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
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.
I always ask if you are ready that is included in the preparedness.
Speaker 2:Am I prepared to say something? No, ready to record and prepared to say something are two different things.
Speaker 1:Being a podcast host is like being a parent you know, nobody's ever ready.
Speaker 2:No, you make the best you can with what you got it started out by a mistake that we made, you know it's a night of passion.
Speaker 1:A whoopsie in a backseat. That's how you start most podcasts.
Speaker 2:Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.
Speaker 1:Are they in the proper approach pattern for today? Negative.
Speaker 2:All weapons Now Charge the lightning field.
Speaker 1:Meatloaf is the patron saint of podcasting.
Speaker 2:yes, this is Dispatch Ajax, where we do worship at the altar of the loaf.
Speaker 1:I'm Skip.
Speaker 2:I am his fellow loafer, Jake.
Speaker 1:Meatloaf is one word, isn't it? No, it's two words, right.
Speaker 2:I'm looking it up. It is two words the meat and the loaf.
Speaker 1:So the proper would be Mr Loaf. Hey, we got a table of one here for loaf. Hey, meat, your table's ready.
Speaker 2:It's Mr Loaf to you asshole Please.
Speaker 1:Mr Loaf is my father.
Speaker 2:I didn't go to seven years of meat school to be called Mr. Just describe Chicago public schools, Okay you're going to do an extra semester of kielbasa sausage Casings.
Speaker 1:we're going to focus on.
Speaker 2:This is why I record this, so that it's out there for posterity.
Speaker 1:This is more of a time capsule than a podcast.
Speaker 2:Skip was telling me about stuff he cut out of previous podcasts. I'm like I said that that happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in fact, the other day we recorded for like an hour and 45 minutes and I edited it down to the actual content and it was 39 minutes long.
Speaker 2:Jesus, yeah, edited it down to the actual content and it was 39 minutes long. Jesus, yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep, which?
Speaker 1:we are exemplifying currently. Yes, yes so we are going to finish up our series on pandemics specifically. Oh, that's that's good.
Speaker 2:That's relevant to pod right. It came through my computer speakers. Do you feel that in your ear, listener, that's the gunk.
Speaker 1:It's the substance.
Speaker 2:Ooh, it's the stuff.
Speaker 1:I was fuck you, I was going to suck. I paused because I was like is he going to say it or am I Fuck it's the street trash gonna say it, or am I? It's the street?
Speaker 2:trash. Oh god, it's the chud mucus permeating through your computer speakers as we speak. Yeah, lip it, lick it in oh all right, yeah, so we're gonna finish up our pandemic film series.
Speaker 1:Well, we wanted to tackle a lot of stuff, pandemics in general, in pop culture. The problem was that there really aren't a lot of good comic books about it. I mean there are some, obviously. I mean why the last man comes to to mind. There are many. Well, no, there aren't many. There are a couple. Um, nothing really great, and some of them are just adaptations of films anyway. So we figured would just, let's just do films and focus on that when we left off. We had only gotten to 1974, I believe, with when have All the People Gone? You know, made for TV, good cast, really fun stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you want to make sure you find out that answer before you learn who indeed let the dogs out, because they're coming for you. Dogs are coming all over you.
Speaker 1:If you've read or seen any version of I Am Legend.
Speaker 2:Who let those dogs out Probably that Omega man, that's probably who did it.
Speaker 1:They're after that Soylent Green. It's that sweet, sweet Soylent Greenies for their daily toothbrushing treat.
Speaker 2:You blew up my people factory. You damn dirty apes.
Speaker 1:I like how you were like right there on Bronson. You were like right at the edge of Bronson. I'm just on yes.
Speaker 2:I got a little toe in Bronson. I got a little toe in Heston, a little Breston for anybody.
Speaker 1:Breston. That sounds like a millennial name and they're fucking stupid kid. You blew it up, you maniacs.
Speaker 2:Blammo Every once in a while it pays off.
Speaker 1:We're going to recap some of the actual films. We talked about a lot of the structure, the meaning behind, the motivations behind a lot of pandemic films, why they appeal, their sort of sociopolitical impacts, yada, yada, yada, in the first episode. So now we're going to talk about, in the modern era, some of the films between 74 and today. 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 some of the, if not highlights, at least different examples that show how varied and diverse this genre gets. So we're going to start off with a relatively famous movie in this genre called the Cassandra Crossing. Cool yeah, it's a 1976 disaster thriller film directed by George Pan Cosmitos.
Speaker 2:Hell yeah, you guys might remember that name.
Speaker 1:His middle name is Pan, all right.
Speaker 2:Although he generally goes by P, I think.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, he does carry around a fife and has goat legs, so I'm not going to shame 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, burt lancaster, lee strasburg and oj simpson. Oh bringing, it turns out he's the deadly virus you know george p kosmatos, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'm looking at his name right now.
Speaker 1: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 name right now.
Speaker 2:I mean, I don't know what he's done, no, I don't know. Oh, no, you don't know. Okay, alright, alright, sight unseen. Cobra Rambo, first Blood, part 2. Tombstone Leviathan and his son has gone on to make some things you might have heard of, like Mandy.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Or Beyond the Black Rainbow.
Speaker 1:So his son is more talented, but he's done some really interesting things, hey.
Speaker 2:Tombstone, tombstone's great.
Speaker 1:Cobra Aboard a European train which is quickly hurtling toward a derelict arch bridge likely to collapse because of its age and stuff. They they set up earlier in the movie. As things go on, you know, they do a bunch of setup with these different characters. Martin sheen is this young playboy dude with amazing suits, by the way just like I would wear them all in a heartbeat these great polyester, wide collared plaid shit. It's fucking amazing.
Speaker 1:So then we cut to the us mission of the international health organization where three terrorists blow up the building. Two of them are shot, one mortally, then one escapes and then he shows up on the train and runs off. The surviving terrorist is hospitalized in quarantine. Elena stradner and us military intelligence colonel stephen mckenzie argue over disease and what it is and whatever. They're the ones that are there to oversee this thing, because stradner suspects that it's a biological weapon, but mckenzie claims that the weapon that he stole the dude dude stole was being destroyed. I don't know how that makes it okay, but that's kind of the premise. So then the other terrorist he escapes and stows away aboard the train from Geneva to Stockholm.
Speaker 1:They're all on board this European, literally cross-country train when a Swedish I think it's a terrorist comes on board and he's infected with this horrible disease and he keeps trying to keep a low profile or whatever, even though he just shows up everywhere and is in no way shape or form low profile. In fact, there are moments where he just goes into other people's rooms and uses their bathroom and then they come in and they're like who are you? And he's like like, runs out, shoves them aside. You're like you're not hiding at all, not even trying. He shows up, I think. I think he pretends to be the well, I know he goes into the kitchen at one point I can't remember if he pretends to be the chef or he just sneezes all over the chef and his food, it's what, something like that. But he makes no actual effort to hide, even though he's an international terrorist on the run, and so he essentially infects everybody on this train with this whatever engineered or at least tinkered with virus Within this command center. That they have the joint European-US thing, that they have going on.
Speaker 1:They have this debate whether the train should be stopped so that they have going on. They have this debate whether the train should be stopped so that the terrorists can be removed in quarantine. But the US Colonel McKenzie. He's concerned that all the passengers on the train are already infected, and he's right. He insists on rerouting the train to a disused railway line that goes straight to a Nazi concentration camp in Janow, poland, where the strangers will be quarantined. This is 1976. This is literally 30 years after the end of the war. This is so fresh on people's minds You're going to send them to a concentration camp to quarantine them. Yeah, the line crosses a dangerously unsound steel arch bridge, known as the cassandra bridge or cassandra crossing that's the name of the film what a coincidence it's.
Speaker 1:it's literally been out of use since 1948. I don't want to give any spoilers away or whatever how the the movie movie unfolds or what have you. It is an interesting. I think it fits into that like 70s disaster movie genre, things OK, but it's like it's kind of a weird outlier because it's not airport, it's not Daring Inferno or whatever it's. It's a different kind of animal because of its premise.
Speaker 2:But it does tick a lot of those boxes like it's got a huge cast yeah, you kind of have like that curdling conveyance of some sort, whether it'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 weird conditions that are part of the narrative.
Speaker 1:It would be one movie to have. We're hurtling toward this bridge that's going to collapse, but on top of that it's also about terrorism, it's about biological weapons and then also about pandemics, because everyone on board is infected with this thing that could kill everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure at some point they say that it's the plague. This one, apparently, is a variation on the pneumonic plague, which they do not have a cure for, I believe, even to this day. I think they have inoculations for, but I don't think they have a cure for it and this is like a varied, intentionally manipulated version. So they don't have shit for that. So I will leave it there for that movie. It's. It's interesting. I thought some of the tension was good. I find it absurd in some ways, and a lot of that, I think, is because I'm looking now backward after the COVID-19 pandemic, and I feel the same way about other movies we're going to talk about too, where I can't believe that people are doing these things knowing this might happen. You know what I mean. Like I can't believe you're like this close to another human being breathing in your face.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, you look at those things differently.
Speaker 1: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 to wear a mask, you can't gather in public, you have to stay away from people for the same reasons, and those make sense. How did that not stick? How did that not, like, come into our zeitgeist? In Asia they do this all the time and they don't have as many pandemics, as you know, as anybody else.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, mean that's probably an issue for a larger discussion that I don't think we can. I agree, it's just. It's just interesting watching it now and being like it feels dated, but at the same time all pandemic films feel dated now you know what I mean but it's like simple stuff.
Speaker 1:Why aren't you wearing masks? It's the easiest thing in the universe 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 my watching 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 the characters, but they do do a good job of ramping up tension at certain points. The only thing I think that I would say really drags the film down is the fact that they have too many points. But when you're watching it and before you know the ending, you're kind of like so is it about the bridge? Is it about the disease? Is it about the terrorists? Like what I mean?
Speaker 2:right, yeah, just doing a little cursor research, I do think this might be one of the earliest examples of terrorists trying to steal a biological agent and use it as a weapon in movies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say most likely. Yeah, biological warfare wasn't really a thing until God what? Yeah, probably around this time, so this would have been relatively new.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this would have been relatively new yeah, and there was stuff in books before that but I can't really find many movies that focused on utilizing a biological agent in a terrorist scenario.
Speaker 1:After World War II they were outright banned by the Geneva Convention. Even research is illegal to this 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:I think he does what he's supposed to do.
Speaker 1:You just don't expect that much though no, but he is very charismatic as a person.
Speaker 2:Yeah which I always think. I think his noidberg you know character in the naked gun movies work so well I think you just mashed up the Noid and Nordberg. Did I.
Speaker 1:Noidberg. Yes, you called him Noidberg, which is funny. Next on the list is El Año de Pesta. In English, it's the Year of the Plague.
Speaker 2:If only it could have been El Año del Pasto. Huh, no move along.
Speaker 1:Mexicans are definitely well known for their pasta dishes. It is a Mexican film category.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Why not Cut it out? I will decide what's cut out and what is not.
Speaker 2:Please, why you make my pot so bad? Damn you.
Speaker 1:Picture it Mexico City 1925. This is categorized as a thriller, drama and science fiction film. It was filmed in 1978, released in 79. Apparently, the writer was a famous Colombian writer named Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It's an adapted screenplay, obviously, the novel by daniel defoe, a journal of the plague year, which was published in 1722. That was a that's a way back machine, so that's one of our not the earliest, I think, in history, but one of the earliest example just getting adapted in, uh, in 1978.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think the oldest plague story is the Decameron published in Italy in 1353. About a small group of people who flee Florence to escape the Black Death and spend two weeks telling each other stories to distract from the horrors around them, which is really kind of a lot of times what these films are about in a broader sense really kind of a lot of times what these films are about in a broader sense.
Speaker 1:It's crazy that this genre kind of brush off, I think in the mainstream zeitgeist is one of the oldest genres of fictional drama. In this movie, a dreadful sickness is found in a mexican town. A doctor tries to alert the authorities when he discovers its epidemic nature. No one listens to him and soon the illness spreads. Common trope in these the government then tries to manage the information in order to prevent terror. So it's not about managing the disease but about the messaging that doesn't sound like trump anybody.
Speaker 1:L fauci our next one is called the hamburg syndrome, which in German is Die Hamburg Krankheit.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure it's Krankheit. Yes, boy, and this is going to date. This 1979, west German slash French science fiction film by Peter Fleischman, starring Helmut Grimm, fernando Erebal, caroline sizer. In this one, a deadly epidemic breaks out in hamburg. Out of the blue, victims fall dead in the fetal position. In one scene, a doctor who autopsies 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 more space. So when politicians in the military intervene, set up quarantine stations and develop a vaccine which carries high risks and this is where we get into some weird territory today Like not that vaccines do carry high risk today, but people just are going to look at that and assume that this is so hard not to get topical with jokes and bits.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, that's kind of why we do this. It's fine. I don't think it's a problem. We talk about that a lot, even the Mandela Effect thing.
Speaker 2:We started talking about it January 6th, yeah, I don't know how good my RFK impression is, though.
Speaker 1:Do you have a Kermit impression or a Patrick Mahomes impression? It's close enough.
Speaker 2:But I got to like be gargling asphalt while being Kermit.
Speaker 1:You got to be gargling Trump's balls while you do it, while Cheryl Hines tapes it for her fucking Instagram, or whatever.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:So people leave, crazily. People leave their homes with face masks to go to the quarantine Wow. Easily, people leave their homes with face masks to go to the quarantine Wow, what an insane response to a fucking global pandemic. Basically, that one is all about finding patient zero. It spreads around the world, or at least Europe, and then they call it the Hamburg disease, and this one I put in there specifically because of the search for patient zero, the first known infected, which in epidemics and pandemics is usually like if a disease has jumped from, let's say, the animal community to the human community. Who's the first person that exhibited these symptoms? Or a disease exists, but it's rare. And then there's one person who's a massive spreader of it often.
Speaker 2:Well, that's real no, I was laughing.
Speaker 1:A massive spreader, that's all oh, which is funny because one of the most anachronistic 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:A steward, not stewardess, a flight attendant An attendant.
Speaker 1:Flight attendant. Yeah, that he spread AIDS to a bunch of people around the world because he was gay and he fucked a bunch of dudes. None of that is true. Now, that guy did exist and he did give AIDS to people, but that is in no way, shape or form, the reason for the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic, which people had forgotten was a real, fucking, crazy epidemic. Yeah, because Reagan covered up all of it, refused to even acknowledge it. Yeah, hey, but it was real and it was awful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, watch. And the Band Played On.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, do that, even watching. You know what I've been rewatching? Kids in the Hall, and how many episodes do they have about that. I mean it's crazy, it's nuts, how awful that epidemic was. And we didn't do shit intentionally. It would take years sometimes for people to die, but at that point it was 100 fatal. And that's something we never talk about, mostly because they kind of figured it out quietly and didn't want to acknowledge it, didn't even want to acknowledge that it happened. But you know, unlike some of the other ones, we're going to cover where they actually do go out of the way to acknowledge that we figured it out and we fixed it. Um, which is, I think, one of the reasons that people don't understand the scope and the weight of pandemics today, because there are certain pandemics that we fixed, we figured it out, we cured it, we did the thing. And so when they, when the world doesn't collapse, they're like, well then, it couldn't have been that bad. We're like, no, if you didn't die, if there wasn't a giant pandemic, then we did the right thing, we did what we were supposed to do. People didn't understand that during covet 19, as it turns out, there's a movie called virus.
Speaker 1:It's a Japanese movie known in Japan as Fukatsu no Hai or Day of Resurrection. It's from 1980. It's a post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Kinji Fukasaku, based on Sakyu Komatsu's 1964 novel of the same name. It starred a crazy. You know what? I watched this movie. I loved it.
Speaker 1:You know, what I watched this movie I loved it Really.
Speaker 1:Yes, I mean it doesn't have a resolution and it doesn't end well, but another example of a fucking brilliant cast. And it's fascinating watching a Japanese writer and director talk about the Western world and how they deal with things. And there are some really gut-wrenching moments in this movie that I thought were really great. Had this movie come out like today or had a bigger budget or had been more widely seen, I think would be considered a classic. But I said, the third act. Most of the action comes in the third act and then there's no resolution to that. So it kind of just feels like a beginning of a, like a trilogy or something. It's a little unsatisfying, but I loved what they were building to. It's crazy. It stars a japanese actor meseo kusakari, sonny Chiba, george Kennedy, robert Vaughn, chuck Connors, olivia Hussey, edward James Olmos I know who is awesome in that movie, by the way.
Speaker 1:Okay, picture Kurt Russell in the Thing but, Edward James Olmos, beard, long hair, strong out, total badass. And then Glenn Ford, from, also from Superman the movie, and Henry Silva, glenn Ford's in Superman the movie. Robert Vaughn's, the villain in Superman 3. So in 1982, a shady transaction occurs between an East German scientist, dr Kruse Krauss, dr Krauss and a group of Americans, involving a substance called M88, m-m-88, not to be confused with M80s.
Speaker 2:Or Mad Dog.
Speaker 1: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 an American geneticist that amplifies the potency of any other virus or bacterium that comes in contact with it. That is crazy.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:That is a new angle on this We've never seen before. The Americans recovered the sample of the virus which was stolen from the lab in the US the year before, but the virus is accidentally released after the plane transporting it crashes. It's just like that scene in Temple of Doom. They can't pull up in time.
Speaker 1:Oh right yeah they just right into the fucking mountain which creates a pandemic.
Speaker 1:They call and this is funny italian flu.
Speaker 1:That's only funny because the 1919 quote spanish flu pandemic, which was a worldwide pandemic which, by the way, killed tens of millions of people, if not hundreds of millions of people, and we don't talk about it, but it was insanely deadly.
Speaker 1:It was only called the Spanish flu because it manifested during World War I, where the United States had a crazy law where news outlets weren't allowed to talk about anything that could hurt the war effort. So even speaking out in public against the war you could get arrested. So when all of these troops were getting infected with this disease and dying, the US news and the entire press apparatus was banned from even talking about it. One of the only countries that wasn't under this sort of gag order or a similar one was Spain, and they were the first to put out papers that documented this disease. Turns out it came from America, I think originally in Kansas, but we called it the Spanish flu because that was where we learned where it came from, or we learned that it existed. Horribly fascistic that we did all of that, but that's where we are that doesn't sound like us at all no, not at all.
Speaker 1:Freedom cabbage. Within seven months, virtually all the world's population is dead. However, the virus is inactive at temperatures below 10 degrees celsius and the polar winter has spared this elite group. It's very crichton at this point, this elite group of people 855 men and eight women stationed in an arctica. So then they have this whole thing where this british nuclear submarine joins the scientists after sinking a soviet submarine. So this scene is actually really good, because the soviets come in and they're like we need refuge, please. We know you're the only people left and there's a british sub that's like patrolling to make sure 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 some place 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 who are representatives from all around the world are like do we let them in? And they ultimately decide they can't, because they realize that some of the people on board the submarine are infected. And so the desperate Soviet submarine who isn't aggressive or like violent, they just want they want to live Tries to make it through their barricades or whatever, and so they're. The British submarine sinks them and kills them all. It brings up all sorts of really interesting questions. Barricades or whatever, and so they're, the british submarine sinks them and kills them all. It brings up all sorts of really interesting questions. That's how they deal with the drama, the pathos of the virus part.
Speaker 1:There were a lot of these things that came out of the soviet union in the 70s and 80s. I mean I don't want to speak out of turn because I don't know as much and it's hard to know as much the mindset of the soviet people at that time, especially Soviet sci-fi writers, because A a lot of their stuff was censored, like you couldn't even see it in the US, even though they were some of the biggest pioneers of filmmaking in general throughout history. Look up Soy Cuba, fascinating film. So in the Soviet Union they did a lot of these bioengineered pandemic movies and I think a lot of it was. If I had to guess, and looking through context and stuff that I've read, it seems like that was more their fear.
Speaker 1:We were worried about nuclear exchange with Soviet Union. They seem to be more worried about this kind of thing and I think a lot of that comes from World War Two, when they were occupied. A lot of their major cities were felled by the Nazis and during that period there was rampant starvation and disease and these things that they had no control over. It's kind of like with the British in the Blitz In. Their mindset about how to deal with disasters or emergencies is different than ours, because we weren't bombed, we weren't attacked on the mainland, the British were, and there's a good sci-fi British movie about that. Await Further Instructions, is that what it's called? It sounds right. I think it's an interesting look at the British mindset, okay.
Speaker 2:During Okay.
Speaker 1:During an emergency. That's why I would watch. I feel like the Soviets had that thing too, so there are tons of Soviet. So then you have in 85, warning Sign, an American science fiction horror film directed by Hal Barwood and starring Sam Watterson Cool, catherine Quinlan again. Yafet Kodo Hell yeah, jeffrey DeMunn and Richard quinlan again y'all. Fat koto hell yeah, jeffrey damon and richard dicert in that one.
Speaker 1:A secret military laboratory operating under the guise of a pesticide manufacturer. You know what I've seen? This one too. There's an outbreak of a virulent, a virulent bacteria. During routine work. A sealed tube is broken, releasing the secret biological weapon, detecting the release of the weapon.
Speaker 1:Essentially it's the beginning part of resident evil. It's a lab and they accidentally drop a vial and somebody's bio suit is torn and then it all kind of like spirals downhill. They're in the middle of nowhere and they have to like figure out how to address the emergency situation and how to like get people out that are still uninfected and shit like that. It's kind of a bottle movie, you know like it only takes place in a couple of locations and shots and, uh, it's almost the same premise as like a hostage negotiation type movie, okay, where you have the outside, communicating with them, trying to figure out how to get them in and out.
Speaker 1:There's that one. Uh, then we go to pandemic, a 1987 dan Danish experimental medical dark comedy, horror. Okay, the only reason I put this in the air is because it's Lars von Trier. I have not seen that. Apparently he did what they call the Europa Trilogy, element of Crime, europa, and this Basically it's a meta comedy. It's literally about the two of them trying to write a movie Gotcha. It's sort of like Lars von Trier's Synecdoche New York.
Speaker 2:Except it has Udo.
Speaker 1:Kier, it's got Udo Kier.
Speaker 2:My shoulders are shrugging. Oh, come on, we both love Udo Kier. No, udo's fine, I just, I don't know if just Udo's bringing me to the table.
Speaker 1:Especially for Lars Van Trier. If you're going to be super ambitious 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's Danish, so it wouldn't have gotten a lot of release here, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Now, if you put some frosting on it, maybe a little, you know cherry jam filling then it just seems like jerking off. Right.
Speaker 1:And then there's a another Soviet drama from 1988, called A Step, directed by Alexander Mita. Grieving mother defies bureaucratic barriers and journeys to the soviet union to secure a life saving polio vaccine, determined to protect her child and countless others amidst a devastating pandemic. Now this is a propaganda film. I mean you just can't get around. Even if it's not consciously, one is. But that's all america ever makes too, so I'm not going to judge anybody for that. But, um, it is one of those ones that goes out of its way to herald and and hail the benefits of of vaccines, especially one of the greatest achievements of humankind ever, the polio vaccine. So you know, it's just another step. In the whole, the soviets made a lot of really good movies about this stuff that we never talk about right okay.
Speaker 1:So now we're going to enter the modern era, so we're out of the. We're out of the 70s and 80s.
Speaker 2:Now we're going to get into the silver age and the golden age we're in the bronze age now, baby.
Speaker 1:so now we're into the modern era and this is where we get into a really interesting phase in virus, pandemic, epidemic movies, and I think this is where the genre kind of splits off a little bit into a new subgenre. This starts around 1995, where you had movies like virus, which is a 1995 television film starring nicole nicolette sheridan, william devane, stephen caffrey, dakin matthews, kurt fuller, barry corbin and a bunch of other people that no one's ever heard about, but it's based on a book by Robin Cook called Outbreak. Hmm, in this, a strain of Ebola, apparently transmitted by an infected African monkey, is starting to sweep across the country, and we don't want to get into the absurd racial ramifications of all that, but it's there. So, investigating unusual similarities between many of the victims, a young doctor discovers a conspiracy amongst senior hospital administrators and doctors who don't seem to want her to stop the disease.
Speaker 1:Uh, yada, yada, yada, oh no, but here's my favorite. Here's a quote from it Ebola is a real virus. Uh, okay, no one knows when it might reappear, as it did in Zaire. Thousands of these viruses wait hidden in the deep forests throughout the world. They are simply the Earth's defense against the most dangerous invaders.
Speaker 1:Man, jesus Christ this is 1995, 1950, not 1955. The commentary they're making bluntly is the sin being punished is man's arrogance and thinking. We know how to master the world and and we've mastered the natural world enough to manipulate it and there's nothing else can can surprise us. We're in control. And if people don't remember the Ebola virus, it was a big fucking deal.
Speaker 1:So Ebola virus disease, evd, is a severe communicable viral illness in humans that is frequently fatal. I cannot emphasize that enough. Symptoms initially include some combination of headache, muscle pain, fever, weakness, malaise, then eventually diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain and unexplained hemorrhages. Ebola virus symptoms typically appear eight to ten days following infection. The percentage that die is 50%. Damn. The people that die every year from the flu is like 1%, and the people that do survive it are not in good shape. They don't just bounce back, and it scared a lot of people back then. Later in that year, outbreak was a 1995 American medical disaster film directed by Wolfgang Peterson, who almost did Batman, superman. Maybe he remembers that it stars Dustin Hoffman, cuba, cuba, gooda jr, kevin spacey and all sorts of other sex offenders. I mean, all of them are sex pests it's holly weird.
Speaker 1:This film focuses on an outbreak of the Mataba virus, which is a fictional offshoot of the Ebola virus, in Zaire, wow and then later in a small town in California, because it's spread by a once again rhesus monkey.
Speaker 2:If we could get one of those Snickers monkeys, maybe they'd do better.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Or a Mars bar monkey.
Speaker 1:This is the kind of panic that goes on when these things happen, and a lot of it is quite frankly, racist. The monkey oftentimes is a stand in for just black people. You know what I mean? Like oh, it came from Africa, from a monkey.
Speaker 2:They're biting from the news, trying to highlight those hysterics.
Speaker 1:And this is the 90s mid 90s. So this is like liberal racism instead of conservative just straight out being racist. This is liberals finding proxies for maintaining the status quo of racism and not knowing 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 we talked about in this series. Here's a quote from that j that Jacobin article I referred to last time. Quote Outbreak 1995 retold the story of panic in the streets from 45 years earlier. It, too, ended by containing a disease that originated abroad but threatened the American mainland, and it too had a charismatic military doctor, played by Dustin Hoffman the smallest man in the world as a hero that needed to defeat it. The film acknowledged the problems of america's global capitalist power at its high point, depicting the military as the bad guys, but it nostalgically retreated to a past era of heroic individualism to solve the growing concerns about infectious diseases that could spread almost instantly around the world. I mean, it is the film of its time and place.
Speaker 1:In that era, later that year, we get 12 monkeys, which was an interesting choice that I thought you put on this list I yes, I don't know if it quite fits a lot of our criteria, but it is, at its heart, about a pandemic, and if you try and strip that out of the movie, that movie's about nothing, true? I re-watched it and it, by the way, it does not hold up very well, ah see, I haven't seen it in years.
Speaker 1:So I had neither. I literally hadn't seen it in probably 10, 15 years at at least. Visually it's still cool, it's still very Terry Gilliam, but like his commentary does not hold up well, like at all, it's problematic in a lot of ways and the Terry Gilliam stuff kind of sticks out like a sore thumb in a lot of places. It tries to be visually absurdist, like Brazil, but that's not the plot. So it kind of it's a little awkward, not terrible, but that's not the plot.
Speaker 1:So it kind of it's a little awkward, not terrible but it's kind of like some tim burton movies where you're like, oh, you can tell this is still a tim burton movie, right, I mean I still enjoyed watching it. But it's about a pandemic. It's about time travel and a pandemic. Trying to not even trying to stop the pandemic. People forget about that. Bruce willis goes back in time not to stop the pandemic but to just find out information about it so they can treat it in the future because they know they can't change the past, which is really more of a commentary on well done time travel, science fiction, because you solved a lot 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 about animal rights, but the animal rights people are all the villains. It's got a great cast, it's got a great ensemble thing going on, but it but I put it in there because this is all in 1995.
Speaker 1:All of this stuff, those are three huge things. I mean obviously the virus one or whatever. It's just a made for tv movie, but it's based on a huge best-selling book. All of these things happened in 1995. That's not for no reason. Then in 1996 you get pandora's clock, otherwise known as the doomsday virus, depending on if you where you buy the dvd, like if you buy it at the dollar bin, that's what it's called. It's an nbc miniseries based on a novel by john j nance. This just screams airport book to me. Well, and ironically it's about a virus on a Boeing 747 from Frankfurt to John F Kennedy International Airport. It's got Richard Dean Anderson, it's got MacGyver he still doesn't figure it out but it does have Robert Lozier, alum of the University of Missouri, and Stephen Root from everything, and he's great.
Speaker 1:So it turns out that this period was the first major outbreak of the ebola virus. I mean, it initially started in like 1981 or so, in 83, something like that. But it became a real epidemic in africa and other places and really really peaked around 1995. That's why all this stuff started coming up. They realized this is a growing problem. Covet 19, the flu, all of these things were devastating. Covet 19 killed millions of people in a very short period of time, but its kill rate was like what? Like five, ten percent, uh it wasn't large.
Speaker 2:I was looking at the deadliest viruses. I don't even think it makes like the top 10 list oh no, not at all.
Speaker 1:Ebola kills 50 of people infected well, that was early on.
Speaker 2:So in the last outbreak it got up to 90 holy balls, and that's after they found a vaccine. Yeah, the Bundy Bugio strain. The human fatality rate is up to 25%, and it is up to 90% for the Zaire strain. That is insanity. Yeah, it's like the second deadliest, right underneath the Marburg virus, which is at 100% in 2017.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:It's really about the amount Marburg and Ebola. It's a much smaller amount as opposed to COVID and the bubonic plague which swept through most of the world.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting part of this whole problem. The Ebola virus is deadly and could have been the world's greatest disaster, but trust in medicine, evidence-based science, they did eventually find a treatment and they did quarantine measures. They did all of the things that you're supposed to do with a pandemic. Keep in mind COVID-19 killed millions of people. The Spanish flu killed more people than the allies lost in World War II.
Speaker 2:Spanish flu began in 1918, sickened up to 40% of the world's population, killing 50 million people.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, hey, and that one people lived from it. This, it's a coin flip Up to certain death, lived from it. This, it's a coin flip up to certain death. So if it weren't for the heroic efforts of scientists, of the World Health Organization, of the United Nations, of US and other nations that put their resources into this, this would have been it for humanity. This would have been the one that they talked about in post-apocalyptic movies about this.
Speaker 1:Even though they did take measures and did figure it out, it was on even americans minds who don't remember a real global pandemic in 1995. They don't really have a context for that. The very few people in 1995 were still around that survived through the original spanish flu outbreak, you know. Then there are a bunch of these in the 90s. There's Pandora's Clock in the 96. And then you get into the 2000s when things are a little bit different. Ebola's on people's minds, but they had done a really good job of containing Ebola, so it really was kind of like an afterthought.
Speaker 1:At this point you do have some stuff in Europe. This is where you start getting back to the more speculative sci-fi part of it. You in Europe, this is where you start getting back to the more speculative sci-fi part of it you have. Have Mercy on Us All, aka Seeds of 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 2003 by Fred Vargas. That one makes sense, because it's one of those things we've forgotten. That is still around. But what if we couldn't contain it anymore? You know?
Speaker 1:that kind of thing yeah uh, and then you get stuff like more fantastical, imaginative things, like blindness from 2008, which is an epidemic of instant what they call white blindness, which, if you don't know anything about the movie, sounds super racist and weird, essentially, where the entire population slowly goes blind. They tried to make that into a post apocalyptic apple tv show with dave bautista and jason momoa wait, bautista's in that.
Speaker 2:Are you talking about like where? Yeah?
Speaker 1:I mean it's.
Speaker 2:It's not related to that, but it's the same premise no, which which was a okay show ish baut, it's the same premise no, which was an okay show-ish.
Speaker 1:Bautista is the villain. As it turns out Well, one of the villains.
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't think I got that far.
Speaker 1:I watched it for the same reasons we watch all of those kinds of shows, but it was just one of those weird reaches by Apple TV where they were just like let's throw everything at the wall and see what happens. Oh, they were trying.
Speaker 2:You got a little Game of Thrones-y stuff with Jason Momoa and it's kind of post-apocalyptic barbarian stuff, and you got the blindness angles. That's an interesting conceptual conceit, at least.
Speaker 1:That's something that's kind of used a little bit with Bird Box later, which I didn't include in this because that's a completely different type of thing, especially if you watch Bird Box Barcelona, which ruins Bird Box completely.
Speaker 2:Wait, so they made a sequel.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, and it ruins the first one. It's kind of like the Descent Part 2. It like completely retroactively ruins whatever positive things came out of Bird Box. Huh, it's fine, but it's been done.
Speaker 2:I kind of want you to spoil it for me, but let's not spoil it for the audience, in case they want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah we'll do that later. So then, let's build our way to 2011 contagion, which is another medical disaster thriller film directed by steven soderbergh. Once again, incredible ensemble casts matt damon, lawrence, fishburne, elliot gould, jude law, marion cotard, kate winslet, branston, gwyneth Paltrow. She dies in the first, like 10 minutes of the movie. It's essentially a flu pandemic film.
Speaker 2:Kind of coming off the SARS bird flu possible epidemic.
Speaker 1:Which we did not take seriously in this country whatsoever. And the sad part is, once again it's because the rest of the world did. The sad part is, once again it's because the rest of the world did. It wasn't as bad in the United States because other people took precautions. They did the things you're supposed to do, because that was a two-year-long outbreak, even kill people in the United States, but they can't handle COVID-19. I mean, get the fuck out of here. And Contagion is considered one of the most, I think, iconic in this genre.
Speaker 2:I would say it does the best job of hitting Realistically yeah holistically hitting all of the major thematic elements of pandemic films, exploring them over a long period of time, and you're also getting both human stories and larger scope pictures.
Speaker 1:Yes, even Gwyneth Paltrow's death, I think, works really, really well. I think it shows our vulnerability. She had the flu, he brought her in and they're like sorry she didn't make it. He just doesn't understand how that could be possible. Yeah, which I think is a gripping scene that I think is really effective. Which I think is a gripping scene that I think is really effective.
Speaker 1:Still another film that when you look back on it after COVID-19, you're like it doesn't quite have the same. Not that it doesn't have the right weight, it just doesn't have the same content. It's not Knowing what we know now. It's a little different. You know, that movie would be made differently today. And I feel that way about a lot of other things that I saw, because and I feel that way about a lot of other things that I saw because there's a pandemic TV show that has the same problems that I saw. But I'll just get to some of the highlights.
Speaker 1:For the rest of this, I wanted to talk about Parts Per Billion, but it doesn't really fit. It's a 2013 American romantic drama written by Brian Haruchi. Also great ensemble cast Frank Langella, rosario Dawson, josh hartnett, the the dude from um, her, um, it's just like, not her. What is that? That netflix one that everybody thinks is hot, even though he's a serial killer? It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. 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's released in the Middle East and then spreads across the world. So I didn't, really I'm not going to spend any time on it, but it does hit a lot of the beat. And here's a really great one that I like personally. I think this is we're still in the sort of back to sci-fi thinking when it comes to this genre, sort of back to sci-fi thinking when it comes to this genre.
Speaker 2:The last days, a spanish film from 2013.
Speaker 1:Okay, not the kurt cobain one. No, not the kurt cobain one. No, also not the last dance or the last waltz. Not as much cocaine in this film than in any of those films. I'm pretty sure you've seen this. It's set in barcelona. It deals with the absolute end of all humankind because they suffer from fatal agoraphobia. I would be shocked if you haven't seen this, because I think it's great.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to find out right now. This is a hidden gem. Oh, it's from the Bird Box, barcelona, guy.
Speaker 1:One for two. That's pretty good at baseball.
Speaker 2:No, I haven't seen this.
Speaker 1:It's an original premise. This is something new we've never thought about. At the beginning, these guys are in an office building. One of the guys that works with them is getting fired and he panics. He can't go outside. He has this uncontrollable agoraphobia, but suddenly and violently, and is like freaking out that they're throwing him out of the building. They throw him out of the building because they think he's full of shit or whatever, and then he dies. And so the rest of the movie is realizing that no one can ever leave an enclosed space, ever again. Huh, premise wise alone, I think, lets that movie coast because, like you, have to figure out how you're going to travel from place to place right, but it seems to be less about the pandemic or virus right, but I'm just saying this isn't a period of time in which we start tackling diseases, pandemics, epidemics in a creative sci-fi way again.
Speaker 1:That's how you get movies like this. Instead of the older dealing with real viruses or the real ramifications, you get kind of like a fantastical take on it here during this period. So that's 2013, so I feel like 13 is probably where that part ends uh, at least in western culture, because 2013 to 2000, I want to say 16 another big ebola outbreak happens. The other branches of the, the pandemic genre don't go away, they all stay. But there is a more mainstream push back into the more realistic dealings with pandemics and epidemics, like flu from 2013, which is based on a true story. It's in south korea. It's an airborne disease, chaos is going crazy, the government orders a complete shutdown and it's about trying to find a macguffin that will fix the problem or whatever. It's a kind of a classic, but based on a real disease and something that's very possible. And then then, in 2015, you get Embers, which is also one of those kind of like fantastical, interesting reimaginings of epidemics. It's an American independent film sci-fi where, instead of being blind or what have you now, you can't form long-term memory and you can only remember what's just happened, and so it's constantly trying to rebuild itself. It's an interesting idea. It's yeah. I mean, I love the idea that you're trying something else. There's another thing they're just trying to throw at the wall. Now here's one. I will stand up for this movie. I think it's very good. Containment from 2015.
Speaker 1:This is a British movie written by David Lemon, directed by Neil McHenry West. This is set in 1970s era council block in Weston, southampton, but it's set in present day. Just that's where the. It's the, the brutalist public housing that they built back then in the seventies. But it's set in present day, united Kingdom.
Speaker 1:Mark, an artist, wakes up to find out that he's been sealed into his flat with no way out. There is no electricity. Electricity, no water, no communications to the outside world, apart from a voice over the intercom repeating the phrase please remain calm. This situation is under control. Now this is very, very much like I was getting at with that other one. It goes into like the blitz mindset keep calm and soldier on.
Speaker 1:This is something that's not in our dna. It's different from how the japanese dealt with that stuff. This is an exclusively british thing and it's fascinating watching how they deal with these emergencies, because it's very different. Strange figures in hazmat suits patrol the grounds outside and set up a military tent. Mark's neighbor, sergey, breaks down the wall between their flats in order to discover why they've been sealed in and try and find a way to escape. Along the way they team up with fellow residents and then they try and figure out the whole yada, yada, yada. I think the tension building is great and it's not dissimilar to certain zombie movies that came out in that era, like there's a french well, not even that era, but maybe a little later. There's a french zombie movie that came out not too long after that, but I think it's very good but doesn't really fit into our thing. There are a couple of korean ones that came out. That's essentially something like you're trapped in an apartment building right and have to get out.
Speaker 1:I mean, there are lots of zombie ones like that, even all the way up to evil dead rise, but this one is specifically about a viral pandemic. It's not zombies, it's not aliens, it's not anything like that. I think it's a great movie. It deals with the uncertainty of lockdown, of quarantine long before COVID-19. And I really enjoy it. So I would definitely check that one out, and I do think it fits well into this category.
Speaker 1:93 Days is a 2016 Nigerian drama thriller that recounts the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Nigeria, that second huge wave that killed a fuck ton of people, and how they successfully contained the virus due to health workers at Lagos Hospital. This one's great because it is a true story about real heroes doing real work. They actually contained the most deadly strain of Ebola that 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 have fucking statues made of them. The movie itself I think this is huge. These people should have fucking statues made of them. The movie itself. I think this is funny. Stars danny glover, okay, and then two guys named bimbo uh-huh, bimbo acantola and bimbo manuel. It's interesting but it's kind of low rent. It's a little made for tv, but I mean it's based on a real story with real heroes. This should be a hollywood movie. It's just not. They don't do it. We don't care about that here, apparently. It's a real shame.
Speaker 1:And then, right before the pandemic really hits, there's some more american, or at least western, more imaginative sci-fi versions of this kind of pandemic thing. One I really liked, I thought stood out, was a Canadian one called hall. It was directed by Francesco Giannani. Two women, each dealing with unhappy marriages, find themselves trapped in a hotel hallway. As a deadly airborne virus ravages the hotel clientele and the outside world, it really slows things down in the craziest way possible. The entire thing is it's literally just an airborne illness that kills everybody, kind of like Ebola. But the major action comes from whatever characters that survive literally trying to get from their door in the hotel to like the elevator that's the entire film them trying to drag themselves down the hallway as all these people are dying. Geez, it is bleak, it is dour, but I think it's ambitious. Oh okay, they're trying something different. I don't know that it's great, but it is really really different and it's uh. For that reason I'd give it a watch. So we're dealing with these things all the way up to now.
Speaker 1:We've got tons of stuff coming out Still. Some of it is the more fantastical sci-fi stuff. Some of it is the more traditional stuff. A lot of it still tries to deal with zombies or whatever. Some of it's just red-pilled idiots or black-pilled idiots doing COVID-19 stuff. It's gotten way worse now because of where we are, but can you imagine if something like Ebola got out, like COVID-19 did? All those anti-mask idiots it's I mean you'd literally just see them die in front of you on the street.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's one of those things that in Contagion, one of the things that still hits home when I think about the film, is Jude Law and his character, like selling forsythia, I think, which is the miracle cure which is oh man. You know, hydroxychloroquine kind of thing, prescient you know, and it's like.
Speaker 1:Or that watered down bleach the miracle. Yeah, Mineral cure or whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or they're ingesting silver or what. Methylene blue is the most recent kind of BS. All these miracle cures. It resonates, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to me it doesn't hit home as hard now because, looking back on it, not that it's not a good movie and exactly it's time and place, but if they only knew how bad it's going to get.
Speaker 2:In some ways it got worse and in other ways theirs is worse. You know, you can't plot out exactly how weird and wild things will get.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know it's kind of like going back and rewatching Social Network, which I think is still fantastic, but if they only knew how bad it got after that. If they only knew that was just scratching the surface. They take on a different context now, but all these movies do it's a different time and they always reflect the current panics that are in the zeitgeist. And sometimes these movies are censored by government agencies and sometimes they influence government agents. If I remember, right during the COVID pandemic, the UK government who has a way better healthcare system than we do, which and it's still super flawed Matt Hancock, during the pandemic, watched Contagion and then after that was like no, I need to allocate all this money to PPE and the NHS, which was good. That was a positive outcome from these cautionary tales that they're throwing out there. That's great.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, especially in America, we don't live in that world. Something're throwing out there. That's great. Unfortunately, especially in america, we don't live in that. Something good came out of that and sometimes these movies do wake people up or even shock people enough to look into. But the world we live in today, it'd be really hard to influence people positively through movies like this. We don't live in a world where people do the right thing or listen to reason or evidence-based science anymore in america, where we're at this is february 2025 everything's getting worse, everything's falling apart, everything's and it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not like it's being dismantled piece by piece which will make it fall apart in ways that we can't even get into right now, because it's complicated, but actually quite simple, we're not headed in a good direction. Just the entire mindset of the american people. Now, it's not even half and that's enough. Yeah, way more than it should be.
Speaker 2:But I do think, having these movies out there, they definitely say something about both the virus that is on the mind culturally, how we as people in society can affect those things, and how telling these stories both prepare us and perform some kind of catharsis for dealing with these things. I think there's definitely going to be a vibe that's going to come out a decade from now where, post-covid, looking back back on those things, it's going to be represented in our filmmaking yeah, I mean probably.
Speaker 1: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, I guess these films do provide an outlet for the pity and terror that we feel when confronting our mortality in the face of something invisible and malevolent, but not aware or conscious. Besides the terror of the thing itself, a plague, it's a metaphor for the uncertainty of the human condition in general and we can fight it, but we can't stab it or punch it. It's existential and, like I said, it does not escape commentary of capitalism. I'll quote once again from that article from Jacobin.
Speaker 1:Early movies offered a belief in doctors and ordinary citizens, along with the application of science and reason to address social problems, or at least they pointed out where things could change. Stories about ordinary Americans sacrificing material gains, let alone their family's health, to defeat a disease have today virtually disappeared. America is no longer worth defending and everyone is on their own. Over the last century, disease movies have, in a broader sense, gone from offering a critique of mid-century state-managed capitalism to an acceptance of the neoliberal order. Increasingly recent movies even go beyond the neoliberal framework of contemporary capitalism, reflecting debates over what comes next. They now embrace global destruction and human extinction as the inevitable outcome. A famous remark of Frederick Jameson it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. That literally plays out on the big 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.
Speaker 1:And we talked mostly about just the actual movies themselves and not necessarily the sociopolitical, economic ramifications of that. But that's why those things exist. Economic ramifications of that, but that's why those things exist. Even if you want to factor in zombie movies, things like that, it was rife with social commentary. All of these things play on our basest fears, but also they serve as mirrors held up to society and how we would deal with things in the face of tragedy. We're not doing very well with all that, but that's why whatever the next giant pandemic will be will probably kill way more people than covid19 ever even dreamed of.
Speaker 2:And don't forget, it killed millions of people, good stuff but hopefully we can learn something from movies and approach things differently. Maybe that's just a little bit of optimism this last fleeting moment before the bug gets us all, but that's all we got. That's all we got and that's all we got for you about pandemic movies. We hope you guys have enjoyed, learned a little something, maybe given you some choice recommendations If you guys wouldn't mind, like share and subscribing. We will have other intense debates and looks at socio, political, geo, everything about geek culture, and sometimes we're just going to talk about farts in comic books. Uh, you know, it kind of probably vacillates. You never know what you're going to hear from us, but it's always something cool and we guys hope you like it. Joy and spread it around Like a virus. Like a virus, if you wouldn't mind.
Speaker 1:Shit Nothing. I'm sorry, did I derail you?
Speaker 2:If you wouldn't mind giving us five crossings over the Cassandra. No, it's not.
Speaker 1:Dying Gwyneth Paltrow.
Speaker 2:I was going to do something like R-naughts, but that didn't really work.
Speaker 1:Five Andromeda strains? I don't know yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:That's a tough one, that's a really tough one.
Speaker 2:It's a tough one. There's nothing really funny or fun.
Speaker 1:Five last men on earth. Oh, I got it. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Five plague-ridden zombie monkeys. Oh, okay, it's going to kill you, but at least it's a monkey. That's something. They're infected.
Speaker 1:With what Rage?
Speaker 2:Aren't we all If you wouldn't mind leaving us those monkeys on the podcast app of your choice, ideally.
Speaker 1:Apple Podcasts 12. How about 12?
Speaker 2:12 of them. You know, I don't think it goes beyond five, but if you can add some more, by all means work your computer wizardry and boost us up those charts.
Speaker 1:Five Monkeys was not as popular.
Speaker 2:Five Monkeys got less than half the audience of 12 Monkeys. It did. It did not scream well, it did scream well. That is one thing it did.
Speaker 1:Well.
Speaker 2:Again, not as good as 12 monkeys. You put all of these monkeys in a barrel. Eventually. They're going to write Shakespeare Eventually. But until that day, stop back and check out, dispatch Ajax. We will have something new for you coming down the pike. But until those monkeys crank out, hamlet, monkey, ham, taming, taming of the man. Nothing's really fuck. Taming of the flu.
Speaker 1:How about that Taming?
Speaker 2:of the flu. Nice job Topical.
Speaker 1:Yes. Well, until that point, like you 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 your local comic shops and retailers. And from Dispatch Ajax we would like to say Godspeed, fair wizards.
Speaker 2:It's Jesus Christ. Get your Jesus Christ shots, Please go away.