesare indeed present, though.
This comes from an articlecalled Pandemic Movies Reflect
(29:19):
Our Age of Late CapitalistDespair by Merle Eisenberg,
robert Alpert, lee Mordecai forJacobin Quote.
In the case of Pacific Liner,the film presented a critique of
social groups that did notfulfill their class obligations
(29:42):
class obligations.
The movie criticized the upperclass for partying instead of
paternalistically stopping thespread of cholera below decks.
Yet the working classcharacters on board were no
better, since they wereuncivilized, justifying their
huge number of deaths.
Only the hard-working,professional middle class
correctly fulfilled their classroles, ensuring the safe arrival
.
This is a very early film inthis genre and, I think, a very
(30:03):
poignant film, and it reallysort of sets up a lot of what
would come later.
Now, in compiling this list offilms, at least for this, I
tried to avoid zombie outbreaksfor the most part.
(30:24):
While such films are poignant,vehicles for commentary of
rampant consumerism or perhapseven misguidedly, collectivism,
these stories often use thepandemic as a backdrop, not a
villainous force like we weretalking about earlier.
Backdrop, not a villainousforce like we were talking about
earlier.
Same with a lot ofpost-apocalyptic tales like Mad
(30:46):
Max or Boy and His Dog are thesame thing as a lot of viral
pandemic post-apocalyptic movies.
It doesn't matter what thething was that caused it.
It's about where we are now,which is interesting and does
deserve its own thing, butthat's not really what we're
talking about in this scope.
Yeah, for instance, rise of theblend of the apes from 2011.
It condemns corporatebiomedicine.
(31:06):
The original invasion of thebody snatchers is often
interpreted interpreted aspseudo orwellian comment on
communism, when it actuallydepicts the transformation of
the american populace intounquestioning, conformist
consumers.
Once again, a lot of that wasmanipulated by studios at the
last minute to not be soheavy-handed commentary on
(31:29):
capitalism.
Just like with Orwell's actualAnimal Farm, the animated movie,
in Britain.
They couldn't get away with itin the US because so many people
had read the book and also itwas a program of the CIA which
technically can't function on USsoil.
In Britain they changed theending so that the commentary
isn't about capitalism, it'sabout it's supposed to be like
(31:52):
some weird, like Stalinistcommentary which is not in the
original text, but they forcepeople to change the uprising of
the proletariat into becomingfat and happy and then becoming
totalitarian in their own right.
That is not the commentary ofthe text, but it is what the cia
strong-armed the britishpopulace into watching,
obviously with uh help from themi6 and the british government.
(32:14):
The movies I was just talkingabout are more about talking
apes and aliens than they areabout communicable disease, so
for this I tried to highlightones where the disease is the
thing to overcome.
All that having been said,let's look at some of the
examples, and let's start withthe last man on Earth.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Not that one, yeah, not the one that you know.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Not the one you think or you think belongs in here,
because it doesn't necessarily.
No, a different one, a wayworse, dumb one.
The Last man on Earth is a 1924American silent comedy film
directed by John G Blystone,starring Earl Fox, great name,
(32:58):
and produced by Fox Film, wowFox and Fox Film, and based on
the short story by the same nameby John D Swain that appeared
in Wow, you're really diggingdown for source material here
that appeared in the November1923 issue of Muncie's Magazine.
I love Muncie's.
(33:18):
It comes to our door everymorning.
I train my dog to bring it in,are you sure?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
that's what you're reading.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
I don't know I never learned to read or write.
It's up in the air In thisstory.
In 1940, a man becomes a hermitafter rejection Incel, by the
way.
This is about incels, I'm sorryto tell you.
By 1950, a plague kills alladult males except him.
Now desired by millions ofwomen, he still yearns for his
(33:47):
initial love interest, makinghim a treasured last man.
Wow, talk about fragile maleego.
Like that's Jesus Christ.
You already control women.
Like I don't know how much moreyou need here.
Everything, yeah, exactly.
The film was remade as theJesus Christ semi-musical comedy
(34:11):
.
It's Great to Be Alive from1933.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
And then 1929, then 2024.
As Joker 2, follow you, doYou're?
Speaker 1 (34:21):
not wrong, and in Spanish as El Ytumo Verón Sombre
La Tierra, also in 1933.
And it influenced a sci-finovel called Mr Adam in 1946.
And also a bunch of other stuffwe'll talk about later, and
also a bunch of other stuffwe'll talk about later.
In it's Great to Be Alive, ayoung aviator, carlos Martin,
(34:44):
played by Raoul Raoulian wow.
He's dumped by his girlfriend,gloria Stewart, and heads on a
solo flight across the PacificOcean.
He has engine trouble and makesan emergency landing on an
uninhabited island in thePacific.
Shortly afterward, a pandemicof a new disease called
masculitis kills every fertilemale human on the planet.
(35:07):
When efforts to cure thedisease fail, the human race is
doomed.
Humanity's institutions are allnow run by women, including the
Chicago underworld oh shit,which actually would probably be
way more cutthroat but lessimpulsive.
Carlos escapes the island andonce he returns home and hears
(35:28):
the news, it now depends on himto continue the human race.
This, of course, will return inwhy the Last man and in the
2019 American drama.
Only Now.
I included this, not because itnecessarily fits our criteria as
much as if, as it's kind of anincel fantasy, but because it
(35:48):
obviously shares the name of theRichard Matheson novel and
Vincent Price adaptation thatmany would point to as an
example of a pandemic film, andwhile that's true, it and its
remakes are more akin to zombieoutbreak movies.
So the first version, whichseems to understand the point of
the book more than the others,is similar to the film the Girl
with All the Gifts, because inthis new reality we're a thing
(36:11):
of the past and our hubris orignorance helped lead to our
extinction.
If you have watched theoriginal Vincent Price Last man
on Earth or read the book I AmLegend, the real commentary
which Omega man and the movie IAm Legend later completely seem
to misunderstand is that ourhero is not a hero.
(36:32):
He is emblematic of a flawedand dying culture and mindset.
He's an alcoholic, he's anasshole, he ignores too much
that he knows is wrong.
Because of his, his ignoranceand his hubris, he essentially
lets his daughter and his wifeboth die and he rails against
(36:54):
the vampire infected around theworld as monstrous and flawed
and evil and the enemy.
And then in the book and in themovie later, he's confronted
with people who have survived,who didn't die, who are
relatively normal, who cansurvive, reproduce and function
(37:18):
even with this infection.
And even in that face he's likeno, you're abominations and
you're all assholes, you know.
And then eventually he he justkind of like dies because of his
ignorance.
And I feel like that's kind ofthe commentary they're trying to
make in the girl with all thegifts.
But either way, the pandemicpart isn't really the point as
much as it is.
(37:38):
I mean, it is to a certain, butit falls in this weird gray
area where you're like you couldkind of make a case either way.
But that's not really,especially if the book and the
original movie maybe you couldmake a case for it.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
I still think they've already dealt with the pandemic
.
In a way, they're dealing withthe society laid bare after that
.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
The first act is the pandemic, as opposed to Omega
man or I Am Legend, where thepandemic is like a flashback at
the beginning, because I watchedit not too long ago, like a
year or so ago.
Last man on Earth.
Like the first act is himdealing with the pandemic, but
it is also just still set up forthe commentary Not that it is.
(38:20):
In fact, it's the opposite ofwhat we're trying to talk about,
because the pandemic isactually not something to be
overcome and that's kind of thecommentary that he's wrong for
thinking he has to defeat it,and so I mean that's why it
doesn't really fit in, butthat's why we included it,
because because you need to seeexamples of, you know, the
methods of our madness.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, Last man.
It's almost like the bad guysin any X-Men book.
We don't want to be left behind.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Right, we don't want change.
Last man is like an issue zeroof House of M.
You know we're like oh well,they won, they took over,
they're the new thing and we'refighting desperately against
this thing.
From the perspective of us, theeveryman who normally would go
yeah, that's an infection thatkilled my family and then
resurrected them as what wethink of, as monstrous
(39:12):
abominations.
But then it turns out actuallyit's just the next step in human
evolution.
Now we're going to move on toSkeleton on Horseback or that
was my first girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Hey, oh no, it was his first girlfriend Are we?
Speaker 1 (39:25):
She was tiny and skeletal.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
I don't know Are we talking about the red hair.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
No, no, no, no, the one that actually took his
virginity.
We'll get into that later.
No, no, it will never come upever again.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Probably OK sometimes you should come up, ever again,
probably.
Oh okay, sometimes you shouldremind me.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Well, you have a bad memory.
I can explain it to you, butyou won't remember.
That actually may have beenbefore you joined our little
clique, though Like right before.
Oh, skeleton on Horseback orthe White Disease is a 1937
Czech drama film directed by andstarring a guy named Hugo Haas.
(40:06):
In it, the White Plague, adeadly leprosy-like disease that
mainly infects people over 50,is ravaging the entire world.
Dr Galen, a reclusive physicianwho has devoted his life to the
poor, finds a cure, but herefuses to share his cure with
the rich and powerful unless hisone condition is met Eternal
(40:27):
peace among nations, which isawesome, yeah, and especially in
1937, this is poignant.
Meanwhile, the nation'smilitaristic leader is preparing
to invade a neighboring country.
I don't know who they'retalking about there in 1937.ter.
His name's hister, mr histerthat they do that.
That's actually in a moneypython skit.
(40:49):
Hitler didn't die, but he likemoved to suburban london and
tried to start over by runningfor like local council and he
kept calling himself hister.
It's, it's a good skit.
John Cleese plays Hitler.
It's very funny.
The dictator's only closefriend, an aristocratic arms
manufacturer who is an essentialpart of his war machinations,
(41:09):
then catches the disease.
This is all based on a playcalled the White Disease by
Carol Kopeck.
I don't know.
There's an accent mark over theC, so it could be Chopek.
It could be Chopek.
I'm not really sure.
I'm not great with Cyrillic, soit's really hard to say I
barely do English.
(41:30):
I barely know English.
Next is a film that is oftenpointed to as setting the stage
for further films, in Americancinema at least about pandemics.
It is a 1950 Americanmedical-themed film noir
thriller directed by the greatElia Kazan, called Panic in the
(41:51):
Streets.
I got nothing, I got nothing.
I got nothing.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
That's funny because I was thinking of Bowie's Panic
in Detroit At the same time, butI couldn't work it in there.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Which is funny, because the first thing I was
thinking about was Dancing inthe Streets by Bowie and Mick.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Jagger, it's the great Unified Bowie theory, I
think.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
We finally reached the Bowie singularity.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
This is like a bit in a PCU, where Gene Hackman and
Michael Caine are in the samefilm.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, why?
We all like Jeremy Piven.
I don't know anymore.
I would say it is Piven's bestvehicle.
Movie-wise I think it's.
He did have a good TV showcalled Cupid on ABC for a long
time that I liked a lot.
It doesn't count.
If only you saw it, it was sopopular it had a reboot a few
(42:50):
years later.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Never heard of it.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
This is what Brandeis American Studies professor, tom
Doherty, has to say about thegenre in general and this film's
place within Quote.
So you get a proliferation ofnuclear disaster movies, alien
invasion scenarios andend-of-the-world narratives to
express the intimations ofmortality.
Pandemic films are a variationon the theme, perhaps in some
(43:16):
ways more terrifying becausetheir conceit is all too
plausible.
Ilya Kazan's Panic in theStreets, released in 1950,
really provides a template forthe pandemic films that follow.
It's about a health worker anda police detective trying to
track down a patient zero in NewOrleans to prevent an outbreak
of pneumonic plague.
Pneumonic plague, by the way, isa weird buzzword.
(43:38):
When we say plague, or theBlack Death or whatever, that is
a combination of like eightdifferent things that swept
through Europe during the MiddleAges.
Okay, I've done a lot ofresearch on that too.
I watched a lot of actually Iwatched a lot of great courses
about the Black Plague and howit's varied.
The film tells the story ofLieutenant Commander Clinton
Reed, played by Richard Widmark,an officer of the US Public
(44:01):
Health Service, which I don'tthink is a real thing, and
Captain Tom Warren, played byPaul Douglas If it was, it's now
gone.
No, 100% has been depreciated Agrizzled veteran detective of
the New Orleans PoliceDepartment, I'm guessing, played
by Powers Booth today.
Well, he's dead, isn't he?
Speaker 2 (44:16):
I don't know guessing played by powers booth today.
Well, he's dead isn't he?
Speaker 1 (44:19):
I don't know, yeah, he's been dead.
Harvey kytel oh, maybe a kytel,sure, yeah, or uh, or a uh uh.
The one I always confuse powersbooth, for for no reason, stacy
keach, maybe a stacy keachwho's also dead, yeah, yeah or
maybe in a different era.
Charles bronson, hey, diseaseyour time up.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
You gotta punch this disease in the face.
I got a present for yourdisease, blammo this disease
raped my wife this diseasecalled hoodlums and black kids.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Oh those punks.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Well, I was watching this video that was kind of
breaking down some of thoseDeath Wish movies, and my
significant other was watchingwith me and she didn't really
understand what Death Wishseries of films was.
She just kind of looks at meand is like, oh my God.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Yeah, cringeworthy is the most diplomatic way you
could put it.
They are problematic at best.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
It's also like one of the most wrongheaded ideas that
then became its own genre.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
That has stayed strong till this day.
There's a reason that BruceWillis starred in the remake.
I'm guessing Big C lost an armwrestling match to Mel Gibson.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
I'm sure Mel has his own versions of that oh.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
I guarantee he does hey boyo.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
It's based on the real threat of smallpox.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
A grizzled veteran detective of New Orleans Police
Department, who may or may notbe Charles Bronson, have only a
day or two of frantic, intensesearch and interviews in which
to prevent a greater outbreak ofa deadly epidemic of, once
again, pneumonic plague which,in this after read, determines a
(46:00):
waterfront homicide victim isalso an index case and the first
to be found carrying thedisease.
The supporting cast includesBarbara Del Geddes as Reed's
wife.
Yada, yada, yada.
Jack Palance in his film debutno way, yes.
And Zero Mostel.
He was Gene Wilder'scounterpart in the Producers.
(46:22):
Okay, I'm pretty sure he was inFiddler on the Roof along with
Topol.
By the way, from Flash Gordonthey play two crooks, associates
of the victim, who had promptedthe public health investigation
, prompted the public healthinvestigation.
The film was also the debut ofTommy Raytig, best known for
playing Jeff Miller in the earlyseasons of Lassie, who gives a
(46:45):
shit.
I think you could have cut thatbit.
No, I know, I know.
The only reason I keep readingis because I want to get to this
point.
The score was composed byAlfred Newman From Mad Magazine,
the Alfred E Newman, nedRyerson from mad magazine, the
alfred e newman ned ryerson.
The film was originally namedport of entry.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Subsequently, wait, I know, subsequently called
outbreak.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
I'm going to tell you this right now 80 of these
movies that have come out wereat one point called outbreak,
and then eventually panic in thestreets.
Uh, so then we get to anotherfilm that same year the killer
that stalked new york, alsoknown as frightened city.
The film shot on location andsemi-documentary style.
But this is interesting.
(47:34):
This is a mockumentary.
It's about diamond smugglerswho unknowingly start a
mockumentary well, it's not areal documentary, it's shot in
documentary style, but I think,I think mockumentary means
something different okay, I'llgrant you that, in that it's not
spinal tap, but that's adifferent pandemic film just
(47:55):
like the office way different.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
to be honest, I haven't seen the killer that
Stalked New York, so I'm notexactly sure how they are
describing this film.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
It's about diamond smugglers who unknowingly start
a smallpox outbreak in New YorkCity in 1947.
It's based on the real threatof a smallpox epidemic in the
city.
The outbreak marked the largestmass vaccination effort ever
conducted for smallpox epidemicin the city.
The outbreak marked the largestmass vaccination effort ever
conducted for smallpox inAmerica.
Within three weeks of thediscovery of the actual outbreak
(48:26):
, the wow, I'm wrong the USPublic Health Service a real
thing in conjunction with NewYork City health officials, had
procured the smallpox vaccineand inoculated over 6,350,000
adults and children.
That is an insane number, for1950 especially, and would be
(48:51):
crazy today.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, yeah, that's wild.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Within three weeks's awesome.
Of that number, five millionhad been vaccinated within the
first two weeks.
The rapid response was creditedwith limiting the outbreak to
just 12 people, 10 of whomrecovered, while two died.
This is fascinating becauseit's a depiction of a real life
(49:17):
crisis with a real life dramaticarc in its society reacting,
then acting appropriately to areal threat.
An event like that would bevery unlikely to see play out
today.
There's no way that wouldhappen today.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
No no.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
That is one of the most amazing and you know what
this is so blasé in the historyof just even American health,
which has been awful throughoutthe entire existence of this
country.
That right there is one of thecoolest, most effective and
amazing examples of how to cometogether and solve a problem
(49:59):
there has ever been in thiscountry.
And we don't even talk about itbecause back then it was like,
yeah, yeah, we cured polio, wedid that, we, you know like we
just did that back then well, alot happened to get us to rfk jr
, portion of our downfall thenwe're going to fast forward a
little bit.
Crimes of the future, but notthat one, not that one.
(50:21):
1970, different time, crimes ofthe future, 1970, by david
cronenberg.
In crimes of the future, it'sset in 1997.
It follows adrian tripod, anoccasional director of the house
of skin, a dermatologicalclinic.
He embarks on a quest to findhis mentor, the insane
(50:42):
dermatologist.
The insane dermatologist.
Well, he does like making filmsabout crazy doctors, so You're
really scraping the bottom ofthe barrel and you have to go.
He's a maniacal dermatologist.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
There's lots of skin particles in the bottom of the
barrel.
He's gotta scrape those off.
Named Antoine Rogue.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Wow, perhaps it's Rouge.
Well, there's no Assault Degue,so I'm guessing it's.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
There is not, but I don't know.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
I mean, he is Canadian, so I'm just trying to
Well then there would be an ex,then they'd know French, they
would know.
Rogue has vanished after adevastating plague caused by
cosmetic products wiped out ohthat, wiped out all sexually
mature women.
It's kind of a reverse of whatwe talked about earlier.
(51:29):
Allegedly the virus mutated,now affects men and kills rogue.
It goes on.
The whole thing is about.
It's a pandemic started by ourvanity and the cosmetic products
.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
The problem is Brand.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
X, really Should have tried Joker Brand.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
With Joker Brand, you get to grin again and again.
What is the key?
Speaker 1 (51:55):
Deodorant Makeup.
Then, a year later, theandromeda strain.
Okay, now this is one that youreally need to talk about.
Everyone needs to reallyacknowledge the andromeda strain
, of course.
By michael crichton.
1971 american science fictionthriller movie produced and
directed by robert wise, whodirected the day the earth stood
(52:16):
still, and also, regrettably,star trek, the motion picture
based on movie produced anddirected by Robert Wise, who
directed the Day the Earth SitsStill, and also, regrettably,
star Trek, the Mushroom Picturebased on Crichton's 1969 novel.
The film stars Arthur Hill,james Olsen, kate Reed and David
Wayne as a team of scientistswho investigate a deadly
organism of extraterrestrialorigin.
With few exceptions, the filmdoes follow the book pretty
(52:38):
close and also, hilariously,special effects were done by
Douglas Trumbull, who did Iguess that's not that weird did
Star Trek the motion picture,but anyway in it, after a US
government satellite crashesnear the small rural town of
Piedmont, new Mexico, onFebruary 5th 1971, nearly all
residents die.
(52:58):
A military recovery team fromVandenberg Air Force Base
attempts to recover thesatellite but dies while trying
to do so, suspecting that thesatellite has brought back an
alien organism.
The military then activates anelite team of scientists, like
every Michael Crichton storyever, an elite team of a group
(53:21):
of people brought together tosolve this thing in isolation.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
I don't follow.
I don't see the connectionanywhere.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
Because I've never read Sphere or seen the movie,
I've never seen Congo orJurassic Park, or Nope, nope.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
I don't know.
13th Warrior?
No, oh no.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
There's no elite group of people brought together
secretly to defeat this evil.
No, no.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
No, you keep working on that theory.
Get back to me.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
ER, a small elite group of people solving all
these problems.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
Wow, that's not ER at all, except for helicopters.
They can elite group of peoplesolving all these problems.
Wow, that's not ER at all,except for helicopters.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
they can't solve that , hey, but who can?
Who has ever been able to solvethe riddle of helicopters?
The riddle of helicopters.
Cron blasts into helicopters.
Did we just do that at the sametime?
God damn it.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
It was there.
It was there.
I should have done it the firstplace.
I was just dangling at the sametime.
God damn it.
It was there.
It was there.
I should have done it the firstplace.
I was just dangling in theeverlasting sky.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
It's an extremely Crichton story.
Now this is a movie that I sawearlier today that actually
stars an actress that appearedin one of the later films we're
going to talk about, which iscompletely coincidental but
interesting, called when haveAll the People Gone.
It was a 1974 Americanmade-for-television
science-fiction drama filmstarring Peter Graves, kathleen
(54:46):
Quinlan, george O'Hanlon andVerna Bloom.
Watching it you're going tonotice the ties to Blazing
Saddles and other films, butPeter Graves obviously from
Mission Impossible and otherthings In it.
On a camping trip to the SierraNevada mountains in Central
California, stephen Anders andhis two teenage children,
deborah and David, are exploringa cave when they experience an
(55:09):
earthquake.
After emerging, they hear froma ranch hand who is outside.
That's the guy from BlazingSaddles.
When you was slaves, you sanglike birds Classic.
It's that guy from blazingsaddles.
When you was slaves, you sanglike birds classic.
It's that guy.
Yeah, uh, that there was abright solar flash prior to the
earthquake.
He soon then falls ill and diesand then, after just watching
(55:31):
it recently, he dies.
And then they go and they'retrying to like figure out what
to do and maybe we should goback to civilization or whatever
.
And then they go back wherethey had buried him Well, not
buried, just covered him up in asleeping bag actually and be
like where is he?
He's gone, there's nothing inthe bag.
And then they open the bag andhis clothes are still there.
Because it turns out that whensomeone dies after being exposed
(55:52):
to whatever, this contagion isturns into a powder.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
Like Batman the movie Everyone gets dehydrated.
Oh shit, you're right, it islike Batman the movie.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
Yeah Well, the reason I included it was because in
Andromeda's train your bloodbecomes solid and becomes a
powder, and that's what killsyou.
That's not going to work.
How's the Riddler going to winso well?
I mean, it's kind of ambitiousfor a made-for-TV movie and has
(56:24):
some good, you know, fun actorsin it, but it actually is more
like Batman the movie.
So that brings us to themid-70s, which so this is a
really interesting period oftime in which the pandemic
epidemic panic turns intosomething else that is usually
either, like I said earlier,man-made or alien.
So we're going to leave it herefor now, in 1974.
And we're going to pick up nexttime in 1976.
(56:45):
We'll wait, wait till part two,mostly because this is a very
dense thing, it's very long.
We also rant a lot.
So there's no way we're goingto get to the rest of this quite
yet.
From 76 to 2024.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
We're not going to get there yet sorry potters,
you're going to have another one.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
You're going to have to wait bang hey, I had to wait
to bury my wife and daughteryou're going to have to wait for
the episode hey, are you tryingto steal my car?
Speaker 2 (57:15):
blammo, this guy looked at me wrong at the deli.
Speaker 1 (57:17):
You trying to steal my car, blammo.
This guy looked at me wrong atthe deli, so I murdered his wife
and daughter.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
He was too ethnic, not my town.
Speaker 1 (57:29):
This town gets dark too early, if you know what I
mean.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
Bang Blammo dead.
Speaker 1 (57:35):
So we're going to leave it there for now.
Next week we will come backwith that.
Probably more Bronson, not TomHardy Bronson, but Charles
Bronson, but not that CharlesBronson, the original Charles
Bronson.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
OG Charles Bronson.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Would have been funnier in that movie if he had
just decided to do a CharlesBronson impression.
The whole time have beenfunnier in that movie if he had
just decided to do with charlesbronson impression the whole
time.
Oh, he's naked and slappinghimself and like chalking
himself up like dong hanging outand he's just like, hey boy, oh
, let's do this this is my fungun hey, blammo gets an erection
(58:16):
immediately.
Speaker 2 (58:19):
Skeet, skeet, as the kids say, which Charles Bronson?
Speaker 1 (58:23):
is famous for saying Both of them.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
They love skeeting.
Speaker 1 (58:28):
Thank you guys for listening.
Jake, take us out.
Speaker 2 (58:32):
Oh, I thought you were going to switch it up this
time.
No, no, I was just queuing itup.
I was intrigued, Like what wasI going to say?
Because I didn't have anythingeither.
Like I have anything, Perhaps Ishould plan ahead.
Speaker 1 (58:45):
It's almost like we should take this seriously.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
Oh, ah, ee, ah, oh ah .
Well, we're to the end so far,so no going back, uh, but we
hope you guys come back.
No going back like share,subscribe, give five blamos to
whoever needs them.
Uh, if you would pass along tofriends who might be interested
(59:09):
in pandemic films or charlesbronson, or charles bronson or
the mythical god Chopper.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
With Eric Bana.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Man, what are the odds that we'd have both Charles
Bronson and Eric Bana's Chopperin the same episode?
Speaker 1 (59:26):
Well, because they're very similar stories and real
people, they're like so close.
That's what I'm saying.
Now, what we need is a moviewhere they fight each other or
team up like a buddy movieStopper, my Chopper will will
shoot or get to the chopper.
The pen is truly mightier thanthe sword.
(59:47):
It's only funny if you've seenchopper oh man, uh, skip before
next episode.
Speaker 2 (59:54):
What should they do?
Speaker 1 (59:55):
well, they should probably rethink the decisions
that have led them here thus far, but they should probably pay
their tabs clean up afterthemselves to some sort of
reasonable degree, make surethat they have supported the
local comic shops and retailersand in that vein we would like
to say godspeed, fair wizardsblammo them as a war zone.
Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
It's me and ma.
Now please go away.
I could go down a rabbit hole about Cupid, but I
will not.
Please do not.
I will not.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Move along, Gentlemen .
Let's broaden our minds.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Are they in the proper approach pattern for
today?
Negative, negative.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
All weapons Now Charge the lightning field.
Ebola it's kind of a big deal.
I'm more of a fan of theMutamba virus personally.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Oh, from Outbreak.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's like Ebola, but not so that everyone who watched
it didn't really know whatEbola was and we're just kind of
misled.
Which?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
is so sad because the Ebola outbreak in Africa was
conquered.
It was sort of defeated becausewe didn't have this science,
skepticism, bullshit that wehave now, and there are movies
about that, actually that we'regoing to talk about.
About the science, skepticismor the Ebola, about how we came
together to defeat Ebola.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Okay, well, that's one thing about all these movies
is that there's a lot aboutcoming together and bettering
humankind as one, which I don'tknow if that plays out in
reality.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
You're right, but that only applies to a certain
era.
After that era, it's the exactopposite.
Okay, okay, let's get into it.
Yeah, welcome back to DispatchAjax after all that.
I'm Skip.
I'm Jake.
Is it all that cock smoke inthere?
I'm Jake.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Is it all that cock smoke in?
Speaker 1 (01:51):
there.
Oh, it's the Bird Bola-demicvid.
That sounds like a sci-fioriginal from like 1999.
Bird Bola, rock and Rolla byGuy.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Ritchie, think of snatch, but a lot of coughing.
I got a bowl in my snatch Lockstock and two smoking jabs.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
So today we decided to do an episode about.
Originally, I wanted it to bemulti-tiered.
We were going to talk aboutpandemics, epidemics and disease
in media, which would havemeant comic books, movies, video
games.
What have you?
Books, obviously Books.
Who reads?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
books I don't read.
Reading's for nerds.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Yeah, exactly the kind of nerds that would solve
epidemics.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
What do they know?
Speaker 1 (02:43):
But honestly, books and films are the the only real
rich genres that these thingsappear in.
You have some in comic books,but they're not.
There are some glaringstandouts, but not a lot.
There isn't a lot, there's likefive you could really get into
yeah, and really there's not alot said no, or about those?
(03:04):
And the ones that do saysomething.
It's stuff that's already beensaid, just kind of modernized,
like why the Last man?
That whole thing has been donelike a thousand times in movies.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And, let's be honest, it's not really about the
pandemic.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
No, it's about a society that's changed because
of the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Right, which is something that I wanted to get
into, because, so the reason wedid this was because I had COVID
and Jake was sick.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yeah, I had a norovirus.
Norovirus Pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
That's not great.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, not fun.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
It's caused specifically and only by
inhaling fecal matter.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Hey, don't tell me, I live my life.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
It's pink eye, but in the gut.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
My guts are already pink, right.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Why hasn't there been pink eye in the movie?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
All right, Googlebot.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It was Wes Graven's last project before he died.
He didn't quite get it done.
It was also starring CillianMurphy.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Bruce Pink Eye from 2008.
No, really, really, pink Eye isset in a small town in upstate
New York, in a prison-like,dilapidated, insane asylum where
secret drug testing has goneinexplicably wrong.
Patients are dying and sick andtwisted.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
What the fuck does that have to do with Pink Eye?
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Raging homicidal lunatics.
All hell breaks loose.
One patient escaped deformed,angry and far beyond insane.
That sounds like 12 Monkeys,but okay, he brings death and
terror to an unsuspecting townand everyone in it through fecal
matter.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Really Does it say that?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
No, I added that because it's more entertaining.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
You'd have to be throwing your shit around like
an ape a la 12 Monkeys for thatto really do it.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I might watch that.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Well, the things that you'd watch, though.
I mean, it's a low bar, and,speaking of low bars, this is
our show and we're going to talkabout, in this specific
instance, films that deal withepidemics, pandemics and disease
.
What Did you hear?
Something new?
Or was that funny?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
No, no, I'm just I was like I was looking at the
director of Pink.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Eye, what else?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
he done and I came upon something called Weed Gees
and I was like what the fuck isWeed G's W-E-E-D-J-I-E-S
Exclamation point?
Speaker 1 (05:30):
A phonetic version of like a Ouija board Kind of, but
it's more.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
I think it's like if the Ghoulies did drugs.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I don't even know where to begin with that I know,
so from the perspective of theghoulies, no, or how they act.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I believe the ghoulies.
So they're doing a Ouija board.
And what kind of drugs theseghoulies come because they're
all the pot, energy or somethingand they're just out running
amok.
It's like little ghoullygremlins but with weed oh, we
(06:13):
weed, weed.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
Oh, okay, weed geez.
Okay, look you and I willintentionally watch a lot of bad
stuff.
I don't even know if that fitsour criteria.
Yeah, this looks more like ohGod, what is like Ginger Dead
man I was literally going to saythat, and Evil Bong the later
(06:35):
incarnations of Ginger Dead manversus the Evil Bong Like Ginger
Weed, dickhead or whatever thefuck it's called.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Because they have other ones after that.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
All right, google, ginger, weezy, dickman and also
Metallica.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Oh man, weegee's looks pretty bad, no shit,
Pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Does it have our friend the albino ghoulie?
Speaker 2 (07:01):
I wish.
I think it might be a cut above.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
By the way, I hadn't told you, but I have Named Disty
our mascot.
Well, because I couldn't callhim Ajax, because that's you
know.
Wait, disty Dispatch Ajax,wouldn't it be Dispy?
Does that sound better to you?
I don't know.
Yes, okay, well, sound betterto you?
I don't know.
Yes, Okay, well, fine, then usethat.
(07:27):
I don't know.
I'm just not calling him Ajax,even though we probably should,
now that I think about it.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeah, call him Ajax.
All right, ajax, the albinoghoulie.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
We have discussed this informally, but now
formally, that is our officialmascot, ajax, the albino coolie
from Tales from the Dark Side.
Right, I forgot, I totallyblanked on it.
It's Tales from the Dark Side.
Yeah, yes, tales from the DarkSide.
Yes, thank you, jesus Christ, Ioverthought it.
I was like, oh God, pleasedon't be for monsters, don't be
(08:02):
for monsters.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Okay.
So then I went down the DannyDraven director hole.
Oh the crow.
No, this is the guy who didWeed G's.
He also did Crypts K-R-Y-P-T-Z.
Oh my god, when aspiringrappers Times Square.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
T-Y-N-E-Z.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
S-K-W-A-R, fuzzy Down and Licorice L-I-K-R-I-S-H.
Cross paths with stripperStesha.
They follow her in MysteriousTrip Club where sexy ladies are
really vampires in disguise.
Damn, that sounds baller.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
It actually sounds like a really tame premise,
considering the buildup ofpeople that are in it.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Oh, licorice.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Oh, that's what you got Okay.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Vampire leader Kulada finds out that Times holds the
key to the Bloodsuckers' worlddomination in this urban horror
film that plays likequote-unquote vampire strippers
in the hood no end quote.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
No end quote.
It's just open-ended, so youcan add your own to it.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
It's just cut.
I don't think there was anybodyediting this particular.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Well, maybe it was on purpose, maybe you were
supposed to add your owncommentary, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
A commentary, perhaps commentary, I don't know, a
commentary perhaps.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Well, I don't think a comma would fix those problems,
but uh, maybe it's common therapper.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
I need commentary.
Wow, that's what.
Yeah, so what's this episode?
Speaker 1 (09:38):
okay, yeah, because I could go down that rabbit hole
and talk about bones for like along time, but we're not going
to do that.
So to be moderately serious forhalf a second, the phenomenon
of epidemic disease has been apart of the human experience
since the moment we beganorganizing into permanent
communities millennia ago.
We know this not just from thefossil record, but thousands of
(09:59):
years of documentation, throughart, music, literature, anything
that we leave behind thatexpresses the state of the day.
By February 9th 2022, accordingto the World Health
Organization, confirmed cases ofthe novel coronavirus known as
COVID-19.
In case you guys had missed allof this, have you heard about
(10:20):
this?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I've heard about the novella coronavirus.
Is that similar?
Way shorter, A little shortermaybe?
Way shorter A little?
Speaker 1 (10:25):
shorter, maybe Way shorter, and the Stephen King
version better than his normalstuff.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Is there like a short story coronavirus?
Maybe I'd rather do that one.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
So this had reached 397 million infections and the
death toll was 5.75 millionworldwide.
This is by 2022.
The raw numbers will be muchhigher because technically, it's
not over.
In December 2019, when thepandemic was thought to have
(10:57):
begun officially, stevenSoderbergh's Contagion was the
270th most watched WarnerBrothers film.
Not just film, warner Brothersfilm.
This is according to BuzzFeed.
By May of 2020, it was thesecond most watched.
The COVID-19 outbreak presents arare opportunity to examine
(11:19):
whether pandemic filmsaccurately reflect the
collective zeitgeist of humansociety.
Pandemic films accuratelyreflect the collective zeitgeist
of human society in the face ofa disease outbreak, its
responses, its course of action,its failures and its foibles?
Or is there a disconnect?
Truth is, the reasons why wefind these stories compelling
(11:44):
and important are likely bothobjectively simple and, at the
same time, head-scratchinglycomplicated.
On one hand, pandemic orepidemic tales are simple to
explain.
Through the lens of innatesurvival instincts, they portray
forces of nature like awildfire, a flood or a tornado.
The disease spreading isunrelenting, overwhelming and,
without significant effort andor opportunity to run and hide,
(12:04):
unbeatable.
However, the thing that makesthem a unique source of awe and
terror is that a disease isinvisible.
Its hidden nature automaticallyputs us on our heels in ways
more complicated than othernatural disasters.
Transmission is often confusingor without evidence-based
science.
(12:24):
Panic-inducing Combat diseaserequires a different type of
decision-making and rationalplanning than we're used to.
Our first reactions are, bynecessity, different than our
fight-or-flight instincts whenconfronted by a threat more
visibly tangible.
Fundamentally, to even get tothe point where a disease is an
(12:45):
epidemic means our guardrailshave failed, our fail-safes have
collapsed and now our sense ofsafety and normalcy are gone.
In this case, the dramatictension comes from how we deal
with these overwhelming odds.
It's kind of like a KobayashiMaru test.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Except there's no way to cheat the plague.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
But with plagues sometimes there's a way to win.
It's kind of like a KobayashiMaru test, Except there's no way
to cheat the plague.
But with plagues sometimesthere's a way to win.
It's a push.
Yet for some the appeal ofthese stories are more nuanced.
It can tap into the modernsense of ennui that there's
something wrong with the worldand it's irreparably broken.
Salvageable only by tearingdown the world as we know it.
Salvageable only by tearingdown the world as we know it.
(13:28):
Or it lies in the anxiety inknowing that whatever stability
the modern world enjoys isfleeting, that the end of life
as we know it is very fuckingnigh.
To quote 28 Days Later.
Some recognizing that thefollies and failures of
humankind are responsible andretribution will come through
either secular or spiritualmeans, others see it as
cautionary tale and call toaction In any event we are often
(13:51):
drawn to its genre for thereasons unique to it.
According to the paper howPandemic Films Help Us
Understand Outbreaks by Zhao LiSong et al, futurist scholars
have identified six broad themesfor films set in the futures
that could be appliedspecifically in this case to
pandemic films Growth and Decay,threats and New Hope, waste
(14:15):
World, the Powers that Be,disarray and Inversion.
There are the macroscopicscenarios of destiny of
humankind, that is, scenarioarchetypes In Growth and Decay.
In growth and decay, collapseand decay of social order and
living conditions areaccompanied by the excessive
power of monopolisticcorporations.
In the powers that be, after acatastrophic event, totalitarian
(14:38):
or dictatorial regime gainstight control over its citizens.
In Waste Worlds, a global-scalecatastrophe brings the world
back to a pre-medieval or tribalstate.
In Threats and New Hope, anapocalypse threatens the very
existence of humanity.
Humankind is saved throughheroic and collective efforts.
(14:59):
In Disarray, human societydegenerates into a chaotic
situation due to problems suchas crime, social unrest, poverty
, war, famines or pandemics.
This is something that zombiefilms lean heavily in,
especially Romero in Night ofthe Living Dead.
His whole thing was comment onracism, sexism, homophobia, the
(15:20):
whole gamut.
In Inversion, a new agent, suchas an alien species replaces
human beings to dominate theEarth.
Most pandemic films belong tothe disaster thriller genre.
In the eyes of this paper, theyresemble the image of Threats
and New Hope.
This corroborates that pandemicfilms are representative of
(15:40):
common social imaginaries.
End quote.
They do go on to say quote ascollective imaginaries, pandemic
films reflect people's fear ofinfectious disease outbreaks and
envision where and how they mayoccur, including their dire
consequences, the complexity toidentify causes, the
difficulties to find treatments.
Some depiction may be based onthe social context, the time and
(16:05):
place, when and where the filmsare made, which is just kind of
films.
According to the medicalhistorian Nancy Tomas, there
have been two periods of germpanic in American popular
culture.
The first one occurred between1900 and 1940, and the other
started in 1985 and is ongoing.
(16:25):
The public awareness andconcerns on disease outbreaks
are shaped by news andentertainment, including films,
and by collaborations amongsocial groups, including
scientific researchers,politicians, activists,
journalists and advertisers, fordifferent social, political as
well as economic interests.
End quote.
Now, this is one of the lasttimes we will quote this paper,
(16:47):
because it goes off the railslater.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of good information there.
It just does not.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
It's not cohesive, it doesn't give you a fucking.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah, it doesn't elucidate a grand answer for a
lot of this.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Which is what it states that it sets out to do.
But whatever, that's, yeah, thefirst germ panic between 1900
and 1940, infectious diseaseswhich had troubled human
societies for millennia, such asthe plague smallpox yellow
fever, tuberculosis, stilloccasionally led to outbreaks.
Subsequently, medical scienceand understanding made huge
(17:22):
strides in the middle of the20th century.
This actually is one of thereasons that the Allies won
World War II, because the Nazisweren't willing to believe in
germ theory as much and thescience behind as the Allies
were.
The Allies helped introduceantibiotics into treatment of
soldiers, and that made a bigdifference, as it turns out.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
That's interesting.
As more Nazis are getting inpower now, germ theory is being
pulled back.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
It's almost like those two mindsets go hand in
hand Weird.
This led to the second germpanic, which includes AIDS,
ebola and drug-resistant strainsof older bacterial diseases,
generating a new viral panic.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
I would also add to this man-made diseases.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I'm about to get to that.
Oh, sorry about that.
No no, no, no, my thing doesn'tmake sense except in my head it.
New knowledge or fantasies ofgenetics, the human immune
system and human natureinteraction have been shaping
popular perceptions of emergingdisease, with no effective magic
bullets against them.
Now subheading, when I saymagic bullets, that's not to be
(18:32):
confused with the film DrElric's Magic Bullet from 1940,
in which a German physician,pre-nazi, developed the first
synthetic antimicrobial drug,606, or cell vericin.
This film describes how Elricbecame interested in the
properties of the then-newsynthetic dyes and had an
(18:53):
intuition that they could becomeuseful in the diagnosis of
bacterial diseases.
If you've ever watched the cutscenes from forensic files or
something like that, you'llunderstand what I'm saying.
After this work met withsuccess, elric proposed that
synthetic compounds could bemade to selectively target and
destroy diseased-causingmicroorganisms.
(19:14):
He called such a drug a quotemagic bullet.
This film very specificallydescribes how in 1908, after 606
attempts, he succeeded incuring syphilis.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, this is a movie based on a real person yes,
these kinds of things do happen.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
They're not common in this genre but they do happen,
and there are several of them.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
It's also funny that this guy and his synthetic dyes
it's like the same thing thatMel Gibson just talked about on
Joe Rogan about methylene bluewhich I mean originally was a
dye used in factories to dyeclothes.
But people are now drinking it,thinking it, I don't know,
alters mitochondrial actions orsome shit, as one of the new
(20:01):
ivermectin adjacent cancer magicbullets I really wish that
everyone involved in that entiremindset had just listened to
trump and injected bleach atthis point.
I really wish they had just doneall.
Could have just stared at thesun while injecting bleach they
did drink bleach that was thing.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
That's unfortunately still a thing.
A lot of people still do that.
Several people have gone toprison for selling watered down
bleach as a medical curativePeople have gone to prison for
putting that on their childrenand using that as health care.
Yeah, that's really fun.
So this commentary doesn'tnecessarily include the use of
chemical weapons in World War I,for instance, since those are
(20:41):
strictly poisonous gases.
So I didn't really.
The use of biological weaponsor germ warfare do become an
emergent subject after World WarII and closer to the peak end
of the Cold War.
In film generally, dates aremore fluid, as the depictions of
the first proposed germ panicthat we cite earlier are
(21:01):
scattered throughout the decades.
They still come up, actually.
So it's not like it's unique tothat period, but it was more
concentrated in that period.
Oh shit, I don't know why.
I said that because I actuallywrote that line down.
They're more concentratedwithin these time periods, but
not necessarily exclusive.
I ad-libbed the line that Iwrote.
Okay, it's almost like it wasmeant to be.
For instance, the movieCounterblast from 1948, in which
(21:25):
a Nazi physician continues withplague, and I think this is
interesting because this kind ofparallels Magic Bullet, because
it's a German physician.
I mean, throughout the latterpart of the 19th century and the
first part of the 20th century,austria and germany, bohemia
they were all known as theintellectual capitals of the
(21:46):
world.
But the nazi scientists pushedback against actual
evidence-based and and researchscience, but they were willing
to just throw whatever at the,at the wall, and see what stuck
yeah, I mean there's a lot ofresearch, quote-unquote science
going on, but but with no actualoversight or a scientific
method.
It was just like let's see whathappens when I stick a thing in
(22:07):
this guy's eye.
That's not how science works,but they all thought they were
brilliant.
So a former nazi physiciancontinues with plague
experiments after the end of thewar.
Now, nearly every decade sinceworld war ii has released a
small number of bioweapon films.
This was probably the first, atleast the most prominent.
(22:28):
The interim period betweenthose two germ panics that we
referred to earlier sawfantastical depictions of
epidemic disease, often fromaliens or coming from the other,
or they were man-made.
I'm quoting again from Song etal.
Both the USA and the formerSoviet Union secretly developed
their biological weapons duringthe Cold War period.
(22:49):
In the 1960s and 70s, the civilrights movement, protests
against the Vietnam War, theassassinations of John Kennedy
and Martin Luther King Jr I'mgoing to throw in there Malcolm
X and Fred Hampton the oil priceshock and following inflation,
as well as the Watergate scandal, added to the enduring shock
and controversy in Americansociety, as well as to a deep
(23:12):
distrust toward the government,particularly among youth.
During and after the VietnamWar, the scientific community
and the public were more awareof biological weapons programs.
The above historical contextmay explain the theme of
deceitful leaders, slashgovernments, secretly developing
bioweapon programs.
(23:33):
End quote.
That is true.
All that having been said, wewould be remiss to not
(23:56):
acknowledge that these films asoften blatant critique, or
sometimes in support of American, slash Western capitalism.
In fact, I think it's one ofthe most important things to
note about these, and there's alot of other academic research
that supports this.
In 1939's Pacific Liner, which Itried to watch but you cannot
(24:18):
find.
It's not streaming, it's not onInternet Archive.
There are physical places whereyou can watch it Right, but
online nearly impossible.
But in this movie, a stowawayand by the way, a Chinaman, one
of them, eh, yeah exactly hasinfected the crew.
Oh, it's on Mubi.
I looked on there and it saidit wasn't available.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Well, I don't know, I don't have Mubi, so, but it
shows it.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
A lot of places have like a placeholder for it, but
when you go on there and try andwatch it, it's like no, you
can't see it, it's not there.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, I don't know, maybe, Maybe you can.
Yeah, I guess.
I guess, that's a weird thingto tell people in this.
Are you saying it doesn't fitwith the whole ethos what we're
talking about?
Hey, listen to Mel Gibson.
(25:12):
Hey, take your ivermectin andgo watch Pacific Liner.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
You're a hydrochloric win.
Yeah, which, by the way?
Hydrochloric win?
It's like a weird mashup of aSpider-Man villain and Harley
Quinn.
I don't know they just gotshipped.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Is that what happened ?
Speaker 1 (25:28):
And the Floronic man?
I don't know.
Yes, they did, it's all slashfiction.
So, yes, a Chinaman infects thecrew of the SS Arctis with
cholera, while the passengers,who are all obviously upper
crust, remain oblivious.
The ship's doctor and nursework to control the infection
and heal their patients, whilethe engineer, who's a disease
(25:49):
skeptic, keeps the stokers attheir jobs, filling the ship's
boilers with coal to make thebest time to San Francisco,
ostensibly to not upset thefirst class passengers.
Above the engineer,appropriately named Crusher,
keeps the working class of theship in line, literally working
(26:10):
them to death.
But because of the science andevidence skepticism of the
working class as portrayed here,they turn on the doctor and
nurse for implementing aquarantine sanitation protocols.
And the weird thing is theyweren't even as upset about the
quarantine as they were abouthaving to wash things.
From everything I've read inthis, they're like I don't want
to have to wash shit.
(26:30):
It's like what are you talkingabout?
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Well, I think it's a different time in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Isn't that exactly how President Garfield died?
His doctor like refused to washany instruments.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
No, it was an abundance of lasagna.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Well, it did happen on a Monday yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
His remains were shipped to Abu Dhabi.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
so Hmm, in a big package with way too much tape
Inside was Solomon Grundy.
They turn on the doctor andnurse for implementing
(27:11):
quarantine sanitation andinoculations which make the crew
temporarily ill.
Between the medicalprofessionals and the layman, if
you get, let's say, a vaccineor something equivalent and it
makes you sick temporarily, theydon't understand that that's
different than actually beingafflicted with the disease
(27:32):
they're curing you of.
And so there is this weirddisconnect there and it's
portrayed prominently in thismovie because they do get
temporarily ill and then thinkthey're dying, but because other
people that were sick beforethey were inoculated did just
die.
They just assume that I don't.
They just come up withsomething that can some sort of
(27:55):
conspiracy as to.
That's why it's happening.
The medical professionals onboard, the doctor and the nurse
even trick the engineer Crusherinto getting an injection which
infuriates him and he getsreally upset.
Crusher then retreats toisolation along with the other
ill crew, causing everyone elseto assume that he's died.
The remaining crew, who arestill alive and relatively
(28:15):
healthy, decide to mutinyagainst the doctor, just as
Crusher and many of the otherones they thought were dead
reappear.
It turns out that the medicineworked and those treated were
healed.
Wow.
It's almost like it's a crazyone-to-one.
It's like a cause and effect.
Order is then re-establishedand the arctis arrives in san
(28:35):
francisco two hours ahead ofschedule and all is well now.
This film does suffer from a lotof studio interference, but
mostly about the ending of themovie being more positive.
I think they were relativelyhands-off until that, and the
film does pull back from a lotof biting commentary that it
could be making, and that's whyit's one of the reasons that
(28:56):
this movie is not well known.
It wasn't even all that wellreviewed even at the time,
because it didn't.
People watching it could seewhat they were going for and
what they were reaching for, butit never quite got there.
They were kind of hamstrung bythe powers that be.
So some of the glaring themesare indeed present, though.
This comes from an articlecalled Pandemic Movies Reflect
(29:19):
Our Age of Late CapitalistDespair by Merle Eisenberg,
robert Alpert, lee Mordecai forJacobin Quote.
In the case of Pacific Liner,the film presented a critique of
social groups that did notfulfill their class obligations
(29:42):
class obligations.
The movie criticized the upperclass for partying instead of
paternalistically stopping thespread of cholera below decks.
Yet the working classcharacters on board were no
better, since they wereuncivilized, justifying their
huge number of deaths.
Only the hard-working,professional middle class
correctly fulfilled their classroles, ensuring the safe arrival
.
This is a very early film inthis genre and, I think, a very
(30:03):
poignant film, and it reallysort of sets up a lot of what
would come later.
Now, in compiling this list offilms, at least for this, I
tried to avoid zombie outbreaksfor the most part.
(30:24):
While such films are poignant,vehicles for commentary of
rampant consumerism or perhapseven misguidedly, collectivism,
these stories often use thepandemic as a backdrop, not a
villainous force like we weretalking about earlier.
Backdrop, not a villainousforce like we were talking about
earlier.
Same with a lot ofpost-apocalyptic tales like Mad
(30:46):
Max or Boy and His Dog are thesame thing as a lot of viral
pandemic post-apocalyptic movies.
It doesn't matter what thething was that caused it.
It's about where we are now,which is interesting and does
deserve its own thing, butthat's not really what we're
talking about in this scope.
Yeah, for instance, rise of theblend of the apes from 2011.
It condemns corporatebiomedicine.
(31:06):
The original invasion of thebody snatchers is often
interpreted interpreted aspseudo orwellian comment on
communism, when it actuallydepicts the transformation of
the american populace intounquestioning, conformist
consumers.
Once again, a lot of that wasmanipulated by studios at the
last minute to not be soheavy-handed commentary on
(31:29):
capitalism.
Just like with Orwell's actualAnimal Farm, the animated movie,
in Britain.
They couldn't get away with itin the US because so many people
had read the book and also itwas a program of the CIA which
technically can't function on USsoil.
In Britain they changed theending so that the commentary
isn't about capitalism, it'sabout it's supposed to be like
(31:52):
some weird, like Stalinistcommentary which is not in the
original text, but they forcepeople to change the uprising of
the proletariat into becomingfat and happy and then becoming
totalitarian in their own right.
That is not the commentary ofthe text, but it is what the cia
strong-armed the britishpopulace into watching,
obviously with uh help from themi6 and the british government.
(32:14):
The movies I was just talkingabout are more about talking
apes and aliens than they areabout communicable disease, so
for this I tried to highlightones where the disease is the
thing to overcome.
All that having been said,let's look at some of the
examples, and let's start withthe last man on Earth.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Not that one, yeah, not the one that you know.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Not the one you think or you think belongs in here,
because it doesn't necessarily.
No, a different one, a wayworse, dumb one.
The Last man on Earth is a 1924American silent comedy film
directed by John G Blystone,starring Earl Fox, great name,
(32:58):
and produced by Fox Film, wowFox and Fox Film, and based on
the short story by the same nameby John D Swain that appeared
in Wow, you're really diggingdown for source material here
that appeared in the November1923 issue of Muncie's Magazine.
I love Muncie's.
(33:18):
It comes to our door everymorning.
I train my dog to bring it in,are you sure?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
that's what you're reading.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
I don't know I never learned to read or write.
It's up in the air In thisstory.
In 1940, a man becomes a hermitafter rejection Incel, by the
way.
This is about incels, I'm sorryto tell you.
By 1950, a plague kills alladult males except him.
Now desired by millions ofwomen, he still yearns for his
(33:47):
initial love interest, makinghim a treasured last man.
Wow, talk about fragile maleego.
Like that's Jesus Christ.
You already control women.
Like I don't know how much moreyou need here.
Everything, yeah, exactly.
The film was remade as theJesus Christ semi-musical comedy
(34:11):
.
It's Great to Be Alive from1933.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
And then 1929, then 2024.
As Joker 2, follow you, doYou're?
Speaker 1 (34:21):
not wrong, and in Spanish as El Ytumo Verón Sombre
La Tierra, also in 1933.
And it influenced a sci-finovel called Mr Adam in 1946.
And also a bunch of other stuffwe'll talk about later, and
also a bunch of other stuffwe'll talk about later.
In it's Great to Be Alive, ayoung aviator, carlos Martin,
(34:44):
played by Raoul Raoulian wow.
He's dumped by his girlfriend,gloria Stewart, and heads on a
solo flight across the PacificOcean.
He has engine trouble and makesan emergency landing on an
uninhabited island in thePacific.
Shortly afterward, a pandemicof a new disease called
masculitis kills every fertilemale human on the planet.
(35:07):
When efforts to cure thedisease fail, the human race is
doomed.
Humanity's institutions are allnow run by women, including the
Chicago underworld oh shit,which actually would probably be
way more cutthroat but lessimpulsive.
Carlos escapes the island andonce he returns home and hears
(35:28):
the news, it now depends on himto continue the human race.
This, of course, will return inwhy the Last man and in the
2019 American drama.
Only Now.
I included this, not because itnecessarily fits our criteria as
much as if, as it's kind of anincel fantasy, but because it
(35:48):
obviously shares the name of theRichard Matheson novel and
Vincent Price adaptation thatmany would point to as an
example of a pandemic film, andwhile that's true, it and its
remakes are more akin to zombieoutbreak movies.
So the first version, whichseems to understand the point of
the book more than the others,is similar to the film the Girl
with All the Gifts, because inthis new reality we're a thing
(36:11):
of the past and our hubris orignorance helped lead to our
extinction.
If you have watched theoriginal Vincent Price Last man
on Earth or read the book I AmLegend, the real commentary
which Omega man and the movie IAm Legend later completely seem
to misunderstand is that ourhero is not a hero.
(36:32):
He is emblematic of a flawedand dying culture and mindset.
He's an alcoholic, he's anasshole, he ignores too much
that he knows is wrong.
Because of his, his ignoranceand his hubris, he essentially
lets his daughter and his wifeboth die and he rails against
(36:54):
the vampire infected around theworld as monstrous and flawed
and evil and the enemy.
And then in the book and in themovie later, he's confronted
with people who have survived,who didn't die, who are
relatively normal, who cansurvive, reproduce and function
(37:18):
even with this infection.
And even in that face he's likeno, you're abominations and
you're all assholes, you know.
And then eventually he he justkind of like dies because of his
ignorance.
And I feel like that's kind ofthe commentary they're trying to
make in the girl with all thegifts.
But either way, the pandemicpart isn't really the point as
much as it is.
(37:38):
I mean, it is to a certain, butit falls in this weird gray
area where you're like you couldkind of make a case either way.
But that's not really,especially if the book and the
original movie maybe you couldmake a case for it.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
I still think they've already dealt with the pandemic
.
In a way, they're dealing withthe society laid bare after that
.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
The first act is the pandemic, as opposed to Omega
man or I Am Legend, where thepandemic is like a flashback at
the beginning, because I watchedit not too long ago, like a
year or so ago.
Last man on Earth.
Like the first act is himdealing with the pandemic, but
it is also just still set up forthe commentary Not that it is.
(38:20):
In fact, it's the opposite ofwhat we're trying to talk about,
because the pandemic isactually not something to be
overcome and that's kind of thecommentary that he's wrong for
thinking he has to defeat it,and so I mean that's why it
doesn't really fit in, butthat's why we included it,
because because you need to seeexamples of, you know, the
methods of our madness.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, Last man.
It's almost like the bad guysin any X-Men book.
We don't want to be left behind.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Right, we don't want change.
Last man is like an issue zeroof House of M.
You know we're like oh well,they won, they took over,
they're the new thing and we'refighting desperately against
this thing.
From the perspective of us, theeveryman who normally would go
yeah, that's an infection thatkilled my family and then
resurrected them as what wethink of, as monstrous
(39:12):
abominations.
But then it turns out actuallyit's just the next step in human
evolution.
Now we're going to move on toSkeleton on Horseback or that
was my first girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
Hey, oh no, it was his first girlfriend Are we?
Speaker 1 (39:25):
She was tiny and skeletal.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
I don't know Are we talking about the red hair.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
No, no, no, no, the one that actually took his
virginity.
We'll get into that later.
No, no, it will never come upever again.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
Probably OK sometimes you should come up, ever again,
probably.
Oh okay, sometimes you shouldremind me.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Well, you have a bad memory.
I can explain it to you, butyou won't remember.
That actually may have beenbefore you joined our little
clique, though Like right before.
Oh, skeleton on Horseback orthe White Disease is a 1937
Czech drama film directed by andstarring a guy named Hugo Haas.
(40:06):
In it, the White Plague, adeadly leprosy-like disease that
mainly infects people over 50,is ravaging the entire world.
Dr Galen, a reclusive physicianwho has devoted his life to the
poor, finds a cure, but herefuses to share his cure with
the rich and powerful unless hisone condition is met Eternal
(40:27):
peace among nations, which isawesome, yeah, and especially in
1937, this is poignant.
Meanwhile, the nation'smilitaristic leader is preparing
to invade a neighboring country.
I don't know who they'retalking about there in 1937.ter.
His name's hister, mr histerthat they do that.
That's actually in a moneypython skit.
(40:49):
Hitler didn't die, but he likemoved to suburban london and
tried to start over by runningfor like local council and he
kept calling himself hister.
It's, it's a good skit.
John Cleese plays Hitler.
It's very funny.
The dictator's only closefriend, an aristocratic arms
manufacturer who is an essentialpart of his war machinations,
(41:09):
then catches the disease.
This is all based on a playcalled the White Disease by
Carol Kopeck.
I don't know.
There's an accent mark over theC, so it could be Chopek.
It could be Chopek.
I'm not really sure.
I'm not great with Cyrillic, soit's really hard to say I
barely do English.
(41:30):
I barely know English.
Next is a film that is oftenpointed to as setting the stage
for further films, in Americancinema at least about pandemics.
It is a 1950 Americanmedical-themed film noir
thriller directed by the greatElia Kazan, called Panic in the
(41:51):
Streets.
I got nothing, I got nothing.
I got nothing.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
That's funny because I was thinking of Bowie's Panic
in Detroit At the same time, butI couldn't work it in there.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Which is funny, because the first thing I was
thinking about was Dancing inthe Streets by Bowie and Mick.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Jagger, it's the great Unified Bowie theory, I
think.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
We finally reached the Bowie singularity.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
This is like a bit in a PCU, where Gene Hackman and
Michael Caine are in the samefilm.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, why?
We all like Jeremy Piven.
I don't know anymore.
I would say it is Piven's bestvehicle.
Movie-wise I think it's.
He did have a good TV showcalled Cupid on ABC for a long
time that I liked a lot.
It doesn't count.
If only you saw it, it was sopopular it had a reboot a few
(42:50):
years later.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Never heard of it.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
This is what Brandeis American Studies professor, tom
Doherty, has to say about thegenre in general and this film's
place within Quote.
So you get a proliferation ofnuclear disaster movies, alien
invasion scenarios andend-of-the-world narratives to
express the intimations ofmortality.
Pandemic films are a variationon the theme, perhaps in some
(43:16):
ways more terrifying becausetheir conceit is all too
plausible.
Ilya Kazan's Panic in theStreets, released in 1950,
really provides a template forthe pandemic films that follow.
It's about a health worker anda police detective trying to
track down a patient zero in NewOrleans to prevent an outbreak
of pneumonic plague.
Pneumonic plague, by the way, isa weird buzzword.
(43:38):
When we say plague, or theBlack Death or whatever, that is
a combination of like eightdifferent things that swept
through Europe during the MiddleAges.
Okay, I've done a lot ofresearch on that too.
I watched a lot of actually Iwatched a lot of great courses
about the Black Plague and howit's varied.
The film tells the story ofLieutenant Commander Clinton
Reed, played by Richard Widmark,an officer of the US Public
(44:01):
Health Service, which I don'tthink is a real thing, and
Captain Tom Warren, played byPaul Douglas If it was, it's now
gone.
No, 100% has been depreciated Agrizzled veteran detective of
the New Orleans PoliceDepartment, I'm guessing, played
by Powers Booth today.
Well, he's dead, isn't he?
Speaker 2 (44:16):
I don't know guessing played by powers booth today.
Well, he's dead isn't he?
Speaker 1 (44:19):
I don't know, yeah, he's been dead.
Harvey kytel oh, maybe a kytel,sure, yeah, or uh, or a uh uh.
The one I always confuse powersbooth, for for no reason, stacy
keach, maybe a stacy keachwho's also dead, yeah, yeah or
maybe in a different era.
Charles bronson, hey, diseaseyour time up.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
You gotta punch this disease in the face.
I got a present for yourdisease, blammo this disease
raped my wife this diseasecalled hoodlums and black kids.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Oh those punks.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Well, I was watching this video that was kind of
breaking down some of thoseDeath Wish movies, and my
significant other was watchingwith me and she didn't really
understand what Death Wishseries of films was.
She just kind of looks at meand is like, oh my God.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Yeah, cringeworthy is the most diplomatic way you
could put it.
They are problematic at best.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
It's also like one of the most wrongheaded ideas that
then became its own genre.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
That has stayed strong till this day.
There's a reason that BruceWillis starred in the remake.
I'm guessing Big C lost an armwrestling match to Mel Gibson.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
I'm sure Mel has his own versions of that oh.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
I guarantee he does hey boyo.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
It's based on the real threat of smallpox.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
A grizzled veteran detective of New Orleans Police
Department, who may or may notbe Charles Bronson, have only a
day or two of frantic, intensesearch and interviews in which
to prevent a greater outbreak ofa deadly epidemic of, once
again, pneumonic plague which,in this after read, determines a
(46:00):
waterfront homicide victim isalso an index case and the first
to be found carrying thedisease.
The supporting cast includesBarbara Del Geddes as Reed's
wife.
Yada, yada, yada.
Jack Palance in his film debutno way, yes.
And Zero Mostel.
He was Gene Wilder'scounterpart in the Producers.
(46:22):
Okay, I'm pretty sure he was inFiddler on the Roof along with
Topol.
By the way, from Flash Gordonthey play two crooks, associates
of the victim, who had promptedthe public health investigation
, prompted the public healthinvestigation.
The film was also the debut ofTommy Raytig, best known for
playing Jeff Miller in the earlyseasons of Lassie, who gives a
(46:45):
shit.
I think you could have cut thatbit.
No, I know, I know.
The only reason I keep readingis because I want to get to this
point.
The score was composed byAlfred Newman From Mad Magazine,
the Alfred E Newman, nedRyerson from mad magazine, the
alfred e newman ned ryerson.
The film was originally namedport of entry.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Subsequently, wait, I know, subsequently called
outbreak.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
I'm going to tell you this right now 80 of these
movies that have come out wereat one point called outbreak,
and then eventually panic in thestreets.
Uh, so then we get to anotherfilm that same year the killer
that stalked new york, alsoknown as frightened city.
The film shot on location andsemi-documentary style.
But this is interesting.
(47:34):
This is a mockumentary.
It's about diamond smugglerswho unknowingly start a
mockumentary well, it's not areal documentary, it's shot in
documentary style, but I think,I think mockumentary means
something different okay, I'llgrant you that, in that it's not
spinal tap, but that's adifferent pandemic film just
(47:55):
like the office way different.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
to be honest, I haven't seen the killer that
Stalked New York, so I'm notexactly sure how they are
describing this film.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
It's about diamond smugglers who unknowingly start
a smallpox outbreak in New YorkCity in 1947.
It's based on the real threatof a smallpox epidemic in the
city.
The outbreak marked the largestmass vaccination effort ever
conducted for smallpox epidemicin the city.
The outbreak marked the largestmass vaccination effort ever
conducted for smallpox inAmerica.
Within three weeks of thediscovery of the actual outbreak
(48:26):
, the wow, I'm wrong the USPublic Health Service a real
thing in conjunction with NewYork City health officials, had
procured the smallpox vaccineand inoculated over 6,350,000
adults and children.
That is an insane number, for1950 especially, and would be
(48:51):
crazy today.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
Yeah, yeah, that's wild.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Within three weeks's awesome.
Of that number, five millionhad been vaccinated within the
first two weeks.
The rapid response was creditedwith limiting the outbreak to
just 12 people, 10 of whomrecovered, while two died.
This is fascinating becauseit's a depiction of a real life
(49:17):
crisis with a real life dramaticarc in its society reacting,
then acting appropriately to areal threat.
An event like that would bevery unlikely to see play out
today.
There's no way that wouldhappen today.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
No no.
Speaker 1 (49:38):
That is one of the most amazing and you know what
this is so blasé in the historyof just even American health,
which has been awful throughoutthe entire existence of this
country.
That right there is one of thecoolest, most effective and
amazing examples of how to cometogether and solve a problem
(49:59):
there has ever been in thiscountry.
And we don't even talk about itbecause back then it was like,
yeah, yeah, we cured polio, wedid that, we, you know like we
just did that back then well, alot happened to get us to rfk jr
, portion of our downfall thenwe're going to fast forward a
little bit.
Crimes of the future, but notthat one, not that one.
(50:21):
1970, different time, crimes ofthe future, 1970, by david
cronenberg.
In crimes of the future, it'sset in 1997.
It follows adrian tripod, anoccasional director of the house
of skin, a dermatologicalclinic.
He embarks on a quest to findhis mentor, the insane
(50:42):
dermatologist.
The insane dermatologist.
Well, he does like making filmsabout crazy doctors, so You're
really scraping the bottom ofthe barrel and you have to go.
He's a maniacal dermatologist.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
There's lots of skin particles in the bottom of the
barrel.
He's gotta scrape those off.
Named Antoine Rogue.
Speaker 1 (51:02):
Wow, perhaps it's Rouge.
Well, there's no Assault Degue,so I'm guessing it's.
Speaker 2 (51:07):
There is not, but I don't know.
Speaker 1 (51:09):
I mean, he is Canadian, so I'm just trying to
Well then there would be an ex,then they'd know French, they
would know.
Rogue has vanished after adevastating plague caused by
cosmetic products wiped out ohthat, wiped out all sexually
mature women.
It's kind of a reverse of whatwe talked about earlier.
(51:29):
Allegedly the virus mutated,now affects men and kills rogue.
It goes on.
The whole thing is about.
It's a pandemic started by ourvanity and the cosmetic products
.
Speaker 2 (51:43):
The problem is Brand.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
X, really Should have tried Joker Brand.
Speaker 2 (51:48):
With Joker Brand, you get to grin again and again.
What is the key?
Speaker 1 (51:55):
Deodorant Makeup.
Then, a year later, theandromeda strain.
Okay, now this is one that youreally need to talk about.
Everyone needs to reallyacknowledge the andromeda strain
, of course.
By michael crichton.
1971 american science fictionthriller movie produced and
directed by robert wise, whodirected the day the earth stood
(52:16):
still, and also, regrettably,star trek, the motion picture
based on movie produced anddirected by Robert Wise, who
directed the Day the Earth SitsStill, and also, regrettably,
star Trek, the Mushroom Picturebased on Crichton's 1969 novel.
The film stars Arthur Hill,james Olsen, kate Reed and David
Wayne as a team of scientistswho investigate a deadly
organism of extraterrestrialorigin.
With few exceptions, the filmdoes follow the book pretty
(52:38):
close and also, hilariously,special effects were done by
Douglas Trumbull, who did Iguess that's not that weird did
Star Trek the motion picture,but anyway in it, after a US
government satellite crashesnear the small rural town of
Piedmont, new Mexico, onFebruary 5th 1971, nearly all
residents die.
(52:58):
A military recovery team fromVandenberg Air Force Base
attempts to recover thesatellite but dies while trying
to do so, suspecting that thesatellite has brought back an
alien organism.
The military then activates anelite team of scientists, like
every Michael Crichton storyever, an elite team of a group
(53:21):
of people brought together tosolve this thing in isolation.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
I don't follow.
I don't see the connectionanywhere.
Speaker 1 (53:29):
Because I've never read Sphere or seen the movie,
I've never seen Congo orJurassic Park, or Nope, nope.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
I don't know.
13th Warrior?
No, oh no.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
There's no elite group of people brought together
secretly to defeat this evil.
No, no.
Speaker 2 (53:46):
No, you keep working on that theory.
Get back to me.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
ER, a small elite group of people solving all
these problems.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
Wow, that's not ER at all, except for helicopters.
They can elite group of peoplesolving all these problems.
Wow, that's not ER at all,except for helicopters.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
they can't solve that , hey, but who can?
Who has ever been able to solvethe riddle of helicopters?
The riddle of helicopters.
Cron blasts into helicopters.
Did we just do that at the sametime?
God damn it.
Speaker 2 (54:16):
It was there.
It was there.
I should have done it the firstplace.
I was just dangling at the sametime.
God damn it.
It was there.
It was there.
I should have done it the firstplace.
I was just dangling in theeverlasting sky.
Speaker 1 (54:25):
It's an extremely Crichton story.
Now this is a movie that I sawearlier today that actually
stars an actress that appearedin one of the later films we're
going to talk about, which iscompletely coincidental but
interesting, called when haveAll the People Gone.
It was a 1974 Americanmade-for-television
science-fiction drama filmstarring Peter Graves, kathleen
(54:46):
Quinlan, george O'Hanlon andVerna Bloom.
Watching it you're going tonotice the ties to Blazing
Saddles and other films, butPeter Graves obviously from
Mission Impossible and otherthings In it.
On a camping trip to the SierraNevada mountains in Central
California, stephen Anders andhis two teenage children,
deborah and David, are exploringa cave when they experience an
(55:09):
earthquake.
After emerging, they hear froma ranch hand who is outside.
That's the guy from BlazingSaddles.
When you was slaves, you sanglike birds Classic.
It's that guy from blazingsaddles.
When you was slaves, you sanglike birds classic.
It's that guy.
Yeah, uh, that there was abright solar flash prior to the
earthquake.
He soon then falls ill and diesand then, after just watching
(55:31):
it recently, he dies.
And then they go and they'retrying to like figure out what
to do and maybe we should goback to civilization or whatever
.
And then they go back wherethey had buried him Well, not
buried, just covered him up in asleeping bag actually and be
like where is he?
He's gone, there's nothing inthe bag.
And then they open the bag andhis clothes are still there.
Because it turns out that whensomeone dies after being exposed
(55:52):
to whatever, this contagion isturns into a powder.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
Like Batman the movie Everyone gets dehydrated.
Oh shit, you're right, it islike Batman the movie.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
Yeah Well, the reason I included it was because in
Andromeda's train your bloodbecomes solid and becomes a
powder, and that's what killsyou.
That's not going to work.
How's the Riddler going to winso well?
I mean, it's kind of ambitiousfor a made-for-TV movie and has
(56:24):
some good, you know, fun actorsin it, but it actually is more
like Batman the movie.
So that brings us to themid-70s, which so this is a
really interesting period oftime in which the pandemic
epidemic panic turns intosomething else that is usually
either, like I said earlier,man-made or alien.
So we're going to leave it herefor now, in 1974.
And we're going to pick up nexttime in 1976.
(56:45):
We'll wait, wait till part two,mostly because this is a very
dense thing, it's very long.
We also rant a lot.
So there's no way we're goingto get to the rest of this quite
yet.
From 76 to 2024.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
We're not going to get there yet sorry potters,
you're going to have another one.
Speaker 1 (57:03):
You're going to have to wait bang hey, I had to wait
to bury my wife and daughteryou're going to have to wait for
the episode hey, are you tryingto steal my car?
Speaker 2 (57:15):
blammo, this guy looked at me wrong at the deli.
Speaker 1 (57:17):
You trying to steal my car, blammo.
This guy looked at me wrong atthe deli, so I murdered his wife
and daughter.
Speaker 2 (57:25):
He was too ethnic, not my town.
Speaker 1 (57:29):
This town gets dark too early, if you know what I
mean.
Speaker 2 (57:32):
Bang Blammo dead.
Speaker 1 (57:35):
So we're going to leave it there for now.
Next week we will come backwith that.
Probably more Bronson, not TomHardy Bronson, but Charles
Bronson, but not that CharlesBronson, the original Charles
Bronson.
Speaker 2 (57:51):
OG Charles Bronson.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
Would have been funnier in that movie if he had
just decided to do a CharlesBronson impression.
The whole time have beenfunnier in that movie if he had
just decided to do with charlesbronson impression the whole
time.
Oh, he's naked and slappinghimself and like chalking
himself up like dong hanging outand he's just like, hey boy, oh
, let's do this this is my fungun hey, blammo gets an erection
(58:16):
immediately.
Speaker 2 (58:19):
Skeet, skeet, as the kids say, which Charles Bronson?
Speaker 1 (58:23):
is famous for saying Both of them.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
They love skeeting.
Speaker 1 (58:28):
Thank you guys for listening.
Jake, take us out.
Speaker 2 (58:32):
Oh, I thought you were going to switch it up this
time.
No, no, I was just queuing itup.
I was intrigued, Like what wasI going to say?
Because I didn't have anythingeither.
Like I have anything, Perhaps Ishould plan ahead.
Speaker 1 (58:45):
It's almost like we should take this seriously.
Speaker 2 (58:48):
Oh, ah, ee, ah, oh ah .
Well, we're to the end so far,so no going back, uh, but we
hope you guys come back.
No going back like share,subscribe, give five blamos to
whoever needs them.
Uh, if you would pass along tofriends who might be interested
(59:09):
in pandemic films or charlesbronson, or charles bronson or
the mythical god Chopper.
Speaker 1 (59:17):
With Eric Bana.
Speaker 2 (59:19):
Man, what are the odds that we'd have both Charles
Bronson and Eric Bana's Chopperin the same episode?
Speaker 1 (59:26):
Well, because they're very similar stories and real
people, they're like so close.
That's what I'm saying.
Now, what we need is a moviewhere they fight each other or
team up like a buddy movieStopper, my Chopper will will
shoot or get to the chopper.
The pen is truly mightier thanthe sword.
(59:47):
It's only funny if you've seenchopper oh man, uh, skip before
next episode.
Speaker 2 (59:54):
What should they do?
Speaker 1 (59:55):
well, they should probably rethink the decisions
that have led them here thus far, but they should probably pay
their tabs clean up afterthemselves to some sort of
reasonable degree, make surethat they have supported the
local comic shops and retailersand in that vein we would like
to say godspeed, fair wizardsblammo them as a war zone.
Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
It's me and ma.
Now please go away.
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