Pandemic Films Part 2

As we approach the 5th anniversary of the COVID-19 Pandemic, we look back at how culture viewed such events and their impact. Our fascination with pandemic narratives in cinema didn't begin with COVID—it spans decades of filmmaking that eerily predicted our current reality. From star-studded 70s disaster films to modern psychological thrillers, we track how Hollywood's vision of global disease evolved alongside our deepest fears.


Ready to see these familiar stories through new eyes? Listen now, then tell us which pandemic film predicted our reality best. Share your thoughts and favorite viral cinema moments—we're all in this contamination zone together.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I always ask if you are ready that is included in
the preparedness.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Am I prepared to say something?
No, ready to record andprepared to say something are
two different things.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Being a podcast host is like being a parent you know,
nobody's ever ready.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
No, you make the best you can with what you got it
started out by a mistake that wemade, you know it's a night of
passion.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
A whoopsie in a backseat.
That's how you start mostpodcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Are they in the proper approach pattern for
today?
Negative.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
All weapons Now Charge the lightning field.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Meatloaf is the patron saint of podcasting.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
yes, this is Dispatch Ajax, where we do worship at
the altar of the loaf.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I'm Skip.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
I am his fellow loafer, Jake.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
Meatloaf is one word, isn't it?
No, it's two words, right.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I'm looking it up.
It is two words the meat andthe loaf.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
So the proper would be Mr Loaf.
Hey, we got a table of one herefor loaf.
Hey, meat, your table's ready.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
It's Mr Loaf to you asshole Please.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Mr Loaf is my father.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
I didn't go to seven years of meat school to be
called Mr.
Just describe Chicago publicschools, Okay you're going to do
an extra semester of kielbasasausage Casings.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
we're going to focus on.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
This is why I record this, so that it's out there for
posterity.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
This is more of a time capsule than a podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Skip was telling me about stuff he cut out of
previous podcasts.
I'm like I said that thathappened.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, in fact, the other day we recorded for like
an hour and 45 minutes and Iedited it down to the actual
content and it was 39 minuteslong.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Jesus, yeah, edited it down to the actual content
and it was 39 minutes long.
Jesus, yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep, which?

Speaker 1 (02:09):
we are exemplifying currently.
Yes, yes so we are going tofinish up our series on
pandemics specifically.
Oh, that's that's good.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
That's relevant to pod right.
It came through my computerspeakers.
Do you feel that in your ear,listener, that's the gunk.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
It's the substance.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Ooh, it's the stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I was fuck you, I was going to suck.
I paused because I was like ishe going to say it or am I Fuck
it's the street trash gonna sayit, or am I?
It's the street?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
trash.
Oh god, it's the chud mucuspermeating through your computer
speakers as we speak.
Yeah, lip it, lick it in oh allright, yeah, so we're gonna
finish up our pandemic filmseries.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Well, we wanted to tackle a lot of stuff, pandemics
in general, in pop culture.
The problem was that therereally aren't a lot of good
comic books about it.
I mean there are some,obviously.
I mean why the last man comesto to mind.
There are many.
Well, no, there aren't many.
There are a couple.
Um, nothing really great, andsome of them are just

(03:19):
adaptations of films anyway.
So we figured would just, let'sjust do films and focus on that
when we left off.
We had only gotten to 1974, Ibelieve, with when have All the
People Gone?
You know, made for TV, goodcast, really fun stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, and you want to make sure you find out that
answer before you learn whoindeed let the dogs out, because
they're coming for you.
Dogs are coming all over you.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
If you've read or seen any version of I Am Legend.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Who let those dogs out Probably that Omega man,
that's probably who did it.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
They're after that Soylent Green.
It's that sweet, sweet SoylentGreenies for their daily
toothbrushing treat.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
You blew up my people factory.
You damn dirty apes.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
I like how you were like right there on Bronson.
You were like right at the edgeof Bronson.
I'm just on yes.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
I got a little toe in Bronson.
I got a little toe in Heston, alittle Breston for anybody.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Breston.
That sounds like a millennialname and they're fucking stupid
kid.
You blew it up, you maniacs.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Blammo Every once in a while it pays off.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
We're going to recap some of the actual films.
We talked about a lot of thestructure, the meaning behind,
the motivations behind a lot ofpandemic films, why they appeal,
their sort of sociopoliticalimpacts, yada, yada, yada, in
the first episode.
So now we're going to talkabout, in the modern era, some
of the films between 74 andtoday.

(04:51):
Now, this is not in any way,shape or form a complete list,
because how could it be?
I mean, this is an entire genre, so you're not gonna get to
everything, but these are someof the, if not highlights, at
least different examples thatshow how varied and diverse this

(05:13):
genre gets.
So we're going to start offwith a relatively famous movie
in this genre called theCassandra Crossing.
Cool yeah, it's a 1976 disasterthriller film directed by
George Pan Cosmitos.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Hell yeah, you guys might remember that name.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
His middle name is Pan, all right.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Although he generally goes by P, I think.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, I mean, he does carry around a fife and has
goat legs, so I'm not going toshame him.
So this is the cast legs.
So I'm not gonna shame him.
So this is the cast.
It stars sophia lorraine,richard harris, ava gardner, a
young martin sheen, burtlancaster, lee strasburg and oj
simpson.
Oh bringing, it turns out he'sthe deadly virus you know george

(06:01):
p kosmatos, right?

Speaker 2 (06:02):
yeah, I'm looking at his name right now.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
I mean I don't know what he's done.
No, I don't know.
No, you virus.
You know George P Cosmitos,right?
Yeah, I'm looking at his nameright now.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
I mean, I don't know what he's done, no, I don't know
.
Oh, no, you don't know.
Okay, alright, alright, sightunseen.
Cobra Rambo, first Blood, part2.
Tombstone Leviathan and his sonhas gone on to make some things
you might have heard of, likeMandy.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Or Beyond the Black Rainbow.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
So his son is more talented, but he's done some
really interesting things, hey.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Tombstone, tombstone's great.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Cobra Aboard a European train which is quickly
hurtling toward a derelict archbridge likely to collapse
because of its age and stuff.
They they set up earlier in themovie.
As things go on, you know, theydo a bunch of setup with these
different characters.
Martin sheen is this youngplayboy dude with amazing suits,

(06:56):
by the way just like I wouldwear them all in a heartbeat
these great polyester, widecollared plaid shit.
It's fucking amazing.
So then we cut to the us missionof the international health
organization where threeterrorists blow up the building.
Two of them are shot, onemortally, then one escapes and

(07:16):
then he shows up on the trainand runs off.
The surviving terrorist ishospitalized in quarantine.
Elena stradner and us militaryintelligence colonel stephen
mckenzie argue over disease andwhat it is and whatever.
They're the ones that are thereto oversee this thing, because
stradner suspects that it's abiological weapon, but mckenzie

(07:39):
claims that the weapon that hestole the dude dude stole was
being destroyed.
I don't know how that makes itokay, but that's kind of the
premise.
So then the other terrorist heescapes and stows away aboard
the train from Geneva toStockholm.
They're all on board thisEuropean, literally
cross-country train when aSwedish I think it's a terrorist

(08:04):
comes on board and he'sinfected with this horrible
disease and he keeps trying tokeep a low profile or whatever,
even though he just shows upeverywhere and is in no way
shape or form low profile.
In fact, there are momentswhere he just goes into other
people's rooms and uses theirbathroom and then they come in

(08:25):
and they're like who are you?
And he's like like, runs out,shoves them aside.
You're like you're not hidingat all, not even trying.
He shows up, I think.
I think he pretends to be thewell, I know he goes into the
kitchen at one point I can'tremember if he pretends to be
the chef or he just sneezes allover the chef and his food, it's
what, something like that.
But he makes no actual effortto hide, even though he's an

(08:47):
international terrorist on therun, and so he essentially
infects everybody on this trainwith this whatever engineered or
at least tinkered with virusWithin this command center.
That they have the jointEuropean-US thing, that they
have going on.
They have this debate whetherthe train should be stopped so
that they have going on.
They have this debate whetherthe train should be stopped so

(09:07):
that the terrorists can beremoved in quarantine.
But the US Colonel McKenzie.
He's concerned that all thepassengers on the train are
already infected, and he's right.
He insists on rerouting thetrain to a disused railway line
that goes straight to a Naziconcentration camp in Janow,

(09:28):
poland, where the strangers willbe quarantined.
This is 1976.
This is literally 30 yearsafter the end of the war.
This is so fresh on people'sminds You're going to send them
to a concentration camp toquarantine them.
Yeah, the line crosses adangerously unsound steel arch
bridge, known as the cassandrabridge or cassandra crossing

(09:53):
that's the name of the film whata coincidence it's.
it's literally been out of usesince 1948.
I don't want to give anyspoilers away or whatever how
the the movie movie unfolds orwhat have you.
It is an interesting.
I think it fits into that like70s disaster movie genre, things

(10:14):
OK, but it's like it's kind ofa weird outlier because it's not
airport, it's not DaringInferno or whatever it's.
It's a different kind of animalbecause of its premise.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
But it does tick a lot of those boxes like it's got
a huge cast yeah, you kind ofhave like that curdling
conveyance of some sort, whetherit's a bus, a plane this time
it's a train this time's a train, yeah, but the weird thing is
like they have two weirdconditions that are part of the
narrative.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
It would be one movie to have.
We're hurtling toward thisbridge that's going to collapse,
but on top of that it's alsoabout terrorism, it's about
biological weapons and then alsoabout pandemics, because
everyone on board is infectedwith this thing that could kill
everybody.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
I'm pretty sure at some point they say that it's
the plague.
This one, apparently, is avariation on the pneumonic
plague, which they do not have acure for, I believe, even to
this day.
I think they have inoculationsfor, but I don't think they have
a cure for it and this is likea varied, intentionally
manipulated version.
So they don't have shit forthat.
So I will leave it there forthat movie.

(11:27):
It's.
It's interesting.
I thought some of the tensionwas good.
I find it absurd in some ways,and a lot of that, I think, is
because I'm looking now backwardafter the COVID-19 pandemic,
and I feel the same way aboutother movies we're going to talk
about too, where I can'tbelieve that people are doing
these things knowing this mighthappen.

(11:48):
You know what I mean.
Like I can't believe you'relike this close to another human
being breathing in your face.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
Right, yeah, you look at those things differently.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, I mean go back to the Spanish flu in 1919.
The same thing happened.
That happened in COVID-19.
There were masks, orders.
People were like you have towear a mask, you can't gather in
public, you have to stay awayfrom people for the same reasons
, and those make sense.
How did that not stick?
How did that not, like, comeinto our zeitgeist?
In Asia they do this all thetime and they don't have as many

(12:18):
pandemics, as you know, asanybody else.
Well, I mean, mean that'sprobably an issue for a larger
discussion that I don't think wecan.
I agree, it's just.
It's just interesting watchingit now and being like it feels
dated, but at the same time allpandemic films feel dated now
you know what I mean but it'slike simple stuff.

(12:40):
Why aren't you wearing masks?
It's the easiest thing in theuniverse to do.
Don't breathe on people.
You know what I mean.
Don't sneeze in somebody's face.
It's not hard.
That did, I think, tint mywatching of it.
I do think it's a fun movie.
I think it's worth a watch.
It's got a great cast.
You kind of hate almost all thecharacters, but they do do a

(13:01):
good job of ramping up tensionat certain points.
The only thing I think that Iwould say really drags the film
down is the fact that they havetoo many points.
But when you're watching it andbefore you know the ending,
you're kind of like so is itabout the bridge?
Is it about the disease?
Is it about the terrorists?
Like what I mean?

Speaker 2 (13:21):
right, yeah, just doing a little cursor research,
I do think this might be one ofthe earliest examples of
terrorists trying to steal abiological agent and use it as a
weapon in movies.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
Yeah, I would say most likely.
Yeah, biological warfare wasn'treally a thing until God what?
Yeah, probably around this time, so this would have been
relatively new.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
Yeah, this would have been relatively new yeah, and
there was stuff in books beforethat but I can't really find
many movies that focused onutilizing a biological agent in
a terrorist scenario.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
After World War II they were outright banned by the
Geneva Convention.
Even research is illegal tothis day.
But you know, yeah no.
Also OJ Simpson's in this movie, so he's better than a lot of
athletes turn actors.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
I think he does what he's supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
You just don't expect that much though no, but he is
very charismatic as a person.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah which I always think.
I think his noidberg you knowcharacter in the naked gun
movies work so well I think youjust mashed up the Noid and
Nordberg.
Did I.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Noidberg.
Yes, you called him Noidberg,which is funny.
Next on the list is El Año dePesta.
In English, it's the Year ofthe Plague.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
If only it could have been El Año del Pasto.
Huh, no move along.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Mexicans are definitely well known for their
pasta dishes.
It is a Mexican film category.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
All right.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Why not Cut it out?
I will decide what's cut outand what is not.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Please, why you make my pot so bad?
Damn you.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Picture it Mexico City 1925.
This is categorized as athriller, drama and science
fiction film.
It was filmed in 1978, releasedin 79.
Apparently, the writer was afamous Colombian writer named
Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
It's an adapted screenplay,obviously, the novel by daniel

(15:26):
defoe, a journal of the plagueyear, which was published in
1722.
That was a that's a way backmachine, so that's one of our
not the earliest, I think, inhistory, but one of the earliest
example just getting adapted in, uh, in 1978.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah, so I think the oldest plague story is the
Decameron published in Italy in1353.
About a small group of peoplewho flee Florence to escape the
Black Death and spend two weekstelling each other stories to
distract from the horrors aroundthem, which is really kind of a
lot of times what these filmsare about in a broader sense

(16:06):
really kind of a lot of timeswhat these films are about in a
broader sense.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
It's crazy that this genre kind of brush off, I think
in the mainstream zeitgeist isone of the oldest genres of
fictional drama.
In this movie, a dreadfulsickness is found in a mexican
town.
A doctor tries to alert theauthorities when he discovers
its epidemic nature.
No one listens to him and soonthe illness spreads.
Common trope in these thegovernment then tries to manage

(16:29):
the information in order toprevent terror.
So it's not about managing thedisease but about the messaging
that doesn't sound like trumpanybody.
L fauci our next one is calledthe hamburg syndrome, which in
German is Die Hamburg Krankheit.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
I'm pretty sure it's Krankheit.
Yes, boy, and this is going todate.
This 1979, west German slashFrench science fiction film by
Peter Fleischman, starringHelmut Grimm, fernando Erebal,
caroline sizer.
In this one, a deadly epidemicbreaks out in hamburg.

(17:12):
Out of the blue, victims falldead in the fetal position.
In one scene, a doctor whoautopsies the dead says quote
three days ago it was 12 bodies,the day before yesterday it was
57.
And now we don't have any morespace.
So when politicians in themilitary intervene, set up
quarantine stations and developa vaccine which carries high

(17:35):
risks and this is where we getinto some weird territory today
Like not that vaccines do carryhigh risk today, but people just
are going to look at that andassume that this is so hard not
to get topical with jokes andbits.
Well, I mean, that's kind of whywe do this.
It's fine.
I don't think it's a problem.
We talk about that a lot, eventhe Mandela Effect thing.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
We started talking about it January 6th, yeah, I
don't know how good my RFKimpression is, though.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Do you have a Kermit impression or a Patrick Mahomes
impression?
It's close enough.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
But I got to like be gargling asphalt while being
Kermit.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
You got to be gargling Trump's balls while you
do it, while Cheryl Hines tapesit for her fucking Instagram,
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
So people leave, crazily.
People leave their homes withface masks to go to the
quarantine Wow.
Easily, people leave theirhomes with face masks to go to
the quarantine Wow, what aninsane response to a fucking
global pandemic.
Basically, that one is allabout finding patient zero.
It spreads around the world, orat least Europe, and then they
call it the Hamburg disease, andthis one I put in there

(18:45):
specifically because of thesearch for patient zero, the
first known infected, which inepidemics and pandemics is
usually like if a disease hasjumped from, let's say, the
animal community to the humancommunity.
Who's the first person thatexhibited these symptoms?

(19:05):
Or a disease exists, but it'srare.
And then there's one personwho's a massive spreader of it
often.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Well, that's real no, I was laughing.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
A massive spreader, that's all oh, which is funny
because one of the mostanachronistic of these is the
guy that spread aids everywhere,which isn't true, but but there
is this urban myth that a guy,oh, like the airline pilot guy.
The airline pilot, yeah, or the.
He wasn't a pilot, he was a.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
A steward, not stewardess, a flight attendant
An attendant.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
Flight attendant.
Yeah, that he spread AIDS to abunch of people around the world
because he was gay and hefucked a bunch of dudes.
None of that is true.
Now, that guy did exist and hedid give AIDS to people, but
that is in no way, shape or form, the reason for the outbreak of
the AIDS epidemic, which peoplehad forgotten was a real,
fucking, crazy epidemic.
Yeah, because Reagan covered upall of it, refused to even

(20:03):
acknowledge it.
Yeah, hey, but it was real andit was awful.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, watch.
And the Band Played On.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Oh yeah, do that, even watching.
You know what I've beenrewatching?
Kids in the Hall, and how manyepisodes do they have about that
.
I mean it's crazy, it's nuts,how awful that epidemic was.
And we didn't do shitintentionally.
It would take years sometimesfor people to die, but at that

(20:31):
point it was 100 fatal.
And that's something we nevertalk about, mostly because they
kind of figured it out quietlyand didn't want to acknowledge
it, didn't even want toacknowledge that it happened.
But you know, unlike some ofthe other ones, we're going to
cover where they actually do goout of the way to acknowledge
that we figured it out and wefixed it.
Um, which is, I think, one ofthe reasons that people don't

(20:55):
understand the scope and theweight of pandemics today,
because there are certainpandemics that we fixed, we
figured it out, we cured it, wedid the thing.
And so when they, when theworld doesn't collapse, they're
like, well then, it couldn'thave been that bad.
We're like, no, if you didn'tdie, if there wasn't a giant

(21:15):
pandemic, then we did the rightthing, we did what we were
supposed to do.
People didn't understand thatduring covet 19, as it turns out
, there's a movie called virus.
It's a Japanese movie known inJapan as Fukatsu no Hai or Day
of Resurrection.
It's from 1980.
It's a post-apocalyptic sciencefiction film directed by Kinji

(21:37):
Fukasaku, based on SakyuKomatsu's 1964 novel of the same
name.
It starred a crazy.
You know what?
I watched this movie.
I loved it.
You know, what I watched thismovie I loved it Really.
Yes, I mean it doesn't have aresolution and it doesn't end

(21:58):
well, but another example of afucking brilliant cast.
And it's fascinating watching aJapanese writer and director
talk about the Western world andhow they deal with things.
And there are some reallygut-wrenching moments in this
movie that I thought were reallygreat.
Had this movie come out liketoday or had a bigger budget or

(22:23):
had been more widely seen, Ithink would be considered a
classic.
But I said, the third act.
Most of the action comes in thethird act and then there's no
resolution to that.
So it kind of just feels like abeginning of a, like a trilogy
or something.
It's a little unsatisfying, butI loved what they were building
to.
It's crazy.
It stars a japanese actor meseokusakari, sonny Chiba, george

(22:48):
Kennedy, robert Vaughn, chuckConnors, olivia Hussey, edward
James Olmos I know who isawesome in that movie, by the
way.
Okay, picture Kurt Russell inthe Thing but, Edward James
Olmos, beard, long hair, strongout, total badass.

(23:12):
And then Glenn Ford, from, alsofrom Superman the movie, and
Henry Silva, glenn Ford's inSuperman the movie.
Robert Vaughn's, the villain inSuperman 3.
So in 1982, a shady transactionoccurs between an East German
scientist, dr Kruse Krauss, drKrauss and a group of Americans,

(23:34):
involving a substance calledM88, m-m-88, not to be confused
with M80s.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Or Mad Dog.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Or Mad Dog 2020.
This is a deadly virus,bioengineered, of course, by the
United States.
Created Well, I guess no,actually by East Germany.
Created accidentally by anAmerican geneticist that
amplifies the potency of anyother virus or bacterium that
comes in contact with it.
That is crazy.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
That is a new angle on this We've never seen before.
The Americans recovered thesample of the virus which was
stolen from the lab in the USthe year before, but the virus
is accidentally released afterthe plane transporting it
crashes.
It's just like that scene inTemple of Doom.
They can't pull up in time.
Oh right yeah they just rightinto the fucking mountain which

(24:27):
creates a pandemic.
They call and this is funnyitalian flu.
That's only funny because the1919 quote spanish flu pandemic,
which was a worldwide pandemicwhich, by the way, killed tens
of millions of people, if nothundreds of millions of people,

(24:50):
and we don't talk about it, butit was insanely deadly.
It was only called the Spanishflu because it manifested during
World War I, where the UnitedStates had a crazy law where
news outlets weren't allowed totalk about anything that could
hurt the war effort.
So even speaking out in publicagainst the war you could get

(25:14):
arrested.
So when all of these troopswere getting infected with this
disease and dying, the US newsand the entire press apparatus
was banned from even talkingabout it.
One of the only countries thatwasn't under this sort of gag
order or a similar one was Spain, and they were the first to put

(25:35):
out papers that documented thisdisease.
Turns out it came from America,I think originally in Kansas,
but we called it the Spanish flubecause that was where we
learned where it came from, orwe learned that it existed.
Horribly fascistic that we didall of that, but that's where we

(25:56):
are that doesn't sound like usat all no, not at all.
Freedom cabbage.
Within seven months, virtuallyall the world's population is
dead.
However, the virus is inactiveat temperatures below 10 degrees
celsius and the polar winterhas spared this elite group.
It's very crichton at thispoint, this elite group of

(26:18):
people 855 men and eight womenstationed in an arctica.
So then they have this wholething where this british nuclear
submarine joins the scientistsafter sinking a soviet submarine
.
So this scene is actuallyreally good, because the soviets
come in and they're like weneed refuge, please.
We know you're the only peopleleft and there's a british sub

(26:40):
that's like patrolling to makesure nobody comes in.
And they go in this long,protracted negotiation with the,
the soviet submarine.
And they're just people,they're just survivors and
they're like we just need someplace to go, we're running out
of fuel, we're running food,we're out, we need medicine, we
need medical care.
And this group of people whoare representatives from all

(27:00):
around the world are like do welet them in?
And they ultimately decide theycan't, because they realize
that some of the people on boardthe submarine are infected.
And so the desperate Sovietsubmarine who isn't aggressive
or like violent, they just wantthey want to live Tries to make

(27:23):
it through their barricades orwhatever, and so they're.
The British submarine sinksthem and kills them all.
It brings up all sorts ofreally interesting questions.
Barricades or whatever, and sothey're, the british submarine
sinks them and kills them all.
It brings up all sorts ofreally interesting questions.
That's how they deal with thedrama, the pathos of the virus
part.
There were a lot of these thingsthat came out of the soviet
union in the 70s and 80s.
I mean I don't want to speakout of turn because I don't know

(27:44):
as much and it's hard to knowas much the mindset of the
soviet people at that time,especially Soviet sci-fi writers
, because A a lot of their stuffwas censored, like you couldn't
even see it in the US, eventhough they were some of the
biggest pioneers of filmmakingin general throughout history.
Look up Soy Cuba, fascinatingfilm.

(28:04):
So in the Soviet Union they dida lot of these bioengineered
pandemic movies and I think alot of it was.
If I had to guess, and lookingthrough context and stuff that
I've read, it seems like thatwas more their fear.
We were worried about nuclearexchange with Soviet Union.
They seem to be more worriedabout this kind of thing and I

(28:27):
think a lot of that comes fromWorld War Two, when they were
occupied.
A lot of their major citieswere felled by the Nazis and
during that period there wasrampant starvation and disease
and these things that they hadno control over.
It's kind of like with theBritish in the Blitz In.

(28:48):
Their mindset about how to dealwith disasters or emergencies
is different than ours, becausewe weren't bombed, we weren't
attacked on the mainland, theBritish were, and there's a good
sci-fi British movie about that.
Await Further Instructions, isthat what it's called?
It sounds right.
I think it's an interestinglook at the British mindset,
okay.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
During Okay.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
During an emergency.
That's why I would watch.
I feel like the Soviets hadthat thing too, so there are
tons of Soviet.
So then you have in 85, warningSign, an American science
fiction horror film directed byHal Barwood and starring Sam
Watterson Cool, catherineQuinlan again.
Yafet Kodo Hell yeah, jeffreyDeMunn and Richard quinlan again

(29:32):
y'all.
Fat koto hell yeah, jeffreydamon and richard dicert in that
one.
A secret military laboratoryoperating under the guise of a
pesticide manufacturer.
You know what I've seen?
This one too.
There's an outbreak of avirulent, a virulent bacteria.
During routine work.
A sealed tube is broken,releasing the secret biological
weapon, detecting the release ofthe weapon.
Essentially it's the beginningpart of resident evil.
It's a lab and theyaccidentally drop a vial and

(29:55):
somebody's bio suit is torn andthen it all kind of like spirals
downhill.
They're in the middle ofnowhere and they have to like
figure out how to address theemergency situation and how to
like get people out that arestill uninfected and shit like
that.
It's kind of a bottle movie,you know like it only takes
place in a couple of locationsand shots and, uh, it's almost
the same premise as like ahostage negotiation type movie,

(30:18):
okay, where you have the outside, communicating with them,
trying to figure out how to getthem in and out.
There's that one.
Uh, then we go to pandemic, a1987 dan Danish experimental
medical dark comedy, horror.
Okay, the only reason I putthis in the air is because it's
Lars von Trier.
I have not seen that.
Apparently he did what theycall the Europa Trilogy, element

(30:39):
of Crime, europa, and thisBasically it's a meta comedy.
It's literally about the two ofthem trying to write a movie
Gotcha.
It's sort of like Lars vonTrier's Synecdoche New York.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Except it has Udo.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
Kier, it's got Udo Kier.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
My shoulders are shrugging.
Oh, come on, we both love UdoKier.
No, udo's fine, I just, I don'tknow if just Udo's bringing me
to the table.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Especially for Lars Van Trier.
If you're going to be superambitious and make a meta movie
and nobody talks about it,probably not that good, you know
, yeah, yeah.
But this was 87, so and it'sDanish, so it wouldn't have
gotten a lot of release here,I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Now, if you put some frosting on it, maybe a little,
you know cherry jam filling thenit just seems like jerking off.
Right.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
And then there's a another Soviet drama from 1988,
called A Step, directed byAlexander Mita.
Grieving mother defiesbureaucratic barriers and
journeys to the soviet union tosecure a life saving polio
vaccine, determined to protecther child and countless others

(31:54):
amidst a devastating pandemic.
Now this is a propaganda film.
I mean you just can't getaround.
Even if it's not consciously,one is.
But that's all america evermakes too, so I'm not going to
judge anybody for that.
But, um, it is one of thoseones that goes out of its way to
herald and and hail thebenefits of of vaccines,

(32:17):
especially one of the greatestachievements of humankind ever,
the polio vaccine.
So you know, it's just anotherstep.
In the whole, the soviets madea lot of really good movies
about this stuff that we nevertalk about right okay.
So now we're going to enter themodern era, so we're out of the.
We're out of the 70s and 80s.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Now we're going to get into the silver age and the
golden age we're in the bronzeage now, baby.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
so now we're into the modern era and this is where we
get into a really interestingphase in virus, pandemic,
epidemic movies, and I thinkthis is where the genre kind of
splits off a little bit into anew subgenre.
This starts around 1995, whereyou had movies like virus, which
is a 1995 television filmstarring nicole nicolette

(33:03):
sheridan, william devane,stephen caffrey, dakin matthews,
kurt fuller, barry corbin and abunch of other people that no
one's ever heard about, but it'sbased on a book by Robin Cook
called Outbreak.
Hmm, in this, a strain of Ebola, apparently transmitted by an

(33:24):
infected African monkey, isstarting to sweep across the
country, and we don't want toget into the absurd racial
ramifications of all that, butit's there.
So, investigating unusualsimilarities between many of the
victims, a young doctordiscovers a conspiracy amongst
senior hospital administratorsand doctors who don't seem to
want her to stop the disease.

(33:46):
Uh, yada, yada, yada, oh no, buthere's my favorite.
Here's a quote from it Ebola isa real virus.
Uh, okay, no one knows when itmight reappear, as it did in
Zaire.
Thousands of these viruses waithidden in the deep forests
throughout the world.
They are simply the Earth'sdefense against the most
dangerous invaders.

(34:08):
Man, jesus Christ this is 1995,1950, not 1955.
The commentary they're makingbluntly is the sin being
punished is man's arrogance andthinking.
We know how to master the worldand and we've mastered the
natural world enough tomanipulate it and there's
nothing else can can surprise us.

(34:29):
We're in control.
And if people don't rememberthe Ebola virus, it was a big
fucking deal.
So Ebola virus disease, evd, isa severe communicable viral
illness in humans that isfrequently fatal.
I cannot emphasize that enough.
Symptoms initially include somecombination of headache, muscle
pain, fever, weakness, malaise,then eventually diarrhea,

(34:50):
vomiting, abdominal pain andunexplained hemorrhages.
Ebola virus symptoms typicallyappear eight to ten days
following infection.
The percentage that die is 50%.
Damn.
The people that die every yearfrom the flu is like 1%, and the
people that do survive it arenot in good shape.

(35:13):
They don't just bounce back,and it scared a lot of people
back then.
Later in that year, outbreakwas a 1995 American medical
disaster film directed byWolfgang Peterson, who almost
did Batman, superman.
Maybe he remembers that itstars Dustin Hoffman, cuba, cuba
, gooda jr, kevin spacey and allsorts of other sex offenders.

(35:35):
I mean, all of them are sexpests it's holly weird.
This film focuses on an outbreakof the Mataba virus, which is a
fictional offshoot of the Ebolavirus, in Zaire, wow and then

(35:56):
later in a small town inCalifornia, because it's spread
by a once again rhesus monkey.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
If we could get one of those Snickers monkeys, maybe
they'd do better.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Or a Mars bar monkey.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
This is the kind of panic that goes on when these
things happen, and a lot of itis quite frankly, racist.
The monkey oftentimes is astand in for just black people.
You know what I mean?
Like oh, it came from Africa,from a monkey.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
They're biting from the news, trying to highlight
those hysterics.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
And this is the 90s mid 90s.
So this is like liberal racisminstead of conservative just
straight out being racist.
This is liberals findingproxies for maintaining the
status quo of racism and notknowing that it's racist.
You know what I mean?
Just absolute garbage.
Interestingly enough, though,this movie really is just a
remake of an earlier film wetalked about in this series.
Here's a quote from that j thatJacobin article I referred to

(36:49):
last time.
Quote Outbreak 1995 retold thestory of panic in the streets
from 45 years earlier.
It, too, ended by containing adisease that originated abroad
but threatened the Americanmainland, and it too had a
charismatic military doctor,played by Dustin Hoffman the
smallest man in the world as ahero that needed to defeat it.

(37:10):
The film acknowledged theproblems of america's global
capitalist power at its highpoint, depicting the military as
the bad guys, but itnostalgically retreated to a
past era of heroic individualismto solve the growing concerns
about infectious diseases thatcould spread almost instantly
around the world.

(37:30):
I mean, it is the film of itstime and place.
In that era, later that year, weget 12 monkeys, which was an
interesting choice that Ithought you put on this list I
yes, I don't know if it quitefits a lot of our criteria, but
it is, at its heart, about apandemic, and if you try and

(37:51):
strip that out of the movie,that movie's about nothing, true
?
I re-watched it and it, by theway, it does not hold up very
well, ah see, I haven't seen itin years.
So I had neither.
I literally hadn't seen it inprobably 10, 15 years at at
least.
Visually it's still cool, it'sstill very Terry Gilliam, but

(38:12):
like his commentary does nothold up well, like at all, it's
problematic in a lot of ways andthe Terry Gilliam stuff kind of
sticks out like a sore thumb ina lot of places.
It tries to be visuallyabsurdist, like Brazil, but
that's not the plot.
So it kind of it's a littleawkward, not terrible, but
that's not the plot.
So it kind of it's a littleawkward, not terrible but it's

(38:32):
kind of like some tim burtonmovies where you're like, oh,
you can tell this is still a timburton movie, right, I mean I
still enjoyed watching it.
But it's about a pandemic.
It's about time travel and apandemic.
Trying to not even trying tostop the pandemic.
People forget about that.
Bruce willis goes back in timenot to stop the pandemic but to
just find out information aboutit so they can treat it in the
future because they know theycan't change the past, which is

(38:56):
really more of a commentary onwell done time travel, science
fiction, because you solved alot of problems that you have
like a lot of paradoxes.
But it is interesting.
It is about a pandemic.
It's about a global pandemic uh, it's, it's.
It's supposed to be aboutanimal rights, but the animal
rights people are all thevillains.
It's got a great cast, it's gota great ensemble thing going on
, but it but I put it in therebecause this is all in 1995.

(39:18):
All of this stuff, those arethree huge things.
I mean obviously the virus oneor whatever.
It's just a made for tv movie,but it's based on a huge
best-selling book.
All of these things happened in1995.
That's not for no reason.
Then in 1996 you get pandora'sclock, otherwise known as the
doomsday virus, depending on ifyou where you buy the dvd, like
if you buy it at the dollar bin,that's what it's called.

(39:39):
It's an nbc miniseries based ona novel by john j nance.
This just screams airport bookto me.
Well, and ironically it's abouta virus on a Boeing 747 from
Frankfurt to John F KennedyInternational Airport.
It's got Richard Dean Anderson,it's got MacGyver he still
doesn't figure it out but itdoes have Robert Lozier, alum of

(40:01):
the University of Missouri, andStephen Root from everything,
and he's great.
So it turns out that this periodwas the first major outbreak of
the ebola virus.
I mean, it initially started inlike 1981 or so, in 83,
something like that.
But it became a real epidemicin africa and other places and

(40:23):
really really peaked around 1995.
That's why all this stuffstarted coming up.
They realized this is a growingproblem.
Covet 19, the flu, all of thesethings were devastating.
Covet 19 killed millions ofpeople in a very short period of
time, but its kill rate waslike what?

(40:44):
Like five, ten percent, uh itwasn't large.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
I was looking at the deadliest viruses.
I don't even think it makeslike the top 10 list oh no, not
at all.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Ebola kills 50 of people infected well, that was
early on.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
So in the last outbreak it got up to 90 holy
balls, and that's after theyfound a vaccine.
Yeah, the Bundy Bugio strain.
The human fatality rate is upto 25%, and it is up to 90% for
the Zaire strain.
That is insanity.

(41:22):
Yeah, it's like the seconddeadliest, right underneath the
Marburg virus, which is at 100%in 2017.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
It's really about the amount Marburg and Ebola.
It's a much smaller amount asopposed to COVID and the bubonic
plague which swept through mostof the world.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
That's an interesting part of this whole problem.
The Ebola virus is deadly andcould have been the world's
greatest disaster, but trust inmedicine, evidence-based science
, they did eventually find atreatment and they did
quarantine measures.
They did all of the things thatyou're supposed to do with a

(42:03):
pandemic.
Keep in mind COVID-19 killedmillions of people.
The Spanish flu killed morepeople than the allies lost in
World War II.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Spanish flu began in 1918, sickened up to 40% of the
world's population, killing 50million people.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Okay, well, hey, and that one people lived from it.
This, it's a coin flip Up tocertain death, lived from it.
This, it's a coin flip up tocertain death.
So if it weren't for the heroicefforts of scientists, of the
World Health Organization, ofthe United Nations, of US and
other nations that put theirresources into this, this would

(42:41):
have been it for humanity.
This would have been the onethat they talked about in
post-apocalyptic movies aboutthis.
Even though they did takemeasures and did figure it out,
it was on even americans mindswho don't remember a real global
pandemic in 1995.
They don't really have acontext for that.
The very few people in 1995were still around that survived

(43:03):
through the original spanish fluoutbreak, you know.
Then there are a bunch of thesein the 90s.
There's Pandora's Clock in the96.
And then you get into the 2000swhen things are a little bit
different.
Ebola's on people's minds, butthey had done a really good job
of containing Ebola, so itreally was kind of like an
afterthought.
At this point you do have somestuff in Europe.

(43:25):
This is where you start gettingback to the more speculative
sci-fi part of it.
You in Europe, this is whereyou start getting back to the
more speculative sci-fi part ofit you have.
Have Mercy on Us All, aka Seedsof Death from France in 2007,
which is about the actual plague, the bubonic plague, showing up
again in a mutated form.
It's based on a novel from 2003by Fred Vargas.
That one makes sense, becauseit's one of those things we've

(43:48):
forgotten.
That is still around.
But what if we couldn't containit anymore?
You know?
that kind of thing yeah uh, andthen you get stuff like more
fantastical, imaginative things,like blindness from 2008, which
is an epidemic of instant whatthey call white blindness, which
, if you don't know anythingabout the movie, sounds super
racist and weird, essentially,where the entire population

(44:12):
slowly goes blind.
They tried to make that into apost apocalyptic apple tv show
with dave bautista and jasonmomoa wait, bautista's in that.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
Are you talking about like where?
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (44:24):
I mean it's.

Speaker 2 (44:25):
It's not related to that, but it's the same premise
no, which which was a okay showish baut, it's the same premise
no, which was an okay show-ish.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Bautista is the villain.
As it turns out Well, one ofthe villains.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Oh, I don't think I got that far.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
I watched it for the same reasons we watch all of
those kinds of shows, but it wasjust one of those weird reaches
by Apple TV where they werejust like let's throw everything
at the wall and see whathappens.
Oh, they were trying.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
You got a little Game of Thrones-y stuff with Jason
Momoa and it's kind ofpost-apocalyptic barbarian stuff
, and you got the blindnessangles.
That's an interestingconceptual conceit, at least.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
That's something that's kind of used a little bit
with Bird Box later, which Ididn't include in this because
that's a completely differenttype of thing, especially if you
watch Bird Box Barcelona, whichruins Bird Box completely.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
Wait, so they made a sequel.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Oh yes, and it ruins the first one.
It's kind of like the DescentPart 2.
It like completelyretroactively ruins whatever
positive things came out of BirdBox.
Huh, it's fine, but it's beendone.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
I kind of want you to spoil it for me, but let's not
spoil it for the audience, incase they want to.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Yeah we'll do that later.
So then, let's build our way to2011 contagion, which is
another medical disasterthriller film directed by steven
soderbergh.
Once again, incredible ensemblecasts matt damon, lawrence,
fishburne, elliot gould, judelaw, marion cotard, kate winslet
, branston, gwyneth Paltrow.

(45:50):
She dies in the first, like 10minutes of the movie.
It's essentially a flu pandemicfilm.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Kind of coming off the SARS bird flu possible
epidemic.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Which we did not take seriously in this country
whatsoever.
And the sad part is, once againit's because the rest of the
world did.
The sad part is, once againit's because the rest of the
world did.
It wasn't as bad in the UnitedStates because other people took
precautions.
They did the things you'resupposed to do, because that was

(46:21):
a two-year-long outbreak, evenkill people in the United States
, but they can't handle COVID-19.
I mean, get the fuck out ofhere.
And Contagion is considered oneof the most, I think, iconic in
this genre.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
I would say it does the best job of hitting
Realistically yeah holisticallyhitting all of the major
thematic elements of pandemicfilms, exploring them over a
long period of time, and you'realso getting both human stories
and larger scope pictures.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Yes, even Gwyneth Paltrow's death, I think, works
really, really well.
I think it shows ourvulnerability.
She had the flu, he brought herin and they're like sorry she
didn't make it.
He just doesn't understand howthat could be possible.
Yeah, which I think is agripping scene that I think is
really effective.
Which I think is a grippingscene that I think is really

(47:10):
effective.
Still another film that when youlook back on it after COVID-19,
you're like it doesn't quitehave the same.
Not that it doesn't have theright weight, it just doesn't
have the same content.
It's not Knowing what we knownow.
It's a little different.
You know, that movie would bemade differently today.
And I feel that way about a lotof other things that I saw,
because and I feel that wayabout a lot of other things that
I saw because there's apandemic TV show that has the

(47:31):
same problems that I saw.
But I'll just get to some ofthe highlights.
For the rest of this, I wantedto talk about Parts Per Billion,
but it doesn't really fit.
It's a 2013 American romanticdrama written by Brian Haruchi.
Also great ensemble cast FrankLangella, rosario Dawson, josh
hartnett, the the dude from um,her, um, it's just like, not her

(47:57):
.
What is that?
That netflix one that everybodythinks is hot, even though he's
a serial killer?
It doesn't matter, it doesn'tmatter.
Oh, you, you, penn badgley, yes, yes, he's in that too.
I don't know, it's.
It's interesting.
Uh, it hits a lot of the themes, but it's more about a
biological weapon that'sreleased in the Middle East and
then spreads across the world.
So I didn't, really I'm notgoing to spend any time on it,

(48:17):
but it does hit a lot of thebeat.
And here's a really great onethat I like personally.
I think this is we're still inthe sort of back to sci-fi
thinking when it comes to thisgenre, sort of back to sci-fi
thinking when it comes to thisgenre.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
The last days, a spanish film from 2013.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Okay, not the kurt cobain one.
No, not the kurt cobain one.
No, also not the last dance orthe last waltz.
Not as much cocaine in thisfilm than in any of those films.
I'm pretty sure you've seenthis.
It's set in barcelona.
It deals with the absolute endof all humankind because they
suffer from fatal agoraphobia.

(48:56):
I would be shocked if youhaven't seen this, because I
think it's great.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
I'm trying to find out right now.
This is a hidden gem.
Oh, it's from the Bird Box,barcelona, guy.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
One for two.
That's pretty good at baseball.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
No, I haven't seen this.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
It's an original premise.
This is something new we'venever thought about.
At the beginning, these guysare in an office building.
One of the guys that works withthem is getting fired and he
panics.
He can't go outside.
He has this uncontrollableagoraphobia, but suddenly and
violently, and is like freakingout that they're throwing him
out of the building.
They throw him out of thebuilding because they think he's

(49:33):
full of shit or whatever, andthen he dies.
And so the rest of the movie isrealizing that no one can ever
leave an enclosed space, everagain.
Huh, premise wise alone, Ithink, lets that movie coast
because, like you, have tofigure out how you're going to
travel from place to place right, but it seems to be less about
the pandemic or virus right, butI'm just saying this isn't a

(49:55):
period of time in which we starttackling diseases, pandemics,
epidemics in a creative sci-fiway again.
That's how you get movies likethis.
Instead of the older dealingwith real viruses or the real
ramifications, you get kind oflike a fantastical take on it

(50:16):
here during this period.
So that's 2013, so I feel like13 is probably where that part
ends uh, at least in westernculture, because 2013 to 2000, I
want to say 16 another bigebola outbreak happens.
The other branches of the, thepandemic genre don't go away,

(50:37):
they all stay.
But there is a more mainstreampush back into the more
realistic dealings withpandemics and epidemics, like
flu from 2013, which is based ona true story.
It's in south korea.
It's an airborne disease, chaosis going crazy, the government
orders a complete shutdown andit's about trying to find a

(50:58):
macguffin that will fix theproblem or whatever.
It's a kind of a classic, butbased on a real disease and
something that's very possible.
And then then, in 2015, you getEmbers, which is also one of
those kind of like fantastical,interesting reimaginings of
epidemics.
It's an American independentfilm sci-fi where, instead of

(51:18):
being blind or what have you now, you can't form long-term
memory and you can only rememberwhat's just happened, and so
it's constantly trying torebuild itself.
It's an interesting idea.
It's yeah.
I mean, I love the idea thatyou're trying something else.
There's another thing they'rejust trying to throw at the wall
.
Now here's one.
I will stand up for this movie.

(51:39):
I think it's very good.
Containment from 2015.
This is a British movie writtenby David Lemon, directed by Neil
McHenry West.
This is set in 1970s eracouncil block in Weston,
southampton, but it's set inpresent day.
Just that's where the.
It's the, the brutalist publichousing that they built back

(51:59):
then in the seventies.
But it's set in present day,united Kingdom.
Mark, an artist, wakes up tofind out that he's been sealed
into his flat with no way out.
There is no electricity.
Electricity, no water, nocommunications to the outside
world, apart from a voice overthe intercom repeating the
phrase please remain calm.
This situation is under control.
Now this is very, very muchlike I was getting at with that

(52:20):
other one.
It goes into like the blitzmindset keep calm and soldier on
.
This is something that's not inour dna.
It's different from how thejapanese dealt with that stuff.
This is an exclusively britishthing and it's fascinating
watching how they deal withthese emergencies, because it's
very different.
Strange figures in hazmat suitspatrol the grounds outside and

(52:42):
set up a military tent.
Mark's neighbor, sergey, breaksdown the wall between their
flats in order to discover whythey've been sealed in and try
and find a way to escape.
Along the way they team up withfellow residents and then they
try and figure out the wholeyada, yada, yada.
I think the tension building isgreat and it's not dissimilar
to certain zombie movies thatcame out in that era, like

(53:05):
there's a french well, not eventhat era, but maybe a little
later.
There's a french zombie moviethat came out not too long after
that, but I think it's verygood but doesn't really fit into
our thing.
There are a couple of koreanones that came out.
That's essentially somethinglike you're trapped in an
apartment building right andhave to get out.
I mean, there are lots of zombieones like that, even all the
way up to evil dead rise, butthis one is specifically about a

(53:29):
viral pandemic.
It's not zombies, it's notaliens, it's not anything like
that.
I think it's a great movie.
It deals with the uncertaintyof lockdown, of quarantine long
before COVID-19.
And I really enjoy it.
So I would definitely checkthat one out, and I do think it
fits well into this category.
93 Days is a 2016 Nigerian dramathriller that recounts the 2014

(53:55):
Ebola outbreak in Nigeria, thatsecond huge wave that killed a
fuck ton of people, and how theysuccessfully contained the
virus due to health workers atLagos Hospital.
This one's great because it isa true story about real heroes
doing real work.
They actually contained themost deadly strain of Ebola that

(54:19):
we talked about earlier.
They did it.
No one talks about them.
No one knows this even happened, especially in America.
This is huge.
These people should havefucking statues made of them.
The movie itself I think thisis huge.
These people should havefucking statues made of them.
The movie itself.
I think this is funny.
Stars danny glover, okay, andthen two guys named bimbo uh-huh

(54:41):
, bimbo acantola and bimbomanuel.
It's interesting but it's kindof low rent.
It's a little made for tv, butI mean it's based on a real
story with real heroes.
This should be a hollywoodmovie.
It's just not.
They don't do it.
We don't care about that here,apparently.
It's a real shame.
And then, right before thepandemic really hits, there's

(55:04):
some more american, or at leastwestern, more imaginative sci-fi
versions of this kind ofpandemic thing.
One I really liked, I thoughtstood out, was a Canadian one
called hall.
It was directed by FrancescoGiannani.
Two women, each dealing withunhappy marriages, find
themselves trapped in a hotelhallway.
As a deadly airborne virusravages the hotel clientele and

(55:28):
the outside world, it reallyslows things down in the
craziest way possible.
The entire thing is it'sliterally just an airborne
illness that kills everybody,kind of like Ebola.
But the major action comes fromwhatever characters that
survive literally trying to getfrom their door in the hotel to

(55:51):
like the elevator that's theentire film them trying to drag
themselves down the hallway asall these people are dying.
Geez, it is bleak, it is dour,but I think it's ambitious.
Oh okay, they're tryingsomething different.
I don't know that it's great,but it is really really

(56:13):
different and it's uh.
For that reason I'd give it awatch.
So we're dealing with thesethings all the way up to now.
We've got tons of stuff comingout Still.
Some of it is the morefantastical sci-fi stuff.
Some of it is the moretraditional stuff.
A lot of it still tries to dealwith zombies or whatever.
Some of it's just red-pilledidiots or black-pilled idiots
doing COVID-19 stuff.

(56:34):
It's gotten way worse nowbecause of where we are, but can
you imagine if something likeEbola got out, like COVID-19 did
?
All those anti-mask idiots it'sI mean you'd literally just see
them die in front of you on thestreet.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
Yeah, it's one of those things that in Contagion,
one of the things that stillhits home when I think about the
film, is Jude Law and hischaracter, like selling
forsythia, I think, which is themiracle cure which is oh man.
You know, hydroxychloroquinekind of thing, prescient you
know, and it's like.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Or that watered down bleach the miracle.
Yeah, Mineral cure or whatever.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Yeah, or they're ingesting silver or what.
Methylene blue is the mostrecent kind of BS.
All these miracle cures.
It resonates, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
Yeah, to me it doesn't hit home as hard now
because, looking back on it, notthat it's not a good movie and
exactly it's time and place, butif they only knew how bad it's
going to get.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
In some ways it got worse and in other ways theirs
is worse.
You know, you can't plot outexactly how weird and wild
things will get.

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Yeah, I know it's kind of like going back and
rewatching Social Network, whichI think is still fantastic, but
if they only knew how bad itgot after that.
If they only knew that was justscratching the surface.
They take on a differentcontext now, but all these
movies do it's a different timeand they always reflect the
current panics that are in thezeitgeist.

(58:01):
And sometimes these movies arecensored by government agencies
and sometimes they influencegovernment agents.
If I remember, right during theCOVID pandemic, the UK
government who has a way betterhealthcare system than we do,
which and it's still superflawed Matt Hancock, during the
pandemic, watched Contagion andthen after that was like no, I
need to allocate all this moneyto PPE and the NHS, which was

(58:26):
good.
That was a positive outcomefrom these cautionary tales that
they're throwing out there.
That's great.
Unfortunately, especially inAmerica, we don't live in that
world.
Something're throwing out there.
That's great.
Unfortunately, especially inamerica, we don't live in that.
Something good came out of thatand sometimes these movies do
wake people up or even shockpeople enough to look into.
But the world we live in today,it'd be really hard to

(58:46):
influence people positivelythrough movies like this.
We don't live in a world wherepeople do the right thing or
listen to reason orevidence-based science anymore
in america, where we're at thisis february 2025 everything's
getting worse, everything'sfalling apart, everything's and
it's not.
It's not like it's beingdismantled piece by piece which

(59:09):
will make it fall apart in waysthat we can't even get into
right now, because it'scomplicated, but actually quite
simple, we're not headed in agood direction.
Just the entire mindset of theamerican people.
Now, it's not even half andthat's enough.
Yeah, way more than it shouldbe.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
But I do think, having these movies out there,
they definitely say somethingabout both the virus that is on
the mind culturally, how we aspeople in society can affect
those things, and how tellingthese stories both prepare us
and perform some kind ofcatharsis for dealing with these
things.
I think there's definitelygoing to be a vibe that's going

(59:49):
to come out a decade from nowwhere, post-covid, looking back
back on those things, it's goingto be represented in our
filmmaking yeah, I mean probably.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
I mean that's always kind of been the since the
invention of film.
That's kind of been a thing.
Either way, to sum this up, Iguess these films do provide an
outlet for the pity and terrorthat we feel when confronting
our mortality in the face ofsomething invisible and
malevolent, but not aware orconscious.
Besides the terror of the thingitself, a plague, it's a

(01:00:22):
metaphor for the uncertainty ofthe human condition in general
and we can fight it, but wecan't stab it or punch it.
It's existential and, like Isaid, it does not escape
commentary of capitalism.
I'll quote once again from thatarticle from Jacobin.
Early movies offered a belief indoctors and ordinary citizens,
along with the application ofscience and reason to address

(01:00:45):
social problems, or at leastthey pointed out where things
could change.
Stories about ordinaryAmericans sacrificing material
gains, let alone their family'shealth, to defeat a disease have
today virtually disappeared.
America is no longer worthdefending and everyone is on
their own.
Over the last century, diseasemovies have, in a broader sense,

(01:01:06):
gone from offering a critiqueof mid-century state-managed
capitalism to an acceptance ofthe neoliberal order.
Increasingly recent movies evengo beyond the neoliberal
framework of contemporarycapitalism, reflecting debates
over what comes next.
They now embrace globaldestruction and human extinction
as the inevitable outcome.

(01:01:27):
A famous remark of FrederickJameson it's easier to imagine
the end of the world than theend of capitalism.
That literally plays out on thebig screen in today's disease
movies Yep, that's where we are.
Hey, that kind of sums it up,doesn't it?
I mean, yeah.
And we talked mostly about justthe actual movies themselves and

(01:01:48):
not necessarily thesociopolitical, economic
ramifications of that.
But that's why those thingsexist.
Economic ramifications of that,but that's why those things
exist.
Even if you want to factor inzombie movies, things like that,
it was rife with socialcommentary.
All of these things play on ourbasest fears, but also they
serve as mirrors held up tosociety and how we would deal

(01:02:10):
with things in the face oftragedy.
We're not doing very well withall that, but that's why
whatever the next giant pandemicwill be will probably kill way
more people than covid19 evereven dreamed of.

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
And don't forget, it killed millions of people, good
stuff but hopefully we can learnsomething from movies and
approach things differently.
Maybe that's just a little bitof optimism this last fleeting
moment before the bug gets usall, but that's all we got.
That's all we got and that'sall we got for you about
pandemic movies.
We hope you guys have enjoyed,learned a little something,

(01:02:46):
maybe given you some choicerecommendations If you guys
wouldn't mind, like share andsubscribing.
We will have other intensedebates and looks at socio,
political, geo, everything aboutgeek culture, and sometimes
we're just going to talk aboutfarts in comic books.
Uh, you know, it kind ofprobably vacillates.

(01:03:07):
You never know what you'regoing to hear from us, but it's
always something cool and weguys hope you like it.
Joy and spread it around Like avirus.
Like a virus, if you wouldn'tmind.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
Shit Nothing.
I'm sorry, did I derail you?

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
If you wouldn't mind giving us five crossings over
the Cassandra.
No, it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Dying Gwyneth Paltrow .

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
I was going to do something like R-naughts, but
that didn't really work.

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Five Andromeda strains?
I don't know yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
That's a tough one, that's a really tough one.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
It's a tough one.
There's nothing really funny orfun.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
Five last men on earth.
Oh, I got it.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Five plague-ridden zombie monkeys.
Oh, okay, it's going to killyou, but at least it's a monkey.
That's something.
They're infected.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
With what Rage?

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Aren't we all If you wouldn't mind leaving us those
monkeys on the podcast app ofyour choice, ideally.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Apple Podcasts 12.
How about 12?

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
12 of them.
You know, I don't think it goesbeyond five, but if you can add
some more, by all means workyour computer wizardry and boost
us up those charts.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Five Monkeys was not as popular.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Five Monkeys got less than half the audience of 12
Monkeys.
It did.
It did not scream well, it didscream well.
That is one thing it did.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Again, not as good as 12 monkeys.
You put all of these monkeys ina barrel.
Eventually.
They're going to writeShakespeare Eventually.
But until that day, stop backand check out, dispatch Ajax.
We will have something new foryou coming down the pike.
But until those monkeys crankout, hamlet, monkey, ham, taming

(01:04:56):
, taming of the man.
Nothing's really fuck.
Taming of the flu.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
How about that Taming ?

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
of the flu.
Nice job Topical.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Yes.
Well, until that point, likeyou said, you should make sure
that you have paid your tabs,paid your KJs, your bartenders,
your waitstaff, your podcasters.
Don't forget to support yourlocal comic shops and retailers.
And from Dispatch Ajax we wouldlike to say Godspeed, fair
wizards.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
It's Jesus Christ.
Get your Jesus Christ shots,Please go away.