Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Geeks explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
Bird-Bola-Demic: Pandemics in Film
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.
I could go down a rabbit hole about Cupid, but I will not. Please do not. I will not.
Speaker 2:Move along, Gentlemen. Let's broaden our minds.
Speaker 1:Are they in the proper approach pattern for today? Negative, negative.
Speaker 2:All weapons Now Charge the lightning field. Ebola it's kind of a big deal. I'm more of a fan of the Mutamba virus personally.
Speaker 1:Oh, from Outbreak.
Speaker 2:It's like Ebola, but not so that everyone who watched it didn't really know what Ebola was and we're just kind of misled. Which?
Speaker 1:is so sad because the Ebola outbreak in Africa was conquered. It was sort of defeated because we didn't have this science, skepticism, bullshit that we have now, and there are movies about that, actually that we're going to talk about. About the science, skepticism or the Ebola, about how we came together to defeat Ebola.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, that's one thing about all these movies is that there's a lot about coming together and bettering humankind as one, which I don't know if that plays out in reality.
Speaker 1:You're right, but that only applies to a certain era. After that era, it's the exact opposite. Okay, okay, let's get into it. Yeah, welcome back to Dispatch Ajax after all that. I'm Skip. I'm Jake. Is it all that cock smoke in there? I'm Jake.
Speaker 2:Is it all that cock smoke in?
Speaker 1:there. Oh, it's the Bird Bola-demic vid. That sounds like a sci-fi original from like 1999. Bird Bola, rock and Rolla by Guy.
Speaker 2:Ritchie, think of snatch, but a lot of coughing. I got a bowl in my snatch Lock stock and two smoking jabs.
Speaker 1:So today we decided to do an episode about. Originally, I wanted it to be multi-tiered. We were going to talk about pandemics, epidemics and disease in media, which would have meant comic books, movies, video games. What have you? Books, obviously Books. Who reads?
Speaker 2:books I don't read. Reading's for nerds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly the kind of nerds that would solve epidemics.
Speaker 2:What do they know?
Speaker 1:But honestly, books and films are the the only real rich genres that these things appear in. You have some in comic books, but they're not. There are some glaring standouts, but not a lot. There isn't a lot, there's like five you could really get into yeah, and really there's not a lot said no, or about those? And the ones that do say something. It's stuff that's already been said, just kind of modernized, like why the Last man? That whole thing has been done like a thousand times in movies.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And, let's be honest, it's not really about the pandemic.
Speaker 2:No, it's about a society that's changed because of the pandemic.
Speaker 1:Right, which is something that I wanted to get into, because, so the reason we did this was because I had COVID and Jake was sick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a norovirus. Norovirus Pretty bad.
Speaker 1:That's not great.
Speaker 2:No, not fun.
Speaker 1:It's caused specifically and only by inhaling fecal matter.
Speaker 2:Hey, don't tell me, I live my life.
Speaker 1:It's pink eye, but in the gut.
Speaker 2:My guts are already pink, right.
Speaker 1:Why hasn't there been pink eye in the movie?
Speaker 2:All right, Googlebot.
Speaker 1:It was Wes Graven's last project before he died. He didn't quite get it done. It was also starring Cillian Murphy.
Speaker 2:Bruce Pink Eye from 2008. No, really, really, pink Eye is set in a small town in upstate New York, in a prison-like, dilapidated, insane asylum where secret drug testing has gone inexplicably wrong. Patients are dying and sick and twisted.
Speaker 1:What the fuck does that have to do with Pink Eye?
Speaker 2: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 town and everyone in it through fecal matter.
Speaker 1:Really Does it say that?
Speaker 2:No, I added that because it's more entertaining.
Speaker 1:You'd have to be throwing your shit around like an ape a la 12 Monkeys for that to really do it.
Speaker 2:I might watch that.
Speaker 1: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 talk about, in this specific instance, films that deal with epidemics, pandemics and disease. What Did you hear? Something new? Or was that funny?
Speaker 2:No, no, I'm just I was like I was looking at the director of Pink.
Speaker 1:Eye, what else?
Speaker 2:he done and I came upon something called Weed Gees and I was like what the fuck is Weed G's W-E-E-D-J-I-E-S Exclamation point?
Speaker 1:A phonetic version of like a Ouija board Kind of, but it's more.
Speaker 2:I think it's like if the Ghoulies did drugs.
Speaker 1:I don't even know where to begin with that I know, so from the perspective of the ghoulies, no, or how they act.
Speaker 2:I believe the ghoulies. So they're doing a Ouija board. And what kind of drugs these ghoulies come because they're all the pot, energy or something and they're just out running amok. It's like little ghoully gremlins but with weed oh, we weed, weed.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, weed geez. Okay, look you and I will intentionally watch a lot of bad stuff. I don't even know if that fits our criteria. Yeah, this looks more like oh God, what is like Ginger Dead man I was literally going to say that, and Evil Bong the later incarnations of Ginger Dead man versus the Evil Bong Like Ginger Weed, dickhead or whatever the fuck it's called.
Speaker 2:Because they have other ones after that.
Speaker 1:All right, google, ginger, weezy, dickman and also Metallica.
Speaker 2:Oh man, weegee's looks pretty bad, no shit, Pretty bad.
Speaker 1:Does it have our friend the albino ghoulie?
Speaker 2:I wish. I think it might be a cut above.
Speaker 1:By the way, I hadn't told you, but I have Named Disty our mascot. Well, because I couldn't call him 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 better to you? I don't know. Yes, Okay, well, fine, then use that. I don't know. I'm just not calling him Ajax, even though we probably should, now that I think about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, call him Ajax. All right, ajax, the albino ghoulie.
Speaker 1:We have discussed this informally, but now formally, that is our official mascot, ajax, the albino coolie from Tales from the Dark Side. Right, I forgot, I totally blanked on it. It's Tales from the Dark Side. Yeah, yes, tales from the Dark Side. Yes, thank you, jesus Christ, I overthought it. I was like, oh God, please don't be for monsters, don't be for monsters.
Speaker 2:Okay. So then I went down the Danny Draven director hole. Oh the crow. No, this is the guy who did Weed G's. He also did Crypts K-R-Y-P-T-Z. Oh my god, when aspiring rappers Times Square.
Speaker 1:T-Y-N-E-Z.
Speaker 2:S-K-W-A-R, fuzzy Down and Licorice L-I-K-R-I-S-H. Cross paths with stripper Stesha. They follow her in Mysterious Trip Club where sexy ladies are really vampires in disguise. Damn, that sounds baller.
Speaker 1:It actually sounds like a really tame premise, considering the buildup of people that are in it.
Speaker 2:Oh, licorice.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's what you got Okay.
Speaker 2:Vampire leader Kulada finds out that Times holds the key to the Bloodsuckers' world domination in this urban horror film that plays like quote-unquote vampire strippers in the hood no end quote.
Speaker 1:No end quote. It's just open-ended, so you can add your own to it.
Speaker 2:It's just cut. I don't think there was anybody editing this particular.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe it was on purpose, maybe you were supposed to add your own commentary, I don't know.
Speaker 2:A commentary, perhaps commentary, I don't know, a commentary perhaps.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't think a comma would fix those problems, but uh, maybe it's common the rapper.
Speaker 2:I need commentary. Wow, that's what. Yeah, so what's this episode?
Speaker 1:okay, yeah, because I could go down that rabbit hole and talk about bones for like a long time, but we're not going to do that. So to be moderately serious for half a second, the phenomenon of epidemic disease has been a part of the human experience since the moment we began organizing into permanent communities millennia ago. We know this not just from the fossil record, but thousands of years of documentation, through art, music, literature, anything that we leave behind that expresses the state of the day. By February 9th 2022, according to the World Health Organization, confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19. In case you guys had missed all of this, have you heard about this?
Speaker 2:I've heard about the novella coronavirus. Is that similar? Way shorter, A little shorter maybe? Way shorter A little?
Speaker 1:shorter, maybe Way shorter, and the Stephen King version better than his normal stuff.
Speaker 2:Is there like a short story coronavirus? Maybe I'd rather do that one.
Speaker 1:So this had reached 397 million infections and the death toll was 5.75 million worldwide. This is by 2022. The raw numbers will be much higher because technically, it's not over. In December 2019, when the pandemic was thought to have begun officially, steven Soderbergh's Contagion was the 270th most watched Warner Brothers film. Not just film, warner Brothers film. This is according to BuzzFeed. By May of 2020, it was the second most watched.
Speaker 1:The COVID-19 outbreak presents a rare opportunity to examine whether pandemic films accurately reflect the collective zeitgeist of human society. Pandemic films accurately reflect the collective zeitgeist of human society in the face of a disease outbreak, its responses, its course of action, its failures and its foibles? Or is there a disconnect? Truth is, the reasons why we find these stories compelling and important are likely both objectively simple and, at the same time, head-scratchingly complicated. On one hand, pandemic or epidemic tales are simple to explain. Through the lens of innate survival instincts, they portray forces of nature like a wildfire, a flood or a tornado.
Speaker 1:The disease spreading is unrelenting, overwhelming and, without significant effort and or opportunity to run and hide, unbeatable. However, the thing that makes them a unique source of awe and terror is that a disease is invisible. Its hidden nature automatically puts us on our heels in ways more complicated than other natural disasters. Transmission is often confusing or without evidence-based science. Panic-inducing Combat disease requires a different type of decision-making and rational planning than we're used to. Our first reactions are, by necessity, different than our fight-or-flight instincts when confronted by a threat more visibly tangible. Fundamentally, to even get to the point where a disease is an epidemic means our guardrails have failed, our fail-safes have collapsed and now our sense of safety and normalcy are gone. In this case, the dramatic tension comes from how we deal with these overwhelming odds. It's kind of like a Kobayashi Maru test.
Speaker 2:Except there's no way to cheat the plague.
Speaker 1:But with plagues sometimes there's a way to win. It's kind of like a Kobayashi Maru test, Except there's no way to cheat the plague. But with plagues sometimes there's a way to win. It's a push. Yet for some the appeal of these stories are more nuanced. It can tap into the modern sense of ennui that there's something wrong with the world and it's irreparably broken. Salvageable only by tearing down the world as we know it. Salvageable only by tearing down the world as we know it. Or it lies in the anxiety in knowing that whatever stability the modern world enjoys is fleeting, that the end of life as we know it is very fucking nigh. To quote 28 Days Later. Some recognizing that the follies and failures of humankind are responsible and retribution will come through either secular or spiritual means, others see it as cautionary tale and call to action In any event we are often drawn to its genre for the reasons unique to it.
Speaker 1:According to the paper how Pandemic Films Help Us Understand Outbreaks by Zhao Li Song et al, futurist scholars have identified six broad themes for films set in the futures that could be applied specifically in this case to pandemic films Growth and Decay, threats and New Hope, waste World, the Powers that Be, disarray and Inversion. There are the macroscopic scenarios of destiny of humankind, that is, scenario archetypes In Growth and Decay. In growth and decay, collapse and decay of social order and living conditions are accompanied by the excessive power of monopolistic corporations. In the powers that be, after a catastrophic event, totalitarian or dictatorial regime gains tight control over its citizens. In Waste Worlds, a global-scale catastrophe brings the world back to a pre-medieval or tribal state. In Threats and New Hope, an apocalypse threatens the very existence of humanity. Humankind is saved through heroic and collective efforts. In Disarray, human society degenerates into a chaotic situation due to problems such as crime, social unrest, poverty, war, famines or pandemics. This is something that zombie films lean heavily in, especially Romero in Night of the Living Dead. His whole thing was comment on racism, sexism, homophobia, the whole gamut. In Inversion, a new agent, such as an alien species replaces human beings to dominate the Earth.
Speaker 1:Most pandemic films belong to the disaster thriller genre. In the eyes of this paper, they resemble the image of Threats and New Hope. This corroborates that pandemic films are representative of common social imaginaries. End quote.
Speaker 1:They do go on to say quote as collective imaginaries, pandemic films reflect people's fear of infectious disease outbreaks and envision where and how they may occur, including their dire consequences, the complexity to identify causes, the difficulties to find treatments. Some depiction may be based on the social context, the time and place, when and where the films are made, which is just kind of films. According to the medical historian Nancy Tomas, there have been two periods of germ panic in American popular culture. The first one occurred between 1900 and 1940, and the other started in 1985 and is ongoing. The public awareness and concerns on disease outbreaks are shaped by news and entertainment, including films, and by collaborations among social groups, including scientific researchers, politicians, activists, journalists and advertisers, for different social, political as well as economic interests. End quote. Now, this is one of the last times we will quote this paper, because it goes off the rails later.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean there's a lot of good information there. It just does not.
Speaker 1:It's not cohesive, it doesn't give you a fucking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't elucidate a grand answer for a lot of this.
Speaker 1:Which is what it states that it sets out to do. But whatever, that's, yeah, the first germ panic between 1900 and 1940, infectious diseases which had troubled human societies for millennia, such as the plague smallpox yellow fever, tuberculosis, still occasionally led to outbreaks. Subsequently, medical science and understanding made huge strides in the middle of the 20th century. This actually is one of the reasons that the Allies won World War II, because the Nazis weren't willing to believe in germ theory as much and the science behind as the Allies were. The Allies helped introduce antibiotics into treatment of soldiers, and that made a big difference, as it turns out.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. As more Nazis are getting in power now, germ theory is being pulled back.
Speaker 1:It's almost like those two mindsets go hand in hand Weird. This led to the second germ panic, which includes AIDS, ebola and drug-resistant strains of older bacterial diseases, generating a new viral panic.
Speaker 2:I would also add to this man-made diseases.
Speaker 1:I'm about to get to that. Oh, sorry about that.
Speaker 1:No no, no, no, my thing doesn't make sense except in my head it. New knowledge or fantasies of genetics, the human immune system and human nature interaction have been shaping popular perceptions of emerging disease, with no effective magic bullets against them. Now subheading, when I say magic bullets, that's not to be confused with the film Dr Elric'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 Elric became interested in the properties of the then-new synthetic dyes and had an intuition that they could become useful in the diagnosis of bacterial diseases. If you've ever watched the cut scenes from forensic files or something like that, you'll understand what I'm saying. After this work met with success, elric proposed that synthetic compounds could be made to selectively target and destroy diseased-causing microorganisms. He called such a drug a quote magic bullet. This film very specifically describes how in 1908, after 606 attempts, he succeeded in curing syphilis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is a movie based on a real person yes, these kinds of things do happen.
Speaker 1:They're not common in this genre but they do happen, and there are several of them.
Speaker 2:It's also funny that this guy and his synthetic dyes it's like the same thing that Mel Gibson just talked about on Joe Rogan about methylene blue which I mean originally was a dye used in factories to dye clothes. But people are now drinking it, thinking it, I don't know, alters mitochondrial actions or some shit, as one of the new ivermectin adjacent cancer magic bullets I really wish that everyone involved in that entire mindset had just listened to trump and injected bleach at this point.
Speaker 2:I really wish they had just done all. Could have just stared at the sun while injecting bleach they did drink bleach that was thing.
Speaker 1:That's unfortunately still a thing. A lot of people still do that. Several people have gone to prison for selling watered down bleach as a medical curative People have gone to prison for putting that on their children and using that as health care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really fun. So this commentary doesn't necessarily include the use of chemical weapons in World War I, for instance, since those are strictly poisonous gases. So I didn't really. The use of biological weapons or germ warfare do become an emergent subject after World War II and closer to the peak end of the Cold War.
Speaker 1:In film generally, dates are more fluid, as the depictions of the first proposed germ panic that we cite earlier are scattered throughout the decades. They still come up, actually. So it's not like it's unique to that period, but it was more concentrated in that period. Oh shit, I don't know why. I said that because I actually wrote that line down. They're more concentrated within these time periods, but not necessarily exclusive. I ad-libbed the line that I wrote. Okay, it's almost like it was meant to be.
Speaker 1:For instance, the movie Counterblast from 1948, in which a Nazi physician continues with plague, and I think this is interesting because this kind of parallels Magic Bullet, because it's a German physician. I mean, throughout the latter part of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, austria and germany, bohemia they were all known as the intellectual capitals of the world. But the nazi scientists pushed back against actual evidence-based and and research science, but they were willing to just throw whatever at the, at the wall, and see what stuck yeah, I mean there's a lot of research, quote-unquote science going on, but but with no actual oversight or a scientific method.
Speaker 1:It was just like let's see what happens when I stick a thing in this guy's eye. That's not how science works, but they all thought they were brilliant. So a former nazi physician continues with plague experiments after the end of the war. Now, nearly every decade since world war ii has released a small number of bioweapon films. This was probably the first, at least the most prominent. The interim period between those two germ panics that we referred to earlier saw fantastical depictions of epidemic disease, often from aliens or coming from the other, or they were man-made. I'm quoting again from Song et al.
Speaker 1:Both the USA and the former Soviet Union secretly developed their biological weapons during the Cold War period. In the 1960s and 70s, the civil rights movement, protests against the Vietnam War, the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr I'm going to throw in there Malcolm X and Fred Hampton the oil price shock and following inflation, as well as the Watergate scandal, added to the enduring shock and controversy in American society, as well as to a deep distrust toward the government, particularly among youth. During and after the Vietnam War, the scientific community and the public were more aware of biological weapons programs. The above historical context may explain the theme of deceitful leaders, slash governments, secretly developing bioweapon programs. End quote. That is true. All that having been said, we would be remiss to not acknowledge that these films as often blatant critique, or sometimes in support of American, slash Western capitalism. In fact, I think it's one of the most important things to note about these, and there's a lot of other academic research that supports this.
Speaker 1:In 1939's Pacific Liner, which I tried to watch but you cannot find. It's not streaming, it's not on Internet Archive. There are physical places where you can watch it Right, but online nearly impossible. But in this movie, a stowaway and by the way, a Chinaman, one of them, eh, yeah exactly has infected the crew. Oh, it's on Mubi. I looked on there and it said it wasn't available.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know, I don't have Mubi, so, but it shows it.
Speaker 1:A lot of places have like a placeholder for it, but when you go on there and try and watch it, it's like no, you can't see it, it's not there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know, maybe, Maybe you can. Yeah, I guess. I guess, that's a weird thing to tell people in this. Are you saying it doesn't fit with the whole ethos what we're talking about? Hey, listen to Mel Gibson. Hey, take your ivermectin and go watch Pacific Liner. Okay.
Speaker 1:You're a hydrochloric win. Yeah, which, by the way? Hydrochloric win? It's like a weird mashup of a Spider-Man villain and Harley Quinn. I don't know they just got shipped.
Speaker 2:Is that what happened?
Speaker 1:And the Floronic man? I don't know. Yes, they did, it's all slash fiction. So, yes, a Chinaman infects the crew of the SS Arctis with cholera, while the passengers, who are all obviously upper crust, remain oblivious. The ship's doctor and nurse work to control the infection and heal their patients, while the engineer, who's a disease skeptic, keeps the stokers at their jobs, filling the ship's boilers with coal to make the best time to San Francisco, ostensibly to not upset the first class passengers. Above the engineer, appropriately named Crusher, keeps the working class of the ship in line, literally working them to death. But because of the science and evidence skepticism of the working class as portrayed here, they turn on the doctor and nurse for implementing a quarantine sanitation protocols. And the weird thing is they weren't even as upset about the quarantine as they were about having to wash things. From everything I've read in this, they're like I don't want to have to wash shit. It's like what are you talking about?
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's a different time in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1:Isn't that exactly how President Garfield died? His doctor like refused to wash any instruments.
Speaker 2:No, it was an abundance of lasagna.
Speaker 1:Well, it did happen on a Monday yeah.
Speaker 2:His remains were shipped to Abu Dhabi.
Speaker 1:so Hmm, in a big package with way too much tape Inside was Solomon Grundy. They turn on the doctor and nurse for implementing quarantine sanitation and inoculations which make the crew temporarily ill. Between the medical professionals and the layman, if you get, let's say, a vaccine or something equivalent and it makes you sick temporarily, they don't understand that that's different than actually being afflicted with the disease they're curing you of. And so there is this weird disconnect there and it's portrayed prominently in this movie because they do get temporarily ill and then think they're dying, but because other people that were sick before they were inoculated did just die. They just assume that I don't. They just come up with something that can some sort of conspiracy as to. That's why it's happening. The medical professionals on board, the doctor and the nurse even trick the engineer Crusher into getting an injection which infuriates him and he gets really upset. Crusher then retreats to isolation along with the other ill crew, causing everyone else to assume that he's died. The remaining crew, who are still alive and relatively healthy, decide to mutiny against the doctor, just as Crusher and many of the other ones they thought were dead reappear. It turns out that the medicine worked and those treated were healed. Wow. It's almost like it's a crazy one-to-one. It's like a cause and effect. Order is then re-established and the arctis arrives in san francisco two hours ahead of schedule and all is well now.
Speaker 1:This film does suffer from a lot of studio interference, but mostly about the ending of the movie being more positive. I think they were relatively hands-off until that, and the film does pull back from a lot of biting commentary that it could be making, and that's why it's one of the reasons that this movie is not well known. It wasn't even all that well reviewed even at the time, because it didn't. People watching it could see what they were going for and what they were reaching for, but it never quite got there. They were kind of hamstrung by the powers that be. So some of the glaring themes are indeed present, though. This comes from an article called Pandemic Movies Reflect Our Age of Late Capitalist Despair by Merle Eisenberg, robert Alpert, lee Mordecai for Jacobin Quote. In the case of Pacific Liner, the film presented a critique of social groups that did not fulfill their class obligations class obligations. The movie criticized the upper class for partying instead of paternalistically stopping the spread of cholera below decks. Yet the working class characters on board were no better, since they were uncivilized, justifying their huge number of deaths. Only the hard-working, professional middle class correctly fulfilled their class roles, ensuring the safe arrival.
Speaker 1:This is a very early film in this genre and, I think, a very poignant film, and it really sort of sets up a lot of what would come later. Now, in compiling this list of films, at least for this, I tried to avoid zombie outbreaks for the most part. While such films are poignant, vehicles for commentary of rampant consumerism or perhaps even misguidedly, collectivism, these stories often use the pandemic as a backdrop, not a villainous force like we were talking about earlier. Backdrop, not a villainous force like we were talking about earlier. Same with a lot of post-apocalyptic tales like Mad Max or Boy and His Dog are the same thing as a lot of viral pandemic post-apocalyptic movies. It doesn't matter what the thing was that caused it. It's about where we are now, which is interesting and does deserve its own thing, but that's not really what we're talking about in this scope. Yeah, for instance, rise of the blend of the apes from 2011. It condemns corporate biomedicine.
Speaker 1:The original invasion of the body snatchers is often interpreted interpreted as pseudo orwellian comment on communism, when it actually depicts the transformation of the american populace into unquestioning, conformist consumers. Once again, a lot of that was manipulated by studios at the last minute to not be so heavy-handed commentary on capitalism. Just like with Orwell's actual Animal Farm, the animated movie, in Britain. They couldn't get away with it in the US because so many people had read the book and also it was a program of the CIA which technically can't function on US soil.
Speaker 1:In Britain they changed the ending so that the commentary isn't about capitalism, it's about it's supposed to be like some weird, like Stalinist commentary which is not in the original text, but they force people to change the uprising of the proletariat into becoming fat and happy and then becoming totalitarian in their own right. That is not the commentary of the text, but it is what the cia strong-armed the british populace into watching, obviously with uh help from the mi6 and the british government. The movies I was just talking about are more about talking apes and aliens than they are about communicable disease, so for this I tried to highlight ones 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 with the last man on Earth.
Speaker 2:Not that one, yeah, not the one that you know.
Speaker 1:Not the one you think or you think belongs in here, because it doesn't necessarily. No, a different one, a way worse, dumb one. The Last man on Earth is a 1924 American silent comedy film directed by John G Blystone, starring Earl Fox, great name, and produced by Fox Film, wow Fox and Fox Film, and based on the short story by the same name by John D Swain that appeared in Wow, you're really digging down for source material here that appeared in the November 1923 issue of Muncie's Magazine.
Speaker 1:I love Muncie's. It comes to our door every morning. I train my dog to bring it in, are you sure?
Speaker 2:that's what you're reading.
Speaker 1:I don't know I never learned to read or write. It's up in the air In this story. In 1940, a man becomes a hermit after rejection Incel, by the way. This is about incels, I'm sorry to tell you. By 1950, a plague kills all adult males except him. Now desired by millions of women, he still yearns for his initial love interest, making him a treasured last man. Wow, talk about fragile male ego. Like that's Jesus Christ. You already control women. Like I don't know how much more you need here. Everything, yeah, exactly. The film was remade as the Jesus Christ semi-musical comedy. It's Great to Be Alive from 1933.
Speaker 2:And then 1929, then 2024. As Joker 2, follow you, do You're?
Speaker 1:not wrong, and in Spanish as El Ytumo Verón Sombre La Tierra, also in 1933. And it influenced a sci-fi novel called Mr Adam in 1946. And also a bunch of other stuff we'll talk about later, and also a bunch of other stuff we'll talk about later. In it's Great to Be Alive, a young aviator, carlos Martin, played by Raoul Raoulian wow. He's dumped by his girlfriend, gloria Stewart, and heads on a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean. He has engine trouble and makes an emergency landing on an uninhabited island in the Pacific. Shortly afterward, a pandemic of a new disease called masculitis kills every fertile male human on the planet. When efforts to cure the disease fail, the human race is doomed. Humanity's institutions are all now run by women, including the Chicago underworld oh shit, which actually would probably be way more cutthroat but less impulsive. Carlos escapes the island and once he returns home and hears the news, it now depends on him to continue the human race. This, of course, will return in why the Last man and in the 2019 American drama. Only Now.
Speaker 1:I included this, not because it necessarily fits our criteria as much as if, as it's kind of an incel fantasy, but because it obviously shares the name of the Richard Matheson novel and Vincent Price adaptation that many would point to as an example of a pandemic film, and while that's true, it and its remakes are more akin to zombie outbreak movies. So the first version, which seems to understand the point of the book more than the others, is similar to the film the Girl with All the Gifts, because in this new reality we're a thing of the past and our hubris or ignorance helped lead to our extinction. If you have watched the original Vincent Price Last man on Earth or read the book I Am Legend, the real commentary which Omega man and the movie I Am Legend later completely seem to misunderstand is that our hero is not a hero. He is emblematic of a flawed and dying culture and mindset. He's an alcoholic, he's an asshole, he ignores too much that he knows is wrong. Because of his, his ignorance and his hubris, he essentially lets his daughter and his wife both die and he rails against the vampire infected around the world as monstrous and flawed and evil and the enemy.
Speaker 1:And then in the book and in the movie later, he's confronted with people who have survived, who didn't die, who are relatively normal, who can survive, reproduce and function even with this infection. And even in that face he's like no, you're abominations and you're all assholes, you know. And then eventually he he just kind of like dies because of his ignorance. And I feel like that's kind of the commentary they're trying to make in the girl with all the gifts. But either way, the pandemic part isn't really the point as much as it is. I mean, it is to a certain, but it falls in this weird gray area where you're like you could kind of make a case either way. But that's not really, especially if the book and the original movie maybe you could make a case for it.
Speaker 2:I still think they've already dealt with the pandemic. In a way, they're dealing with the society laid bare after that.
Speaker 1:The first act is the pandemic, as opposed to Omega man or I Am Legend, where the pandemic is like a flashback at the beginning, because I watched it not too long ago, like a year or so ago. Last man on Earth. Like the first act is him dealing with the pandemic, but it is also just still set up for the commentary Not that it is. In fact, it's the opposite of what we're trying to talk about, because the pandemic is actually not something to be overcome and that's kind of the commentary that he's wrong for thinking he has to defeat it, and so I mean that's why it doesn't really fit in, but that's why we included it, because because you need to see examples of, you know, the methods of our madness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Last man. It's almost like the bad guys in any X-Men book. We don't want to be left behind.
Speaker 1:Right, we don't want change. Last man is like an issue zero of House of M. You know we're like oh well, they won, they took over, they're the new thing and we're fighting desperately against this thing. From the perspective of us, the everyman who normally would go yeah, that's an infection that killed my family and then resurrected them as what we think of, as monstrous abominations. But then it turns out actually it's just the next step in human evolution. Now we're going to move on to Skeleton on Horseback or that was my first girlfriend.
Speaker 2:Hey, oh no, it was his first girlfriend Are we?
Speaker 1:She was tiny and skeletal.
Speaker 2:I don't know Are we talking about the red hair.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, the one that actually took his virginity. We'll get into that later. No, no, it will never come up ever again.
Speaker 2:Probably OK sometimes you should come up, ever again, probably. Oh okay, sometimes you should remind me.
Speaker 1:Well, you have a bad memory. I can explain it to you, but you won't remember. That actually may have been before you joined our little clique, though Like right before. Oh, skeleton on Horseback or the White Disease is a 1937 Czech drama film directed by and starring a guy named Hugo Haas.
Speaker 1:In it, the White Plague, a deadly leprosy-like disease that mainly infects people over 50, is ravaging the entire world. Dr Galen, a reclusive physician who has devoted his life to the poor, finds a cure, but he refuses to share his cure with the rich and powerful unless his one condition is met Eternal peace among nations, which is awesome, yeah, and especially in 1937, this is poignant. Meanwhile, the nation's militaristic leader is preparing to invade a neighboring country. I don't know who they're talking about there in 1937.ter. His name's hister, mr hister that they do that. That's actually in a money python skit. Hitler didn't die, but he like moved to suburban london and tried to start over by running for 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 close friend, an aristocratic arms manufacturer who is an essential part of his war machinations, then catches the disease.
Speaker 1:This is all based on a play called the White Disease by Carol Kopeck. I don't know. There's an accent mark over the C, so it could be Chopek. It could be Chopek. I'm not really sure. I'm not great with Cyrillic, so it's really hard to say I barely do English.
Speaker 1:I barely know English. Next is a film that is often pointed to as setting the stage for further films, in American cinema at least about pandemics. It is a 1950 American medical-themed film noir thriller directed by the great Elia Kazan, called Panic in the Streets. I got nothing, I got nothing. I got nothing.
Speaker 2:That's funny because I was thinking of Bowie's Panic in Detroit At the same time, but I couldn't work it in there.
Speaker 1:Which is funny, because the first thing I was thinking about was Dancing in the Streets by Bowie and Mick.
Speaker 2:Jagger, it's the great Unified Bowie theory, I think.
Speaker 1:We finally reached the Bowie singularity.
Speaker 2:This is like a bit in a PCU, where Gene Hackman and Michael Caine are in the same film.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why? We all like Jeremy Piven. I don't know anymore. I would say it is Piven's best vehicle. Movie-wise I think it's. He did have a good TV show called Cupid on ABC for a long time that I liked a lot. It doesn't count. If only you saw it, it was so popular it had a reboot a few years later.
Speaker 2:Never heard of it.
Speaker 1:This is what Brandeis American Studies professor, tom Doherty, has to say about the genre in general and this film's place within Quote. So you get a proliferation of nuclear disaster movies, alien invasion scenarios and end-of-the-world narratives to express the intimations of mortality. Pandemic films are a variation on the theme, perhaps in some ways more terrifying because their conceit is all too plausible. Ilya Kazan's Panic in the Streets, released in 1950, really provides a template for the pandemic films that follow. It's about a health worker and a police detective trying to track down a patient zero in New Orleans to prevent an outbreak of pneumonic plague.
Speaker 1:Pneumonic plague, by the way, is a weird buzzword. When we say plague, or the Black Death or whatever, that is a combination of like eight different things that swept through Europe during the Middle Ages. Okay, I've done a lot of research on that too. I watched a lot of actually I watched a lot of great courses about the Black Plague and how it's varied. The film tells the story of Lieutenant Commander Clinton Reed, played by Richard Widmark, an officer of the US Public Health Service, which I don't think is a real thing, and Captain Tom Warren, played by Paul Douglas If it was, it's now gone. No, 100% has been depreciated A grizzled veteran detective of the New Orleans Police Department, I'm guessing, played by Powers Booth today. Well, he's dead, isn't he?
Speaker 2:I don't know guessing played by powers booth today. Well, he's dead isn't he?
Speaker 1: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 powers booth, for for no reason, stacy keach, maybe a stacy keach who's also dead, yeah, yeah or maybe in a different era. Charles bronson, hey, disease your time up.
Speaker 2:You gotta punch this disease in the face. I got a present for your disease, blammo this disease raped my wife this disease called hoodlums and black kids.
Speaker 1:Oh those punks.
Speaker 2:Well, I was watching this video that was kind of breaking down some of those Death Wish movies, and my significant other was watching with me and she didn't really understand what Death Wish series of films was. She just kind of looks at me and is like, oh my God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cringeworthy is the most diplomatic way you could put it. They are problematic at best.
Speaker 2:It's also like one of the most wrongheaded ideas that then became its own genre.
Speaker 1:That has stayed strong till this day. There's a reason that Bruce Willis starred in the remake. I'm guessing Big C lost an arm wrestling match to Mel Gibson.
Speaker 2:I'm sure Mel has his own versions of that oh.
Speaker 1:I guarantee he does hey boyo.
Speaker 2:It's based on the real threat of smallpox.
Speaker 1:A grizzled veteran detective of New Orleans Police Department, who may or may not be Charles Bronson, have only a day or two of frantic, intense search and interviews in which to prevent a greater outbreak of a deadly epidemic of, once again, pneumonic plague which, in this after read, determines a waterfront homicide victim is also an index case and the first to be found carrying the disease. The supporting cast includes Barbara Del Geddes as Reed's wife. Yada, yada, yada. Jack Palance in his film debut no way, yes. And Zero Mostel. He was Gene Wilder's counterpart in the Producers. Okay, I'm pretty sure he was in Fiddler on the Roof along with Topol. By the way, from Flash Gordon they play two crooks, associates of the victim, who had prompted the public health investigation, prompted the public health investigation.
Speaker 1:The film was also the debut of Tommy Raytig, best known for playing Jeff Miller in the early seasons of Lassie, who gives a shit. I think you could have cut that bit. No, I know, I know. The only reason I keep reading is because I want to get to this point. The score was composed by Alfred Newman From Mad Magazine, the Alfred E Newman, ned Ryerson from mad magazine, the alfred e newman ned ryerson. The film was originally named port of entry.
Speaker 2:Subsequently, wait, I know, subsequently called outbreak.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tell you this right now 80 of these movies that have come out were at one point called outbreak, and then eventually panic in the streets. Uh, so then we get to another film that same year the killer that stalked new york, also known as frightened city. The film shot on location and semi-documentary style. But this is interesting. This is a mockumentary. It's about diamond smugglers who unknowingly start a mockumentary well, it's not a real documentary, it's shot in documentary style, but I think, I think mockumentary means something different okay, I'll grant you that, in that it's not spinal tap, but that's a different pandemic film just like the office way different.
Speaker 2:to be honest, I haven't seen the killer that Stalked New York, so I'm not exactly sure how they are describing this film.
Speaker 1:It's about diamond smugglers who unknowingly start a smallpox outbreak in New York City in 1947. It's based on the real threat of a smallpox epidemic in the city. The outbreak marked the largest mass vaccination effort ever conducted for smallpox epidemic in the city. The outbreak marked the largest mass vaccination effort ever conducted for smallpox in America. Within three weeks of the discovery of the actual outbreak, the wow, I'm wrong the US Public Health Service a real thing in conjunction with New York City health officials, had procured the smallpox vaccine and inoculated over 6,350,000 adults and children. That is an insane number, for 1950 especially, and would be crazy today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's wild.
Speaker 1:Within three weeks's awesome. Of that number, five million had been vaccinated within the first two weeks. The rapid response was credited with limiting the outbreak to just 12 people, 10 of whom recovered, while two died. This is fascinating because it's a depiction of a real life crisis with a real life dramatic arc in its society reacting, then acting appropriately to a real threat. An event like that would be very unlikely to see play out today. There's no way that would happen today.
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 1:That is one of the most amazing and you know what this is so blasé in the history of just even American health, which has been awful throughout the entire existence of this country. That right there is one of the coolest, most effective and amazing examples of how to come together and solve a problem there has ever been in this country. And we don't even talk about it because back then it was like, yeah, yeah, we cured polio, we did that, we, you know like we just did that back then well, a lot happened to get us to rfk jr, portion of our downfall then we're going to fast forward a little bit.
Speaker 1:Crimes of the future, but not that one, not that one. 1970, different time, crimes of the future, 1970, by david cronenberg. In crimes of the future, it's set in 1997. It follows adrian tripod, an occasional director of the house of skin, a dermatological clinic. He embarks on a quest to find his mentor, the insane dermatologist. The insane dermatologist. Well, he does like making films about crazy doctors, so You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel and you have to go. He's a maniacal dermatologist.
Speaker 2:There's lots of skin particles in the bottom of the barrel. He's gotta scrape those off. Named Antoine Rogue.
Speaker 1:Wow, perhaps it's Rouge. Well, there's no Assault Degue, so I'm guessing it's.
Speaker 2:There is not, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: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 a devastating plague caused by cosmetic products wiped out oh that, wiped out all sexually mature women. It's kind of a reverse of what we talked about earlier. Allegedly the virus mutated, now affects men and kills rogue. It goes on. The whole thing is about. It's a pandemic started by our vanity and the cosmetic products.
Speaker 2:The problem is Brand.
Speaker 1:X, really Should have tried Joker Brand.
Speaker 2:With Joker Brand, you get to grin again and again. What is the key?
Speaker 1:Deodorant Makeup. Then, a year later, the andromeda strain. Okay, now this is one that you really need to talk about. Everyone needs to really acknowledge the andromeda strain, of course. By michael crichton.
Speaker 1:1971 american science fiction thriller movie produced and directed by robert wise, who directed the day the earth stood still, and also, regrettably, star trek, the motion picture based on movie produced and directed by Robert Wise, who directed the Day the Earth Sits Still, and also, regrettably, star Trek, the Mushroom Picture based on Crichton's 1969 novel.
Speaker 1:The film stars Arthur Hill, james Olsen, kate Reed and David Wayne as a team of scientists who investigate a deadly organism of extraterrestrial origin. With few exceptions, the film does follow the book pretty close and also, hilariously, special effects were done by Douglas Trumbull, who did I guess that's not that weird did Star Trek the motion picture, but anyway in it, after a US government satellite crashes near the small rural town of Piedmont, new Mexico, on February 5th 1971, nearly all residents die. A military recovery team from Vandenberg Air Force Base attempts to recover the satellite but dies while trying to do so, suspecting that the satellite has brought back an alien organism. The military then activates an elite team of scientists, like every Michael Crichton story ever, an elite team of a group of people brought together to solve this thing in isolation.
Speaker 2:I don't follow. I don't see the connection anywhere.
Speaker 1:Because I've never read Sphere or seen the movie, I've never seen Congo or Jurassic Park, or Nope, nope.
Speaker 2:I don't know. 13th Warrior? No, oh no.
Speaker 1:There's no elite group of people brought together secretly to defeat this evil. No, no.
Speaker 2:No, you keep working on that theory. Get back to me.
Speaker 1:ER, a small elite group of people solving all these problems.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's not ER at all, except for helicopters. They can elite group of people solving all these problems. Wow, that's not ER at all, except for helicopters.
Speaker 1:they can't solve that, hey, but who can? Who has ever been able to solve the riddle of helicopters? The riddle of helicopters. Cron blasts into helicopters. Did we just do that at the same time? God damn it.
Speaker 2:It was there. It was there. I should have done it the first place. I was just dangling at the same time. God damn it. It was there. It was there. I should have done it the first place. I was just dangling in the everlasting sky.
Speaker 1:It's an extremely Crichton story.
Speaker 1:Now this is a movie that I saw earlier today that actually stars an actress that appeared in one of the later films we're going to talk about, which is completely coincidental but interesting, called when have All the People Gone. It was a 1974 American made-for-television science-fiction drama film starring Peter Graves, kathleen Quinlan, george O'Hanlon and Verna Bloom. Watching it you're going to notice the ties to Blazing Saddles and other films, but Peter Graves obviously from Mission Impossible and other things In it. On a camping trip to the Sierra Nevada mountains in Central California, stephen Anders and his two teenage children, deborah and David, are exploring a cave when they experience an earthquake. After emerging, they hear from a ranch hand who is outside. That's the guy from Blazing Saddles. When you was slaves, you sang like birds Classic. It's that guy from blazing saddles. When you was slaves, you sang like birds classic. It's that guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, uh, that there was a bright solar flash prior to the earthquake. He soon then falls ill and dies and then, after just watching it recently, he dies. And then they go and they're trying to like figure out what to do and maybe we should go back to civilization or whatever. And then they go back where they had buried him Well, not buried, just covered him up in a sleeping bag actually and be like where is he? He's gone, there's nothing in the bag. And then they open the bag and his clothes are still there. Because it turns out that when someone dies after being exposed to whatever, this contagion is turns into a powder.
Speaker 2:Like Batman the movie Everyone gets dehydrated. Oh shit, you're right, it is like Batman the movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, the reason I included it was because in Andromeda's train your blood becomes solid and becomes a powder, and that's what kills you. That's not going to work. How's the Riddler going to win so well? I mean, it's kind of ambitious for a made-for-TV movie and has some good, you know, fun actors in it, but it actually is more like Batman the movie. So that brings us to the mid-70s, which so this is a really interesting period of time in which the pandemic epidemic panic turns into something else that is usually either, like I said earlier, man-made or alien. So we're going to leave it here for now, in 1974. And we're going to pick up next time in 1976. 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 going to get to the rest of this quite yet. From 76 to 2024.
Speaker 2:We're not going to get there yet sorry potters, you're going to have another one.
Speaker 1:You're going to have to wait bang hey, I had to wait to bury my wife and daughter you're going to have to wait for the episode hey, are you trying to steal my car?
Speaker 2:blammo, this guy looked at me wrong at the deli.
Speaker 1:You trying to steal my car, blammo. This guy looked at me wrong at the deli, so I murdered his wife and daughter.
Speaker 2:He was too ethnic, not my town.
Speaker 1:This town gets dark too early, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Bang Blammo dead.
Speaker 1:So we're going to leave it there for now. Next week we will come back with that. Probably more Bronson, not Tom Hardy Bronson, but Charles Bronson, but not that Charles Bronson, the original Charles Bronson.
Speaker 2:OG Charles Bronson.
Speaker 1:Would have been funnier in that movie if he had just decided to do a Charles Bronson impression. The whole time have been funnier in that movie if he had just decided to do with charles bronson impression the whole time. Oh, he's naked and slapping himself and like chalking himself up like dong hanging out and he's just like, hey boy, oh, let's do this this is my fun gun hey, blammo gets an erection immediately.
Speaker 2:Skeet, skeet, as the kids say, which Charles Bronson?
Speaker 1:is famous for saying Both of them.
Speaker 2:They love skeeting.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys for listening. Jake, take us out.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thought you were going to switch it up this time. No, no, I was just queuing it up. I was intrigued, Like what was I going to say? Because I didn't have anything either. Like I have anything, Perhaps I should plan ahead.
Speaker 1:It's almost like we should take this seriously.
Speaker 2: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 to friends who might be interested in pandemic films or charles bronson, or charles bronson or the mythical god Chopper.
Speaker 1:With Eric Bana.
Speaker 2:Man, what are the odds that we'd have both Charles Bronson and Eric Bana's Chopper in the same episode?
Speaker 1: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 movie where they fight each other or team up like a buddy movie Stopper, my Chopper will will shoot or get to the chopper. The pen is truly mightier than the sword. It's only funny if you've seen chopper oh man, uh, skip before next episode.
Speaker 2:What should they do?
Speaker 1:well, they should probably rethink the decisions that have led them here thus far, but they should probably pay their tabs clean up after themselves to some sort of reasonable degree, make sure that they have supported the local comic shops and retailers and in that vein we would like to say godspeed, fair wizards blammo them as a war zone.
Speaker 2:It's me and ma. Now please go away.