Dawn of the Dead (1978) | Zombie Book Club Ep 97

In Episode 97 of Zombie Book Club, Dan and Leah dissect George A. Romero’s seminal 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, exploring its enduring relevance as both a zombie classic and a sharp critique of consumer culture. From the chaotic newsroom to the corridors of the Monroeville Mall, they examine how Romero's undead reflect societal anxieties about capitalism, race, and gender.

The discussion delves into the psychological complexities of the main characters—Peter, Roger, Stephen, and Francine—and how their dynamics mirror broader themes of survival and identity. With the upcoming Living Dead Weekend at the original filming location, this episode offers a timely reflection on a film that continues to resonate nearly five decades later.

Relevant Links:

• Living Dead Weekend (June 6–8, 2025): Event Details
• Monroeville Mall: TripAdvisor Page
• Axios Article on Monroeville Mall's Future: Read More

• Elevator Pitch
  • The Returned by Jason Strutz: https://returnedcomic.com
    
    

Transcript

Welcome to Zombie Book Club

Speaker 1 0:20

Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a mall and the mall has everything you could ever want to consume. I'm Dan, and when I'm not consuming everything in my path, I'm writing a book about an oligarchic government so focused on consuming as much wealth as possible that they allow a deadly virus to wipe out the majority of the population in the massive resource grab and take the opportunity to enslave the survivors to work in their factories for next to nothing.

Speaker 2 0:42

More and more. I think that your book is just a really dark version of reality. Right now, I'm Leah and I have something very important to share with everyone a news update. Oh, when there's no more room in hell, Dan, the dead will walk the earth. Oh, finally, how full do you think hell is right now? You know, I feel like Are we getting?

Speaker 1 1:00

close. You know how you go to a sleepover and your friend has bunk beds and there's three of you and one of you is like I'll sleep on the floor. Well, I think we've filled up the floor space, we've got both the bunks, and there's people now that are like, well, maybe if we all just stand, we could probably fit a lot more in there. So I think that's the stage that we're at. We're a standing room, but we can fit more in.

Speaker 2 1:33

Well, dan, I think when all of the oligarchs have died, we will have achieved a full hell, and that's what's going to bring on the apocalypse, or?

Speaker 1 1:42

salvation.

Speaker 2 1:43

Yeah, I think that's what they call nirvana but that ruins the whole quote from dawn of the dead it does, I don't know maybe, maybe the devil walks the earth for all the other people who love the oligarchs, and then we get raptured like I was told as a child, that the good people would just like disappear from earth yeah, and we leave our clothes behind yeah yeah, we all go naked into the sky yeah, except for that, I never got raptured in all of my nightmares and I just was left, usually in a car with no driver.

Speaker 2 2:14

Oh wow, scary. Yeah, that was like a recurring nightmare as a child. Thanks christianity, you really, uh, taught me some good morals I never had rapt rapture dreams, well.

Speaker 1 2:23

But also I had only learned about the rapture when I was like 30 years old. Yeah, wow.

Speaker 2 2:28

You're lucky to not have that kind of religious trauma. Anyhow, today, if it's not already obvious, we're talking about the original 1978 George Romero film Dawn of the Dead.

Speaker 1 2:39

Yeah, we talked about the remake before and, leah, this was your first time watching it? It was, yeah, it was actually one of my first zombie movies that I ever watched. How old were you? Oh, I don't know. Um, I was. I was probably at the time where I was a little gun psycho, so probably 13 or 14, a little gun psycho.

Speaker 2 3:01

Yeah, I loved guns. You have to unpack that for us a little bit little gun psycho.

Speaker 1 3:05

Yeah, I loved guns. You have to unpack that for us a little bit. What I mean? I kind of still do. You know I've, you know they're fun, um, but uh, yeah, when I was 13 or 14, it was, that was my identity. I just loved.

Speaker 2 3:14

I would just talk endlessly about just every kind of gun when I was 13 or 14, I was in my prime god hating phase after leaving christianity, before briefly becoming a mormon. It's complicated, yeah, it's complicated, yeah, but I just went and looked uh, the last episode we had for the 2004, uh, rendition of dawn of the dead was episode 22 wow, that was a long time ago yeah, it was august or, sorry, november.

Speaker 1 3:38

12 2023 dan wow, that feels like a lifetime ago.

Speaker 2 3:41

A different world of hope.

Speaker 1 3:43

Yeah, I wasn't a citizen yet, and I was still excited about becoming one. Yeah, as soon as you become a citizen, leah, everything's going to be great.

Speaker 2 3:56

Oh God, you can only laugh when it's bad. Out there, we release episodes every Sunday. So Submarine, submarine, I don't know.

Speaker 1 4:03

Submarine.

Speaker 2 4:04

Dive deep into our collection of 90,. What are we at now? 97 episodes.

Speaker 1 4:10

Yeah, we have means subscribed, but Submarine will work.

Speaker 2 4:13

Yeah, and if you're new here, welcome.

Speaker 1 4:14

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for being a new person here.

Speaker 2 4:19

Yeah, before we dive into Dawn of the Dead, we have a author pitch today that I'm really excited to share with you, dan.

Speaker 1 4:25

Oh yeah, I haven't heard it.

Speaker 2 4:27

Yeah, I've only heard a little bit of it. I will say already like shout out. We've had a lot of great author elevator pitches on the show so far, but Jason Strutz for the Returned has given us the best produced one with music and everything.

Speaker 1 4:45

So you're not going to get the chance to put your cheesy elevator music in the background. But what if I do anyway?

Speaker 2 4:47

and it's just it just blends with it and makes it horrible. That would be such a terrible thing to do to jason, who clearly made this with care, so don't, please, don't. Okay, are you ready? I'm ready to listen to the return by jason strats, let's hit the button on the elevator okay, what button are we hitting?

Speaker 1 5:02

um, I'm I just kind of like slap all of the buttons. Oh, there's gonna be a lot of dinging happening. Well, we're gonna get out the first floor that pops up, but whoever gets in next is fucked yeah, jason, you're taking us for a ride, let's go medieval horror family drama.

Speaker 3 5:21

introducing return, a heartfelt horror adventure graphic novel written and illustrated by Jason Strutz. Vale is among a dwindling band of soldiers fighting a losing battle against an army of the dead. As we join her story, a new figure, seemingly directing the extermination of humanity, emerges. There is no time to fight back as Vale and her fellow warriors quickly fall and are conscripted into the dead army Floating above. But still attached to her rampaging form, vale's spirit is forced to bear witness to the horrible acts her undead body commits. Just as she is about to give up, she is saved by the family she thought she'd never see again.

Speaker 3 5:59

After ten years illustrating stories, I am proud to present my first large-scale project I've both written and drawn, featuring a working mother and a work-at-home dad raising a child. Returned is both an emotional family drama drawn from my own experiences, as well as an expansive horror epic that goes far beyond anything you've read before. Returned is a four-part graphic novel releasing twice weekly for free at returnedcomiccom, following a successful March 2025 Kickstarter to print part one. Part two launches on Kickstarter in September 2025. Join the mailing list for free monthly PDF issues and all of your returned news.

Speaker 2 6:39

It's the music for me at the end.

Speaker 1 6:41

So good, like I listened to this and I was like damn Jason. Yeah, that sounds great. That was well produced. Yeah, and you've seen a little bit of it, haven't you?

Speaker 2 6:49

I have read the first issue. Yeah, it's really great. I've got to say kudos to you for both being a good storyteller, jason, and also an artist. That's a rare combination that I find really impressive. I can only do one of those things, and badly, which is the art part.

Speaker 1 7:03

Yeah, and I can only do either of those things badly.

Dawn of the Dead Introduction

Speaker 2 7:06

Yeah, but I think what you've done really well is captured motion in your art. That's a highlight. Go and folks to check it out. It's available for free online. I know I'm going to sign up for the newsletter. I haven't done it yet but we need to. Yeah, and another shout out I want to give to you Bale, the main character, a female character. You know how refreshing it is to see a female character that is not hyper-sexualized. Like they're clearly a soldier, they're a warrior, they don't have, like, booty shorts on, they're not running around in heels. No boob armor.

Speaker 2 7:36

They don't have heaving tits with boob armor. No, they look like a warrior. That's sort of androgynous, actually, because they don't have any of those markings of of what a woman is supposed to perform and how she's supposed to look, and I just find that super refreshing. So that alone, I think, made me an instant fan of this graphic novel series, and also thank you for making it available for free for everybody. So, uh, listeners, go check it out. All the links will be in the show notes yeah, look in the the notes for links.

Speaker 1 8:04

Yeah, they'll be there and uh.

Speaker 2 8:05

Sign up to that newsletter so you can support the kickstarter in september.

Speaker 1 8:08

I know it will be also. You could sign up for our newsletter too yeah, we have one.

Speaker 2 8:15

we've not been doing a good job advertising it, but we recently went by, we dan made one, I made it, and we did actually get somebody. Um another author reach out to us via the newsletter. Yeah, oh, but that's for another time.

Speaker 1 8:27

I'm hoping they'll send us a pitch. I don't know anything these days.

Speaker 2 8:32

I get the emails and Dan just works.

Speaker 1 8:34

Yeah, I come home from work, I crash, and then usually by the end of the week I'm ready to speak with my voice again, but not very well. And at that time Leah informs me of all of the things and I try to absorb it with my brain and it just it penetrates the mush, doesn't, but then it kind of drips out my ear.

Speaker 2 9:01

It's OK, that's how I am with everything.

Speaker 1 9:05

At least you have really good memory for some things.

Speaker 2 9:07

Yeah, like what? Um like how to fix a machine, any machine well, that's more of a trauma enforced memory how to do a radio signal thing. Very typical of me um random, random facts that just live in your brain about mushrooms.

Speaker 1 9:25

Yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't know how much I remember about mushrooms anymore but regardless, we are here.

Speaker 2 9:31

We are doing this. I gotta say it was a hard one.

Speaker 1 9:33

I think you're about a month into working now, dan yeah and starting to feel the wear and tear yeah, so I only have to do this for another seven, possibly eight months.

Speaker 2 9:43

Um, by then I'll probably just be a pile of goo I like you, nice and squishy just a gelatinous corpse with bones sticking out this is making me think about the dead city, uh, methane power lab. Yeah, we just watched. Uh, before we get into it, we just watched episode one of season two of the dead city and um, spoiler, but not really. It wasn't that great. The first season was good. We were going to do a an episode about it actually, so I feel like maybe we should do that before we have it ruined for us by season two. Yeah, we'll talk about season one.

Speaker 1 10:18

Season one was good. Check it out, guys. Yeah, I bet season two is gonna be great, yeah, yeah well, I mean, it's just the first episode we'll see.

Speaker 2 10:28

Today. We are talking about the sequel to the 1968 night of the living dead, which is up there as one of my absolute favorite zombie movies of all time, which I never expected, and so when you told me this was made in 1978, I thought, okay, I have the same level of expectation as night of the living dead 1968 for quality and enjoyment of the film.

Speaker 1 10:46

Yeah, did it live up to that? No, oh.

Speaker 2 10:50

It was pretty good it was still pretty good. Yeah, I enjoyed it.

Speaker 1 10:55

It is kind of interesting sometimes, especially with older movies, when directors have a shoestring budget. A great example would be the Evil Dead. They didn't even have money for gum on that set. Uh, you know a lot of like um indie filmmakers from the 90s, like robert rodriguez and quentin tarantino. Some of their best movies were when they had no money and um, and that's probably what you're noticing between night of the living dead and dawn of the dead is like now that they had money, they're like we're going to get a whole bunch of red paint for blood.

Speaker 2 11:30

It was so bright red.

Speaker 1 11:32

Whereas in 1968, like they had to they had to get creative with their special it was also black and white.

Speaker 2 11:38

So, like you just couldn't see if the color was off, it was just you know gray. If the color was off, it was just you know gray or black. But I I think, um, there's also the fact that, like I said, when I watched night of the living dead with you and then we reviewed it was I had terrible expectations for that movie, because I don't have an attention span. I was like this was made well before I was born.

Speaker 1 11:57

It's gonna be bad I didn't expect you to like night of the living dead, because you know it's. It's an old. First of all, you don't like old movies. But you know what the difference is between the night of the Living Dead, because you know it's an old.

Speaker 2 12:04

First of all, you don't like old movies, but you know what the difference is between the Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. Before we get into the details at a high level, dawn of the Dead had an hour of setup. Night of the Living Dead, you get to the cemetery and shit goes bad. Yeah, you know, you have a really lovely intro scene of the car driving down the road, but then it's crazy. But I don't feel like it's quite as intense. Um, for the first. Well, there's like the intense. Okay, we're diving into it. Let's talk about what it is. You may not have ever watched it. Maybe you're like me and you. This is the first time you've seen it. Probably not I.

Speaker 1 12:35

I want to give a warning. Um oh, because I planned this episode and because Dawn of the Dead is like such an important movie for me and I think so much about it, I've so overplanned. The notes on this want to avoid sounding like we're just reading random autistic facts that I've jotted down in in a in a big, long, 13 page document dan, you've broken the fourth wall.

Speaker 1 13:16

I'm doing it on purpose? Don't do it. I'm doing it on purpose. Now they'll know, yeah, but I, I want, I, I want you to understand that this was a challenge for me to not just completely go off the wall and write an essay about this.

Speaker 2 13:36

I bet you, every single person, is now like can I have the essay? No one's getting the essay. I don't think so because people love your rants, but it was more like a fact dump, an info dump, and Dan's getting the essay. I don't think so because people love your rants, but it was more like a fact dump, an info dump, and Dan's opinions, yeah, but I feel like you've gotten it to a really good place. So what is Dawn of the Dead about? During an escalating zombie epidemic, two Philadelphia SWAT team members a traffic reporter and his TV executive girlfriend seek refuge in a secluded shopping mall. That happens after they fly through the air on a helicopter. It's a really important point there, yeah, and in just a few weeks we will be at the mall where this was filmed.

Speaker 1 14:11

Yeah, we're going to Living Dead Weekend.

Speaker 2 14:13

Monroeville Mall near Pittsburgh. We're going to go to the mall. It might be the last one. There's rumors that Walmart bought it. I don't even think there's rumors. Actually I think I saw a news article.

Speaker 1 14:21

Yeah, they definitely bought it, and they want to turn the monroville mall into a walmart yeah.

Speaker 2 14:27

So if you have not yet made the commitment to come to living dead weekend, now is the time it's happening june 6th through 8th. We're going to be there. A lot of our zombies are going to be there. We've got brandon staraki from avalon comic. Joe salazar, the dead weight. Alice b sullivan and her numerous like she's one of those prolific writers zombie and her numerous zombie books. And another prolific writer, courtney Constantine, is going to be there. So we're all going to be hanging out. You should come. It's not too late. I will Well, yeah, you're coming down. Yeah, I think I'm going to go. I'm not talking to you.

Speaker 1 15:01

You know I love that Dawn of the Dead starts off as such a simple premise, because what you described is exactly what the plot of the movie is. It's very simple, it's just they go find them all. They live in a mall, that's it. There's nothing more to it. But the levels of storytelling within that is what I love about the zombie apocalypse genre.

Speaker 2 15:22

Yeah, and we're going to get a chance to meet some of the actors of this original Dawn of the Dead at Living Dead Weekend. How do you feel about that, dan Um?

Speaker 1 15:30

scared. Why are you scared? Well, meeting new people is scary, oh.

Speaker 2 15:35

Well, if you're listening to this as a Dawn of the Dead zombie actor or grip like Lenny Lies for the movie, you'll know why Dan and I may look at you zombie like and be like hi.

Speaker 2 15:48

I might just run away okay, that's a good plan, but, yeah, lenny lies great, great name, by the way, the grip for the movie is going to be there. Marty schiff and joe shelby, who are both motorcycle raiders, are going to be there. Oh, nice, uh, and a bunch of zombies we'll talk about in a minute. Zombie actors are going to be there, including some of the really iconic ones. Iconic zombies, like for the film. Yeah, oh, this is what we mean by. Dan is tired dan, what kind of zombies are the? The dawn of the dead zombies?

Speaker 1 16:19

well, um, people would call these romero zombies, because george romero kind of invented the, the, the modern zombie. But there's painfully slow. Uh, they shuffle along. They are not getting anywhere fast. No, um, they can be easily knocked over. Um, they retain some memories and patterns from their former life, even though they don't have a lot of reasoning intelligence.

Speaker 2 16:47

Yeah, like, apparently the reason why they're all coming to the mall is because that's where they used to come when they were alive.

Speaker 1 16:52

Yeah, they just know it's important, they want to be inside. I feel like we get that from our dogs, like they know that they want to be inside of a place, and then you let them in and then they're like oh, I was happier outside.

Speaker 2 17:03

Yeah, especially Nero. As he gets older he's not really sure where he wants to be, but he's being a cutie right now, sleeping. Yeah, he is, they're both sleeping. The other thing that's interesting about them is that, unlike a lot of the zombies that I grew up with before, watching.

Speaker 1 17:17

You grew up with zombies.

Speaker 2 17:18

Well, I mean, I'm old now, so in 20 years, yeah, I've grown up with them.

Speaker 1 17:23

I thought you meant like in your hometown.

Speaker 2 17:24

Oh, sadly no In zombie, although my first, I did realize, my first zombie movie was Evil Dead, which we need to do an episode on someday. But what was strange to me is that it's very clear in this movie that they don't care about sound, they're not attracted to it, they're just attracted to meat. And if they're already eating, they're not going to come after you, they're just going to be happily chewing on an arm. And that was really strange for me to see, and that was not as evident in night of living dead they are attracted to sound, um, it's, it's, it's stimulus.

Speaker 1 17:54

So, if you make, that's why they weren't, um, shooting any zombies back in their little abode in the back of the malls, because that would attract the zombies. But it is. It was interesting. In the very beginning of the movie we saw a situation where, um, all of these zombies were eating a bunch of corpses and they didn't care that people, you know, the, the, the, the actors in the movie showed up to, like, one by one, shoot them in the head.

Speaker 2 18:20

They didn't seem to even notice them because they were just fully, fully eating yeah, whereas, uh, the walking dead zombies are like adhd zombies they could be eating, but if you make a loud enough noise they're gonna come. Yeah, they're gonna stop what they're eating and come and get you.

Speaker 1 18:34

Uh, they can also sneak up on you really easily in this world because they're so quiet that's one thing that I love about romero's type of zombies is that, like it's, it's less about them being aggressive or scary and it's more about, like, the characters being aloof and not knowing that they're there, so like they'll just be pumping gas and minding their own business.

Speaker 2 18:57

And then there's a zombie in the in the shot, encroaching on the camera, and you can clearly see that they're just walking very slowly towards the actor, but they don't notice it, which makes it kind of panic inducing another point with these zombies that's important to me is it's the first romero film that I've seen where there's color is their skin is kind of like sometimes it's purpley and sometimes it's gray, uh, and the makeup is you can there's. Their lips are very pink on the inside. They really don't get that close to their eyes so you can see that they're alive underneath. It's not great makeup, yeah, but the actors make up for it. I feel like they've had a lot of great zombie actors.

Speaker 1 19:34

They have fabulous hair.

Speaker 2 19:35

Yes, and great outfits, great outfits. Let's talk about the zombies that are going to be with us at Living Dead Weekend. There's is performed by Sharon Hill and she's going to be there. I'm really excited to meet Nurse Zombie. Yeah, bob Micelucci. I'm so sorry, bob, if I'm saying your name wrong. Another zombie actor is going to be there. Then there's the red leather jacket parking lot zombie, gary Marlott, who will be with us, and you're the zombie girl in the airport chart house.

Speaker 1 20:09

Yeah, there was two kids, I think is the one that you're talking about. That, uh, burst out of a back room.

Author Pitch: The Returned

Speaker 2 20:17

Yeah, let us know if we're wrong, melissa, because that one was played by Melissa Dunlap. But they're all going to be there, but not as zombies, as real people we can, like, shake their hand and stuff. Oh, okay, which reminds me I got us a bunch of hand sanitizer for our table.

Speaker 1 20:28

Okay, good Cause you, because you're going to need hand sanitizer if you're shaking hands with zombies.

Speaker 2 20:33

Also oh yeah, what if they scratch us?

Speaker 1 20:36

Yeah, and also I just imagine that zombie hands are just not that clean.

Speaker 2 20:41

Yeah, that's probably true, sorry, melissa. The fingers that are coming out of my zombie crayons that I make definitely are disgusting, so I don't want to shake those. Then there's the Hare Krishna zombie, which I'd never heard of before, but was such a distinct zombie I had to stop the film and ask you what is a hari krishna?

Speaker 1 20:57

uh, it's, it's, um, it's a form of hinduism that uh came to america in the around 1965, um, I don't know how long it lasted, but they, uh, they tended to show up in public places to try to hand out pamphlets to people to join the Hare Krishna movement. They wore orange robes, they shaved their heads, they had tambourines.

Speaker 2 21:26

This guy had very nice round glasses. He had round glasses.

Speaker 1 21:28

Which is how you know he's smart Round glasses, yeah, round glass, yeah. Um, when I was a kid and I first watched this movie, I I have the distinct memory that somehow I knew that because he had glasses, that he was a smart zombie, and that's why he finds their hiding spot so easily I mean that might be yeah I don't know how I knew that, but I I knew that it. But I knew that it was the glasses. Dan, yeah, it was the glasses.

Speaker 2 21:56

Even at that age we knew the stereotype that four eyes equals extra brain power.

Speaker 1 22:00

Yeah, it magnifies your brain power.

Speaker 2 22:04

One of my favorite zombies is a zombie who gets their head chopped off by the helicopter blades. It took me a minute to even process what happened. I was like where did half its head go?

Speaker 1 22:15

Yeah us what happened. I was like where did half its head go? Yeah, he steps up on a on a box as the helicopter's running and it lobs just the top of his cranium off and then it just starts shooting blood out of the top of his head yeah, yeah, there's.

Speaker 2 22:24

This was interesting because the makeup was so you know, from our 2025 lens obvious that most of it wasn't scary for me, but there were a few things like when the zombies were ripping somebody's guts out, that was really gross. Yeah, watching a zombie getting their head smashed in with a machete was gross.

Speaker 1 22:40

I remember specifically you said I draw the line at guts.

Speaker 2 22:43

I do. There's something about watching entrails getting pulled out. That is like absolutely where I can't handle gore anymore. It's not nice yeah.

Speaker 1 22:52

My favorite zombie is the gun zombie. The gun zombie is the zombie that um in the mall grabs onto the barrel of an m16 while they're trying to get through a door. They have to let go of the the rifle and he just kind of holds it to his forehead the entire movie. He's just walking around with it. I would love to know the story about that because, like, did he know that he was going to do that? Was it in the script? Or did george romero be like well, you did it?

Speaker 2 23:20

so now you have to hold it, now you gotta hold it for the rest of the movie that sounds like some basic training level stuff but at the end he reappears. Yeah and somehow he trades guns.

Speaker 1 23:29

Yeah, he reappears and he grabs a different gun. That's pointing at his head and he likes the new gun better, so he drops the m16 I wonder.

Speaker 2 23:39

He must have used guns in his real life, because he really was attached to his gun maybe yeah, it was kind of cute. He's sort of an adorable zombie he was.

Speaker 1 23:47

I like him. Uh, let's talk leah about some characters.

Speaker 2 23:54

There's four main characters right, the two swat, yeah swat people.

Speaker 1 23:59

So swat officers, officers.

Speaker 2 24:01

We got a helicopter pilot and a tv executive excellent, all right, who we're going to talk about first, dan uh let's talk about the one who's introduced last in in the movie and then becomes the most important character, peter washington.

Speaker 1 24:16

Um, he's a, he's the swat officer he's. He's also just kind of like level-headed and cool about everything he's.

Speaker 2 24:24

He kind of becomes the emotional anchor of the group and the leader I mean he's level-headed until somebody shoots a gun very close to his head.

Speaker 1 24:33

Oh, I mean, I understand in that situation, flyboy, who's the helicopter pilot, tries to shoot a zombie and he's standing on the other side of the zombie and almost kills him and yeah, he gets pretty mad about that, but I think that's understandable. That's, that's coming from a real place.

Speaker 2 24:53

But he is other than that one episode where he points a gun at Flyboy and says, like now you know what it's like to have a gun pointed at your face. Don't ever do that again. Yeah, he does seem like the moral compass of the group. Yeah, and definitely the leader. Definitely, Even though Flyboy wants to be the leader. But we'll get into that.

Speaker 1 25:17

I have also read the book the dawn of the dead, and because I've read the book, I have a little bit of information that they don't discuss in the movie. Um, both of the swat officers were formerly vietnam era marine corps veterans, so they've been through it, yeah. So, like both of them, you can see different types of combat stress, but in the case of uh of peter, it kind of like channels into a protective leadership. He's also, uh, the only black character only main lead black character yeah, and this is um 1978, so this is.

Speaker 1 25:52

This is kind of first. Granted, there's a lot of black cinema at this time in history, but in a, in a feature film in movie theaters around the world, a black character that's not portrayed as either the enemy or sacrificed um is is kind of a big deal, especially when they when he's depicted as being strong, being intelligent and being the leader and the most respectful one of women of the three men that have that's right woman present.

Speaker 2 26:27

And also I think it's cool that george mario carried on that tradition of having a black male lead in the first one and then again in the second one. Yeah, both times being really like just if I was going to rely on a character in one of those movies, this was real. I would trust them the most yeah, um, yeah and even, uh.

Speaker 1 26:44

Even in his first movie night of the living dead. In the end his black character does become a sacrifice yeah in the in in the story. So this is a little bit different, being that he doesn't get treated that way.

Speaker 2 26:59

Yeah, he survives and in fact he survives because he's the best at surviving. I also want to, just as a sidebar, point out that I have seen so few black zombies in zombie films and TV to the point where it is noticeable, where I'm like why are all the zombies white? White? Is it just because it's the extras who are volunteering are mostly white, like what's going on here. And this one had a healthy balance of different zombie, um folks of all different races, which I appreciated. I don't know, I just it's like it's very weird when, like, all of a sudden, the dead people are white. It makes sense when it's blood quantum and it's like um karmic penance. But, like, like in other films, I'm like what is going on here? So that was cool too.

Speaker 1 27:39

Like the Walking Dead that started in the South. There should be a lot bigger demographic than just white people. Yeah, I think that in Romero movies it's not just about being inclusive, but also because his zombies are all characters, they're all unique. They don't just put a plaid shirt on all of their zombies, paint them gray and be like you're a horde now.

Speaker 2 28:08

No, they all have a story to them.

Speaker 1 28:10

Yeah.

Speaker 2 28:11

If you look at them close enough, you can see sort of who they were before, and I like that a lot, yeah they're. They're less of a, a mindless monster and and uh, more of an individual I'll put it this way, george romero zombies have more dimensions to them than many women who are portrayed in zombie media.

Speaker 1 28:28

Yeah, uh, moving along, roger, um, he's the other, uh, swat officer, the one that like you kind of assume is going to be the main character, because he's the white guy, he's the action guy, he's, he's, he's doing a lot of the kicking in doors and jumping over things.

Speaker 1 28:48

So you're like this guy's gonna be the main character, right, yeah, he's gonna make it to the end, um, but uh, the thing about roger is that he kind of is an adrenaline junkie, um, and this is like kind of a, a symptom of his battle stress as well, which is like, uh, back then they called it battlefield euphoria, which, uh, which I didn't know that that was the name for it until I did research for this episode. But it makes sense, because there's a point where you're facing mortality on a daily basis and you kind of get of staying behind cover in a firefight. You run across an open area to get to somewhere else that you need to go, because you're like, fuck it, I'm gonna go, but then you get this huge rush because you're like I lived through it. That's. That's where roger is at, um, and it doesn't go well for him it doesn't, but he's an example right off the bat.

Speaker 2 29:54

I mean there's there's a number of examples of disability in this movie. Right at the beginning we have the black preacher who's missing a leg that's right. And then roger I think if you were listening to this I'm gonna assume you've watched it, but if you haven't spoiler ends up getting bitten and shot. Shot right, not just bitten, bitten and shot. Uh, he gets bitten multiple times. Okay, bitten multiple times, and they take care of him. They see him still having a role in like helping secure them all and protect everybody.

Speaker 2 30:22

They just kind of pull it, push him around in like a cart, a wheelbarrow yeah, I really appreciated that, you know your mobility when it's hard to have mobility, and he plays a key role even when he is uh slowly zombifying he still had a lot of skills that he could contribute.

Speaker 1 30:36

He could still hotwire cars. He could still blow a zombie's brains out. All they had to do was just wheel him around in a car. Just throw him in the back of a car, yeah, and they could just drive around and he would just pop zombies while he's just laying in the back in crippling pain.

Speaker 2 30:51

Let's talk about my least favorite boy of the four fly boy I I love his character because he's he's such a complex person.

Speaker 1 31:00

But steven uh, also known as fly boy, the helicopter pilot and fran's boyfriend, um, he is an insecure male, uh, and I find this really fascinating because it's like you know, we we talk about like alpha males now, like we have we have that word for that um, but I don't know if that was necessarily the word that they used back then, but he very much is the person who would probably call themselves an alpha male. But, as I've found with every single person who's ever told me that they're an alpha male, I found that he is the weakest version of that. He is so insecure and entirely brittle in his masculinity.

Speaker 2 31:50

Yeah, like he doesn't want his girlfriend Fran to learn how to fly the helicopter, because then she helicopter, because then she wouldn't need him. He doesn't want her to have any kind of say in their plans, because I don't think he thinks women have brains.

Speaker 1 32:01

Yeah, he. Just he wants her to play, play her her female role in their group and to just rely on him for protection as the man in their relationship, and to just listen to him and take his lead.

Speaker 2 32:17

Meanwhile, he's the one who makes the most risks, whereas Roger and Peter are usually. Who saves her?

Speaker 1 32:24

Yeah, and he's obsessed with proving himself, which puts him in situations that are really dangerous, and that's because he suffers from this deep inferiority, uh complex, especially when he's around peter and roger, who are very skilled and, um, and actually know what they're doing.

Speaker 1 32:43

So, like we talked about before, he almost shoots, uh, peter, because he's trying to go around, shoot all and shoot all the zombies, but he doesn't actually know anything about shooting a firearm, so he doesn't realize that you have to consider what's on the other side of your target when you're shooting at a zombie.

Speaker 1 33:01

So he just sees a zombie, tries to shoot at it and he doesn't realize he's almost going to kill Peter. If Peter didn't notice that that was happening, yep, and Roger would tend to come up next to him as, as a fly boy, is shooting zombies in the chest like six or seven times, and he would just knock his gun out of the way and then take one slow, steady, aimed shot of the zombie and drop it and, like you could see that he's throughout the movie just being emasculated. He's throughout the movie just being emasculated, but he's. I always feel that, uh, the act of being emasculated is the act of allowing yourself to be emasculated, so he didn't take that opportunity to learn from them, he just instead resented them for it yeah, and he especially resents fran for a long time, yeah, and trying to have autonomy, which is our last main character, tv executive.

Speaker 2 33:55

That's how she knows uh flyboy, whose real name I can always forget steven, right, I just think of him as flyboy, fran and flyboy. Uh. It was interesting is that when uh they're asked what their relationship is, fran says like I think they asked like, is that your boyfriend or whatever? And fran's sort of like sometimes, which indicates that there's already some dispute or tension between them.

Speaker 1 34:18

Yeah, there's a point later where Peter makes a fancy dinner for the two of them because Stephen wants to take that opportunity to propose marriage to Fran, and she's just like so not, not now yeah, like, and you can. You can see his eyes just like ice over with that, yeah, with that uh, resentment and things just kind of go bad from there. Uh, francine, uh, tv executive.

Speaker 2 34:49

She's the only woman in the group yeah, in the beginning, like I'd say the first hour, I was like, really, george romero, I thought you could do better than this super two-dimensional female character, passive just for the most part following the lead of what the men are saying. But then she really does start to be like, hey y'all. Like once they get to the mall, she's like I'm not gonna just make you your dinners. Yeah, I want to learn how to fly. I want to learn how to use a gun. Um, I want to be part of the planning. You can't just like inform me later.

Speaker 1 35:19

Yeah, she has, she has to be included in the plans, yeah, and she has a say yeah, um, but yeah, like you said in the beginning, um, she was, she was passive, but she was also kind of traumatized too, which I think is probably where most people were mentally during that time. But what she brings to the group is emotional intelligence. Her and Peter both are the emotionally intelligent characters where the other two are just emotionally inept.

Speaker 2 35:50

Yeah, the whole time I was kind of hoping her and Peter would get together. I mean they could, they could be in the future. Right, that is, it's not implied, but there's the possibility, because steven's out of the way, well, let's talk about that later.

Speaker 1 36:04

Um, but, yes, uh, one, one quote that I love when she is asserting herself to the group, she says that, um, I'm not going to be a dead mother for you guys. Yeah, and that's such a powerful statement for 1978. Um, and like, because it's 1978, that like I kind of feel like, along with, along with, uh, other types of, like, racial inclusion and, uh, you know, um, gender identity inclusion and everything, this is probably as good as it's going to get in 1978.

Speaker 2 36:39

Let's think of it this way In 1974 is when women were allowed to get their own credit card without asking their husband, in their own name. Yeah, so four years previously. No financial autonomy is available to women in the United States. So, yeah, I think for that alone she represents a lot of the progression. Let's get into the story.

Speaker 1 36:58

Yeah, act one we, uh, I mean, I think most people have seen this movie, but so this will kind of just be like a refresher. But if you haven't seen this movie, um you should, you should watch it yeah, yeah, just you could?

Speaker 2 37:13

You could two times the speed for the first hour.

Speaker 1 37:16

What I love is that it shows in each act. It shows so much that goes into the collapse of society and long-term survival. It's everything that I love about the zombie apocalypse. So in Act 1, this is where order is collapsing. The outbreak already happened back in Night of the Living Dead. We're starting at a place where zombies definitely exist and we're reacting to it as a society. So when we open up in the newsroom, I remember reading this script back when I was first getting interested in writing, like seriously wanting to write and I read the script and I could see it play out just like the movie. And this newsroom scene is so chaotic and it depicts so much that panic and chaos that happens in the first few days of an outbreak and I love it so much.

Speaker 2 38:16

Including the audio, which is horrible, and half the time I have no idea what the characters are saying, because there's just like cacophony.

Speaker 1 38:23

We had to turn on closed captioning 100%.

Speaker 2 38:25

I think the cacophony was intentional. It's just, you know, the audio mixing of the time makes it so that you can't really hear some of the main characters unless you have the subtitles. But it definitely conveyed the feeling of chaos and stress. I will be clear here that I had this expectation in my head, having watched the 2004 John of the dead, that it was going to be the same movie. And so we open up in the newsroom. I'm like what? What is happening? This is not how the more recent one started, so I was a little confused at the beginning more recent one started, so I was a little confused at the beginning.

Speaker 1 38:57

Um, and there's some themes that go with with this uh, media is being shown as this failing institution, so there's confusion, misinformation, uh chaos.

Speaker 2 39:05

Um, they're they're unable to manage a crisis that's unfolding and that they are all individually falling apart, while the institution of the media is falling apart around them yeah, it's interesting that they're prioritizing you know, the one person's prioritizing ratings over actually providing accurate information, and I think that's a little sobering to realize that in 1978 that was a critique george romero had over society. Yeah, and like look at where we are now with misinformation.

Speaker 1 39:32

Yeah, because these? Because what they had is they had a list of safe houses that they were sending people to, but it hadn't been updated in a really long time and they didn't think that they were even, uh, up and running anymore. They thought that they'd been overrun by zombies. So they would be literally sending people to their deaths. If they said these are are safe places, go to these places. And Franny takes it down. She takes it down off the teleprompter or whatever machine in 1978, put words on the screen, yeah. And the TV producer is like you got to put those back up. And she's like are you okay with sending people to their deaths? Like she's saying this live on the air. People can hear her over the over the pa system. And he's just like if, if we take those off the screen, people are aren't going to watch anymore and our ratings are going to go down quick.

Speaker 2 40:27

What would you do? You're watching this on tv unfold. Do you just decide you're going to stay home and hope the the SWAT team doesn't come after you? Yeah, I think so too. I'd be like I'm not going fucking anywhere, let's go to the basement. Baby need some peanut butter.

Speaker 2 40:39

And I'm gonna keep watching this because this is entertaining, yeah I think another theme that it really shows up in the next scene is where they have the project housing raid. Yeah, is um, some big brother vibes like forced displacement? I don't really know that I agree with this idea of what the government was choosing to do at the time and I don't think George Romero did either which is essentially forcing people out of their homes to these quote unquote safe houses and instead of letting them stay. And so we come across the scene where, again, full chaos, where we have a whole SWAT team breaking into a project and by a project housing, I mean like what's it called in the United States, section 8? In fact, I don't even know if the term project housing is derogatory. Let's look that up live.

Speaker 1 41:26

I think project housing is a correct term, but section 8 is like the code that the housing department would use to classify it yeah, that's how.

Speaker 2 41:38

That's what I learned about it, as when I moved to the united states with section eight housing in augusta which, by the way, you could be on a waiting list for years and never get in that place, so still not very great, but regardless. In the movie, the police are coming in and are basically just like forcing people to leave and or opening the door and shooting them outright. Uh, you have a white cop named willie who is clearly racially motivated and just using it as an opportunity to shoot people, particularly black people. Man, every time we do these shows, I'm like we needed a content warning at the beginning of this um and it's really interesting because he already doesn't clearly doesn't see people who are not white as people, regardless of whether or not they're zombies. And I think that there's a clear intention romero has to mirror that dehumanization of black people in the same way that we dehumanize zombies. And it's actually where peter and roger meet and sort of form an immediate bond because they help each other. Take this racist asshole down yeah, there's.

Speaker 1 42:39

There's a scene and I will never forget this scene because it's iconic um, when willie kicks in the door of somebody's apartment and, without even identifying any of the targets inside, uh, fires a shotgun at a black man and blows his head to pieces. And I remember the first time I saw that and I didn't know was that a zombie or was that a living person? And back in the VHS and theater days when you could only see the movie once, maybe you wouldn't know.

Speaker 2 43:10

George Romero was so woke for 1978. He was. Yeah, think about it. Police brutality has been going on forever but as a white person, like it really didn't enter my consciousness, frankly, until 2020, with the murder of George Floyd. Like that's the embarrassing truth, because I've never had that experience, I've never known people who are directly targeted by the police for their race. Well, that's not true. I've known people, but in my inner circle, right like growing up, it was a bunch of other white people, so that was not a part of my reality. But again, like george romero was just calling it all out in this, in this movie yeah and um, yeah it was.

Speaker 1 43:44

That was a shocking moment because, you know, until until you got the, the freeze frame and rewind ability of vcr, but in the in the 80s and 90s, you couldn't go back and be like, was that a zombie? Because it's definitely not.

Speaker 2 43:58

It's interesting. I knew it wasn't a zombie right off the bat, but I think that's because I was so, uh, focused on the zombie makeup, because I'm working on another crown yeah, a zombie crown and I was like taking notes about what I do and don't want to do. So I was like, oh, that person doesn't have a purple face.

Speaker 1 44:13

On a side note, definitely alive about the makeup. I bet when it's when it was on a screen in 1978 and on like low resolution tvs, it probably looked a lot better wow, yeah, I guess we should get a low resolution tv in our bunker.

Speaker 2 44:29

Our bunker needs. We need one of those like wooden case tvs.

Speaker 1 44:33

Yeah we could get them from uh, the mall.

Speaker 2 44:36

That would be incredible. That's exactly. Yeah, the antique mall that's near us probably has one.

Speaker 1 44:41

I'm at the monroville mall we could go and get a floor model tv you think?

Speaker 1 44:44

they're gonna have one of those. Oh, they better. Something I didn't think about until until, literally, we watched it this time is how the zombies and, uh, poor minorities are kind of viewed the same and by. In the eyes of a lot of the people in this universe, there's not a whole lot of difference between a zombie and somebody who's poor. And this wasn't just about consumerism, it was also about class warfare. And even when they get to the mall and they are clearing out the mall of all the undead, the, the zombies still show up to bang on on the doors because they want to get inside. They want to get inside and be one of them inside the mall, but they're on the outside because they're a different class I wasn't paying attention.

Speaker 2 45:40

Let's talk about the helicopter escape okay, I'm so sorry uh.

Speaker 1 45:46

So our four characters meet up, um after after uh taking willie out, um roger and peter become. After taking Willie out, roger and Peter become best friends and decide that they're going to skip town. And Roger knows somebody who's going to steal a helicopter and he's like, why don't you come with us? And they become best friends and they decided to take off. And the person with the helicopter is Flyboy and his girlfriend, fran, and they have no plan they're going to get with the helicopter is fly boy and his girlfriend Fran, and they have no plan. They're going to get in a helicopter and fly away.

Speaker 2 46:19

I mean that's the best plan you've got in that situation. Like, as much as we don't love Steven fly boy man, uh, it's really handy to have a helicopter pilot. It is yeah.

Speaker 1 46:29

At some point I do remember them saying something about getting to Canada. Um, At some point I do remember them saying something about getting to Canada, but that's not until we get to the mall and they're like do you know how many stops it'll be before we get to Canada?

Speaker 2 46:41

Can I say from how hilarious it is so many of these movies and shows it's like about escaping to Canada, as if there's like a magical wall that would stop the zombies from coming in.

Speaker 1 46:49

Well, you don't have a wall Not yet, protecting Canada from Americans? Not yet you don't have a wall Not yet Protecting Canada from Americans.

Speaker 2 46:56

Not yet, but it is very funny that it's like people are like, let's get to Canada. I see it over and, over and over again as a trope.

Speaker 1 47:05

And because they're in a helicopter, we get to see a lot of the things that are going on because they're flying over these things. Because they're flying over these things Like, we're seeing National Guard and police conscripting hillbillies to go out like it's a hunting session. They all have their like orange vests on with their deer hunting tags on their back.

Speaker 2 47:28

Having a great time.

Speaker 1 47:30

They're like here's some coffee, here's some donuts. Go shoot the zombies.

Speaker 2 47:35

I kind of got to give them credit for how organized they were yeah they were doing a better job of self-organizing than the us government was in actually protecting its people.

Speaker 1 47:42

Yeah, um, and then we're also seeing like a lot of the out the outer skirts areas like they land at a few helicopter airports to try to get fuel, and those places have been, have been, uh, empty and dead for a long time. It looks like like completely unmanned um and just signs of like nobody's. Nobody's been here for a long time and this is, this is now chaos. Yeah, so we get to see a lot of the stuff that's going on in the world at that time, which I think is important because it leads you to the same conclusion that they arrive when the world at that time, which I think is important because it leads you to the same conclusion that they arrive when they get at the mall, which is you know what.

Speaker 2 48:18

Maybe we should just stick around here, yeah, for a bit.

Speaker 1 48:21

You find a place with food, water, a place to land your helicopter. Um, you should probably hang out there for a while now it's time to talk about the mall. Yeah, act two baby the illusion of safety Act. Two baby, the illusion of safety.

Speaker 2 48:36

I mean, isn't there always an illusion of safety? Yes, in our reality.

Speaker 1 48:41

Yeah, it's absolutely true. You know, something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is that like there's been this illusion of safety in our society and everyone's like, yeah, there's rules, there's safety, you know, you just put your head down and go to work and then you'll get to 85 years old and then you die of old age. Um, but I think, a lot like the characters in this story, they realize that, uh, that survival is a little bit more complex than that, and in my own life, um, I've I've always felt like in the back of my mind that there's always something lurking that is just ready to change the whole world.

Speaker 2 49:20

Well, I know we haven't reviewed this book yet, but in Parable of the Sower, one of the religious values that the main character develops is God is change, and I think we see that in this film. We see it in Darren Smith's the Undead Symphony we talked about last week. It's this reality that the mall is a safe place for a while, but stability will become unstable and you have to be ready for that change. So the mall is a really good metaphor for that, especially because it's filled with all the things, all the things we're supposed to need and want and desire things, all the things we're supposed to need and want and desire, yeah and uh, I think what we learn is that consumerism is unstable.

Speaker 1 50:00

You know it's, it's, it's good for. It's good for a little while. You know, get all the stuff that you want, um, but it can't last yeah, uh.

Speaker 2 50:08

So they, they fly to the mall. They discover first of all is like how convenient is, how convenient is this? And is this a real thing? I don't know, but they discover a room full of survival supplies, boxes and boxes.

Speaker 1 50:19

It literally says survival supplies.

Speaker 2 50:21

Yeah, like, or something like that.

Speaker 1 50:22

I do think that this is realistic because back before it was called FEMA, the government had a program called COG continuity of government and part of that was being prepared for a nuclear disaster, and one of the things that they would do is they would set up supply zones, usually at schools or in churches or government buildings and I think probably, in this case, malls, where they would supply non-perishable food that would feed a large number of people for a period of time. So I think that's probably what they found when they landed on this mall.

Speaker 2 51:04

Okay, that makes it more believable for me, but how convenient, you know. And then they get into the mall and we watch. First of all have to kill the zombies, which we'll get to, but what I think is amazing is that we actually see them like live out the fantasy of having everything you could possibly want.

Speaker 1 51:20

Yeah, yeah, it's. It is the the temple of consumerism. Yeah, um, everything you could ever want it's. It's kind of funny watching it now, where they're just like. They're like they got everything in this place. It's like like we have Amazon yeah, except for we don't want Amazon anymore. We don't, but we live in a time where we all live in malls. It's just like you just got to wait a couple days for it to show up. You can buy anything. You want anything. You could imagine things that you can't imagine, and you could have it on your doorstep in a few days.

Speaker 2 51:52

If you're an American and you have a little bit of cash. Yeah yeah, it's a pretty weird world that we're in, and the recent whole tariff drama I don't even know what to call it and the threat of having unstable supply is really unsettling for your average middle-class white American, I think, or anybody who has a steady cash income, because we're just used to being able to get everywhere we need with ease. I was. It was what's the word? It was out of stock and I was like WTF and I had to buy it from Amazon. I tried really hard to buy it from another place but then it was gone. Yeah, so Bummer, yeah. But it does make me feel safe that I can just like get the thing I want whenever I want it. And it's really really powerful that the zombies just keep coming to the mall for no other reason.

Speaker 1 52:37

Yeah, inst instinct they, they knew that they wanted to be there and, like the era of the mall, like we don't have as many malls now because, well, because of the internet probably. But, um, but there there was this instinct to go to the mall, like you don't know if you actually need anything, you're not going there because you're like oh, I have to buy pants, I gotta go to the mall. I never went to the mall when I needed to buy a thing really. No, like the like going to the mall. I never went to the mall when I needed to buy a thing Really. No, going to the mall, it's like you're going to pay more for the thing that you want, so you want pants. I mean, I was going to buy those pants at Walmart.

Speaker 2 53:14

Oh, I didn't have Walmart as a kid. We had a place called Zeller's. Oh yeah, You're nodding like you know what Zellerers?

Speaker 1 53:20

is. I've heard of that word, yes.

Main Characters Analysis

Speaker 2 53:22

Oh, weird. Okay, it doesn't exist anymore. It was replaced by targets that then failed in Canada.

Speaker 1 53:27

Yeah, complicated story, um but we went to the mall because it was it was an activity.

Speaker 2 53:33

It was like uh, the thing to do.

Speaker 1 53:35

Yeah, like you could, like you start at the, you walk all the food all at once, um, which is something that I didn't realize I would miss is smelling every food at once, like chinese food next to a taco bell and a pizza place, like all of that at once, um. And then you, then you walk down down the rows and you look into the stores of all the things that you're like, ooh, there's things in there. But yeah, you went there to walk around and look at things. It was like a museum that you could buy the things.

Speaker 2 54:09

I did do that. Sometimes the mall that was close to me as a kid was actually attached to the Zellers and we would go as like teeny boppers. Sometimes my parents would drop us off and we would go to this store called claire's and get like stupid earrings or whatever for five bucks you'll get your ears pierced oh my god, I didn't get my ears pierced.

Speaker 1 54:26

A horrible infection um, another thing that I love about act two in this model is that we start to see, uh, we start to see, like, how masculinity, the different ways that each of the characters approach this. So, like peter and roger are experienced, they're confident, they have abilities that are going to keep them alive and they immediately decide to run off and go find some stuff that they can use to survive. They're like let's go get some stuff. And they have a great time doing it. They're running around, they're hooting and hollering, they're fighting zombies, they're just having a great old time.

Speaker 1 55:10

And Flyboy, who's just so desperate to prove himself, when he wakes up after flying a helicopter for 48 hours straight, wakes up from his coma eight hours straight, uh, wakes up from his his coma and he's like he's like where do they? Where where'd the boys go? And fran's like they left to go shopping and he's like, well, I'm gonna go too. And he leaves her there by herself. So rude.

Speaker 1 55:35

He runs off and he goes into the generator room and he's just like, fucking around in the generator room, finds like he does find keys, and he finds like a layout map and a big binder. So he did find something, but they could have found that later. But he puts himself in serious harm's way as he's in the generator room and there is a zombie in there with him and, instead of being cool and collected like the more well-trained members of his party, he's in out of his depth and he just starts shooting at shadows. You can hear the bullets ricocheting around inside of the room and uh, and he almost dies because the zombie just keeps creeping up on him and eventually gets on top of him and he has to beat his head in with a hammer because he just wasted all of his bullets shooting at shadows good thing there's an entire store full of bullets and guns we discover later.

Speaker 1 56:28

Yeah but you know the the the gun store inside of the mall is a little bit before my time, but like I could, I could totally see that being a thing. I bet you people could smoke in the mall in 1978?

Speaker 2 56:42

definitely. Can you imagine like everything you buy already stinks like smoke. Yeah, but you pick it up from the mall but you also smell like smoke and you don't know? Yeah, because everybody smokes.

Speaker 1 56:52

Yeah, I mean, the coolest ashtrays were the 70s ashtrays, that's true well, you go and you get your, your, uh, your mink coat and it's just, it's just like permeated with cigarette smoke and it he was like hmm, smells like my house.

Speaker 2 57:04

I mean, it wasn't that much longer that I was alive, it was 1984. And by the time I was like 1987, so like a decade later. I was going to bars where there's smoky all the time and I just, you know, inhaled a lot of secondhand smoke anyways.

Speaker 1 57:18

So they secure the mall, they go out, they decide that they have to clear out all the zombies. They got to get all the stuff. It's a fun time, um, and they do a good job. Yeah, and this also, like this, plays into other other themes of of, uh, of masculinity, like this fantasy of control, like they're fortifying their fortress, they're doing they're like killing the zombies and making a castle inside of it.

Speaker 2 57:46

There's also this you know, like there's four, there are four people, and it's an entire mall of things. They don't need all of that, but I can see why that creates this sense of like. We should stick around here and we should protect it, cause they also do. It's where Roger gets bit, but they drive giant trucks in front of all four entryways so that zombies can't come in after they've cleared out, which is really smart too, and roger's death, or well, roger getting um, getting bitten during that is like a perfect example of roger's unchecked masculinity.

Speaker 1 58:19

You know he's he feels, feels unstoppable and he becomes reckless. You know that that euphoria takes over where he's just taking these huge risks, but also because he's so amped up and so so hyper in those moments, all the hooting and hollering just like, completely warps his perception and he starts making mistakes, leaving behind his toolkit, which is why he had to go back in the first place and ended up getting bitten. It's because he started making small mistakes that just kept on adding up and you could see that he was just kind of, he was really starting to lose it in that moment. And then Peter was measured. He was staying cool in those moments because he is more emotionally regulated than Roger and he was trying his best to protect Roger from himself in those moments, but ultimately there was nothing he could do. And then we see how all of their comfort and their wealth, all of the stuff that they have, just turns into complacency. And there's this moment where Peter is questioning what is the point in survival if you're not actually living?

Speaker 1 59:45

Yeah, you're just sort of playing house. Yeah, um, that's something that the raiders call them out for is playing house inside of their, inside of their castle. I think it's time for us to get to the raiders.

Speaker 2 59:54

Let's talk about the raiders we're gonna meet two of the motorcycle gang members at living dead weekend.

Speaker 1 59:58

I'm stoked you think they'll smash our heads in with a sledgehammer?

Speaker 2 1:00:02

I mean, that would be the photo op, wouldn't it?

Speaker 1 1:00:03

yeah, act three, a rubber one, the collapse. So, uh, these raiders see fran and fly boy practicing in their helicopter on the roof, um, and they're like there's a lot of stuff inside of there and we're gonna call them on the radio and tell them to give up all their stuff. And uh, and they, they didn't do that. So the raiders are like you fucked up, now we're gonna come kill you I think the raiders symbolize a lot they do.

Speaker 1 1:00:36

Um, the raiders are the most toxic and unchecked form of masculinity. Like it's all about violence and it's destruction just for the sake of destruction. They're taking joy in destroying the mall and causing chaos and they're and even even their their fight against the zombies instead of like they could have easily just killed all the zombies and gone in there and taken the stuff, but instead they're just having a fun time. They're literally throwing pies at zombies at one point, Like it's a big game to them and they're not taking it seriously at all.

Speaker 2 1:01:10

What's interesting about it to me, though, is like this is an example where there was an opportunity because the mall had plenty of stuff, so maybe there's like 30. I think they say there's 20 raiders, but there's more than 20 raiders. That's just somebody's one of the people's estimates in the movie, but they could have just said, hey, why don't we share them all and you can help us protect it? That was never an idea on either side. Both sides needed to hoard and control and keep the things, but at the same time, I feel like the raiders also critiqued that, because they really had an interest in destroying things.

Speaker 1 1:01:43

It's like they wanted all the stuff, but they also were okay with destroying it, because they represented a different way of living, of like survival on the road and just taking what you need and keeping going yeah, I also noticed an interesting thing too that I never really thought about is like how, um, inside the mall, they're kind of isolating themselves from the outside world and they have all of the comforts, and that is slowly eroding their selves Mentally. It's eroding them and making them complacent and causing lots of depression and anxiety. Yeah, whereas the raiders are on the outside and they're the exact opposite, where they're fully exposed to all the elements all the time and they're fully. They don't have homes, they're on the road and that's how they live now, and they're full aggression and it's almost like they hate that the people inside the mall are existing in this way.

Speaker 2 1:02:47

Yeah, it's, it's a an ideological battle at this point well, it's also a have and have not battle because, like, again, four people have hoarded an entire mall, yeah, and now you have a bunch of people who have been surviving and, honestly, um, are probably much more resilient and able to handle zombies than the folks who've been stuck in the mall for so long. And again, I don't know why, for me, octavia Butler's book just keeps coming back as we're talking about this. But there's a very similar message in Parable of the Sower, because it's about the in the beginning, anyways, it's about these gated communities still surviving. But then you have the people on the outside that are trying to take what's theirs because they didn't have that, um, and so it's kind of a question of like is is anybody actually right? Like, are the raiders themselves evil or are they just also trying to survive?

Speaker 1 1:03:36

I don't know um, I, I think it's both. I think. I think the way that they conduct themselves is not that which makes them on the good side. If they just smashed in, went in, took what they needed and left, that'd be one thing. But they almost relished this fight and they wanted to have a fight and they wanted to cause destruction and chaos that's true, and violence is often the only language left to the oppressed.

Speaker 2 1:04:07

Yeah, and if you take a, if you look at it from like a class metaphor, they're just, they're mocking this idea of security and the only reason those four people have them all is luck and privilege. Not, and you know, yes, they did also work for it, but the raiders did work for it too. I'm not saying I'm team raider, I'm saying it's more complicated than I think I saw it at first. And it's again because of the amazing octavia butler, like I just see and hear a lot of very parallel moments in that story that demonstrate this problem of class and haves and have-nots and hoarding wealth, that everybody thinks the solution is to take what they want. Uh, it's just that in this case the raiders uh, that's their only way of surviving, whereas these four folks just got used to having everything they needed and again sort of became zombified by just having this cornucopia of bullshit around them to try on and wear yeah, let's I.

Speaker 1 1:05:04

I love cornucopia of bullshit.

Speaker 2 1:05:07

Let's have one isn't that our society, cornucopia of bullshit, yeah, um, so yeah, I don't think it's.

Speaker 1 1:05:15

It's easily one way or the other. Like even the people inside the mall, I can't side with them entirely, because they had the opportunity to just allow the raiders to take what they wanted, smash what they wanted and then leave. They had a really good hiding place. They drywalled up the only place that you could get to where they were staying. They wouldn't have found them, yeah, and then eventually they would have left because they don't want to be inside the mall, they want to be on their motorcycles outside the mall. But Flyboy was was like this stuff is ours, you can't take it. He's, he's the one that fired the first shot. Fly boy, the uh angry man, the insecure alpha male who's just uh cracking at the seams, is the one who fired the first shot and then that left peter to have to, to have to finish the fight yeah, I don't think there's another alternative in reality in this movie, because of the realities of capitalism, that the entire concept of a mall is girdered by, like the raiders had.

Speaker 2 1:06:19

the raiders got a raid and the hoarders got a hoard and you're you're put in a position where you got to keep your stuff and so you have to fight. Yeah, so even though I say like theoretically there's this alternative, I don't think that that idea would have occurred to anybody.

Speaker 1 1:06:32

That should be a new question that we ask people Are you a raider or a hoarder?

Speaker 2 1:06:37

I'm definitely a hoarder, yeah, yeah, because I do inherently have this idea that raiding is less moral. But if I was on the side where I needed to raid to survive, would I feel that way? Like I think about my grandpa's stories of going into neighbor's gardens at night and stealing their food so that he could feed his brothers because his dad had been murdered. Oh, your grandpa was a raider. He was, yeah, so it's like it's just it's interesting to think about. He was a tomato raider. Yeah, he mostly talked about potatoes potatoes.

Speaker 1 1:07:07

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a little bit harder to notice as they're underground I don't know you're digging.

Speaker 2 1:07:12

Wouldn't they notice like the dug up potato, put the dirt back. You know, I never asked him. If he ever got caught doing this, I should have missed opportunity.

Speaker 1 1:07:19

Rip grandpa yeah, um, yeah, I think I'm hoarder, but you know, if it comes to raiding, I think that there's like a lot of different moral barriers that you have to think about when you're in an apocalyptic situation, Like, yeah, okay, I'm going to go raid the neighbor's house because they're already dead, they don't need that stuff. I'm going to go raid it.

Speaker 1 1:07:44

Yeah, yeah and then add it to my horde, uh. But then there's like do I, do I attack other aggressive raiders and take their stuff, and that's that's a. That's a moral barrier by itself. And then it's like do I attack innocent people? That's another moral barrier. So it's like, how many moral barriers are you, are you willing down?

Speaker 2 1:08:06

Well, you know, are they fully innocent? They could have seen if there was anybody else alive that could have shared that with them. They had a fucking helicopter. They literally could have gone up and been like do we see any other survivors that we could build a community with? And they didn't. But again, I think it's about the limitation of imagination when you grow up in a system that tells you that you should just take what you want and that there's, there's one way that's more appropriate quote unquote to do that than others. Like it just didn't even occur to anybody in this movie.

Speaker 1 1:08:33

That could have been an interesting story too, because I feel, like Peter would have, would have wanted to find trustworthy people to to help, to help build something bigger, whereas fly boy would have been like, no, then we have to share our stuff.

Speaker 2 1:08:47

Yeah, I'll give a real life example right now. You know I was hoping to push for community solar in our HOA and because of uh, because I wanted that community resiliency. Then, um, I had a series of events happen where I realized I don't think I have the political sway to make that happen in our little community. It's go back to the hoa episode. You'll get a sense of why. And then I realized I don't have the time to make this happen, because the 30 tax write-offs that are available right now thanks to the inflation reduction act that make things like going solar and getting storage and heat pumps affordable for your average person because it just replaces your power bill, is going to probably be gone by the end of this year if the federal administration and Congress on the right side of things and by right I mean the political right get what they want, which means I don't have time to convince my neighbors.

Speaker 2 1:09:42

So in that moment I'm just focused right now on trying to get us as much solar as I can before we can't have it. But I tell myself that I'm a good person because it's okay that I'm not being more aggressive with my neighbors and saying, hey, we got to get this done now. We got to work on this now. We got to get a plan now Because in my mind I'm like well, if we lose power, they can come to our house. But I guess I'm saying it's really easy to start to think about yourself and not others when things feel like they're in a crisis mode, and I just want to own that. I'm doing that.

Speaker 1 1:10:11

Yeah, you know what Moral barriers in each direction. Yeah, how much more moral are you willing to go at the sacrifice of yourself? You willing to go at the sacrifice of yourself?

Speaker 2 1:10:23

Well, I think the lesson in this example, like my solar example, is I should have done more work before it was crisis. I should have done more work to build the community willpower to get it done before. We were at a point where I have six months before the probably I mean it's not said and done yet but probably before the tax credits are gone. So that's my regret. I just want to be as real with you all about the ways that we fail so that you don't think that we're just over here being like the most amazing community contributors ever.

Speaker 1 1:10:58

So this leads to the end, and if you haven't seen the movie yet, this is big spoiler territory. But fly boy dies. Fly boy, uh, he gets shot in an elevator shaft and because he's shot in the arm he can't climb out of the elevator escape hatch. And zombies come into the elevator when the door opens and just they, they just eat them. They just eat them a lot.

Speaker 1 1:11:28

And uh, and because he'd spent so much time in this mall, his zombie self knew that he had to get back to their little safe house, and he knew exactly where that was. And because flyboy turned into a zombie and needed to go back to the safe house, he broke down the drywall facade wall that goes straight to their, to their safe house, and brings all the zombies with them. And uh, peter and Fran have to escape. Um, there's this whole thing about Peter being like I want to stay behind, and then he's like holding a Derringer to his head and he's about to blow his brains out. But then he's peter being like I want to stay behind, and then he's like holding a derringer to his head and he's about to blow his brains out. But then he's like no, I want to live.

Speaker 2 1:12:08

And then he climbs the ladder and escapes I'm glad he did, because now there's a potential relationship between fran and peter and um, and that's that's where the, the movie ends.

Speaker 1 1:12:17

And it's like this ambiguous moment where it's like, well, well, what happens next? And it's just this moment of hope, even though they're like, well, we have almost no food, we have very little ammunition, very little fuel in our helicopter, very little fuel in the helicopter, we can't go very far.

Speaker 2 1:12:34

But Fran can fly it. Now, fran can fly it. Fran can fly. That's like so overt of a metaphor. Fran the fly girl, yeah, fran can get her own credit card. Metaphor.

Speaker 1 1:12:42

Fran, the fly girl.

Speaker 2 1:12:43

Yeah, fran can get her own credit card. Now Fran can fly. Yeah, granted, she's a white woman, and it's probably still a lot harder for everybody else who's not a white woman, but Fran can do it.

Speaker 1 1:12:53

Fran can do it. Yeah, yeah, and that's kind of where it leaves off is just like what will happen next. We'll never know. They might have a happily ever after. They might make it to one of those islands that the cops in the beginning of the movie were talking about.

Speaker 2 1:13:09

I realize we forgot to talk about a really important part of this movie that also speaks to the feminism of the era, which is abortion rights, oh yeah, and finding out that Fran is pregnant, and it's Peter, I think, who?

Speaker 1 1:13:24

asks her if she wants to keep the baby. He's talking with fly boy and roger in the other room oh, they're talking about it without her yeah, I forgot that. And he's like do you want to keep it? And uh and fly boy's like I don't know, and he's good. And uh and peter's like because I know how to do it, I can do it.

Speaker 2 1:13:41

Um, very handy guy well, I think the fact that he knows how to do it indicates, uh, the reality of the time, which is hold on. When does roe v wade? It's right around there, isn't?

Speaker 1 1:13:51

it 74 1973.

Speaker 2 1:13:53

Oh, so this is so five years after the supreme court decision that allows abortion as a right. Um, this is happening, so you can imagine somebody like peter coming from a black community where, already, health services are probably not as available as they should be in a world where abortion is not okay, seems like the kind of guy who would help a woman out. Yeah, it's interesting, um, though, that they point that out and that they presented as an option. That is okay and was probably pretty bold of romero yeah, yeah it was.

Speaker 2 1:14:24

It was definitely bold, because this was not a conversation that was happening yeah um in in mainstream film anyways the reason it came up for me is because I was imagining a world where, like maybe, peter is raising fran and steven's baby as his own yeah or maybe they have their own babies yeah, I mean he might be helping fran raise his child, or maybe fran doesn't make it and peter has to raise it himself.

Speaker 1 1:14:50

Yeah, that's a whole different movie that is. And uh, yeah, I, I kind of wish that people threw more money at george romero in the 70s, because I feel like he could have made so many movies, so many sequels and spinoffs with the already existing stories that he wove.

Speaker 2 1:15:09

The more that I think about his work, the more I want to know more about him and what went behind his decisions to make these movies, because there really is so much more than meets the surface eye.

Speaker 1 1:15:19

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:15:20

And I've got a deep appreciation for that. So I think we should do a way back playback right now and give donna, the dead from 1978, some zeds oh, I mean, how, how could you not give it 10?

Speaker 1 1:15:31

I feel like it's like, like it would be like sacrilege to not.

Speaker 2 1:15:36

I feel like you're setting me up to not be allowed to give it 10, which is which is threatening my autonomy, dan I didn't say anything.

Speaker 1 1:15:43

You just said you're, I'm not allowed.

Speaker 2 1:15:46

Uh, it depends on your religion, I suppose is your religion romero, yeah, romero is god romeroism um, I don't think I'd give it a 10 because I gave night of the living dead a 10 and I didn't enjoy it as much. It's a good movie. Having thought about it, I appreciate it even more. Um, but I think I'd give it a solid eight. Yeah, just because my attention span, like it, was a two hour two and a half hour long movie, something like that, definitely over two hours, and the beginning was really interesting, but there was, I think, the a big part of the first act could have been cut and we still would have had a good movie at like 90 minutes I mean, I liked all that stuff.

Speaker 1 1:16:25

I think, where I would, I would uh take off points and I mean you're not allowed to take off points, that's right because I'm a romeroist, um, but uh, you know it is 1978 so I give it some, uh, some, some leeway.

Speaker 1 1:16:39

But like the sound, the sound quality was awful, yes, um the sound effects quality, like gunshots and things like that were also terrible. Uh, visual effects were, um, not great. A lot of the, a lot of the cuts are really hard. A lot of the editing is is is rough. Um, the makeup, the makeup some of the acting of, of the, you know, of some of the actors like uh, the police officers that they meet on the airport runway when they're making their first escape, fucking awful, like howdy duty level fucking cops, where they're like, like where are you heading? And they're like and fly was like straight up and the guy like looks like a, like he almost like crosses his eyes because he's trying to act so stupid and he's like, oh, okay I'm gonna go somewhere else.

Speaker 2 1:17:34

I think the entire scene of them interacting with those cops who decide to go to the boat could have been cut. That could have been cut, yeah and the book.

Speaker 1 1:17:40

It was written a lot better, um, and it seemed a lot more, a lot more menacing. The book came after the movie, right yeah, it's a novelization.

Speaker 2 1:17:48

So somebody was like I'm gonna fix this. Yes, george romero fixed it. Judge merrill wrote it, george romero wrote yeah, okay, you're going to keep that because I said it so fast. Yeah, yeah, well, everybody, I think that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the show and that maybe we get to see you at living dead weekend yeah, maybe, yeah, come to living dead weekend.

Speaker 2 1:18:10

Um, that's where we're gonna be, we'll be living and we're living dead dead it's true, I'll be dead I have so many zombie stickers, somebody come buy them yeah, who wants a zombie sticker?

Speaker 1 1:18:21

I do. Who wants a zombie?

Speaker 2 1:18:23

shirt well, I'm gonna be wearing those. I do. Who wants a zombie shirt? Well, I'm going to be wearing those. Yeah yeah, I also have a unicorn shirt that says eat the rich. It's got a unicorn and a rainbow and I saw it online. I was like this is made for me. I got to spend money to demonstrate how much I'm against consumerism and capitalism.

Speaker 1 1:18:37

Yeah, and we'll go to a mall.

Speaker 2 1:18:44

Although it was from a company that I I believe in. But, yeah, let's go to the mall. Let's go to the mall. This will be our first time in a mall in like oh yeah, seven, eight years for me.

Speaker 1 1:18:49

For me, I think the last time I was in a mall was like 2011, I think 2018 for me.

Speaker 2 1:18:53

Yeah, that'll be an experience. Thanks everybody for joining zombie book club. Yeah, you can support us?

Speaker 1 1:18:59

yeah, you can support us. We love your support. Yeah, we eat it right up. Yeah, um, you could, you can support us. We love your support. Yeah, we eat it right up. Yeah, you could give us a review? Five stars, please. Love it. Love having five stars.

Speaker 2 1:19:10

Yeah, and if you don't want to give us five stars, you can just give us a review. Yeah, you can just go away, because the little tiny points really make a difference with people who do want to find us and listen it does.

Speaker 1 1:19:20

It's one of the only ways that we can find new listeners is by having a rating and reviews. Yeah, that's how people find us.

Speaker 2 1:19:29

Yeah, also instagram, which you can kind of find the zany book club podcast on instagram.

Final Thoughts and Movie Rating

Speaker 1 1:19:34

Yeah, also you could send us a voicemail. That's what I was gonna say yeah, where are they gonna send it to?

Speaker 2 1:19:39

614-699-0006. That is officially memorized. Yeah, I think it's one of the few phone numbers other than yours and mine and my mother's that I know. I don't know my mom's I'll see.

Speaker 1 1:19:53

You can sign up for our newsletter. Um, I'm I haven't actually put out an actual newsletter yet, but you can sign up for it and you will get it when I send it.

Speaker 2 1:20:03

It's a good way for us to stay in touch in case all of our social media platforms disappear, which is a very likely scenario. Yep, because, speaking of stability, the idea that Instagram is always going to be where we are or where anybody is is an illusion.

Speaker 1 1:20:16

Yeah, we might be pushed out of Instagram and forced to go to a safe zone.

Speaker 2 1:20:23

Yeah, I will say briefly that I rediscovered an author that we had been talking to from like seven months ago and they hadn't shown me a single thing of hers on Instagram in seven months, wow. And then I was going through our DMs and I was like, oh yeah, what are we up to? And then I saw they literally had a book coming out soon.

Speaker 1 1:20:39

Wow. So yeah, Instagram sucks the algorithm clearly sucks, because I want to talk to this person. They must have had some opinions that meta didn't agree with. Must have. Yeah, um, you can also join the brain munchers collective discord. Uh, all the links. They're in the description.

Speaker 2 1:20:56

There's a description down below, and don't forget, check out jason strutz, the return, all of those things are there. It's a free, every bi-weekly graphic novel that you can get straight to your inbox wow, bi-weekly yeah, wow yeah, I gotta give a shout out to the returned and days worth living for providing free zombie content.

Speaker 1 1:21:14

We love y'all yeah, I love, I love free. That's my favorite price um. But thanks for listening everyone. The end is very, very nigh.

Speaker 2 1:21:23

I won't sing the song.

Speaker 1 1:21:24

Bye-bye, bye-bye-bye.

Speaker 2 1:21:28

Dan did it Bye-bye-bye. Don't die, don't die.