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Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
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Day of the Dead | Zombie Book Club Ep 99
In this episode of Zombie Book Club, Dan and Leah delve into George A. Romero's 1985 masterpiece, Day of the Dead. Set in an underground bunker, the film explores the psychological unraveling of a group of scientists and soldiers amidst a zombie apocalypse. Central to the narrative is Dr. Sarah Bowman, who navigates a world rife with misogyny and military aggression, and Bub, a zombie exhibiting signs of intelligence and emotion, challenging the very definition of humanity.
The discussion also highlights the groundbreaking special effects by Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero, and examines the film's commentary on societal issues such as racism, sexism, and ableism. As Day of the Dead marks its 40th anniversary, this episode offers both a nostalgic revisit and a critical analysis of a film that remains profoundly relevant.
Contact Information & Relevant Links:
- Living Dead Weekend: Monroeville (June 6–8, 2025)
Website: The Living Dead Weekend
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Facebook Group: The Living Dead Weekend
Film Information:
- Day of the Dead (1985)
IMDb: Day of the Dead
Wikipedia: Day of the Dead (1985 film)
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Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is an underground science lab and the army is there and they hate science. I love science, I hate science. We're at odds now.
Speaker 2:Let's get a divorce. It's over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Get out of the underground bunker Leah.
Speaker 2:That's what we're recording right now. I'm not leaving Fine.
Speaker 1:I'll leave. Then Okay, I'm Dan. And when I'm not leaving, fine, I'll leave. Then Okay, I'm Dan. And what am I doing? Science in my own underground bunker. I'm writing a book about a zombie apocalypse, and it could have been easily avoided if not for government and military mismanagement under the crisis.
Speaker 2:Under the crisis. They're underneath the crisis. You heard me and I'm Leah and yes, I just watched Day of the Dead for the very first time yesterday, may 25th. I'm Leah and, yes, I just watched Day of the Dead for the very first time yesterday, may 25th. I'm going to timestamp it May 25th 2025 was the first time, but not the last time, I watched Day of the Dead. I am a late bloomer to the apocalypse. Please forgive me, bub, I love you.
Speaker 1:I love you, Bub. Bub has no forgiveness in his heart.
Speaker 2:Yes, he does Not anymore. If I befriended him like Frankenstein did, he would.
Speaker 1:That he does not anymore.
Speaker 2:If I befriended him like frankenstein did. He would, that's true, but he might. He might be fully rotted by now, because it is a 40 year anniversary, it is of day of the dead yeah, you want.
Speaker 1:You want to know a fun fact about day of the dead yes um, I watched day of the dead for the first time a long long time ago, by downloading it on limimeWire probably, and I really haven't seen it since then because I decided back then when I was a young boy, how old were you?
Speaker 2:LimeWire like 16? I don't know.
Speaker 1:I was in my early 20s. But yeah, I was, like you know what, not my favorite Romero movie. I don't know if I even like it, wow. So I didn't watch it again. So when we rewatched it, this was the first time in like almost 20 years probably, that I've watched this movie and realized, wow, it's actually great and it might be my favorite Romero movie. Now I think it is mine.
Speaker 2:And it's also George Romero's favorite movie of the series, so I feel like that says a lot yeah, yeah definitely. If you're a total newbie like me, this episode is going to be like a crash course in underground bunkers, sentient zombies and 80s era military meltdowns. But if you're a die-hard romero fan like dan although now I'm realizing you won't have that much of a nerdy refresher because you threw this one in the bin- yeah, I was I was like I'm not smart enough to understand this in the garbage.
Speaker 2:Oh, I think we may have just made everybody who found us at Living Dead Weekend turn this off.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, I took it back, though I definitely am. I'm a huge fan, though, that's true. You know when in life you start off with this brain that you're given when you were born? Yeah, it's a fresh brain and much like Bub. Over time it can learn new things, and the first time I watched Day of the Dead, my brain was a rotting, shambling zombie brain.
Speaker 2:Your brain was post-Afghanistan brain, so I can see that you probably were like I want more violence and less existential questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I probably didn't like it because they were underground the whole time. It's not a good feeling, but I think that was intentional, like that's the idea. It's like, yeah, it sucks down here, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's surrounded by cinder blocks. Yeah, it's not cool, four miles underground or something like that. If you haven't guessed it, we're talking about Day of the Dead today. George Romero's 1985 film, oh really, yeah, right in time for our very first Living Dead weekend that we're going together. Yeah, this will be coming out the weekend that that event is happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's probably coming out right as we're talking to somebody and they'll they'll look, they'll check us out, They'll look us up and they'll be like, wow, they put out this episode where they recording this at the booth when I was talking to them. And no, we recorded it two weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, unfortunately we have not cracked time travel working on it.
Speaker 1:Oh, you know what I mean. It would solve so many problems.
Speaker 2:And if you are at Living Dead Weekend right now, you should come say hi to us, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're hearing this, While we're here. Yeah.
Speaker 2:If it's the past, you should come say hi to us via our newsletter. Yeah, or subscribe, or so. I'm so sorry. Sub Scooby-Doo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wrote it today. One of these days we're just going to say subscribe, I just did. One of these days we're just going to say subscribe, I just did. Yeah, you did it by accident. I'll edit it out, don't worry. Okay, I won't. Let's talk about this movie in case no one's ever seen it before. It's possible. It's possible that no one's ever seen this before. I feel like most people know what Dawn of the Dead is, because there was a very popular remake of it. Everybody knows what Night of the Living Dead is, because there was a very popular remake of it. Everybody knows what Night of the Living Dead is, even if they've only heard of the title. But Day of the Dead might have gone under their radar because, you know, like me, when I had a rotting zombie brain probably didn't talk about it highly enough to people who were like what are some good zombie movies? I don't know where I was going with that. Anyways, people might not have seen this movie, and they should. They should if they like Romero movies.
Speaker 2:I'm a really late-to-the-party Romero fan, but I'm a big fan now. Yeah, I replaced my horse habit after my horse died with zombies. I've realized, and all the love I had for my horse I now have for George Romero, and all the love I had for my horse I now have for George. Romero and he's also dead, so at least I can watch the movies.
Speaker 1:Is there a Leah subplot where Leah is trying to bring things back from the dead? Possibly Is this something you should talk about with your therapist.
Speaker 2:I mean it hasn't entered my dreams yet. So I think I'm okay, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, the second you have a zombie atlas. Combo dream, combo dream I've had atlas dreams.
Speaker 2:Atlas is my horse, for anyone who has not heard me uh lament about him in previous episodes. Or my now dead horse, unfortunately not undead yeah horse, or maybe fortunately. I guess it depends if he, if atlas was like a bub zombie horse, then could be great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he'd live it up if he was a bub horse.
Speaker 2:He could even be more compliant and undeath than life, because he was very stubborn.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think a whole lot would have changed. His feet would still smell horrible.
Speaker 2:That's because he had abscess problems and he might chomp on your arm instead of a carrot.
Speaker 1:He would continue to have abscess problems, except he would try to be eating us while we're fixing it.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's how I had the horses to zombie pipeline. Happen for me was the putrid smell of Atlas's hoof abscesses in the last six months of his life that I was constantly dealing with, which is not why he died, and I feel like this has gone really sideways.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've gone really off the rails here.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about Day of the Dead. Dan, give us a quick rundown.
Speaker 1:What is this movie about? Oh well, if you've never seen a zombie movie, this is a world overrun by zombies. So try to imagine that there is a small group of scientists and soldiers trapped inside of an underground bunker I think it's a missile silo and they're trying to find a solution to the outbreak, exploring multiple avenues for that. Of course, tensions rise as the military becomes more aggressive and unstable, while the scientists, especially Dr Logan aka Frankensteinstein, conduct experiments on the undead Very unhinged experiments. I totally forgot about the zombie that has his entire skull removed and only the brain and stem are attached to a body.
Speaker 1:It's deeply disturbing but honestly amazing to see, I mean if you're going to do I mean if you're gonna do science, that's how you do science or the other zombie that he had taken out every single organ except for the brain yeah including the stomach, and that was still hungry yeah, I, I get that relatable dan relatable.
Speaker 1:Uh, one of the zombies, bub, shows signs of intelligence and memory, challenging the idea that the undead are mindless. Meanwhile, the group fractures under pressure, leading to a brutal showdown between the living and the dead. The film ends with only a few survivors escaping to a remote island as civilization collapses, which is actually kind of a bit of a change from the previous two movies, that kind of end with the unknown With the unknown, some kind of hope possibly. Well, the first one ended pretty dark. Night of the Living Dead ended with like hey, here's what racism looks like. And Dawn of the Dead is like. It ends with like hey, let's, we're fucked, but let's ride in a helicopter and go somewhere, I guess.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, day of the Dead ends at an island. Maybe Jamaica, we don't know, could be. It looks very Caribbean and lovely. Or maybe it was just the Keys in Florida, since it is based in the Keys.
Speaker 1:Or not the.
Speaker 2:Keys Florida.
Speaker 1:I believe that they were located somewhere near Miami, so they've got a lot of choices. I feel like going to Jamaica would probably be a bad idea. Highly populated.
Speaker 2:Before we get into this movie, I have to name one thing that was not believable about it. I don't believe there's a bunker in Florida. Yeah, I just I don't think you can dig that deep in Florida without hitting the ocean, so underground water.
Speaker 1:That's all I'm saying. Well, I don't know if it's true or not. Will to dig bunkers? Probably would have battled that at any cost to the American taxpayer.
Speaker 2:Throughout central Florida. The Floridian aquifer is 100 to 200 feet beneath the land surface. I thought this thing was a couple miles deep they referenced, but it was actually filmed in a bunker in Pennsylvania, even though it was in Florida.
Speaker 1:All of the shots of the main elevator and the missile silo actually filmed in a bunker in pennsylvania, even though it was in florida, um, I mean all of all of the shots of, like, the main elevator and the missile silo doesn't give me the impression that they're miles below the surface okay, so they could be 50 feet below the surface and this would work.
Speaker 2:I'll, yeah, I'll take it.
Speaker 1:I'll take it yeah, the silo itself might be like a hundred, um, possibly, uh. But I mean I I think like when they were building stuff like this between the 1950s to the 1980s for the Cold War, like they didn't give a shit what kind of, what kind of costs they would incur. They're like no, we need a missile silo. I don't care, I don't care if it's in the middle of a lake. Drain the lake, just get the lake out of there. Middle of a lake Drain the lake, just get the lake out of there. Put a missile silo in, bring the lake back.
Speaker 2:That does sound like an American thing to do. You're right, dan. It's the 40th anniversary of the movie 48th, 40th, 40th, 4-0-t-h. 40th and a bunch of the actors, cinematographers, creators of the film are going to be at the event. Yeah, are you more or less nervous to see them than the Dawn of the Dead actors? Oh, you're standing in front of Greg Nicotero now.
Speaker 1:I mean that would be pretty cool because I mean it's a lot, I'm nervous to meet everybody. I you know, being that we have a booth there. I don't, I don't know, I don't know if, like, are we going to be able to see these things Like I don't like what's going on, I don't know, I don't know what we're doing.
Speaker 2:I can sit at the booth while you go shake Greg.
Speaker 1:I'm getting stressed out already.
Speaker 2:You can shake Tom Savini's hand, greg Nicotero's hand, michael Gornick the cinematographer's hand. You can offer them hand sanitizer after you've shaken their hand. Shook, their hand. Shook, shaken, shook. I feel like it's shaken bacon or like shaken chicken. Anyways, shake and bake, and bake.
Speaker 1:Shake and bake.
Speaker 2:Anyways, you can shake their hands or wave at them. I might just wave from a distance. So for anybody who is clueless like me, prior to this movie.
Speaker 1:Who's tom savini? Greg nicotero and michael gornick. So tom savini has been um involved with george romero since the very beginning. Tom savini was the special effects makeup artist. Uh, so he, he did the makeup for all the zombies. He does all the gore. He does like the all the the torn apart carcasses on the ground. He does stuff like that. Prosthetic makeup is, uh, is is the official title, um, and he's a master of that. Tom savini also played the leader of the motorcycle gang in Dawn of the Dead. He also played many other roles. He played the role of Sex Machine in From Dusk Till Dawn. He was a guy that was a motorcycle guy and he had a gun that came out where his dick was. Wow.
Speaker 2:That is probably so many dudes' fantasies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he had a gun for a dick.
Speaker 2:Although, wouldn't it be kind of problematic, because then you can only use it for one thing and not the other thing? Yeah, well, it was a codpiece.
Speaker 1:A what A codpiece.
Speaker 2:What's that?
Speaker 1:It's like a cup that goes over the dick in his house. Oh, so you're saying there's a dick under there? Yeah.
Speaker 2:He wears it on the outside.
Speaker 1:He didn't replace his dick with a gun. I thought it was like a cyborg dick situation. But yeah, he's very recognizable, he just has that face. He also directed the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's really interesting about the relationship between Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero? Greg Nicotero you might have seen in the credits of the Walking Dead, like every season, again, as a prosthetic makeup artist, as an executive producer, as a writer, as a director, as a camera operator, as a stunt coordinator Also, he plays as a stunt coordinator, um, also, he plays roles of zombies, sometimes like he played the role of the zombie eating a deer. And the walking dead, season one, episode three, tell it to the frogs, Wow, uh, so he, he likes to dress up as zombies. Anyways, my point is is that Greg Nicotero got his start in the film industry as tom savini's apprentice in this movie day of the dead. This was his first film credit and since then he went to go work on pretty much every 80s horror movie up until you know modern times, as as a special effects makeup artist. Um, so, like Friday the 13th, uh, the fan, uh, phantasm two, um, I mean, you name it. He was probably in it from dusk till dawn.
Speaker 2:This is what I mean by I'm the newbie and Dan's the nerdy. Yeah, newbie and nerdy over here. Well, I mean, I just learned this today oh well, you're repeating it like you've done it forever, like this is not show notes.
Speaker 1:I memorized the Wikipedia.
Speaker 2:Okay, this is the man I married. I love you. Yeah, it's amazing. Michael Gornick, the cinematographer of the film, is also also loved on the dead, but not as much the 1978. When we reviewed a couple episodes ago, I was most excited to meet folks from night of the living dead. Now I am fully nerded out and nervous to meet everybody from day of the dead because I want to ask them questions and I want to be like will you come on our little podcast?
Speaker 2:yeah, please so yeah, please uh, because I just now I'm really curious what it was like to be there making this, making something so iconic, and like I wonder if they knew at the time just what they had done.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I don't know, like. I mean, how many times have you done something in your life where you're like this is significant and I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life and it's changing everything right now as I live it?
Speaker 2:I mean, that's happened in my life, but nothing that is changing the fucking culture of the world around me and it has a 40-year and like is a cult classic. That's a little different. I've had like momentous life moments for me, but I don't think anybody else would be like, hey, leah, it's the 40th anniversary of that time. You met dan on the internet, on icq we're not that old not yet. How many wait? How many years has it been now, though?
Speaker 2:let's not say okay, well, if anybody knows what icq is, that'll date us all by itself. Yeah, let's get into the main characters. Yeah, also many of them at living dead weekend. I'm getting so nervous, yeah I, I loved the characters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, you know I watched so many movies where I'm just like I don't really pay attention to who's who, because a lot of times there's just characters that aren't written very well, but this movie, it's like everything was alive in this movie. Let's start with Dr Sarah Bowman, the main character, the only woman in the bunker, the only woman Unfortunate, the only one unfortunate for her, isn't she?
Speaker 2:yeah, yes, you're right, and she's trying to research the cause of the zombie outbreak, uh, and we'll get into her in great detail. But laurie cardill oh, I really should look at these people's names because it's gonna be even more embarrassing when I say it wrong. But laurie's gonna be there. The actor at living dead weekend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, terry alexander, who plays john fly boy but a way cooler fly boy than donald the dead way cooler fly boy um the group's helicopter pilot and jamaican and the only black man in the bunker yeah, also going to be a living dead weekend also going to be a living dead weekend. Um bill mcdermott, the only irish man, the only irish man, they I was gonna say the only alcoholic, but I don't think that's true.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of people were. Yeah, devolving into alcoholism, yeah, I forget who it was.
Speaker 1:Was it private steel? Who's who, like?
Speaker 2:criticized uh bill's bill for being an alcoholic while throwing an empty beer can at him well, jarleth conroy, the play, the actor for bill mcdermott, is also going to be at living dead weekend yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:The note here is the group's alcoholic radio operators. It's like these are, these are your, these are the things you are. Um, uh, sherman howard who plays bub, a uh, friendly, captured zombie. Zombie taught by Logan to engage passively in human behavior.
Speaker 2:Also going to be a living dead weekend. That's the one I want to meet the most, because I think that he killed it. Yeah, playing a zombie with feelings yeah, also like zombie.
Speaker 1:Really well done. How does he do that with his mouth? His mouth looks so like slack and, like I don't know, like most mouths seem like firm and rigid in some way, like they only make certain shapes his mouth makes.
Speaker 2:So many shapes. So when we go and meet sherman howard we're gonna say can you make the bub mouth for us? Show us your mouth apparently he was credited as howard sherman on the film, but his name is sherman howard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know maybe, maybe we have, but I think it also says howard sh. I don't know, maybe, maybe we have, but I think it also says Howard Sherman.
Speaker 2:I don't, yeah. Now I'm like who is where? I am D M, b, I am to be MB. Um, yes, his name is actually Sherman Howard, not Howard Sherman, but I can see how somebody might mess that up in the credits.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I, yeah, I mean, why not? Why not just switch it up? Sometimes he looks like a lovely guy on the internet. He's wearing this lovely like a lime green fedora. He's got a nice beard like yours. Can't wait to meet him. Um, in the movie he also had great style as bub.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I next character, terrifying captain henry rhodes. I feel like I've I knew people like this in the army joseph pilato. Maybe this is why I didn't like this in the army, joseph Pilato. Maybe this is why I didn't like this movie when I first watched it when I was a kid. I'm like this is too real.
Speaker 2:I love how you keep saying when you were a kid, but you were like 26.
Speaker 1:I was such a kid. He is an increasingly mentally unhinged officer and the self-appointed leader of the military group. Yeah, so after the major dies, they all come back and they're like major's dead.
Speaker 2:I'm in charge now yeah, this guy's so unhinged that because sarah wants to leave a meeting early, he decides he's going to kill her and the only way she doesn't die is because she sits back down. Yeah, and he was serious about it. I think he really would have shot her yeah, he was.
Speaker 1:He was fully prepared to enact corporal punishment. Actually, he was ordering private steel to shoot her and then, when private steel just joked around about it because he thought that it was a joke, because he thinks everything was a joke, um, uh, captain rhodes threatens to execute private steel for not following his order. So yeah, he, he is full on. Just, he's going full corporal punishment. Yeah, then there's a whole bunch of privates that we didn't. We don't have them all written down.
Speaker 2:But one of them will be here at Living Dead Weekend Tasso and Stavrakis Private Juan Torres.
Speaker 1:We played Torres. I mentioned Steele, I think another one was starts with an R and the only word I can think of is ratso. And it's definitely not ratso, but he kind of had that kind of like ratso vibe going on. He had a high-pitched, insane laugh.
Speaker 2:I think the most important private is miguel salazar, though for the movie yeah he is fucked up yeah, he's been deeply just disturbed by his reality, seeing his comrades die, watching the world fall apart and being stuck in a bunker. He is, as uh captain rose points out, the only man getting laid because he is sarah's lover yeah and I would not be that crass. This is, this is uh, captain roads saying that they.
Speaker 2:They definitely discussed it in much crasser yes, that was actually like very classy how I just described it comparatively yeah, you did captain roads a favor by by describing it that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're definitely going to be talking about Private Salazar's issues. John Amplas I don't know if that's how you pronounce that name Amplas Amplas as Dr Ted Fisher, one of the scientists.
Speaker 2:He'll be at Living dead weekend as well yeah, him and john aka flyboy were like the most stable men of a very long list of unstable men yeah, I know who you're talking about now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, he kind of worked alongside of uh, sarah as, like her equal in the scientific side of things, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then there is frankenstein, dr matthew logan, and that's the main surgeon, the scientist, the one who does things like dismember zombies to see what happens, yeah, and tries to train them to be pets yeah, um, I, I love, I love when sarah's going through his lab and just being like this is this is bad, it's he?
Speaker 2:is just to like bring it back for those who have seen it, or if you haven't seen it before, I imagine, uh, an unhinged science man unhinged science man, uh, fully covered in blood, and you walk into his laboratory and there's just a bunch of strapped down zombies still alive, but missing a lot of different parts yeah, with like probes stuck into them and and, uh, and, and he, he almost has like a childlike glee about all of it, where he's just, like he's, so fascinated by everything that's happening oh, he's loving his excuse to be able to experiment on former people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he really has no self-awareness. Like he sits down at the meeting and he's covered in blood, his hands are covered in blood and he's like I'm hungry. What's for dinner?
Speaker 1:yeah, wash your hands and change dude. There'll be food. This is right after um captain rhodes was threatening corporal punishment for not sitting down and he shows up 20 minutes late and he's just like where's the food?
Speaker 2:yeah, and no threat for him to get murdered. Yeah, to point out. And then g Greg Nicotero plays Private Johnson, another one of the privates.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wish I knew before. I would have kept an eye out for him. Love to watch it again Because I don't know what 1985 Greg Nicotero looks like.
Speaker 2:I'm definitely going to watch it again before we go, because now that I know that I'm going to actually meet people who are in it, I want to pay attention to see if I can like figure out who they are when I'm there.
Speaker 1:yeah, as their 40 year old herself yeah uh, let's talk zombies um, it should be no surprise that these would be romero zombies, um, so they're slow and they're dumb. However, in this movie they seem a little bit faster and a little bit smarter than in previous movies, specifically like the cave zombies, the ones that they keep in this cave and they kind of pull zombies from this cave to do experiments on. They show signs of fear. They have a hard time wrangling them, getting them to come out so that they can grab them, because they're hiding. They're hiding in the shadows. They won't come out until they, like entice them. Uh, private steel um entices them by offering to pull out his, uh, his dick. Delicious, yeah, um, it worked, I guess they got it.
Speaker 2:They got one and no surprises. Of romero film there are a lot of very memorable zombies. Uh, many of them will be at living dead weekend. Bub obviously will be there. Yeah, mike ankus, who is the head ripping zombie, which is a very gory scene oh yeah, oh yeah yeah, michael tomaso, the football zombie. Yeah, I remember the football zombie the football zombie Deborah Gordon was the female zombie that was chained up in the very beginning that they caught.
Speaker 1:So interesting thing about that that I noticed, and I think that they were trying to insinuate in the movie they pulled out two zombies these are the cave zombies that we just mentioned and when they caught Deborah Gordon's zombie character and pulled her out, there was another zombie, a male zombie, who was really amped up like really aggressive, and they brought him too, because he also went into the cage and I feel like it insinuates that these two were a couple.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they remember their relationship together. We should ask Deborah, so the we should ask being protective, oh yeah I bet deborah would know yeah, I feel like we got to write down questions for these folks also. I bet she's answered that question a hundred times bill laxo, another zombie's gonna be there.
Speaker 2:And then jeff monahan I call this the puss moss zombie because I'm not really sure what's going on, but there's like green stuff coming out of his eyes and like on his face. Oh, you would remember if you saw his picture. Yeah, yeah, uh, is we? I'm like, did you come out of the swamp? Are you just really pussy? I don't know what the story is behind that particular zombie, but very distinct makeup, uh. And then so many other zombie folks are going to be there ralph langer, hermy uh, granati, ned johnstone, george demick, mark tierno.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, we can really chat it up with the zoms yeah real life zoms from all three of the series we'll be there to talk to yeah, uh, it's boy, it's a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's a lot.
Speaker 2:But I mean this is going to be a special, a special event that's the 40 year anniversary yeah, it's going to be really incredible and I have to say I'm so inspired to draw more zombie cartoons so I just drew the hari krishna zombie from dawn of the dead, which will be a limited edition sticker that is going to be at our booth that you can get. But now I'm like, oh my gosh, there were so many great ones in this film. There was theerina zombie, which looked like they were kind of dance staggering. There was a clown zombie Horrifying.
Speaker 1:The clown zombie was upsetting.
Speaker 2:Wedding zombie and George Romero was a zombie with a scarf. Oh yeah, Look for him this time.
Speaker 1:You know the scarf look is a classic George Romero look. That's what he looks like in real life.
Speaker 2:So George Romero as himself, as a zombie. As a zombie, I mean, why not? Yeah, he's iconic. Let's get into the gore, because I don't normally like it, but I have an appreciation for it in this movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I don't dislike gore, um, but it's, it's not an important thing for me. I know some people watch horror movies like I love the gore, I want to see gallons of blood and I'm okay with it. Um, but it's, you know, I, I like having a good movie first, so like when you have the day of the dead, which is excellent, and you have excellent gore, it really, uh, really it, you know, just adds, adds points what's incredible to me is that this is all tom savini, starting from night of the living dead all the way to day of the dead, like the evolution of the makeup.
Speaker 2:I'm sure budget helped, yeah, uh. But like from night of the living dead all the way to day of the dead, like the evolution of the makeup. I'm sure budget helped, yeah, uh. But like even Donna, the dad versus day of the dad, light years, yeah, more impressive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like night of the living dead. It's just like we're going to throw some like bluish purple makeup on them. Yeah and like, uh, we'll throw a handful of flour at you so you look dusty, and then in Dawn of the Dead, it's just like we're going to paint you gray or purple. What really I found interesting about Dawn of the Dead was everybody's very vibrant and colorful and well-crafted hair. Like you'd see somebody with like some really good hair, but they're a zombie. Good hair zombies, good hair zombies, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:There's also really great prosthetics, like Deborah Gordon, zombie has really great face prosthetics. If you look at what Deborah Gordon looks like versus a zombie, would not know same person. Terrifying and super disgusting, though. A lot of them.
Speaker 1:Also private Salazar, when he has his arm chopped off and they cauterize it. That's. That's some prosthetic makeup as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, and it's upsetting.
Speaker 2:To put it in context, the makeup and the special effects in the 1985 day of the dead versus the movie we just reviewed, zoom bees, from 2016, doesn't make sense, because zoom bees has how many years on screen, like 30 years, 31 years, yeah, at least, and it was terrible. This is, I feel, like the makeup could stand up. Some of it could still stand up to today's oh yeah, special effects, yeah, 40 years later.
Speaker 1:I mean incredible 80s, 80s, gore, makeup and special effects is is almost timeless at when it's done, right? Um, because it's all practical and like yeah, it's, it's. It's kind of like the last era, with the exception of the 90s, of course, before visual effects became digital or a combination of practical and digital. So everything that they did in 1985 would stand up today and does, because that's you know, look at the Walking Dead.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you can see the signature of it, even just the fact of, like the very first, that's the first time I've seen a zombie film having an arm cut off to save someone from becoming a zombie yeah, who he dies anyways yeah, just filling this with spoilers, but you know, an unrelated way unrelated. Yes, also there's animatronics yeah, yeah, the 80s loved animatronics but they were really good, like when that guy's head was ripped off and his mouth was still moving yeah, I want to.
Speaker 1:I want to throw in an addition to the head ripping off animatronic head um scene. My favorite part of that scene is, as the zombies are pulling, it's also pulling the vocal cords with it as they're dismembering the head and as the as he is screaming and making noise, his voice becomes higher pitched as the vocal cord gets stretched out. I gotta re-watch for that, and it's I, I. That's the one thing that I do remember from the first time that I watched it, when I saw it and I was like whoa, that's hilarious.
Speaker 2:It's definitely saying like same levels of gore is what you'd see in walking dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's pretty impressive the guts falling out of people, so many guts and intestines which we've established. I don't love, but well done.
Speaker 1:Direct quote from Leah I draw the line at guts.
Speaker 2:I do. Intestines specifically, intestines, specifically. Uh, people shot themselves in the head. There was a zombie whose head was cut in half by a shovel. There's never any cutaways, it's like a direct like this head's been chopped in half they want to show it off zombies are ripping necks open with their teeth.
Speaker 1:It is deep horror yeah, what I loved about the the head uh, the the shovel head zombie is when, when the head is cut off, you see all the layers and different um parts of like the bone and cartilage of the head is cut off. You see all the layers and different um parts of like the bone and cartilage of the head as it's being pushed away on the floor like that could have been covered up. They could have done it from a different angle. They didn't have to do that, but they did it and it made it so much better dan, I just realized something utterly terrifying.
Speaker 2:What actual special effects artists are going to see? My zombie crown maybe they might love it. Leah's leah's bringing a zombie crown my face is melting off and that's like scary. That's like having somebody who's a master something. Look at your like amateur shit. But anyways, my face is literally getting red thinking about it. Now, okay, I hope they don't see it because I don't want to have that conversation.
Speaker 1:I hope they do because I think I think they're gonna look at it and love it. They're gonna love how fucked up and gross it is I don't know, I'm not gross compared to what they've done leah has a mouth on this crown, um, and it's, it's a bunch of teeth and ripped off lips that are just kind of like smashed flat, and just you know, I I thought it was good and then you painted it and then I'm like, oh my god, that is so upsetting I am.
Speaker 2:It brings me so much pleasure to upset people. Now it's like a I understand why they do what they do. It's just really weird to think that somebody of that caliber will see my silly little crown. But wow, okay, I'm officially going to be terrified that entire weekend.
Speaker 1:Let's get into the existential questions of the movie, because there are many there, there are, um, you know, I never remembered this about this movie, but there is this, uh, this question of you know, science or higher power, and I guess that exists in all the movies.
Speaker 1:Um, now that I think about it, uh, but it's like the first time that somebody actually like names and says, yeah, well, maybe it's just god doing this and um, you know, I, I tend to always look at the more scientific side of things, but when, when john lays out, like you know, maybe this is just a punishment from God, and not because you know we didn't follow the Bible good enough, but because you know we're down here just killing each other, we're tearing apart the, the, the earth. Um, we, we've invented bombs. It'll blow a hole in the sky, uh, and maybe he's just like the sky, uh, and maybe he's just like, yeah, I gotta, I gotta shut you guys down. And I felt like it was as reasonable an explanation as anything else in any zombie movie. It's like, okay, all right, you've converted me. I, I believe it's.
Speaker 2:I believe now, it's a higher power that's pissed off at us I mean, that is always an existential question of humanity, right, like, why do things happen? Why do bad things happen? Specifically, um, pulling on my anthropologist hat for a moment, that is like every culture has an answer to that question. Why do bad things happen? Sometimes the answer is it's random, right, like that's the atheist answer. What I really loved about John, the Jamaican helicopter pilot in the movie is that he does say like maybe it's a punishment for God, but like also, there's no sense in trying to understand it. I really appreciated that, and he was like let's just have a good time and he actually has like a whole room set up that looks kind of like he's on the beach in Jamaica. Yeah, to get away from it. Yeah, go get drunk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, saying something about like um, trying to understand why this happened, is like trying to understand why the stars are where they are. Yes, um, some things. This, this isn't. This isn't for humans to know. This is our purpose is not to know these things meanwhile, there are astronomers whose entire purpose is to know those things.
Speaker 2:But I've always found that, like I think you're more on the science side, I'm a little bit more on the woo side. I feel like there's always a point where, if you keep asking the question, why to the answer? There's a point where you just can't answer anymore. Yeah, and that's that, like wondrousness, that is the universe. But the scientists, on the other hand, like I feel like scientists in this movie really want to control it. They want to figure out how to make specifically Frankenstein, dr Logan. He wants to figure out how to control them and make them like pets or slaves, basically, and then Sarah just wants to know what the cause is so that she can stop it. But either way, I think science sometimes is very obsessed with control and trying to shape things, and I think I align a little bit more with John's perspective of just like, let it be what it is and enjoy your life, even if it's in the midst of a zombie apocalypse yeah, I I kind of vibed with it.
Speaker 1:I was like, yeah, maybe, maybe you should just focus on enjoying the rest of your life. He literally says like, like you know, there's always something to do around here. Um, and we could just get in a helicopter right now, fly off to an island and just live out the remaining number of our short existence, uh, relaxing on the beach which he does at the end of the movie yeah, spoiler. They relax on the beach they do.
Speaker 2:it reminds me of um naela king, our friend of the show, also a writer. Uh when, when she was on the Zombie Wayne game show last year, a lot of her jokes were just like yeah, it's the apocalypse, let's just have fun and die. Yeah, that was her attitude too.
Speaker 1:So I feel like she would appreciate John. She's not here for a long time. She's here for a good time. Society breaks down Leah.
Speaker 2:That is one of the main themes of pretty much every apocalypse yeah story.
Speaker 1:I think they did a really good job of showing that like as an interpersonal story, like not only was it the clash between the military and the scientists, but you also saw the soldiers just kind of like tumble out of a door just beating the shit out of each other because they got into a fight. They're just fighting in the hallways and you can see that they're just they're falling apart too, like everybody is falling apart in their own special way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is very much like at the individual experience and, like you said, interpersonal. And what it makes me wonder a little bit about is that Frankenstein keeps talking about civility and he says, when he's talking about Bob is that civility is what distinguishes humans from animals, or humans from zombies in this case. But as he was saying that, I was thinking like you're not very civil, dr Frankenstein. You're literally chopping people up and you're you're the one who's saying that they have some humanity inside of them, but you think it's okay to literally tie them down and pull them apart. And I think as much as Bub loved Frankenstein because Frankenstein did nice things for him, like give him books and guns yeah, he loves those things.
Speaker 1:And helped him listen to some music. I don't know if Bub would have felt that way about him if he'd gone into the room and seen all of the or was he in the room? Could he see what he was doing?
Speaker 2:no, he there was a, a one-way mirror, yeah, so he could only see himself, and there's even a moment where bub recognizes himself in the mirror yeah, which is a sentience test going on in there yeah, but he had no idea what dr logan, aka frankenstein, was doing on the other side of that wall yeah, yeah, he didn't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think he would have liked it at all. I think he would have been upset yeah, I don't think that.
Speaker 2:uh, science, science can, if civility is what makes humans human. First of all, I don't know if I buy that argument, but secondly, science and the way science has been done has been very uncivil, if that's's a word, for a long time. There is this sense in the film that made me think a lot about just human subjects, research and why we have really stringent laws around what we're supposed to do and how we're supposed to do it. Even if you want to interview somebody for a survey to learn about their knowledge on something as part of a study at a university, it has to go through the institutional review board. You have to be able to prove that you have informed consent that they're not a vulnerable population. The zombies Bub is clearly vulnerable. All of the zombies are vulnerable because they're not working at full human capacity, but they're also proving Bub proves that they have something in them that is still human, and so I think it's pretty barbaric what's been done in the name of science.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's pretty barbaric what's been done in the name of science. Yeah, I'm sure all of the Nazi scientists during World War II thought that they were very civilized.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he also says something that really stood out for me, which is that to have civility, it has to be rewarded, and so that's why he was so focused on giving Bub things as rewards to build a relationship with him, and it made me wonder is like is that true? And is that why we were seeing all of the soldiers losing their shit Because there was no more reward? They joked about like this was their job, they're getting paid, and they're like wait, no, we're not getting paid. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They don't get paid Like there's no incentive to them anymore to continue to do quote, unquote the good thing or the civil thing and really the barbarism was the only thing that kept them in line.
Speaker 1:Uh, captain rhodes, you know, exerting his dominance and his willingness to use corporal punishment was really the only thing that kept them following his orders, I assume. Anyway, I would have liked to see. If there's one thing that I didn't like about this movie is that I wish it was six hours longer.
Speaker 2:So a miniseries, yeah. I mean, it could come back as like a rebooted miniseries yeah.
Speaker 1:I feel like I saw, like in searching where we could watch this online, I feel like I saw something that was a series on one of the streaming platforms that was called Day of the Dead. But also people have co-opted the title of the day of the dead so many times, like there's a right after dawn of the dead, the remake. In 2004, in 2005 or 2006, they made a movie, uh, called day of the dead. Um, and then there's like some tagline, something else, um, let's just call it reanimation or something, something stupid like that. I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1:It was not a reboot of day of the dead, it was somebody making a zombie movie and the hilarious thing is that, um, in dawn of the dead 2004, ving rames is in that movie. So they called up ving rames and they're like do you want to be in day of the dead? And he said, yeah, I'm on board. Oh, no, and uh, they got ving rames, they got nick cannon to be in this fucking terrible movie that they thought was the sequel to 2004's dawn of the dead.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's tragic yeah, so they signed on before they saw the script. There's a lesson there.
Speaker 1:Well, they might have seen the script, but it was not written by George Romero or anybody involved with these movies. And because of the nature of the Night of the Living Dead and how it became kind of like open source, because of George Romero's original screw-up with the copyright of Night of the Living Dead, the whole of the dead or living dead could just be used by anyone, and it is. There's so many Day of the Dead movies now. There's Day of the Dead 2. There's Day of the Dead 3. None of them are made by George Romero.
Speaker 1:There's also Dio de los Muertos, the day of the dead, yeah, like the actual holiday, yeah you know, I think back to what I originally watched this movie way back in the limewire days and, uh, and I was at my worst when it comes to pts. I was undiagnosed. I was fresh back from Afghanistan and several other places Kind of back-to-back hellholes that I decided to deal with by becoming a day drinker and watching zombie movies on the internet, among other things. Uh, driving really fast cars um, was also a thing. That riding riding the razor thin line between life and death was was how I lived my life back then. Um, and I feel like I was blind to all of the examples of post-traumatic stress disorder in this movie. I don't know if they did deep, deep research into PTSD. This was 1985.
Speaker 2:I don't even know if the term PTSD had been coined, yet it was probably still called shell shock. Yeah, like what my uncle had from World War II.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like what my uncle had from World War II there. Um, miguel salazar uh, we see his right away in the opening scene where they are in downtown miami and they're trying to find survivors and he sees zombies and he fucking bolts, he runs away. He just runs back to the helicopter right and he, he freezes up under stress. Um, he's lashing out like like, uh, he has an argument with sarah, his girlfriend, and he slaps the shit out of her and honestly, I thought she was gonna knock him out no, she just hugged him and then drugged him.
Speaker 1:She shot some sedative into his back with the he slapped her and then like cried into her shoulder and then she sedated him because he was not sleeping, he was lashing out, he was not making good, good decisions, not making good sense. He was making a lot of really bad mistakes. Because of his uh, because of his disorder. He was not functioning in any capacity throughout the entirety of the movie, um, except maybe at the very end, when he does a fucking crazy thing by sacrificing himself to make sure that everybody else dies. That was the only time that he actually functioned well, under stress, that's really sad, but uh, he sacrificed himself for others yeah um
Speaker 1:all of the All of the soldiers have really, really, really dark humor. That would probably be considered actual verbal assault in today's society. If you said any of the things that these soldiers said, you probably would lose your job that day. If you said these things at work, if you said these things while being a soldier in the military, you would find yourself with a lot of extra duty and probably have an entire month of paychecks taken away from you. That's scary and rank taken away from you, uh, which actually that reminds me of something that I thought was interesting about Private Steel's character. He is an E2 private. He has one rafter on his shoulder, one upside down V right, oh, I didn't know, that's what that meant.
Speaker 1:So he's an E2. One promotion from E1, or we call E0 or E nothing, because you don't have a rank tag when you're E1. But he looks like he's like 44 years old and when you see somebody in the army who's that low ranked and that old, that usually means that they did something to get there. They got demoted Like somebody. His age should probably be like a sergeant first class, a first sergeant, maybe even a command sergeant, major, but to be a private means you done fucked up big time before the collapse of society because he had to be demoted um by somebody official in the military you know you don't need a zombie apocalypse to have ptsd.
Speaker 1:It's true, you may have already had some um captain rhodes is committed to his homicidal enforcement of his own uh, his own authority and he is dead set on taking control over this scientific um experiment. He is the scariest person he's way, scarier than any zombie in the entire dead set on taking control over this scientific experiment.
Speaker 2:He is the scariest person. He's way scarier than any zombie in the entire film, because he just you don't know what he's going to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He don't know what he's going to do and he has power.
Speaker 1:And you get the impression that when the major was in charge before him, that there it was more of a collaborative experience, like something that I experienced in the army was, after getting out I came back as a civilian contractor and worked alongside of soldiers, kind of separate from their chain of command but working with them. And in this case I think that's how it should have been, where the people who are the scientists, they control their experiments, their conditions, they have their mission and they do, they stick to their mission, whereas the military is there for support. But Captain Rhodes doesn't see it that way and he's willing to blow anyone's head off who disagrees with him. Quite literally Sarah, the main character we see immediately, like before we even see opening credits. We see Sarah's nightmares where she is trapped in a cinder block room with a calendar.
Speaker 2:And when she approaches the calendar and she looks at it, zombie hands come tearing through the wall at her. Or when she has sedated her, her lover salazar, and he's still asleep, and she, she and she falls asleep and she sees him roll over on his bed and all of his guts spill out, only to realize like, oh, I'm waking up now and he's fine, he's just in the corner on the bed. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of alcoholism yeah, bill's alcoholism.
Speaker 1:Sure, which one's Bill again. Radio operator Right. Alcoholic radio operator Right. He's an obvious example of that alcoholism, but I think he's coping with alcohol, whereas the soldiers are drinking excessively and just going off the rails.
Speaker 2:It's interesting you would distinguish those two things. Yeah, well, that's so basically functioning versus non-functioning alcohol abuse yeah, I was, uh, I was a functioning alcohol abuser.
Speaker 1:You know uh, when, when it was time to get things done, I was sober, uh, when it wasn't, I also wasn't now, you never drink yeah, you know I uh, that's a time long since passed and I am better for it. Um, dr logan has completely lost his grip on reality and his mental facilities are clearly declining as a result of that I don't know.
Speaker 2:I feel like he came into his own and was like yes, I can dismember people without any consequence, I can feed the body parts of recently deceased soldiers to the zombie as a reward for being a good bub.
Speaker 1:I would say that that's probably mental decline. I mean, you never know. But agree to disagree. John flyboy helicopter pilot is fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's the most hinged. All of his hinges are still attached. Yeah, and I did look it up briefly PTSD became a medical diagnosis in 1980, so it's entirely reasonable that this was actually part of the conscious thinking around the film and what the themes of the film were. To recap the themes here I think what's interesting about George Romero films and the zombie genre in general is it's not like they're reinventing new themes to think about. These are basic experiences of humanity trauma, societal breakdown. I mean, we're living through one right now. It seems to happen every few generations in some way. What does it mean to be human, like who's human and who's not human? These are questions we're asking ourselves all the time, and I think that's why this genre is so compelling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I also love the way that george romero approaches storytelling because, um, you know, I, I, I like to say that it's never about the plot. Um, when you're, when you're writing, the plot doesn't really matter. Um, I guess it depends on what you're writing. But george romero, like, if you look at a george romero movie, uh, okay, um, people are chased by zombies. They go to a farmhouse. They have to not let the zombies in the farmhouse. That's the movie, that's the plot, that's everything. Zombies, zombies came back, board up the windows, that's it. But the layers and layers of character development and exploration of themes within that are so deep and fascinating and that's what the story is about. And every single movie is like that. And it seems like every single movie, like, takes it up a few notches I agree this is the best one, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:Before we get into the depressing things around racism, sexism, capitalism, misogyny and ableism, let's talk just briefly about some fun things we haven't talked about yet, like what we loved, what we hated. Okay, uh, the captain, captain rhodes a lot of things against him. Don't't like him? Amazing hair His hair is fantastic. It's perfect For all the ways that he is unhinged. His hair is always perfectly coiffed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's almost an accent to his unhingedness.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's a contrast.
Speaker 1:Because it kind of sweeps to the side. Yeah, you get the impression that he didn't comb it that way. It happened when his head snapped to the side while he was glaring at somebody thinking about whether he was going to shoot them or not.
Speaker 2:I feel like you could. You could rock his haircut yeah I think it's worth giving it a try, having the uh captain rhodes coif yeah, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna get the captain rhodes. I'm gonna go to a hairstylist and say, give me the captain rhodes they're to think you're talking about some sort of like sea captain. I'll come out with a tricorner hat made of hair.
Speaker 2:Other things. I loved the zombie feast scene at the end where they're all just getting their vengeance and eating delicious, delicious dead military dudes. Yeah.
Speaker 1:The so the shitty military dudes being torn apart because they were so shitty and horrible and they just make you detest them in every possible way. They're sexist, they're racist, they're loud, obnoxious, they're dangerous. They're unqualified to do their fucking jobs. They're alcoholics unqualified to do their fucking jobs. They're alcoholics, and when the zombies get their hands on them and they draw out their deaths in the most painful and terrifying way possible, it feels good it does, yes, like rip that private in half while he's still alive.
Speaker 1:He goes down screaming to a horde of zombies, while Bub is shooting him in the stomach.
Speaker 2:It's really interesting because usually in zombie films, right, you're rooting for the people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you're like, yeah, kill that zombie, but they definitely flip the script on who you have empathy for in this film.
Speaker 1:And you're like, yes, the zombies deserve their vengeance that is so true and I don't know if I realized that when I was watching it. It's just like I don't know what at what point I was rooting for the zombies it was instant.
Speaker 2:they did a really good job. This film of, just like I think it was seeing, um, it was seeing deborah and the other character zombie that was chained up and then looking afraid and trying to pull the chains off, and that sense of their captivity was instantly where I felt just started to feel that like, oh no, I feel bad for the zombies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so they establish it early in my view, and of course, bob takes it home.
Speaker 2:Bob deserved an Academy Award for his acting Truly. Maybe he got one. We should look into that, we should, and also, if he didn't, then we can. Maybe I can make him a little clay award and be like here's my best zombie award. Yeah, it says academy the zombie book club academy award. There were only two things we listed as hating, yeah one of them was that it's not six hours long. Yeah, there really was so much more that could be told. Yeah, uh, the the other one was the hard cuts in the same scene.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was interesting like it was, like it was almost edited to be on tv and have commercial breaks. Like it was like the. It was a hard cut, but it was also like a fade to black and then back to the scene yeah um we could ask the cinematographer about it yeah, I wonder if the cinematographer would know.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's more of an editing thing, but I mean, too bad, george romero isn't around because I feel like this is a great question because, uh, you know, 1985, like vcrs had just been invented and the idea of watching movies at home is still kind of a new idea.
Speaker 1:Like most people would go to theaters or, um, you know, would have a rich friend that would have a film projector and a collection of of of films in a library, um, and those were your options, um, and the other one was to watch it on tv. And there were channels that, especially on the weekends or Friday nights and Saturday nights, would do horror or monster movie marathons. Is because, when George Romero screwed up the copyright issue on Night of the Living Dead, immediately these TV stations that were running these horror movie marathons were like holy shit, there's a brand new movie that just came out and we can play it for free. And they got their hands all over it. And while he didn't make any money from that movie because of what happened, he definitely got a lot of eyes on his movie because of it.
Speaker 2:Well, because we have the internet. Dan, I hate to tell you that your theory is wrong. Fuck, but I hope everybody listening followed along and was like, yeah, this makes total sense. No, that's not what happened. Okay, romero refused to cut the extreme gore, meaning it was an unrated film. Romero refused to cut the extreme gore meaning it was an unrated film. They wanted it to be. They meaning the people who put it on the TV and in theaters wanted it to get to an R rating, but the level of gore would not allow for that, so many theaters just wouldn't show it. It had a smaller theatrical run than it was supposed to, compared to Dawn of the Dead, and so it just developed this cult following over time from home video and then later it was cut for for tv, but a lot of that gore was pulled out, so we no longer have a good explanation for these cuts I'm sticking with what I said oh, you sound like somebody.
Speaker 2:Oh, what was that in our last episode recorded? Um, you sound like you're kind of having some zombieism where you decide something's true, even though all evidence points to the former that it's not. Or the fire, I should say no, that sounds like something else.
Speaker 1:Um, here's one more thing I wanted to throw in, and it's kind of something that I hated, but also it's. It's a, it's a story choice. Um, complete lack of firearm discipline from the soldiers. They, they, they fire from the hip, they don't aim, they're just rapid firing, shooting zombies in the stomach. And that can happen if you panic.
Speaker 1:Well, they seem pretty panicked, yeah, but soldiers would be trained to at least bring their rifle up to their shoulder, and that bothered me, that everybody was firing from the hip. But it was also the 80s and that was the cool thing to do back then. Um, and it's something that I forgive because, uh, it moves the story along that these, um, absolute imbecile, incompetent soldiers that are all that's left of the military, um, just are just a complete group of completely undisciplined people who have very poor skills.
Speaker 2:I mean, maybe they had poor skills even in the army, who knows?
Speaker 1:I think that's the story that we're being told, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:By their inability to take out zombies.
Speaker 2:It's time for my favorite segment.
Speaker 1:You mean the racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic, of the living dead? Misogyny.
Speaker 2:Yes, of the living dead, misogyny yes of the living dead correct, I screwed it up um there, this is your favorite, huh it is my favorite, but it's my favorite with Romero films because it's clearly commentary and not just fucking thoughtlessness or living into um some of the problematic aspects of our culture, our western culture, without any examination. Um, first of all, main character female lead white female lead, sarah uh, is clearly not just surviving the zombie apocalypse. If anything, she is surviving a bunker full of very fragile male egos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely um, and it's even brought up that you, that she needs to be careful around there because things could happen. They voice their willingness to do terrible things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, insert terrible things that are often done to women. Yeah, there, constantly she just lives under that threat and John says to her at one point you need to take care of your body, you need to be very careful around these men, you cannot trust them.
Speaker 1:She reassures him and says that she can take care of herself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which we believe, because she's one of the most competent people there. If not the most competent Yep.
Speaker 1:One thing that I love, a quote that I love from this steel uh, private steel. When they're grabbing the cave zombies, um, and he's using his wing wing to lure in zombies, or at least suggesting that he might. Um, he starts bragging about how he has the quote biggest meat in the cave, um, and they make some comments towards sarah that are pretty disgusting about how much she'd like his meat basically yeah, it involves his meat, yeah, uh, she says quote uh, you're incapable of exciting me steel, except as an anthropological curiosity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, her ability to not only keep her cool but have humor in the face of pretty intense misogyny is impressive. I would probably I would lose it, I would yell, I'd want to punch them, I would not keep my cool in the way Sarah keeps her cool in this situation. She is very even keeled in a crisis situation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's constantly undermined, yeah, despite the fact that she's the most rational, most qualified person in the room. She's qualified in so many ways, not just as a scientist, as we see, but also as a conflict mediator, and also she's way more competent at blasting zombies than any of the soldiers. The untrained scientist better Because she aims. The untrained scientist better, yeah, because she aims.
Speaker 2:It's really frustrating to watch, because I've experienced this myself as somebody with a vulva. It is really frustrating to watch, or really like listen to Dr Logan, aka Frankenstein, who's clearly losing it, covered in fucking blood, chopping up zombies without thought, and every time she has a suggestion or a push back or anything, they make comments about her body, they make comments about assaulting her, they make comments about how she's stupid and she's just a woman. They shouldn't listen to her and it's really clear that, like the older man who's the doctor, has respect where she doesn't, and that's super frustrating. Yeah, I've been in those rooms where I will have an idea and I will say the thing, and then my male colleague will say the same things if I never said it, and suddenly everybody thinks it's a great idea.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure this is like a like, a direct uh, like directly from like the world of academia, like, um, you know, the, the, the older male doctor, is the one that's always going to be the one that they listen to. To be fair, when Dr Logan speaks, he speaks in a way that makes you want to listen.
Speaker 2:But so does she. She says hey, we could actually collaborate here. We could work together to figure this out. We don't have to be at odds and everybody's like no, I would rather sexually assault you than listen to a woman.
Speaker 1:That is true, um dr logan. When he's, when he's talking to um captain rhodes, specifically, captain rhodes despises dr logan because dr logan talks circles around him. Because, uh, because captain rhodes is constantly threatening to leave, he's like we should just leave. Then what the fuck are you going to do? And he's, and he's he just should just leave. Then what the fuck are you going to do? And he's, and he's, he just simply is like but where would you go? And he doesn't have an answer for that. And then he'll fly off on another tangent and he's like and again I will ask you where would you go?
Speaker 1:yeah and it enrages him and that he listens.
Speaker 2:He doesn't point a gun at him when he's enraged.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dr logan showed up late.
Speaker 2:It's fine, it's fine sarah gets up to leave not for murder, yeah uh, she also defies that, like trope of a lot of these slasher movies, of being hypersexualized. She's not, she's just wearing her daily outfits. Yeah, she's not saved by a man. She collaborates with men because, honestly, that's all she's got other than zombies. Um, she's not freaking out and panicking all the time. Compared to everybody else, she is the smartest, steadiest and strategic person there, other than john in my view, and so I really just appreciated her role in an 80s horror film being so thought out yeah, um, defying that final girl trope.
Speaker 1:Also, she wasn't the final girl, she was the final one of the three. Yeah, who was the only girl?
Speaker 2:yeah, because she was the only one the whole time and I might have had a problem with that, except for the message that was clearly there about what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominated industry or world. Yeah, um, and it felt very real just adding zombies on top romero is is is always telling these these types of stories.
Speaker 1:I don't think he did it as well in night of the living dead, because barbara was just kind of a fucking mess well, he's clearly evolved in his own thinking. That was almost 20 years ago, when he yeah it's just interesting because like this is, you know, 1978, uh, dawn of the dead. 1985, land of the dead. Um, these are times when it's it's like the dark ages for men understanding how women feel it still is yeah in a lot of cases, unfortunately and it speaks to the quality of the character of george romero.
Speaker 2:I bet he was a cool guy yeah, I hope he was a good dad, tina. I hope he was a good dad to you. I hope his apparent feminism showed up in his personal life as much as it did in his films. Um, racism very clearly had a center stage in this film, as the again you've mentioned. It does in all of romero's films. Uh, I think this is the first time we see overt racism towards a latino man. Yeah, uh, private miguel salazar, sarah's suicidal lover, in the same way that she is constantly being berated for being a woman, basically, and under attack he is for being hispanic. They use racist slurs constantly. They were shocking to hear, uh, things I've not heard. I don't know ever said out loud uh, people mock his accent, they reduce him to stereotypes all the time. I don't know ever said out loud People mock his accent, they reduce him to stereotypes all the time. They don't really see him as a good guy with them. He's an outsider simply because he has a different skin tone and an accent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's not one of them. Even though he is a soldier and should be a part of them. He's not treated that way. One thing that I found really interesting is that Captain Rhodes himself does not join in with the Hispanic slurs. He kind of stays quiet while his men are saying those things. He doesn't correct them, but he doesn't join in with it. The only time that he joins in with the overt racism is when he's talking to John and says overtly racist things to him about being black yeah so it's like they're different flavors of racists I mean, it's basically the white guys club, right?
Speaker 2:everybody who's not in the white guys club is going to be under threat. Yeah, in this bunker. I also really want to give a shout out to george romero for a clear um lens of pushing back against anti-blackness, which was pretty common in the era and still is to this day. John is, first of all, he's Jamaican, he speaks with a Caribbean accent and he has a very like, rare and layered sense of personality that you would not see in a lot of 1980s films.
Speaker 1:Typically, you're looking at like they're the funny guy, right're looking at like they're the funny guy, right, yeah, or they're the scary guy yeah, or like the comic relief, or like the the action hero yeah, like the the, the, the muscular guy that um is the sidekick to the cool white guy, john is the wise outsider, so he has a calm, spiritual and philosophic demeanor to him. I actually really loved the monologue that he had with Sarah in his little tropical island paradise that he set up in the cave. Yeah, because I love conversations like that, where it just comes out of nowhere and it just becomes deep and philosophical and he's criticizing all the ways that society has just been recording data about all kinds of things. He mentions that there's records for immigration, records for taxes.
Speaker 1:Natural disasters, and that's what they're storing down there in the caves.
Speaker 1:They think that that's important and at the end his thing is like we should get out of here, restart society, repopulate the earth and teach them to never come back to these caves and look up any of this information. And I vibe with that. Um, he's, he's always, he, always. He's critiquing these things that are so normal in our society that we think are so important. Um, but really it's, it's just costing us time, and when they're down in the bunker, all they have left is time. So every moment that they're spending not living anymore, um is wasted time and that's the only thing that they have left. So like, why, why should they? Why should they be doing any of this? He doesn't believe in the mission, he just flies the helicopter, which I? I feel like that's my role as a dump truck driver. I don't believe in repairing the roads, I just drive the truck, yeah.
Speaker 2:He also says he's very aware of his position with Captain Rhodes versus others. Even though Captain Rhodes does say something racist towards him. He knows that, because he's the only person who can fly the helicopter, that he has a position of power. I also think that's why he is not, as, um, overtly racially discriminated against, yeah, as salazar is throughout the entire film, because he does have this position of power, uh, in the context of also being a black man yeah, he's the only one that can fly them out of there.
Speaker 1:He's the only, really. He says that um, alcoholic radio operator and, like Rhodes, doesn't understand electronics, so he needs alcoholic radio operator. Yeah, he can't fly the helicopter, so he needs John and he needs Dr Logan, because Dr Logan can think circles around him, but everybody else needs to be watching their back because they are expendable to him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a really good example of how you can be somebody who is discriminated against, in his case for being a black man. But if you have some level of position of power, it shifts the dynamic a little bit and I think that's probably what pisses Rhodes off the most. Yeah, definitely, towards the end, it's realizing that he's fucked. He can't just discriminate against this man. He has to do what he says, otherwise he can't get out. Yeah, um, but what's great about his character is that he's not the comic relief, he's not a sidekick to a white lead, although I mean, he's sort of he's not the main character. I would say, yeah, um, but I wouldn't call him a sidekick. And he's not hyper masculine action guy without a brain yeah, but there are still some tropes with him, like this mystic islander stereotype, that's true, that I've seen, and like you know, he's I mean, he's the chilled jamaican, you know, don't worry, what's that song by bob marley? Every little thing is gonna be all right.
Speaker 1:I thought you're gonna say don't worry, be happy yeah, don't worry um yeah, and you know I don't you know?
Speaker 1:it's 1985 and tropes exist um yeah yeah I don't, I don't know where we were at in 1985 around stuff like this, but it, like it definitely is, is that is that trope right? Like if, if, if, the if, if they cast a different person in that is that trope where, like if, if, if, the if, if they cast a different person in that role and that person was a native American who could fly a helicopter, it would have been a whole different set of of stereotypes.
Speaker 2:Yes, also probably a wise man stereotype. Yeah, but regardless, for the eighties I think he did a really great job. And also he didn't die. He wasn't one of the first people to die. It's great, it's a win.
Speaker 2:We have to talk about ableism in this movie and this was what really stood out for me watching this film, and I don't even know if I would love to know if George Romero was thinking about it in this way, because I think ableism and disability, justice and thinking about people with disabilities as equals with human rights is actually still pretty pretty far behind, as in humanity with this one. So I think it's there, even if he didn't have the language for it in 1985. But Bub, I think, is a metaphor of a disabled person, particularly somebody with intellectual disabilities. Yeah, intellectual disabilities, yeah, uh, because to the scientist, to, to frankenstein, he's still really only useful to society if he can make him do something for him. Yeah, bub just can't be bub out there in the world. If he's just, if he's just bubbing along being a zombie, he's gonna get chopped up like the rest of them yeah, and he almost did, but he proved himself to be special yeah, he's a zombie who has memory, learning emotions, uh.
Speaker 2:But even knowing all of that, dr logan still treats him like a subject, like a thing that he can act his will upon, not a person. And it's because he has this he's not quite, uh, as intellectual as sarah, maybe, as an example yeah, yeah and everybody else sees bub as dangerous or laughable, even when he tries to connect with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they almost think it's a joke Like this is a parlor trick.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Until he picks up a gun. And then Captain Rhodes is very upset, right, because now Bob is threatening to take his job away. It was all fun and games when he was answering telephones, but as soon as he proved himself as a, as a marksman, yeah, I just think like, what is it?
Speaker 2:what does it require? What does a human require, like? What do they have to have for us to actually think of them as people? And pub pub bub has emotions, he cares, he has the ability to learn, he has self-recognition, which, as I said earlier, is one of the key sentient tests. Like there's a moment where he sees himself in the mirror, but to everybody around him he's not human enough and so he's not deserving right.
Speaker 2:People assume that he is incapable and less intelligent and less worthy, that he's just a threat because he's not predictable and he's not going to do things the way that they expect him to. He's only valuable if he does what Dr Logan tells him to do or when he acts quote unquote normal. He's infantilized and experimented on. He's not seen as a fully autonomous being with the right to make his own choices, and certainly in recent history that's how disabled people have been treated in all of these ways. And his emotions are dismissed or feared by most people, except for Dr Logan, and he only takes them seriously from the point of view of I will give Bubb rewards so I can make Bubb my pet to do act my will upon him, not as this person who deserves his own rights.
Speaker 1:He's a project, he's a thing to be improved.
Speaker 2:Which is the saddest part, because he, bub, does get emotionally attached to Dr Logan, but Dr Logan is an emotional manipulator, yeah, who doesn't actually care about Bub. I feel like a just true justice for Bub would have been like building a relationship with Sarah. It could have been a Goonies moment moment. Yeah, you know where Bub gets to go to the island with everybody else too.
Speaker 1:Oh, that would have been so nice. It would have Bub deserved that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sarah, john fuck, I can't remember his name radio operator. And Bub yeah, they all just chill on the beach and Bub's just like just having a good time.
Speaker 2:But if you think about what disability is, it's pretty much, in our society, defined by your ability to produce for capitalism. If you can't be a good worker bee and also be quote unquote normal and the way people expect you to be, so you go. You go to your job, you do your little things in the way that you're expected to do them, like an automaton, and you make money for people and for the people who need to make money off of you, then you're considered disabled. That's basically what disability is in our culture, and so I really feel like Bub epitomizes that. That it's clear if you watch him. I mean, how can you not love Bub? But society does not love Bub. Society sort of symbolically, as Dr Logan only sees Bub's value if he can use him in some way.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what? Now I can add to the list of people that I've been in this movie to also bub, Really. Yeah, I mean, there's my. My value has always been placed on whether or not I'm capable of doing work that generates money, Um, which is you know why I'm a truck driver now, is it feels like the only thing that I can manage. Uh, I can't. I can't work at a store. I tried doing that. I can't call people on the phone. I can't deal with people. I can't do those things as work, and almost every job requires you to interact with human beings in exchange for money, and it's that is not a thing that I'm capable of doing on a daily basis. I can. I can amp myself up if I have a few weeks to prepare.
Speaker 2:And for Living Dead weekend.
Speaker 1:And only need to spend a few days, or maybe even just a few hours, proving to people that I'm a normal human being. But I cannot do it every day. I need to be locked inside of a small cubicle where no one can talk to me. Ie a dump truck and that's. That is my. My last line of employment that, I feel, is I'm capable of. I'm bub. You could put bub in a dump truck. Bub could do my job. You're being I mean, dogs have been taught to drive, yeah, and get licenses, I think in aust dump truck bub could do my job.
Speaker 2:You're being I mean, dogs have been taught to drive, yeah, and get licenses, I think in australia bub could absolutely drive a dump.
Speaker 1:In fact, I'm pretty sure I work with bub.
Speaker 2:I I think that you're not wrong, dan, like it's um, and you're rewarded right for those behaviors yeah and if you're not, if you don't assimilate, if you don't live exactly how you're supposed to be?
Speaker 2:and why do people who are neurodivergent mask? They mask because if they act in accordance with who they are and the way that their brain works, they're ostracized. And they're ostracized because they're not seen as being productive or fitting in well or like doing the thing that they're supposed to do to make society run, and I think that's dehumanizing. I think Bub is an example of the dehumanization of disabled people, so it's neat that you see yourself in him, but also really sad. This is why I'd like to say I'm a fan of universal basic income. People deserve to live a good life, regardless of how productive they are. In the way that we think of productivity. I really believe that if you had your time back, not working, that the things that you would do for your family, um, for yourself, for your community, would be of much more value than anything you could do in a truck. Yeah, but it's not going to be dollars and cents value, and thus it's not seemed uh, as worthy, for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah I think that I think people also were afraid of Bub, like what that means. Especially soldiers Like these guys must have killed thousands of zombies and they probably did it in really horrible ways, especially the way that they would just laugh and ridicule the undead. If Bub is capable of feeling real emotions, like fear and empathy and joy and sadness, then all of those things that they thought were just mindless automatons are actually people, yeah, and they went from just clearing out a nuisance to being mass murderers. Sense, to being mass murderers. The implications of what that means for them, the psychological impact of that, might be too much for them to even accept, and part of their resistance to Bub might just be that they don't want to believe it. They would rather dismiss it as a parlor trick.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe that's why we dehumanize and ostracize others, because it's just too hard to think they're human, because it doesn't allow us to do the terrible things we want to do. It's a good point, yeah, but Bub does get his revenge, even though I'm still mad that he doesn't know that Dr Logan is a piece of shit. And they didn't get to go. He did not get to go to the island. Well, he's not dead. Yeah, but he did not go to the island with sarah, you can still get there.
Speaker 2:He's gonna swim. I guess that's possible.
Speaker 1:This is this is my dream, um, sequel to day of the dead. It's day of the dead, uh, weekend at bubs, and it's basically weekend at bernie's too. Um, but it's bub and he's alive and he's dancing on the island. He learns to dance and he learns to love. Uh, bub gets his groove back that's the movie.
Speaker 2:Bub gets his groove back because bub is more human than any single one of those, uh, military folks are human in the sense of his basic emotions. Yeah, and care, I don't know. We love bub. I don't have anything more to say about that why?
Speaker 1:why does it matter?
Speaker 2:well, I think I will just put it out there as somebody who also doesn't eat animals. Uh, bub challenges first of all who we see is fully human, but also just who we see is worthy of respect, care rights in the first place. Bub is not that far off from our dogs.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I would say he has got about the same level of cognition as our dogs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think Nero could half answer the phone. Yeah, he could. If it's a 1980s phone, he could knock the receiver off, like I said dogs can drive cars. Dogs can drive. Look it up. People and Bub can drive cars. If you haven't seen it, it's really fun to watch.
Speaker 2:Bub can drive. Bub could totally drive, yeah, but again, their ability to drive is not what makes them worthy of respect and care. I think, for me, where the line is drawn is their ability to feel. If they have the ability to feel emotion and they have the ability to feel physical pain, then they are worthy of respect and care yeah that's it and I don't know if they can feel physical pain.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's kind of an attribute of the zombie is that they, they feel fear they don't feel that pain because it's like bub. He does the shaving thing in the mirror. He grabs a shit razor, cuts part of his face.
Speaker 2:He didn't feel that okay, well, I guess the, but he did feel the emotion of fear. Yes, and the other zombies in the cave felt the emotion of fear. So I guess I'm still landing on the zombies have human rights side of the debate here. I'm not on the opposite side. Do you have emotions and can you feel pain? And if you are either of those things are true, then I think you're worthy of some level of respect. And frankly, I mean, I guess trees I don't know if they feel pain or have emotions I think they're still worthy of respect. Okay, we're going to get to the basics. I think all life deserves respect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know there's. There's ways that we have to navigate society in order to live. One of those things is eat something that's living, and I think in the zombie apocalypse, in most cases you would have to shoot zombies because they're not at Bub's level. They're not on Bub's level yet. They haven't learned yet to not eat you. So until that happens, the unfortunate thing is, if you want to live you got to shoot zombies.
Speaker 2:So then, is dr logan actually the most compassionate of them all, because he was trying to get them to all be bub? But he was. But he was doing it to make them slaves, though.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I'm torn I don't know if he wanted them necessarily to be slaves. I think he was more intrigued by the concept that you could teach them tasks. Um, I don't know. I don't think he was necessarily a capitalist in the sense that he's thinking about, like, what value they can bring to society after.
Speaker 2:Maybe that was why he couldn't communicate that to the, to the soldiers, because the soldiers wanted to know what's the practical application of this yeah, well, sarah had a good point, though, which is like how many people to how many of us are there left to catch every single zombie and retrain them like Bob?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and do 15 hours of surgery that only one person in the world is qualified to do.
Speaker 2:I think the best case scenario in this zombie apocalypse, with this kind of zombie, is humane euthanasia. So shoot them the head, let it be fast yeah, if they're dead, shoot them in the head yeah, and with that, I'm gonna give this 10 out of 10 zeds. I love this movie. I love george romero films because of the exact conversation we just had, which just gets you to think about things.
Speaker 1:It gets me to think about things in a different way yeah, I feel like if you asked me 20 years ago, I would have been like I don't know, it's like a, it's like a seven out of ten, it's definitely a 10 out of 10 now, um, because my brain, uh, has gone from atrophied to uh to to expanding, much like bub's brain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've, I've become a bub myself and now I can understand this movie also we need to read salem's lot by stephen king, because that was Bub's read. I already did. I think I did too as a teenager, but I need to reread it, yeah.
Speaker 1:Also, we watched the most recent adaptation of it.
Speaker 2:We did. I already forget.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's Vampires.
Speaker 2:I already forget Town of Vampires in Maine.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, I barely remember. See, that's what I was trying to movie that I love in a movie that I was fine. Yeah, it's like I think I will remember Day of the Dead, but I already forgot that I watched the new Salem's Lot even though it's probably a few weeks ago. But for now, everybody, thanks so much for joining the Zellian Book Club. If you are new here, you found us from Living Dead Weekend. Welcome, it's really great to have you. We love to. This is a community, it's not just a one-way thing. So you can actually leave us a voicemail if you're feeling up for it 614-699-0006. That'll be in the show notes. Let us know what you think. What did we miss in this episode? I have a feeling that people listening to this have opinions about Day of the Dead.
Speaker 1:Do you agree that the editing feels like it was edited for TV and that my theory is correct, or?
Speaker 2:do you agree with what is factually documented on the Internet?
Speaker 1:No. Also, we would love it if you give us a rating or review. That helps us. That's what helps us reach new listeners. Five stars please. Five whole stars please. We used to joke about 4.9 stars. Then someone did it. Yeah.
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Speaker 1:Yeah, you can sign up for our newsletter. This is new and I'm still figuring it out. I've got news about the newsletter. I'll talk about it in a different episode Because it's not going the way I hoped it would. It's going to the spam filter. I guess that's the update. I just did it, that's it. That's it.
Speaker 2:We're also on Instagram. It's currently really our only social platform. It's at zombie book club podcast, but you can also come hang out with us at brain munchers zombie collective on discord. There's a whole bunch of zombie creators there and zombie lovers. We love to chat about everything zombies and sometimes not zombies. You can just send a picture of your dog in there and we'll be like oh, cute dog. Yeah, I want to see that dog. I do, show us that dog, show me that hot dog yeah, you got a hot dog.
Speaker 1:Show us that too preferably an actual dog.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in a hot dog costume. That's what I'm going for. If that happens because of this episode, I will consider it a success.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would be an absolute resounding success.
Speaker 2:But in the meantime, for those who have been here for all 99 episodes, thank you for listening, For the folks who showed up somewhere in the middle between now and 99, thank you also for listening and for the brand new folks. Have fun with our library of episodes. Please don't listen to the first episode. Zero. It's terrible yeah.
Speaker 1:No, episode zero is episode one. It's the bad one. Oh, is it? I mean it's fine. The terrible pilot episode. It's titled the terrible pilot episode. Please don't listen to this.
Speaker 2:I suggest you listen to the Amazon challenge if you're new. That's a very funny one. Yeah, I like that one. Yeah, classic. But for now, everybody, the end is nigh.
Speaker 1:It is Bye.
Speaker 2:Bye-bye, bye-bye, see you next week for episode 100. Yay Bye, yay Bye.
