Episode 245: Dr Kyle Bishop aka Dr Walking Dead

RECORDING IN PROGRESS!

In this special episode we get to talk with zombie scholar Dr Kyle Bishop about all things zeke. We talk his studies, we talk first, last, best, and worst, we talk top 10s and so much more. And, apologies to Michael and Curtis, he scored a winning 18/20 on Virus or Voodoo. The bar has been set high. Will that score be beaten?

Check out his work on Contributions to Zombie Studies here

https://mcfarlandbooks.com/imprint/contributions-to-zombie-studies/?srsltid=AfmBOop_pk9R9FXchem4xbfpovETDMZZ-j3pH7EGJZK2hep8rIQjsbD5

and his podcasting here

https://www.newhorrormovies.com/dead-man-still-walking/

He does have to still watch Pro-Wrestlers v Zombies. 

HOW DARE YOU!

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Recording in progress.

SPEAKER_03: 0:01

Yes, recording is in progress. The reason we do that, we are joined by Kyle Bishop, who is Dr. Walking Dead on Instagram, a self-professed, and I have to agree with him already, scholar in the undead. The reason we do that is Michael and I recorded with a guest about two hours worth of Fear the Walking Dead. Although we didn't quite record it because I didn't press the record button. And therefore, we now make a point of when we log on, Michael will say, going to a catchphrase, Mikey.

SPEAKER_02: 0:36

Recording in progress, but also it was a guy I work with, so imagine going back to work that next day and having that awkward conversation.

SPEAKER_03: 0:45

I'm sure I was blamed. To be fair, it was my fault. I just forgot to press record. It was a really good chat, which is really disappointing. We've all been there. We have all been there, and the lesson was really learned. And from now on, Michael will say recording in progress, and if it isn't, then that is when I actually do quickly press the record. The cold sweats kick in. Yes, indeed. Yes, exactly. But no, we're now experts at this. This is episode 245. Well done, boys. Thank you very much. It does involve watching lots of zombie movies and then talking about it, so it's not like it's an arduous task. Although, I did just watch Oasis of the Zombies, and I still need to floss that one out of my

SPEAKER_02: 1:31

teeth. It's not an arduous task. I think out of the 245, I can name at least 20 that have been arduous tasks.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39

Well, Attack of the Flat congratulating dead and zombie with a shotgun to name two yeah transit 17 took three views to be fair oasis of the zombies is now our official lowest score and i'd give it one out of ten

SPEAKER_05: 1:54

whoa okay then

SPEAKER_03: 1:56

Well, this is where Kyle says he loves that movie. It's such a wonderful early 1980s example of French undead movies.

SPEAKER_02: 2:03

Kyle, can I ask the question that we ask every zombie expert? Because we gauge how much do we like zombies compared to you. Have you seen Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies? How

SPEAKER_05: 2:17

dare you? Yeah, I haven't. Shame. So much shame, no.

SPEAKER_02: 2:23

Has anyone but us seen that film? No wonder the director DMs us. All the time. No,

SPEAKER_05: 2:28

it sounds like you all are doing a much more thorough job than I am. I'm only, you know, about 55 deep in my work. And maybe I'm just a little too discriminating because it sounds like you guys are watching everything.

SPEAKER_03: 2:44

We do. That's the thing. Our catchphrase to a degree is we watch it so you don't have to. So we've actually watched nearly 300 movies from 40 countries. So it isn't just the shit that America chose. out, you know, with the low budget end of stuff. It is all of the international stuff, too. Oh, yeah. When Zedmum comes out, Cambodia will be country 41 that we would have actually watched. We actually watch everything. We are cut glass half full reviewers. Sometimes it's difficult to see what's in the bottom of the glass, especially when you're watching Attack of the Flatulating Dead or Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies. How dare you? Thank you. So we try to do that. I'll tell you what it is. We'll do the intro in a minute. And then listeners of the dead, Steph, she's a good friend of ours. She comes on our podcast. We go on hers. She came up with this wonderful little analogy about what we wanted all of our zombie podcasts to be. Because she said that she wants to kind of be like the first port of call. So in a library, she would be the desk that you get onto and you walk in the main entrance and there is the desk with that bespectacled heron of a lady sitting at it. And she would basically say, okay, what would you like? Oh, I'd like to learn about zombies, please. And then Steph would point them towards... computer games, comic books, books, TV shows, movies, anything zombie related. Actually, she has a lot of merchandise as well. She loves a little knickknacks. Her favorite thing is the actual splinter through the eye in zombie flesh eaters. That's one of her favorite little dial armor thing that works. So she wanted to be the intro, you know, whatever it is, the reception desk, a library. We had all these brains on We love Ollie. He's actually really looking forward to this episode too. He does these zombites, which is really like quite short clips or in Insta, there's just a little bit of a write-up of each movie that you see. And he calls, he likened them to the index cards in the library, which leaves us with this slightly onerous task of being the reference section. So you don't necessarily want to go in there. It's a little bit dusty. There's a lot of large volumes in there. There's actually quite a lot of it there, and they all look the same. However, if you do want to go and find whether there has been a zombie movie from Belgium that's any good, yes, yummy, or if you want to go and watch a random low-end American movie about somehow beer and a copy of the Constitution mixed together brought back the founding fathers of zombies... We've seen that shit. It's called re-enacted,

SPEAKER_02: 5:43

re-elected. Or a zombie movie that famously prides itself on being made for only£45, aka Colin, and definitely has production values that it was made for£45. Then come and visit

SPEAKER_03: 5:58

us.

SPEAKER_02: 5:58

But the thing

SPEAKER_03: 5:59

is, we will review... a piece of shit like Colin that cost£45 as we would review World War Z that cost gabillions. And that was just Brad Pitt. So we are an equal opportunities zombie review podcast. It's likely to have me rant for a bit and get angry with it, but we are trying to find the good stuff. that is out there

SPEAKER_02: 6:23

a good example a good example if you don't mind me interjecting and also to the listeners as well would possibly be because normally me and Darren agree and we're normally a 0.5 out between us roughly and it just is coincidence isn't it Darren you know we do go oh really you don't give a damn but I think probably a good example of how we try to get the goodies is when we said the world's end at Camp Z and in the sense that you didn't like it at all. And I try to defend the fact that if it wasn't a zombie film, it would be a good film because it actually was quite good in parts. But yes, so that's a good example if you want to go back and listen to that show. I try to defend it even though it is shit.

SPEAKER_05: 7:02

So no, no, I have to, I have to definitely get caught up on you guys. And, and the films I refuse to review, I'll just, I'll just send people your way so they can listen to, to your.

SPEAKER_03: 7:12

Absolutely. Actually. And something we do as well as at the end of this episode, we will talk about, you know, movies that we would recommend to you that you may not necessarily have seen. We had Andy Begling on the other week and we recommended a night eats the world. Wonderful. Oh, zombie movie. Great. He loved it. He never heard of it. He recommended you rewatch, Messiah of Evil, which is slightly at the other end of the spectrum, sort of like a late 1970s, early 80s supernatural thing. Not as good as Dead and Buried, but of the same ilk. We kind of do that, so The way that things normally work is just a chat. We'll have some fun. We have a game. You may not have... If you haven't listened before, we have this game called Virus or Voodoo, where I literally just give you a list of 20 zombie movies, and you have to tell us whether the zombies were caused by virus or voodoo. It's that simple.

SPEAKER_05: 8:10

Oh, for

SPEAKER_03: 8:11

sure. Exactly. Well... Not really. It did get a little bit competitive at times with Michael and Ollie and others all doing it and getting roughly the same scores. I appreciate

SPEAKER_02: 8:23

that. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm still top with Curtis Gould. Yes.

SPEAKER_03: 8:27

16, I think you guys got.

UNKNOWN: 8:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 8:31

Yeah, so we'll play a game of that. It's really fun. The way we normally do it is we talk about our first zombie movie we saw or being aware of, the last, our favorites, top tens, outliers, sort of like sleeper hits, other things in the genre. Obviously, being a zombie scholar, much like lovely Peter Dendel. We'd love to have Peter Dendel on. Oh, Peter's

SPEAKER_05: 8:55

great.

SPEAKER_03: 8:56

I mean, literally, I gave Ollie Eats Brains my two copies of Peter's encyclopedia And he's loving those. So, yeah, so we'll just do that. And it's just a chat and it's just fun and it's just relaxed because we're all zombie fans here. So that's the way we normally do it. Is that

SPEAKER_05: 9:14

okay? It's great. Yeah, you guys are bringing the production values and the high

SPEAKER_03: 9:19

quality. We haven't even started yet. We're going to do this. We're going to do, but I've got the virus or voodoo theme there. We're going

SPEAKER_02: 9:25

to do that in a minute. Sorry, sorry. You said the high production and quality value. When is that going to start? Yeah,

SPEAKER_05: 9:31

well.

SPEAKER_02: 9:31

It's got to sound like we know what we're doing.

SPEAKER_05: 9:35

It does, it does. And I got to say, the accents help, because we perceive anything with a British accent as being sophisticated. Oh,

SPEAKER_03: 9:42

you clearly don't know us. Well, you don't know Michael. You don't know Michael. Okay, so I'm going to play the intro now, and you actually deserve... you deserve the best so this will be the intro we're playing for mr kyle bishop this

SPEAKER_06: 9:58

is alan vance bryan who played sergeant nicotine crockett in survival of the dead and diary of the dead and also brubaker in land of the dead

SPEAKER_09: 10:05

this is john russo writer of night of the living dead i'm

SPEAKER_08: 10:10

laurie cardill and i played sarah and george a romero's day of the dead

SPEAKER_07: 10:15

hi this is ken ford peter from 1978's dawn of the dead arguably the greatest zombie movie ever made

SPEAKER_08: 10:23

and you're listening to darren and michael on the undead symphony the undead

SPEAKER_09: 10:29

symphony

SPEAKER_07: 10:30

one dead symphony

SPEAKER_09: 10:31

the undead symphony thank you

SPEAKER_03: 10:48

I think it sounds professional.

SPEAKER_05: 10:51

Oh, wow. That was impressive. That

SPEAKER_03: 10:53

was super impressive. Well, I mean, you deserve the big boys, and therefore we rolled out the Romeros for you. We were kind of lucky that Alan Van Sprang is in three of them, including two of the lesser Romeros. But I don't know. I like it. Michael, what do you think about that intro?

SPEAKER_02: 11:11

I think it's very good. I mean, the only thing that's missing is Matt Hardy apologising for Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies, but apart from that, it was absolutely stellar tip-top. The thing is, I heard a snigger in the background there. He actually apologised for being in that movie. He did, yes.

SPEAKER_03: 11:28

So we have quite a lot of those, actually. My favourite is we had Lou Diamond Phillips and Laurie Petty from Route 666 on, and Lou Diamond Phillips kept telling us these stories about how they were just getting drunk because there was nothing to do in the desert, and they would end up just going out with the crew and exploding pickles using the explosion Explosives they add for like the Scribs and the like. But welcome. We're joined by Mr. Kyle Bishop, an educator at Southern Utah University. Is that SUU?

SPEAKER_05: 12:02

Yeah, that's me.

SPEAKER_03: 12:03

And you're an English professor there?

SPEAKER_05: 12:05

I am, technically, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 12:07

Technically is good.

SPEAKER_05: 12:09

I teach a lot of different things, but it says on my union card that I am an English professor.

SPEAKER_03: 12:14

wonderful uh and he is a self-professed zombie scholar i think michael and i see ourselves more as connoisseurs or aficionados maybe um but you know we are willing amateurs in in the area uh and uh and carl is also the editor of uh content well Tell us what it is. It's McFarland Books, is it?

SPEAKER_05: 12:37

Yeah, so McFarland, which is kind of a smaller scholarly press, they have a book series called Contributions to Zombie Studies. And oh my, we have about 25 volumes in that series now, which is varying degrees of accessibility. Some are pretty scholarly, but most of them are just people talking about zombies and what they mean and why they are important and how they work. And yeah, we've seen... what I would say some surprising success there. It's nice to know that people continue to care about this much maligned creature.

SPEAKER_03: 13:12

That is true. We do talk about that quite a bit. We do talk about, you know, why are, you know, obviously vampires are these charismatic. Normally they're still pretty, you know, I'm thinking like, you know, pretty as I was thinking like, you know, True Blood and Vampire Diaries and Twilight and all that nonsense. In the beauty of vampire. Interview with a Vampire. Actually, there's a whole TV series that we're ignoring the TV series of Interview with a Vampire. But yes, exactly. They're beautiful, but they're sort of like a single one of them. And even though they are the villain, they're kind of so pretty, you kind of forget that they're this tragic old man. Werewolves, again, it's normally just one person kind of thing, unless you're talking about the latest Frank Grillo movie. But we kind of feel like often zombies are, you know, it's an ignored... sub-genre of horror because they're kind of just i would say faceless but you take that either way you know it's they literally can might not have a face but also they're kind of this this group that it's a load of blank characters that are just a catalyst to make things happen in the main story unless very rarely we get a zombie that you can one name you know and then two care about so you know obviously we've had bob from you know day of the dead um and the mechanic from from uh land of the dead um smalls i don't know if you've seen uh it stains the sands red the american sort of indie movie in the vegas desert um that's just one girl being chased by a zombie across the oh yes it's done for reminding

SPEAKER_05: 14:48

me of that one yeah

SPEAKER_03: 14:48

it's done really well it's one of our out you know outliers that we actually kind of always recommend and then but more recently we watched this japanese um movie called i am a hero and it had this quite horrific uh high jumping zombie in it which basically stuck in our mind because the it stood apart from all the others, you know, whereas all the others are kind of this giant herd or horde, either or. And, you know, and so us having, you know, this genre where 99% of zombies are the same, well, they probably complain about me saying that, but it's interesting that people do love it so much because you kind of have to focus on the survivors rather than the actual zombies. And the zombies, as I said, are just a catalyst. So tell you what, before we get onto the game, we'll play the game later, let's talk about your first... Welcome again. Thank you. Your first zombie... The first time you become aware of zombies, I'll tell you mine so you can think about it. When I was a kid, the local video store had the poster of Zombie Lake up. I was like five or something like that. And I suddenly saw the poster of Zombie Lake and it scared the shit out of me because there were these Nazi zombies coming out of the lake. So basically, I couldn't quite swim because I was still five and, you know, Jewish family and Nazi zombies coming out of this thing. And the whole poster was quite horrific and it stayed with me for ages. It wasn't the first movie I watched, zombie movie I watched, because that was... almost at the opposite end of the spectrum, which was Night of the Comet, sort of the 1980s American... It's a fun one. Have you seen Night of the Comet? It's one of those classic mid-1980s ones. That was the first one I watched. So even though I was terrified and horrified at Zombie Lake, and since I've seen it, the movie itself terrifies me because it's pretty awful. Night of the Comet is the first one that I saw. And Michael's, yours was...

SPEAKER_02: 16:58

Mine was the original Night of the Living Dead. I watched it again when I was a teen, you know, early teens. And you were talking about iconic zombies. I don't think there's really any more, if we think about it, more iconic than he's coming to get you, Barbara, the zombie.

SPEAKER_03: 17:15

So what was yours, Kyle? What was your first experience of the undead?

SPEAKER_05: 17:23

Well, I mean, like you intimated and like so many other people, it was... I wasn't as aware of zombies. I was aware of vampires. Vampires were big. They were particularly big in the 80s, which in retrospect is a little bit of a thin period for some of the zombie fare. But I think I do remember Night of the Comet being really, really early on. But also back then, we didn't really throw the Z word around a lot. It was just kind of we have these different types of undead monsters or people coming back from the dead or people who are mutants or people who are hordes and all that kind of stuff. So I was surprisingly unaware. I did not watch horror when I was younger. I was more into science fiction, and so there was a lot of sci-fi horror, but it wasn't really hardcore. I was a child of the 70s, so my childhood was pretty much just Star Wars. That was pretty much what I

SPEAKER_03: 18:21

cared about. Pretty much the same for me, actually.

SPEAKER_05: 18:23

Yeah, some Indiana Jones and all that fun stuff. It wasn't until quite a bit later when I got into some of my graduate studies. And to make a long story short, in my master's degree, I became very interested in adaptations and adaptation theory and trying to bridge my academic career in English with my love for media, different types of visual media. And this weird conversation I had with my buddy, we were trying to figure out, are there, are there popular genres or sub genres that don't have a literary tradition? Cause we were talking about how we, you know, vampires, you can go back to Dracula or if you really,

SPEAKER_03: 19:05

yeah, you

SPEAKER_05: 19:06

go back to Polidori and, and, but we were thinking, Well, there's no zombie book. There's no zombie book out there. It's not like the zombie was a gothic literary device. And honestly, I didn't know much about zombies. At that point, I had of course seen Night of the Living Dead. But I really hadn't seen a lot. I'd seen Return of the Living Dead. I'd seen... Um, cause this was, this was 20, no, this was 2002. So I'd seen, um, 20 days later, but I was really pretty shallowly invested in the zombie until I had this idea of maybe the zombie is a thing that, that only exists in visual media because it would not work in a written format. Now, since then, after a dissertation, I realized most of my initial ideas were completely wrong, uh, because We do have zombie novels that are quite effective and visceral and frightening, but what remains true are two fundamental things that I find interesting. One is in terms of adaptation, it's one of the sub-genres that's reversed. It went from film to novel, not novel to film. There were short stories out there. And there was, you know, obviously ethnographic stuff like William Seabrook's book and Zora Neale Hurston did a book. But it's kind of reversed. The other thing that really enamored me to the zombie and no offense, boys, no offense, but I'm an Americanist. But you know, love, love Britain. I really liked the idea that the zombie was more or less an American monster because it came out of Haiti and the slave trade and

SPEAKER_04: 20:47

all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_05: 20:48

And so that really interested me as an Americanist. And then I just kind of went down a massive rabbit hole. because academics, I mean, we're always trying to publish stuff. People just want us to publish things. And they really would prefer it if we publish things that haven't already been done. Well, in 2002, there were two academic books on zombies. There was Peter Dendel's first zombie encyclopedia, and there was, Gary Rhodes had done a book on white zombie, which I of course found was the first cinematic zombie depiction. And so I'm like, sweet. That's easy. I don't have a lot of scholarship to review. I can knock these books out, read some stories, read some articles, and I'm off to the races. So crazily enough, the very radical University of Arizona let me do my PhD dissertation on zombies, which has happened since, but at the time it was really unheard of and kind of, I don't know, I'm sure people laughed at me behind my back, but... it worked. So that's trying to tell you the short version. Uh, I kind of came into it in an unusual way because it wasn't through fandom. Um, I, yeah, I wasn't a huge zombie movie fan, but once I realized there was something interesting going on, then I, I was, you know, I was all in.

SPEAKER_03: 22:10

That is really interesting. No, it is. It genuinely is. Um, yeah. I mean, Michael, I've been fans for, for, I guess since our teens too, I guess. My college friends introduced me more to the zombies. So whilst I was much like you, Star Wars and sci-fi, who doesn't love The Last Starfighter? Oh, yeah. The guys were like, I mean, Kevin Nick, who actually ended up being the twin zombies in Shaun of the Dead, and they appeared in the other, the Simon Pegg movies. They introduced me to, oh, have you seen this? And suddenly it was like, Dawn of the Dead I hadn't seen at the time. And then they went down that whole Lichio Fulci route, and we ended up with, you know, zombie flesh eaters, zombie creeping flesh, and then they used to go a bit, you know, off-piece with, like, Cannibal Holocaust and the like. But they suddenly introduced me to all these like 1970s and 80s uh zombie movies which then kind of it's there i mean i still wasn't a huge fan and i think i became a really huge fan sort of after after you know 28 days later and then we had sean and the remake of dawn but really we started this podcast i started this podcast during covid We were all stuck. We had lockdowns in the UK that lasted months. And when you've got all of the streaming services, you can kind of see what's available. And somehow, of course, all of the different platforms that I have, so Apple and Disney and Amazon and Netflix, there was like two dozen zombie movies. So suddenly I'm watching them and I'm like, oh. I had a podcast anyway because Michael and I are both ultra runners and marathon runners so I have podcasts about that so basically it was like well I love podcasting and I love zombie movies and in front of me I've got dozens now so we kind of started with you know Alive and I think you call it Alone but we call it Final Days it's the same movie with the same script but one's South Korean and one's the American version and then Pontypool and you know Matt Smith and Stanley Tucci and Patient Zero and before too long, we are 245 episodes deep.

SPEAKER_04: 24:28

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03: 24:30

So that was your first and our first. What was the last zombie movie you watched?

SPEAKER_05: 24:37

Okay, well, it was this week. Outside. the

SPEAKER_03: 24:43

Filipino. You were not the first person to say that was the last movie they watched. Actually, I think it was Ollie with Ollie Eats Brains. Did you watch it with Ollie Eats Brains? Because he was on a few weeks ago, months ago maybe, and that was the last movie that he watched. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_05: 24:59

By the way, shout out to Ollie. Ollie was like my first friend on Blue Sky. We

SPEAKER_03: 25:04

love Ollie. Awesome joke. Yeah, he's a good boy. Actually, he's got my copy of Peter Dendel's books and mine. And so, yeah. So what was the last one you watched, Mikey?

SPEAKER_02: 25:20

I finished Zion recently and I'm literally just finished. It's not the film, but the TV in the flesh.

SPEAKER_03: 25:27

Oh, great. I just finished watching season one of In the Flesh. It was recommended by our last guest, who is Kieran, who is a podcaster, but he's also written and narrates the zombie audio drama, The Fallen. Have you not? I'm aware of it. yeah yeah it's great it's very very good it's very good um i love i love myself some some audio uh plays i sort of grew up with hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and things like that so um i'm you know right in my wheelhouse uh but he was on and he actually said did you guys watch this and actually i was living in the states when it came out so i hadn't and uh so um i didn't even know it existed so i just binged season one three hours of it uh and then we're gonna we're gonna cover season two in the

SPEAKER_02: 26:19

next episode i think just just quickly while we're on the topic for anyone who hasn't seen it so far i think that is got the potential to be one of the best sleepers we've seen in the last couple of years i might even go that far

SPEAKER_03: 26:33

would you would you would you not i mean to be fair i scored it seven which is actually very high

SPEAKER_02: 26:38

for us which is high for us i was gonna say which you think about it It's not quite Girl with All the Gifts. No, but considering it was a BBC3, for guests in the US who listen to the show, our BBC3 is kind of like a, oh, crikey, I don't even know what to say. It's not

SPEAKER_03: 26:55

as good as BBC1 or BBC2. You know when you take a copy of a copy? That's BBC3.

SPEAKER_02: 27:02

Okay, so I'm surprised.

UNKNOWN: 27:04

Your last one, did you ever see 28 Years? Did you watch 28 Years Later? No.

SPEAKER_03: 27:10

Oh, yeah. Kyle,

SPEAKER_05: 27:11

you did. Yeah, yeah. It's not in the theater. Yeah. What did you think? I loved the first half.

SPEAKER_04: 27:19

Mm hmm.

SPEAKER_05: 27:20

And I was confused by some of the second stuff in the ending, but I've since done my research. And the theory is that that really peculiar ending that sets up the sequel is more resonant with a British audience than would be an American. Well, it's not

SPEAKER_04: 27:38

quite.

SPEAKER_02: 27:40

Just

SPEAKER_04: 27:40

a

SPEAKER_02: 27:41

tad. Well, that's funny. When it happened. Hang on, Darren. Hang on. Hang on. All I got before, so I hadn't seen it and Darren hadn't. He was like, have you seen it? I was like, no, I'm going to see it in the next couple of days. And all I got was ending this, ending that, ending this, and that was like, right, that can't be good. So I watched it and I was like, right, that's awkward. That's very awkward. And then it was like... And then it was like, because again, like you said there, if you're a Brit, that's unbelievably awkward. I mean, you don't have

SPEAKER_03: 28:09

the equivalent of Jimmy Savile over there. I mean, even if you say, oh, yeah, Harvey Weinstein, blah, blah, blah. Harvey Weinstein has nothing. No,

SPEAKER_05: 28:19

no. I love the first half. I was surprised that the dad dropped out of the narrative. I thought the second half was very poignant. A little cheesy for me. It got a little too heart stringy. And then that ending, I just thought it became a Power Rangers movie. But then as I looked into it a little bit, I ended up watching the Netflix documentary on on Sir Jimmy and I was just horrified because I was alive during that period but we had no idea over here what was going on with you all and that guy I mean it's just shocking so obviously it's on purpose

SPEAKER_03: 29:02

obviously they know what they're doing well the idea I mean maybe I mean I have a theory to do with it but basically the thing is that you know this was you know 2002 and then it was what 28 years later so basically if we say that even if the BBC dissolved in 2002 when when the first movie happens Jimmy Savile was not a thing in 2002 I mean I know that he wasn't exposed for what he was until 2012 but you know he was a big thing in sort of the late 1970s and sort of like into the 80s because his show Jim will fix it was kind of like a make-a-wish thing and but that was still the I mean this you know The kid, Jimmy, at the beginning is, what, 10? So he wouldn't have idolized Jimmy Savile in 2002. You've started him

SPEAKER_02: 29:51

off now.

SPEAKER_03: 29:52

He would. I'm going to step back. I'm going to step back. No, it's fine. Power Rangers, one thing, would have made a lot more sense. Mighty Morphin Power Pedophiles, not quite the same thing. I think someone put a meme out. And it was basically Teletubbies, the aubergine emoji... And there was two other things, but I can't remember. A guy firing, oh, a Katniss firing the bow and arrow and then a full thing. And it was like, it's sad that a movie that we've waited. I mean, I actually like 28 Weeks Later. So I've waited 18 years for this movie. Other people have waited 23 years for this movie. And you can describe what happens in a meme. So it's a little bit sad. However, we are going off topic. Back on it. So you've done your last. You've done your first. Now you have an option here. It's up to you, Carl. You can either tell us the worst zombie movie you've ever seen, and you've heard a few of ours, or you can tell us your top ten. What would you like to do first? I get a choice. There's nothing but choice. There is no spoon.

SPEAKER_05: 31:06

There is no spoon. Nice Matrix reference there. uh i'm just kind of okay so the word well that doesn't count i'm looking at my database because my i have old man brain

SPEAKER_03: 31:18

oh no that's great i mean i have a spreadsheet and uh i think if someone someone was on the other day uh andy begley when he was on he goes yeah i'm just bringing up my spreadsheet and i was like

SPEAKER_05: 31:28

okay well okay so i um this is probably not fair, but I slightly rate zombie movies to a slightly different scale than other horror films because there is a lot of low-budge schlock when it comes to zombies.

SPEAKER_03: 31:48

It's easy to make, right? I can give you 40 bucks, you get some blue paint for someone's face, some intestine, some blue animal intestines, and you've got a zombie movie. I'm

SPEAKER_05: 31:58

not necessarily responding to the filmmaking quality. I'm trying to really focus on what the film does with the zombie and how it portrays the zombie and presents

SPEAKER_02: 32:08

the zombie and do you know what I think this is where like he says in Casablanca this could be the start of a brilliant or beautiful friendship because we do the same thing Darren don't we where we might go like take into account if like some films and I'll say this to people bear in mind this was made in this day you know so bear in mind at this time it's like Do you watch Doctor Who? Oh, absolutely. Since I was a child. Michael is a huge Whovian. So just very quickly, it's like, you know, the Tomb of the Cybermen. Patrick Chow in 1966, I think it was. But it's like with that, if you rewatch the scene where Toberman starts attacking the Cybermen, spoilers, you can actually see the wires and the cables that the Cybermen are flying around on. But I'm like, in the 60s, the quality of the filming wasn't as good, so you wouldn't have seen that. So you need to take into account at the time, this was absolutely terrifying. To us now, it is men in silver jumpsuits with pipes attached to them. But back then, this was absolutely terrifying. Absolutely. Sorry, continue. I apologize.

SPEAKER_05: 33:18

No. But even with that caveat in place, I've got to say the worst one I've seen that I recall with any sense of vividly is Corona Zombies. which of course was produced during the initial lockdown, and so they were severely limited in their abilities to produce what they produced. But it is really bottom-of-the-barrel filmmaking. Now, the only reason it has any redemptive qualities is I think that their repurposing of other zombie films with new humorous dubbing is... at times effective, especially if your sense of humor is not particularly sophisticated.

SPEAKER_03: 34:07

Interesting. I've kind of always avoided that one. When you're on Amazon, Amazon just will charge you$3.99 for the absolute shit. I've watched absolute shit on it as well. And I do see I do see coronavirus on Facebook and I just think, no. I need to be in the right frame of mind. There are a lot of awful, awful zombie movies. Zombie Wars with a Z. Attack of the Flatulating Dead is one of my least favorites. Yeah, that sounds pretty bad. It's bad that zombies fart, so you know where they are.

UNKNOWN: 34:43

Um...

SPEAKER_03: 34:45

See, I made you laugh. You're not going to laugh if you watched it. Zombie with a Shotgun is bad, but if you actually watch the movie they made before that to actually raise the money, Zombie with a Shotgun, the beginning, that's awful too. And like I said, we watched some real good. We just watched this really bizarre Dutch-French-Belgian movie called Transit 17, and it was awful. It was awful. It was so awful. You liked it though, Mikey.

SPEAKER_02: 35:19

I couldn't stand it. It was awful. No, I don't want to go too much into it, but I think as well, like, you know, like when you sort of go, well, it wasn't good, but it's got some quite realistic redeeming qualities. The character, I just couldn't get my head around Darren. Tex. Was he the grey-haired guy? The grey-haired guy, Tex, who basically... He actually

SPEAKER_03: 35:39

wrote it and directed it, produced it, did the music.

SPEAKER_02: 35:41

Yeah, you could tell. You know when you give yourself the best part in a film where basically... He's basically like an ageing uncle with an awful grey haircut trying to play stealth, but his hair stands out about two miles away. And you're thinking, well, if this is realistic, the first thing you would do is either wear a hat or shave it off.

SPEAKER_03: 35:58

Well, the issue with it is he did give himself the best part. And there would be any case where other people are fighting, he would turn up and then just beat the bad guy with one shot kind of thing whilst everyone's been fighting kind of thing. But the movie is just so awful. But the worst thing about it is he calls his character Tex... as in Texas, as in he's Texan. And he had the most ridiculous Dutch accent. But he was trying to do American accent with a very strong Dutch accent. And every time he spoke, it was the most ridiculous thing. Probably the redeeming part of that movie was that I just kept laughing at everything that Tex said in his fake Texas accent. Awful, awful movie. Awful. Noted. Noted. I mean, genuinely, I mean, I did start with Oasis of the Zombies. It is awful. I asked ChatGBT in an experiment a couple of episodes ago what it thought. Remember that it's just machine learning. It's not really AI. It's just getting other people's searches and grouping it together. I said, what is the worst zombie movie ever made? And it suggested Zombie Nightmares with Adam West and Sean Levy. And when I watched it, I actually kind of enjoyed it. It was one of those movies that was actually all right. I kind of liked this one. So ChatGPT's got shit for brains when it comes to zombie movies. So what are your top 10. Now, with notable mentions outside, a lot of people have roughly the same top 10, you know, as everybody, as everyone. Everyone should at least have commonality over their top 10s. But what are your top 10 zombie movies? And you can add a couple of almost rams that are just outside your top 10.

SPEAKER_05: 37:49

All right. yeah so um yeah you're getting uh this exclusive list because i'm pretty uh i we did a a special on on my show about top 10 zombie films and i think yours is going to air first so

SPEAKER_03: 38:02

oh no

SPEAKER_05: 38:03

no exclusive exclusive uh scoop for you all i'm gonna put that

SPEAKER_03: 38:10

right so exclusive So I have been thinking about this.

SPEAKER_05: 38:16

Yeah, I've been thinking about this this summer. So and I've got zombies. I've got undead zombies. I've got infected zombies and I have some zombie adjacent guys on here. But this is this is my current list. So number 10 is the beyond. Number nine is the sadness. Oh,

SPEAKER_03: 38:37

that's got some nasty bits in.

SPEAKER_05: 38:39

Oh,

SPEAKER_03: 38:39

yeah. Oh, yeah. I never see a disabled woman. I want to see a disabled woman's skull fucked by a crazy zombie. Ever again. Ever again. Or

SPEAKER_05: 38:48

anyone, frankly. But yeah, that one's rough. It is.

SPEAKER_03: 38:53

Do you know what I did? I actually twinned it in an episode with happiness, which is a South Korean zombie show. So I had happiness and sadness. That's fun. Okay, what's number eight?

SPEAKER_05: 39:03

Number eight is the other Fulci movie that I love, Zombie 2 or Zombie or, you know, all the

SPEAKER_03: 39:09

mini names. Zombie with an I? Zombie with

SPEAKER_05: 39:12

an I. Well, because a zombie fights a great white and it's not CGI. I mean, so what can you say?

SPEAKER_03: 39:20

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05: 39:22

Number seven is the OG, Night of the Living Dead. It's a little lower because it's like super important, obviously. And it is a good movie.

SPEAKER_01: 39:31

It's a game

SPEAKER_05: 39:31

changer,

SPEAKER_02: 39:32

right? Can I just say my argument? And I like Night of the Living Dead. And it's one of the first I've seen. And like I always say that I think one of the worst things I saw in a zombie movie at the time, obviously, and going back to it, is you know obviously I can't remember the little girl's name now it's escaping me but when she's obviously eating her parents in the basement because that's just not nice but I raised this because I'm going to wait until see what you've got later on I do genuinely think a lot of that film and I had this argument with or not an argument in a negative way with Zombie Book Club I think that's just rated so highly because of the nostalgia and But if you watch it as a film, it's good, it's okay, it has moments, but I think, and this will go on to the topic, let's see what you pick later on, I don't think it's one of the best zombie films ever made.

SPEAKER_03: 40:28

We class it as a game changer. I mean, the way I normally see it, because, you know, obviously you're more scholarly about this than us, but we always think about, we go back to White Zombie, I Walk With a Zombie, King of the Zombies, all the voodoo movies from the 40s and 50s, then into the 60s and 70s when it was all radiation. My personal favourite is Nightmare City with Hugo Stiglitz. That's one of the ones that always end up there. Great, great movie. but then it becomes sort of like it's parasites and it's aliens until 2002 and it's viruses you know and it's viruses for the rest of you know the time or you know they just you don't know you don't know why they've you know, the zombies are coming up. So, you know, that's actually a big thing about chemical reactions. The Koreans love to blame some sort of big farmer for causing it. But we always talk about, you know, the game changers. And so I think for us, it's obviously white zombie. And then we sort of, there is probably a gap until we get to Night of the Living Dead, which actually kind of, for me, my favorite sub-sub-genre is the apartment survival zombie horror. So much like, you know, Night Eats the World, but also Rambok, you Siege of Berlin, Way Home 2 from China, Alone, and then Hashtag Alive. These are kind of, I like it because I live in apartments. But then, going back to it, it's White Zombie, then Night of the Living Dead, then Dawn of the Dead, which kind of expands it and makes it much larger. But then we kind of think The 1980s weren't all that great for zombie movies. There were a couple. I personally liked Dead and Buried. But then we get as far, then it's 2002. And it's, you know, it's 28 days later. And then The Walking Dead made it mainstream TV. So, and notable mention to Shaun of the Dead to be the only funny, the first funny zombie movie. So, and that's what we see, right? So that's the, they're the game changers. And I think that even though, as Michael says, the first, the original zombie, Night of the Living Dead, is a game changer. It's not a particularly brilliant movie. Actually, I prefer the 1990 remake, because I like my Barbara to be, you know, more buff Barbara. She's kind of like... Awake. Awake. She doesn't look exactly awake. And to be fair, Tony Todd did a... I tell you what, we actually had this conversation about... There was basically, we watched the original... Night of the Living Dead. We watched the 1990s remake Night of the Living Dead. Then I watched the animated Night of the Living Dead that actually had a really good cast. And we kind of put it all together and sort of saying, well, actually, I preferred Cooper in the 1990s movie because he was actually, I think he was a better character. I actually preferred the preferred barbara in the in the second but then you had all of the you know they're coming to get you and all the fun stuff from the original but the argument michael and i often have is to do with um battening down the hatches and barricading yourself in versus trying to live and escape kind of thing and and in the animated version between um the main characters name escapes me and and mr cooper is they have a whole argument about do you know ben sorry ben ben and cooper have this whole conversation about we should go down in the basement and that's cooper gives a quite good cogent argument of why they should whilst ben is like no but we need to be up here and protect and you know blah blah blah and then we can escape if we have to and so between the three versions of the same movie you kind of got a really really good movie because they took these little bit about these oh yeah okay we're doing that so that's what we're going with that okay so Night of the Living Dead. Was that seven?

SPEAKER_05: 44:23

That was. But now I have to interject because you started it. I think that between White Zombie and Night of the Living Dead, there are two really honorable mentions. And that's I Walked with a Zombie. Absolutely. And then Plague of the Zombie.

SPEAKER_03: 44:40

Yeah. Love Plague of the Zombie. If anything, that kind of fed into Plague of the Zombies for us because we love Hammer House of Horror. oh yeah that was that's our big thing and obviously back from the 1970s 60s 70s uh we had that was us that was our horror movies we turned the tv on on a sunday i got you know uh i don't know guns are never owned during the day and then james bond in the evening and probably a hammer house of horror at night because that's british tv in the 1970s and 80s which is kind of great you're sitting there watching a edward woodward in the original wicker man kind of thing um plague of zombies plague of zombies I genuinely loved it. I thought it was a really good movie. And I think, didn't Romero cite it as one of his inspirations for Night of the Living Dead as well, I thought, maybe.

SPEAKER_05: 45:29

I'm

SPEAKER_03: 45:29

sure I read that somewhere.

SPEAKER_05: 45:30

Yeah, yeah. And with the survival horror, the barricading horror, he talked about the birds from Hitchcock being really influential. But anyway, my number six is Cargo. The Australian zombie movie. The

SPEAKER_02: 45:47

Martin Freeman movie. Yeah, Martin Freeman.

SPEAKER_05: 45:51

Good film. That's just the premise, because it's based on a short film that they did. The premise is just amazing, and it's really creepy. So number five, Train to Busan. Good choice. Classic. I love... filmic narratives that take place on a train i mean there's there's a lot of them because uh it does limit the filmmakers opportunities and options which i think kind of forces creativity you know how are we going to shoot this we're inside a train and so uh i really like that one a lot

SPEAKER_03: 46:25

of what did you think of the sequel

SPEAKER_05: 46:28

um well it's a totally different kind of movie

SPEAKER_03: 46:30

100 100 yeah the interesting thing about the sequel for me isn't the actual zombie bit The zombie bits, again, it's just Korean zombies being Korean zombies. And we've just given you these over-the-top cartoon villains. But it was the whole idea that the country is cut off. And so it happened in South Korea. So they've kind of cut it off. And anyone that escaped is kind of treated like someone who's stateless. And so we kind of had that element as well, because I would like desperate because we're not, you know, the whole refugee idea. And they were kind of going in there to get money to buy themselves, you know, whatever they could. Michael, I had this conversation. You're clearly smarter than both of us put together. So what I'm going to ask you this question, because my master's degree is in nothing useful. Actually, it kind of is, but I never got to a PhD. Apocalypse. Michael and I had this conversation about that whole idea. From the Koreans' point of view, the South Koreans' point of view, they have gone through the zombie apocalypse. Okay? From the Koreans' point of view. Yeah, yeah, okay. Michael and I had this... It was you, Michael. You asked the question, can you have a localized apocalypse? Because isn't the apocalypse global?

SPEAKER_05: 47:56

Oh, that's a really great question because...

SPEAKER_03: 47:58

Thank you. I

SPEAKER_02: 47:59

asked that. I asked that.

SPEAKER_03: 48:00

I just asked that for him. But that's exactly what Mikey asked last time. And I was like, well... I don't know. That's why we're asking Mr. Kyle Bishop to answer this question

SPEAKER_05: 48:11

for us. Okay, short answer is yes. I think apocalypse is subjective because it's the end of the world. But how do you define the world? And so is it the end of your world? Because I think if we get super metaphorical, people can have their own personal apocalypse if everything crashes down around them. But I do think when we're talking about a group that is cut off from everyone else, so like in 28 years later, then it does have to be kind of presented in apocalyptic terms because there is no there is no other world for those people. So the world that they have access to, the world that is theirs is ending, has come to an end, has collapsed and fallen apart. So yeah, that's my shooting from the

SPEAKER_03: 49:04

hip. That's good. We like that. So Mikey, you were right. Oh, actually, no, you were wrong. You wanted to go the other way. But yeah, it was actually during 28 years later, one of our chats that we had with one person who didn't like it quite so much and one person who was foaming at the mouth loved it.

SPEAKER_02: 49:19

So what's next in your list? And I'll just say very quickly before just going back to what you were saying about Train to Busan there, I do honestly think, and I always sound like I'm talking in superlatives, and we're saying about what things it does well, I always mention to people who haven't seen Train to Busan that I think the opening or nearly at the beginning when obviously they're on the train and the little girl as it's departing sees the person getting on the train and they're infected and everything like that, I think that plays into so many sort of fears that people could have with things not zombies and stuff but like with trains because how many times have people departed from train stations and they think they forgot something but there's nothing they can do because now the train's pulling away and they're stuck you know you can't just go oh sorry do you mind just stopping while I pick that up or oh no I've got this so I always say that I really find that that scene where as the train's pulling away she notices obviously at the corner of her eyes like some attacks and One of a really, really good scene overall in the whole genre.

SPEAKER_03: 50:22

It's a great movie. It's everyone's top 10 Trains to Busan. Based on just how well it was made, I think probably Peninsula makes everyone's top 25. I genuinely like Soul Station, which is kind of the prequel, the anime that was the prequel to it. I think that's really well done. Of course, they want to stick in some sort of sexual deviant, and I think it's her pimp rather than a businessman. But other than that, I thought that was really well done too. I'm not too sure how Train to New York's going to be accept it if they do make it it's you know the labour of love for the director but I'm

SPEAKER_05: 50:58

not

SPEAKER_03: 50:58

100% sure we're going to see it because I don't know it's all snakes on a plane to me

SPEAKER_05: 51:04

Yeah, no, it'll probably go that way because the States has a long tradition of taking great concepts and ruining them.

SPEAKER_03: 51:13

But you also do make some really, really good remakes. I mean, everyone loves, you know, everyone loves Reservoir Dogs. So if you're going to make some remakes, make good ones. But you're right. Every now and then. Every now and then. Every now and then. You know, there's a diamond in the rough every now and then.

SPEAKER_05: 51:27

So what's next? Okay, so my number four is a little bit of a cheat, but I'm going with One Cut of the Dead. Oh, I love it. I love it. I do love one cut of the dead. It's just, it's so clever and it's postmodern and you know, you can make the case that it's not exactly what it is, but I think it is. And I have not watched the French remake of that

SPEAKER_03: 51:48

because I don't actually, is it worth it? I find it better. And I'll tell you why. They did a few things. I mean, I love, I love one cut of the dead. They're gonna be wrong. And it's the one I saw first, but when I saw the French one, I was thinking, I'm going to hate this, but I think, they captured everything that was really good about One Cut of the Dead, but they made it look nice. So, you know, I'm doing Caro and Jeanne made all these movies sort of like, you know, City of Lost Children and Amelie and all those movies. So everything kind of looks like a nightmare through a kid's toffee-colored glasses kind of thing. But they kind of, did that with the colouring of it so it's kind of like lots of lovely greens and oranges and browns and the location where they set it really made it rather than like the factory that's in the Japanese version so I do love One Cut of the Dead I think it's really good I would say I actually generally preferred only by a fraction the French version. I just thought it was as well done. It's not original. You know, I can't mark it up for originality. I have to mark it down for originality. But it got what the original was and did a really good homage to that. Plus it added a couple of more visual elements to it, I would say.

SPEAKER_05: 53:05

All right. Well, I'll move it up the list.

SPEAKER_03: 53:09

How big is that list you have to watch, by the way?

UNKNOWN: 53:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 53:12

Longer than the completed list, the ones I've watched does not exceed the ones I need to

SPEAKER_03: 53:20

watch. Similarly for us, I would say, because when we started this podcast, I made a 15-page list of zombie movies, but we've only watched getting on for 300 at the moment so we are nowhere near well done

SPEAKER_05: 53:32

yeah i've i've officially reviewed um 68 so

SPEAKER_03: 53:36

it's like

SPEAKER_05: 53:38

i'm gonna be doing this for the rest

SPEAKER_03: 53:39

forever but that's the thing that that but we love it though isn't it this is our own labors of love right so isn't this

SPEAKER_05: 53:45

well and as a slight tangent my uh my dean my academic dean actually supports my podcasting as as part of my academic efforts so not every school would be that cool cool so i

SPEAKER_03: 53:59

suu is

SPEAKER_05: 54:00

cool yeah we're hip all right so now the top three i mean okay do it anybody um so number three is 28 days later uh just brilliant classic and i you know when it first came out i was a little bit on the sean pegg side where i'm like these aren't zombies they zombies can't run and they're not actually dead daniel

SPEAKER_03: 54:22

was still pushing that and i think dude This is your most successful movie of all time, and you still aren't happy that people are calling

SPEAKER_02: 54:32

them zombies. Darren, do I annoy the listeners and ask the same question I ask all the guests who come on? Which one's that? The one I always ask.

SPEAKER_03: 54:40

I don't know. Which one's

SPEAKER_02: 54:43

that? Whisper it to me. As they move. I know this is your list. Oh, okay, fine. I know what

SPEAKER_03: 54:48

question's coming. You know what's coming. Can I just say that when I watched the original, when I watched it the first time in the movie theater, I saw the original ending. where he dies in the hospital. And it was a very different movie for me because of that. Because it kind of felt much more like Trainspotting where, you know, where he ends up, you know, Ewan McGregor ends up being sucked into the carpet and stuff. It kind of felt like at the end of the version I saw, the doors kind of closed in the hospital on him, because that's the first place we saw him, right? He's in the hospital and the doors open, he comes out. And then it actually went full circle. He dies in the hospital and then the doors close on him. It actually felt like a better movie rather than the clean, high definition, let's live in the countryside and be happy ending. Michael, go on, ask your question.

SPEAKER_02: 55:43

So my question is, obviously, this is your list of, like, favorite movies, right? Yeah. Now, take your nostalgia and your favoritism head off. Put as a pure critic head hat on, is 28 Days Later the greatest zombie movie ever made? If everything was sort of like equal and there was no nostalgia and everything like that, as a piece of film, with scares gore acting quality everything that goes with it is there a better film in the zombie genre than 28 days later no Thank you. I don't think there could be another person that's added to the list because I... He kind of

SPEAKER_03: 56:30

browbeats everyone into agreeing.

SPEAKER_02: 56:33

Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, because we asked it because we, when we were talking, when the trailers were coming out and everything like that, we were talking about it and I actually like, everyone who listens to this podcast knows that my sort of guilty pleasure, probably favourite one, you know, I know it's not perfect but it's Dawn 2004, you know, Darren has his as well, you know, and he likes Night of the Comet and all this stuff but I actually, I asked it as a bit of a kind of ending question just to end a podcast, Darren. And then we actually went, actually, that's a realisation. We genuinely can't think of anything as a movie that is better than this. Whether or not you, like, it's a guilty pleasure or nostalgia, like, we're British, so obviously we love it. But as an actual piece of film, we can't think of a better film ever made in the genre.

SPEAKER_05: 57:20

No, I mean, as a film goes... like I said, where you have to have kind of a little bit of a skewed rating system for zombie movies. Yeah, I agree. I think the second would be Train to Busan. I think if we're talking about quality film cinema, right, then yeah, I can't think of one that's a bigger standout in those terms.

SPEAKER_02: 57:42

Yeah, and I think you're right as well. Like with Train to Busan, you know, it's one of those films with Train to Busan You see it once and you absolutely love it. You know, we reviewed it. I saw it a couple of times, then we reviewed it. And then obviously my friend came on the podcast. I think by then I'd seen it about three, four times. And every time you watch it, you just don't get bored by it and you find that new thing in it. And I think I agree. I don't know of any other films as movies that are the level of those two, but that could just be me going a bit too far. But again, for me, Fight to Pick One, I'd probably say 28 Days Later is the best zombie movie ever made.

SPEAKER_05: 58:16

Well done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 58:18

Okay. So what's your favorite zombie movie then? What is your number one? Well,

SPEAKER_05: 58:23

we still got two. Number two, which will also hopefully please you all, is Shaun of the Dead. And I love Shaun of the Dead on a lot of levels because it is a comedy, it is a satire, it is a romance, but it is still legitimately a zombie movie. It still has the scares. It has the gore. It has the siege. I mean, it really is. And it's a love letter to Romero. And that's, that's cool. I like that it's retro, but it's clever and it's sophisticated and it has really interesting kind of self-reflective moments that are nonetheless poignant. So I think it's, I think it's pretty dang good film.

SPEAKER_02: 59:03

Yeah. And do you know what, just quickly, there was a, like and sean's a bit similar to what we were saying a minute ago you could watch it so many times and find something new especially the more you dive into the genre as a whole and then i mean i've lost count me a many times i've seen sean of the dead you know and it's one of those movies that every time it comes on the tv i watch it and darren you're the same aren't you if it was on itv2 we watch it so it's very famously always on itv2 but then we watched a zombie movie and even though I hadn't seen it for so many, even though I've seen it so many times over so many years, the one line, who died and made you fucking king of the zombies? I said to Darren, I said to Darren, I said to Darren, after we watched it, I was like, Darren, we've just reviewed King of the Zombies and how did we miss, how did we miss that reference after the 20, 30 times we've seen Shaun of the Dead? And again, it's little things like that you think that's so clever.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:00

Something that's interesting to us as well is that a lot of countries, most countries, when they create a zombie comedy now call it that country's Shaun of the Dead. So we've seen one of the dead is the Q version. That's great. I actually genuinely enjoyed that. One of our favorites, because the star came on here as well, is the New Zealand I Survived a Zombie Holocaust, which actually has more jokes over the 90 minutes, but it's not as good as Shaun of the Dead, but it has a lot of jokes and a lot of fun. I survived a zombie holocaust. Interesting, the American one is fucking awful. Dead and Breakfast, which was by Oz Perkins and stars Jeremy Sisto, was America's Shaun of the Dead. And it was probably the worst out of all of them. And there's an Australian one that's just called The Undead, which... actually came out before Shaun of the Dead. Even though it now classes itself, they re-brought out the DVD and it says, Australia is Shaun of the Dead. And we're like, but you came out first. Surely Shaun of the Dead is UK's The Undead. But we've kind of seen them all now and it's interesting for us to see it because they... You make a funny zombie movie and they just say it's that country, Shaun of the Dead. What was the Indian one we watched, Michael? Go, Go, We're Gone. Go, Go, We're Gone, which has... The thing is, you've got to see the good in everything. And it has one scene. The movie's pretty awful, but there is one scene... No, it's not. It's okay. Average at best. The guys are escaping from the zombies and it goes past all these zombies, right? And they're standing in a row on the side of the road. And there's one dressed like Jim from 28 Days Later. Then there's one dressed as the nurse from the remake of Dawn of the Dead. There's one that looks like Tallahassee. And there's literally all of these zombies from different zombie movies that we've seen over the years that are just standing by the side of the road. And it's like, it has nothing to do with, you know, anything that's happening with the main characters. They're just one past them. But it was this wonderful little, we stopped it and we like took that screenshot and went, that's brilliant. That is brilliant. So what is, what's number one then?

SPEAKER_05: 1:02:26

Well, I can't, I can't argue with Mr. Ken Foray, the best zombie movie ever.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:31

arguably the greatest zombie arguably the

SPEAKER_05: 1:02:34

greatest zombie movie the one that really turned it into a sub-genre the one that uh that caused the sensation it's it's dawn of the dead 1978 um filmically not quite on the level of 28 days later and and in terms of watchability i can watch shawn of the dead more frequently because uh Dawn of the Dead is a little heavy. It's kind of a commitment there to get into that, but yeah, just everything about it is fabulous. That's always been the answer to the question. I have yet to find a new zombie movie that has knocked it off from its perch.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:15

But the thing about it is, you've got to think about everything about it. If any members of the cast have had a comic con, people go bananas. Oh, yeah. At the moment, the Monroeville Mall, you know, the whole selling of the Monroeville Mall is for us, us, you know, zombie movie nerds. huge story. Why aren't CNN covering this fucking thing? Because it's huge for us, right? It is our mecca to a degree. It started the whole idea that zombie movies can be set in shopping malls. And how many have I seen in those? Quite a few, I will tell you.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:55

Video games. Dead Rising, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:58

Yeah, exactly. So it's a really good choice. Michael and I were both on Listeners of the Dead, and we both love both versions, but I actually genuinely prefer the original. Michael, one of his earliest movies that he saw and actually still loves is the 2004 version, despite its failings. And we would ask to come on there and debate it. And to be fair, we both love both. They're both always in everyone's top 10 or 15, both versions. It's just not yours. Well, he might be in his top 15. So those were your top 10, actually very good and solid top 10. What almost made your top 10?

SPEAKER_05: 1:04:41

Oh, there's a lot of really pretty solid films. Night Eats the World? So one of the recent ones, Night Eats the World is great. I really liked last year's Die Alone. I

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:53

did too, yeah, with Carrie-Anne Moss.

SPEAKER_05: 1:04:56

Yeah, so I really liked that one. And then just I'm a big fan of what we call the mycological zombie, so the mushroom zombie. So I like Girl with All the Gifts. I love the first season of The Last of Us, which isn't a movie, but still I

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:16

kind of like that. Actually, what we class as the greatest individual piece of– zombie televisual entertainment is season one episode one of the walking dead

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:29

oh yeah well when frank darabont was involved that thing was unstoppable um and then i would say blood quantum is

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:36

very cool you are preaching to the choir we love blood quantum um it's one of our favorites undoubtedly um all the ones you you are listing are I'm certainly very, very high on the list for those. I'm so glad you said go with all the gifts because I was about to say, what about go with all the gifts? And he just mentioned it. And he's got general answers in him. super

SPEAKER_05: 1:06:02

super great a couple more honorable mentions i love fido it's a

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:06

little it is one of those we had a guest on normally when when we have a guest on we kind of and we talk about a specific movie then uh we kind of kind of we get we get an average of our scores but the person we had on just gave it 10 And I was like, well, what? Come on. It's not a tent. It's incredibly well put together. Again, it's another Carrie-Anne Moss movie, Henry Cherney, and obviously, you know, Billy is the Stark. Billy Connolly. Billy Connolly is the Stark. It's a great little movie. It's got a wonderful 1950s aesthetic. It's a really good movie. You know, it's one of those. It's one of those ones that you should, you know, everyone should see it. It's in our top 20 for sure.

SPEAKER_05: 1:06:53

I love that one. I love Maggie. I think it's one of Schwarzenegger's best performances in his whole career. Different tone. And then just throwing this one out there, mostly because some of my friends in the zombie community hate it when I mention it. It's Anna and the

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:10

Apocalypse. We love Anna and the Apocalypse. We absolutely love it. I'd seen it before and I got Michael and Steph from Listeners of the Dead to watch it and then they came on and they wouldn't stop singing.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:27

That makes me very happy because I think it's a brilliant

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:32

film.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:33

My 14-year-old niece loves it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:37

Yeah. That's a very good thought said and some outliers there. No, well, I mean... How can you not like Anna and the

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:45

Apocalypse? I don't... Maybe they just don't like

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:48

musicals.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:49

Some people don't like musicals

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:51

and some people don't like... Maybe they don't like the Scottish.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:54

That's right. I'm

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:56

keeping well away from that one.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:59

Yeah,

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:00

I love it. I love it too. Okay, so... Have you seen The Cured? Yes.

SPEAKER_05: 1:08:07

I do... it's i think it's excellent i think it does a lot of try covers a lot of the ground that i'm in the flesh does um i think it's it's really dark and really gritty uh and i haven't done a formal review on it yet but i've seen it twice and i was gifted the blu-ray so i need to delve back into that it's um It's one of the more disturbing zombie films because of this idea of transformations and regrets and where do we blur the line between the zombie as not having a choice and the zombie as being a choice. And so I think it asks some really interesting questions and it's brutal. So yeah, that one, I need to revisit it, but that one's high. That one's pretty high.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:55

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what I was going to mention because we were just talking about in the flesh and it's quite different. I mean, both of them are there. You know, one of the characters has regrets in the queue, but the other one doesn't. And what they're hiding is they're hiding the fact that they do remember what they did. You know, we can't deny that. You know, I was a zombie. I was not in control. which is a whole idea for me of what a zombie is, you know, whether it's a voodoo priest or a virus or a parasite or an alien, you are no longer in control of yourself. Something else is controlling you. That's my take of what a zombie is. You are a zombie, you know, because you are no longer in control. But it kind of threw that out by suggesting that they were, they remember what they did. And they were in control to a degree. Have you seen one of the shows that Michael and I absolutely adored, All of Us Are Dead?

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:56

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's another. That's a pretty good one, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:00

Yeah, it's way up there for us. Way up there for us. So do you have a recommendation? We might have seen it. I'm just saying we might have actually seen it. You guys have seen everything. Not everything, but a lot of them. I haven't got closure on the genre yet. What would you recommend? I mean, we may have seen it, but go on.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:22

Well, from last year, not a traditional zombie movie, but Handling the Undead, the Scandinavian

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:28

film. I did. Were you a little disappointed with it? I like what it was trying to do. But when we're kind of selling it off the idea, you know, one of the main characters is from, you know, Night Eats the World. It's written by the guy that did, you know, Let the White One In.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:45

And, you know, it sort of felt like it was very slow. Yes. Very, very slow.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:52

Well, and I'm coming from a position where I read the book years ago. And so I like the tone of the film. And I like how it tells these kind of three stories about three different kinds of deaths. And it's, yeah, it's not your, it's not remotely your typical zombie movie, obviously. But I think it's ponderous in a lot of different ways, which I think is interesting. So that one, if people haven't seen that one. jeez I'm just trying to think what are some interesting ones that I've uncovered because so many of them are bad I just recently watched

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:31

what's your view on because we was talking when we spoke to Steph before she's quite into the Nazi zombie genre but I said to and you sound like you know where you like Sean you know you quite like the sort of clever it's quite funny genre as well but I have found myself, and I never thought I'd be this type of person. It's probably where I'm getting older. But I'm quite liking the sort of rom-com-y type ones. So, as we know it... Burying the X. Burying the X was superb. Anna and the Apocalypse, those kind of stuff. Are those sort of ones that you've seen as well? How do you view those? Especially like... I think the question we ask, Mikey,

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:17

what we normally ask is, what would an entry-level zombie movie be if, it's not a teenage boy, it's just like, go watch, you know, any of the Fulchies, right? Whereas if it's Date Night, and the Mrs. Stroke Mr., They're not a zombie fan, but you're going to sit down. Let's watch a zombie movie. That actually is a zombie movie that has the elements of a zombie movie that we appreciate. So we would say things like Warm Bodies. It's an easy one. Or Burying the X was actually really, really good. We saw that with Anton Yelchin in. And, you know, so... Well, no, I can answer this

SPEAKER_05: 1:13:01

practically because my kids have seen two zombie movies. You're

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:08

about to give Michael what he needs because Michael has three kids, not that he's a competition. I lose because I have none. But he actually, his kids, how old are your kids, Mikey? 13, 11, and 5. And you're starting to introduce them to zombie movies, right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:23

Yeah, so I showed them, obviously, just Anna and the Apocalypse. I showed them all As We Know It, which is another good one. Interestingly, they found Sean quite frightening.

SPEAKER_05: 1:13:37

Yeah, I

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:38

think

SPEAKER_05: 1:13:38

it is. So what did you

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:39

show your kids then,

SPEAKER_05: 1:13:40

Kyle? We did Warm Bodies because I have a daughter who really, really likes... Romeo and Juliet? Yeah, well, she just likes romance. So that one worked over. And Nicholas Holtz. And then we did Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I don't necessarily love, but I enjoy it. It's fun, though. It's fun. It is fun. I like the lead. I think some of the casting for Pride and Prejudice, the Pride and Prejudice side, rival... other Pride and Prejudice adaptations. So I think that one has some goodness to it. So yeah, I've shown those to them. If I had started earlier, I probably would have started with Scooby-Doo and Zombie Island. Classic. Give them some animation. I've also introduced my kids to zombies not through film, but through such classics as Plants vs. Zombies and some of the sillier games, etc., So I think those are pretty good. I would recommend Lisa Frankenstein, actually. I liked it. I thought it was clever. Now, granted, it's mostly a Frankenstein adaptation, but it does have some zombie-like elements. So kind of a cheat. I'll admit that that one isn't particularly zombic, but it does have some of the, you know, raised corpses stuff. And then... Yeah, what would I show kids? There's so many on here, I would never show my kids. How old

SPEAKER_04: 1:15:19

are your kids?

SPEAKER_05: 1:15:22

Youngest is 12, then the oldest is like 26. I

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:27

kind of like, have you seen Stooled? Stalled is very good. Well, definitely Stalled. I mean, I would certainly watch... There's actually a three-movie box set you can get here that's got Stalled, which is the UK movie. The one I mentioned earlier, I Survived a Zombie Holocaust, which is brilliant. Hilarious, New Zealand. You'd love that, for sure. And then there's the Australian movie, Me and My Mates Against a Zombie Holocaust. All three on this box set. Stalled... is the guy ends up in a women's toilet in the toilet stall when the

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:06

zombie apocalypse happens. During the Christmas party.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:09

And he's kind of trapped in there. It's really clever. If you like the idea of being trapped on a train, this is even more claustrophobic because

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:19

he's in this toilet. But it's genuinely funny. It's actually genuinely funny. This is one of those that if you hear the premise... like this if you read a TV guide this wouldn't look too out of place on something like the sci-fi channel or you know like a Sharknado rip-off type thing where it's like that sounds absolutely ridiculous but when you watch it it's a very very entertaining film Absolutely. You could do a lot worse than stalled. I think we reviewed that as a Christmas special. We went down the pub, didn't we, especially Darren? Yeah,

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:53

we went to the pub. We didn't sit in the toilets.

SPEAKER_05: 1:16:57

Well, I've heard of the other two, but I haven't heard of that one.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:59

Yeah, stalled's really good. Stalled is really good. As an expert in the area, and to be fair, this is awesome. I mean, we have lots of guests, but it feels like I'm actually learning something here. What do you think about... No offense to anyone else who's ever come on. I'll edit that out. No one's going to hear that. What do you think about Cemetery Man?

SPEAKER_05: 1:17:22

Oh, that is an interesting question because that's the next one I'm going to record on.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:27

Okay, fair

SPEAKER_05: 1:17:28

enough. Cemetery Man

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:29

was... You don't have to tell us that if it's another...

SPEAKER_05: 1:17:31

Can I bleep all this out

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:32

if you want?

SPEAKER_05: 1:17:33

No, Cemetery Man was a bit of a revelation to me because... i like the premise i like the idea that it's a localized event because of this you know this plant essentially i like the idea of there being this um guardian right the gatekeeper and i like that we get different kinds of zombies that we have some that are more traditional we have some that are more sentient we have some that are more uh bits and pieces uh i think it's it's kind of wacky. And by the end, it doesn't completely make sense.

SPEAKER_03: 1:18:15

I think they went a little bit waiting for Godot at the end when it was the character reversal.

SPEAKER_05: 1:18:21

Yeah, it wants to be a little bit more philosophical than maybe it should be. But overall, it was a pleasant surprise.

SPEAKER_03: 1:18:29

It's one of those weird ones where it's sort of like, it's a weird European... movie that's... It doesn't feel like there are many that are like that. We've got Rupert Everett playing this guardian of the cemetery and Gnar, his non-speaking assistant. And it just felt so... I want to say European... But there's, you know, a lot of European literature has a side, you know, there's a side, you know, Don Quixote and, you know, Sancho Panza and, you know, Phileas Fogg had passed for two and suddenly you have all these, like, I've got a sidekick. He has a sidekick as they're fighting zombies that may or may not come up after people are buried. And I just thought it's one of those movies that, When you actually watch it and you appreciate this genre, it doesn't quite fit in with much of the other zombie movies that we see, because obviously it's a lot of survival horror. It's not survival horror at all.

SPEAKER_05: 1:19:31

No, and it's it's hilarious because it's his job that he has. He's just kind of lost interest in it. They are so casual. about the dispatching of the zombies. It's like, just hand me my gun. Okay, go back to your TV show. And so it's only when he lets himself become emotionally involved that things become dangerous for him. So I think it's super interesting. And it had not particularly been on my radar, by the way, but once it was, I definitely delved into it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:03

It's one of those that I think most of us have seen I mean, because I think that, you know, whilst we list our top tens, there are movies in this genre that we have all seen. We've all seen shockwaves. Try to find someone who hasn't seen shockwaves and then go... Are you really a zombie movie fan? Because we have those. And I think, you know, Delamorte Delamoye is one of those. You know, much like Nightmare City or, you know, City of the Living Dead. And, you know, we'll probably go on about, you know, all the Fulchies and the like and the Beyond and all of the like. So that's really good. What we're going to do now, because I know we've been talking for a little bit, but before you go, we need to play the game.

SPEAKER_04: 1:20:44

All

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:45

right. Play the game. We are going to play the game. And the good thing about the game, as Michael will know, it has this soundtrack.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:52

Virus or voodoo? Is it a virus or was it voodoo? It's that simple. Is it a virus or voodoo? And over to your quiz master for a game of virus or voodoo. It's Darren Smith.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:04

I do like that theme

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:06

tune. What's this game called again?

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:10

One second, Michael. Let me just read

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:11

through it. Virus or Voodoo? Is it a virus or was it Voodoo? It's that simple. Is it a virus or Voodoo? Get over to your Quizmaster for a game of Virus or Voodoo. It's Darren Smith.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:25

Is that okay for

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:25

you?

SPEAKER_05: 1:21:26

You'd never know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:27

You would never know. What? The American accent was the right choice there. It made my throat hurt doing it. Okay. So it's 20 movies. I'm literally going to give you the name of the movie. You just got to tell me, is it virus or is it voodoo? I might throw a couple of outliers in there just as a sneaky, sneaky. Poor Ollie got virus or voodoo or aliens, but he still did really well. Anyway, are you

SPEAKER_05: 1:21:55

ready? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:57

Some of these are going to be really easy. Some of these you may not have seen, but number one, 28 years later.

SPEAKER_05: 1:22:02

Virus.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:03

Correct. Bury in the X.

SPEAKER_05: 1:22:08

Voodoo.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:09

Correct. Dead Before Dawn. Voodoo. Correct. iZombie. Virus. Correct. Plague of Zombies. Voodoo. Correct. Zombie Island Massacre. Voodoo. Correct. I Am a Hero. Virus. Correct. Unhuman. Neither. Correct. They were actually drugged to think they were zombies. Well done.

SPEAKER_05: 1:22:53

They weren't

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:54

zombies. They weren't zombies. Death do us part.

UNKNOWN: 1:22:59

I didn't see that one yet.

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:01

Virus. Correct. Here alone. here alone god you have this is these are deep cuts um virus correct

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:13

i walk with a zombie voodoo correct what we become virus correct white zombie voodoo correct all of us are dead fires correct the serpent and the rainbow voodoo Correct. The Resort with a Z. Virus. Correct. Paradise Z. Virus. Correct. Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies. Wait, wait, wait, Michael. How dare you. Correct. Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies.

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:56

Neither. It's Voodoo. I don't know anything about that

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:02

movie. No one does. The Cured. Virus. Correct. And zombie repellent. Ah. Virus. Neither. All of the zombies were actors who were playing zombies to trick the newlyweds.

SPEAKER_02: 1:24:19

Can I just, very quickly, if anyone has seen Pro Wrestlers, please come on. Please come on. The joke where we say, how dare you, is because people insult it so much we feel like we have to defend it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:34

We don't have to defend it, but we do. I'll tell you what, just for Michael, we'll do this. We'll just

SPEAKER_05: 1:24:41

do this. Well, I don't feel bad for missing that one. And on Internet Movie Database, there's only 697 votes on that one. So clearly... 698

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:50

votes.

SPEAKER_05: 1:24:52

It's

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:53

because

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:54

they haven't heard this. How? I'm Matt Hardy, and I played Matt Hardy in Michael's personal favorite zombie movie, Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies. Seriously? Oof. I don't know if I should say thanks or I'm sorry. Anyways, the truth is the truth, and you are listening to the Undead Symphony.

SPEAKER_02: 1:25:18

Thank you, Matt.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:19

Thank you, Matt.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:21

What was the last one you said that I missed? I'd never heard of that one. Zombie Repellent. It's actually quite fun. It's quite recent. Your kids, I don't know if your kids like it, but it's actually quite fun. It's well done. A couple are trying to... go across country and they end up somehow being mistaken for another couple. And basically, the other couple, someone's paid for them to have a zombie apocalypse experience that they were not aware of. And so they actually genuinely think they're in a zombie apocalypse. It's really well done. I kind of enjoyed it. I don't think many people have seen it. It was one of those randoms I found on Amazon.

SPEAKER_05: 1:26:03

227 viewers. ratings. 227, that's it. On zombie repellent. Yeah, zombie repellent. But Taylor King's in it. I've seen him in something.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:17

I often do that. I often do that. I go, oh, we've seen that guy before. We love Oliver Cooper. Oliver Cooper was in Bury in the X, which we just recently saw with Anton Yelchin. And he was also in, what's the other one called, Mikey?

SPEAKER_02: 1:26:33

As We Know It.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:34

which we kind of love. Did you watch As You Know It, Kyle? That one I think I have seen. Yeah, it's kind of like a slacker LA one, and it's, you know, the guys are just kind of like, they're movie nerds, so they're always talking about Waterworld or something.

SPEAKER_02: 1:26:51

Yeah, that's one you should have chucked in the virus or voodoo, because it starts with the apocalypse is started by soy milk.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:58

It's one of those food ones. It's sort of like a zombie land and it's a hamburgers. And actually I just saw one called how old's going stiff. And it was caused by sort of like a, a cheap pork sausage that you can get in sort of like a wrapper that again, another food one. Oh, and cooties chicken nuggets. So actually I have four movies already caused by, by nasty food.

SPEAKER_05: 1:27:22

I haven't seen this one, but Pam Greer's in it. Sheesh. Okay.

UNKNOWN: 1:27:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:27:28

Oh, she, she, she plays the neighbor. It's all right. No, I actually, it's entertaining. We actually ended up talking to the guys that made it and they sent us merch and we're like, I said, I said, I said, I'll just send us some t-shirts. It's fine. So they started sending t-shirts. They sent me 200 stickers. So I just

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:49

gave it. It was a good, solid six out of 10, which for us is a recommended film. I mean, to be fair, when

SPEAKER_03: 1:27:55

Michael and I talk about our favourite movies, mine is Jaws and Michael's is Empire Strikes Back, and for both of us, those are still not 10s. I mean, even if they had... Go on. Jaws is not a 10. Jaws needs the deleted scene for me. There's a deleted scene that is Quint at the music shop getting the piano wire. And there's a little kid on the clarinet playing Ode to Joy. And he's standing behind him going, and it's a fucking amazing scene because it tells us who Quint is. And even though I love the movie, I've seen it a million times. As soon as I saw that deleted scene, I thought, I would have kept that. And normally I don't, when you watch the deleted scenes, you're like, I see why this was deleted. You know, like whole bits of movies, like high fidelity. There's a ton of stuff about, even the dad isn't even in us. Howard Ramis is the dad and he's not in the movie at all. And you know, other people have been cut out there. Beverly D'Angelo stuff was cut out as well. Whereas in Jaws, I watched the deleted scenes and this one scene with Quint at the music shop. And I thought that's, that would arguably in the movie be up there with the USS Indianapolis speech as one of the best scenes in this movie. So for me, it's still a nine and a half, but that's because it's missing that one scene. Michael, how do you score The Empire Strikes Back?

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:22

I think, honestly, that you could probably wrap up the first half battle in The Empire Strikes Back and it would still be one of the greatest films of all time. I think the whole film is near perfect. Is

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:35

it just Lando Carusian's cape that you don't like?

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:38

Yeah, that's basically what it is. And Lobot, doesn't he? The weird bull chap with the implants on the side.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:47

And the Ugnaughts.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:50

Do you know what? It's one of those things where I just can't... nothing's perfect but i can't find it i'm a bit like you darren i can't really find that much wrong with it if anything but it's like i mean we're a zombie podcast aren't we but i mean you could watch that first half battle and then when they fly away and then all the music quiets down you're like i could be done now and i'd still think this is absolutely fantastic And it's only just started.

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:23

So us going off at a tangent basically meant that we actually score quite harshly. So even the best movies, zombie movies we've seen. So if we do last, you know, the dawns and the day and the nights of living dead and the, and the, and those train to Busan's are still, you know, only pushing, you know, seven and a half, eight for us.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:40

Well, I think, I think, I think going back to 28 days, which we have now, Eight and a half. I think we only gave it an eight. And this is something that we both say probably the greatest zombie movie of all time still isn't enough to be remotely near. But if

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:56

we add 28 days later and pro wrestlers versus zombies together, we get a 10.

SPEAKER_02: 1:31:02

It's true. How dare you? That's exactly what 28 Days Later needed, wasn't it? Shane Douglas power-driving someone.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:14

Shane Douglas power-driving the bloody... What are we looking forward to? I mean, I've actually listed a few movies that we've been watching recently. We've got Daisy Ridley in We Bury the Dead is coming up. There's an Australian movie with Richard Roxburgh called Forgive Us All. Not too sure about the Tina Romero Queens of the Living Dead. What are you looking for? And obviously we've got in 28 weeks, we'll have 28 episodes. years later, the bone example. What are you looking forward to?

SPEAKER_05: 1:31:50

Well, I am really curious about that Romero piece. I'm curious about what that... I just want to see where that goes. I'm actually a little bit in shock and or denial because I'd been looking forward so much to 28 years later. And I think that film... might have the best trailer of

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:18

all time. We said that last episode. The trailer was arguably one of the best trailers we've ever seen in this genre for sure. But certainly, we watched that and went, that's what made me excited.

SPEAKER_05: 1:32:29

Yeah, and that's the movie I wanted. 100%. That trailer. And so I had a little bit of a rough ride, like I said. I had to kind of dig in and feel it out. So now I am really looking forward to The Bone Temple because I feel like I got briefly thrown into this other world and then immediately pulled out and said, well, now you have to wait. So I'm really, really curious where that one goes. So, so that is probably the one I'm most looking forward to is figuring out where that goes. Cause this has been a little bit of a downer year. I was so excited about the last of a season two, and then it really was just kind of a downer. It just kind of tanked in my turn, my, my world.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:17

I didn't even bother watching the second season. After the first season, I played the games to death.

SPEAKER_05: 1:33:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:22

don't watch the second season I mean the thing is I had this list like the beginning of the year of movies that I wanted to see the Die Alone was that what it was called the Carrie Ann Moss one was on my list We Bury the Dead Festival of the Dead which is made for the Soska sisters

SPEAKER_05: 1:33:40

yeah it's not good

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:42

made me very angry because it, you know, it didn't just list itself as being the spiritual successor to a, you know, night or sequel to the night of the living dead. It references it all the bloody time and it's shit. So it's kind of tainted it. Um, handling the dead. I was a little bit disappointed with, because it was just so slow. It did feel a little bit like the Danish, uh, what we become, uh, 20 years later was we gave six and I gave six and a half. I wasn't enamored by it. So I've still got Forgive Us All and We Bury the Dead, which I think, I don't know, we'll have to see about those two. Michael,

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:24

go on. I had, I just, my other hat is really, and I've kind of alluded to it already, but my other hat is, is a Frankenstein scholarship. So I'm, I'm in the middle of editing a collection of essays on unfaithful Frankenstein adaptations. And

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:41

so you've got the Oscar Isaac one coming up by, is it, is it? Yeah, I,

SPEAKER_05: 1:34:46

i am very much looking forward to see what del toro does with it and then i'm really interested in the maggie gyllenhaal bride movie um so that's kind of where my current really excited

SPEAKER_02: 1:34:59

where does that where does your um are you going to ask the kenneth question no no the only reason i ask is because i actually didn't mind the kenneth brenner one but one thing I mean I didn't mind it because it got so panned but then the more you read about it and I've read the modern Prometheus Frankenstein it's probably one of the more faithful adaptations give or take a few bits here or there I'm trying not to insult too many people yourself but I didn't mind it but I don't think it deserves to get the pan in it it wasn't as good as it could have been let me just say that but I don't think it deserved the backlash it got.

SPEAKER_05: 1:35:43

No, I don't hate it. And in fact, it's probably my favorite creation scene because it is so overtly sexual. And I like to teach it because it just makes my, my students squirm when they see the, the large sack that's filled with electric eels that gets inserted through a long tube into the, I mean, it's, it's pretty over the top, but the, the whole, the ending with the Helena Bonham Carter stuff, it's pretty unforgivable to me as a fan of the original. So it's a fascinating text. I don't hate it, but it really goes off the rails. But you know, Whatever. And oh, my students love to see, you know, naked Robert De Niro covered in covered in amniotic.

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:30

Did you cover the over here? I don't know if it went over there. Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller. We can't we can't get it. You can't get it. It's not even on YouTube.

SPEAKER_02: 1:36:41

Oh, that's it. That's the thing where they swap. They swapped each

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:45

night to take each other's roles. Because for me, I mean, I didn't see it, but even the concept of them doing that. No, the

SPEAKER_05: 1:36:51

concept's amazing. And I would love to have some access to that. But to my knowledge, it's not yet available. And I've heard them say we're never releasing this on DVD or anything. It was an ephemeral theatrical experience that is now lost to the ages. Um, but yeah, so yeah, I, I like Frankenstein and obviously there's some, there's some overlap because, uh, you know, Frankenstein does have some zombie like qualities. I always attribute the creature more with the, uh, the Jewish golem than I do the zombie, but, um, But yeah, I mean, I traffic in this area. So similar, slightly different. And right now, that's got me a little more excited as a filmgoer.

SPEAKER_02: 1:37:36

And I bet you loved Van Helsing then. No.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:41

I'll tell you what, a movie that I did, we're going to finish soon because we've had a lot of your time. Oh, yeah,

SPEAKER_05: 1:37:46

it's late for you guys.

SPEAKER_03: 1:37:47

No, it's not. We don't sleep. I'm a vampire. Michael has multiple children, so neither of us sleep. Gothic is one of those movies from my teens. Have you seen it, Mikey?

SPEAKER_02: 1:38:01

Which one was that? Remind me.

SPEAKER_03: 1:38:02

It's basically the story. It's got Jodie Richardson, Julian Sands, Timothy

SPEAKER_02: 1:38:09

Spaulding. Yes, yes. So basically

SPEAKER_03: 1:38:12

it's like Byron, the poet Shelley, Mary Shelley and Dr. Polidori getting out of their face on acid in Lake Geneva at Byron's house when he's been banned from doing all the things that Byron did because he was a naughty boy. And just them out of their faces. Was it Ken Russell that did it? Because it felt very... Ken Russell. So it's one of those. It's one of those. I mean, I don't know. I just, I'd never get to talk about that movie. You guys have seen it. What did you think of it? It just, for me as a teenager, it was like, really? They took drugs and this is why she thinks that, what? And he wrote Cassandra, the vampire, and she wrote Frankenstein and

SPEAKER_05: 1:38:52

Yeah, I think a lot of crazy stuff happened that summer. And I don't know how much of it was drugs, but I think there was a lot of it that was sexual. And I don't think they'll ever really know. I don't think they'll know either. But Percy and Byron were really close. We'll just leave it at that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:14

We'll just leave it at that. Actually, let's just leave it at that. Kyle, it's been an absolute pleasure, sir. Tell everybody. I'm honored.

SPEAKER_04: 1:39:24

Well, good.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:25

Deeply honored. As you should. Tell our listeners where they can find you, your podcast. Occasionally I say something and Michael goes, you can't say that. Or that is outrageous was Michael's catchphrase for a while early on. Where can everybody find you? Where can they find your podcast? And what's coming up? You already alluded to a couple of episodes you've got coming up too.

SPEAKER_05: 1:39:50

So I have a, which is normally a solo cast, but occasionally I have guests on and it's called Dead Man Still Walking, which I think is terribly clever. And And it is part of, it's under the umbrella of Jay of the Dead's new horror movies. And on that, so that's the main podcast. Mine is a featured segment. And then I also have a segment on there called The Dead Zone, where I talk about raised dead. ghost films like that, kind of more supernatural films. So that's kind of my podcasting world. And then I do have some academic books out there on zombies that aren't as expensive as other academic books. But I tried to write the definitive survey of the 20th century zombie for my dissertation. And that book is available as American Zombie Gothic, where I make the case that the zombie film is a continuation of the American literary Gothic tradition. And so So that's available on Amazon and stuff for not too much. And I have a second book, which is How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture, where I primarily look at zombie texts from the 21st century that represent a variety of different media and subgenres. So those are my kind of major things. And then, yeah, I mean, I don't show up at Comic-Cons or stuff, but I do go to academic conferences that

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:16

no one's ever heard of. Dressed as a zombie.

SPEAKER_05: 1:41:18

And no one would attend. And I'm glad you mentioned that. I have never dressed as a zombie, but I have cosplayed more than once as a zombie killer because I don't like to celebrate the losers. Okay,

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:33

and just to finish with, if we're going to continue with our library analogy, and we're the reference library, and Steph is the first desk you come to, and Ollie is the index cards, where do you see yourself, sir, in our library of zombiedom?

SPEAKER_05: 1:41:49

I would say that I'm the research librarian. So if people are looking for a particular source or some reference for the paper that was due two days prior, that's me.

SPEAKER_03: 1:42:05

The

SPEAKER_05: 1:42:06

keeper of

SPEAKER_03: 1:42:06

the microfiche. Yeah, that would

SPEAKER_02: 1:42:10

be me. This is another question, though. What would Brian be?

SPEAKER_03: 1:42:15

Brian, we'll have to ask Brian when he's on next. Thank you very much, Carl. It's been an absolute pleasure. And we will be tuning into your podcast too. And ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed it. This was a fun one.

UNKNOWN: 1:42:31

🎵🎵

SPEAKER_04: 1:43:01

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.