Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb and Hey, this is a fun one for you. This was I think one of three or four different Florida movies that we did back in twenty twenty one, including the likes of Frogs and Zat you know, the Bloodwaters of Doctor z. But this is the nineteen seventy seven picture shock Waves. This one is indeed about Nazi zombies emerging off the coast of Florida and attacking people
in the ruins of a huge Florida hotel. This is one that really creeped me out when I saw it on TBS back in the day. I think it was TBS anyway, and I think it holds up pretty well. So this is a fun discussion. Let's jump right in.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back to complete our trilogy of Florida movies. Now recently on Weird House Cinema, we looked at the movie Frogs starring Sam Elliott, which is about as Florida as a movie can Get and then we also recently discussed the movie Zat, which is about a man who dreamed he was a catfish and then turned himself into one, though didn't really look like a catfish, but just sort of like went around settling grudges and getting revenge and semi catfish form. And it's
more Florida again. This time it's going to be Florida Nazi zombies.
That's right. We're going to be looking at the nineteen seventy seven film shock Waves. I believe it was actually filmed in nineteen seventy five, so it's still a few years later than our two previous Florida films, but it is very much a product of the nineteen seventies, and it is I should make it clear here. It's actually supposed to take place on a Caribbean island, but it's very much filmed in Florida, and I think it's ultimately
a Florida movie to its core. It has elements in common with our previous two picks, but it's also doing its own thing. You know.
I think it's fitting that we discuss our final Florida movie today because I have to be honest and say I am running like, right now, my gas tank is full of sand. So Rob, I hope you can bring the life to inject into this podcast today.
I'm going to do my best, all right, All right, Well I have my tea here, so I hopefully that will invigorate me as well. Okay, So, yeah, this movie has things in common with both zat and Frogs, but it's very much doing its own thing because for starters, it's a zombie movie. Furthermore, it digs into two different sub genres of zombie movies by being both an aquatic zombie movie and a Nazi zombie movie. And you know,
it's pretty early in either of these subgenre traditions. And I think you could also make a strong case that this is this film might be the true trend setter, if not one of the key trend setters, for both. You know.
I think I've said on the show before for that, of all the different types of creatures in horror movies, I feel like, on average, it's zombie movies that are the most often trying to say something with the story they tell. You know, the zombies, for some reason just lend themselves quite well to cultural commentary. This movie, I don't think it's trying to say anything.
No, I don't think it is. I think you can lean into we'll discuss you might be able to lean into it a little bit and draw maybe a little bit of nuance from it. But for the most part, this is a film that just wants to scare you and have some creepy stuff going on in it, and and it ultimately succeeds.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a I would say a success on the front of stylish horror movie, and that the creatures look creepy, and you spend a lot of this movie just looking at them. They're just like popping up out of the water, popping up from behind roots, kind of like you might open a drawer in the kitchen and there's one of these zombies in there and it's just looking up at you with those goggles. And yeah, that's what it does. It does it well, and I give it all all credit.
Yeah, So we'll talk about the zombies in this film a bit more now. Now on the zombie front, on the Nazi zombie front, rather, there are only a handful of cinematic predecessors to this movie. There's nineteen forty three's Revenge of the Zombies, which had John Carodine in it. Who's also in this film that involved a mad scientist trying to create zombies for the Third Reich?
But Wadiams hasn't it, hasn't it been proven that John Carodine is actually in all films ever made?
Just about Yeah, well, we'll do a proper breakdown on Kerodine in a bit. But he's come up before, because yeah, he has a tremendous filmography.
Well wait a minute, I challenge you name a film John Carrodine was not in. You can't do.
It within his lifetime. Or well, he was actually in some films outside of his lifetime, which fu cat we'll discuss. But yeah, there was also a nineteen sixty six film called The Frozen Dead which a thaw Nazis zombies in it, and there are a handful of other films that also involved Nazis in the occult as part of a general trend in science fiction and horror, as well as new
age and conspiracy thinking. Because the filmmakers behind Shockwaves they're pretty upfront about citing a nineteen sixty book titled The Morning of the Magicians as a prime influence. So this I think We've briefly discussed this book before, talking about like ancient alien stuff before, but this was a popular book in conspiracy theory circles. Remains popular in conspiracy theory circles because it entails just a whole host of their favorite topics like UFOs and Nazi occultism and so forth.
Though it's funny we think about the I don't know the occult Nazi sub genre as a I don't know the special remit of sort of obscure drek in the film world, but it's easy to forget that some of the most mainstream movies ever got into this territory. This is what Indiana Jones is about. It's all like occult not stuff.
Yeah, Raiders the Lost Arc is the biggest Nazi occultist film of all time. And later on you had to Gaielmo de Toro's hell Boy got into the same territory, but that was that was a little bit later. Initially,
like Shockwaves was was a big trendsetter. There's a film in nineteen eighty called Zombie Lake that I think was a French Spanish production that was I think heavily inspired by Shockwaves, if not just kind of a you know, very very much followed in its footsteps, because you went on to see people like Joel Schumacher get involved in the Nazi zombie subgenre, like two thousand and nine Blood Creek. You see it in all sorts of video games. So it's become something that that sci fi and horror is
really latched onto. And I think a lot of that probably has to do with just the simple formula of taking you know, human evil and supernatural evil and combining them, taking traditional movie villains and traditional movie monsters and combining them. And maybe if you're, you know, daring to get a little contemplative, you might say, you know, the fear of re emergence of a dreadful and destructive ideology, plus the just the obvious metaphor of reanimated corpses.
Oh yeah, I mean that would be an interesting thematic resonance, though I don't think I can honestly say that this movie seems like it had that on its mind.
No, no, no, no, no, that would that would be an add on if you just think too hard about Chockletz.
Right, if you were to try to make an intellectually curious zombie Nazi movie, that would be a good direction to go with it.
Yeah, oh, but I should mention on the aquatic zombie front. Aren't a lot of films that may be come to mind in this category. There's nineteen seventy nine's Zombie from Lucio Fulci, which had a pretty tremendous scene with an underwater zombie, a shark and I think a snorkeler. It's been a while since I've seen Zombie.
It's best remembered for the zombie fighting the shark, and I think the zombie wins. I think it like bites the shark and Okay, that's it.
Well it is called zombie, not sharks, so that makes sense. But that was seventy nine.
Now I can't stand by that. Sorry, I'm not sure.
Maybe it's a draw, I don't know. But at any rate, that came after shock Waves. A film that came before it, but just barely was The Ghost Gallleon from nineteen seventy four. That was one of Amando Diasario's Blind Dead films. I
don't know if you've seen any of these, Joe. They're they're pretty low budget and they have a bunch of undead templars engaging in generally they're just chasing people down and killing them, but in this particular one, they're engaging in some beach in underwater horror.
Oh well, so the undead templars connects to a thing I was going to ask you about, which is I was trying to think if there is something else like that, you know, because there are tons of these Nazi zombie movies, if there's something else like that, like a group of like it's all zombies, but they're united by something they had in common in life, maybe like they are certain type of soldier. And I really couldn't think. I could think of tons of Nazi zombie movies, but couldn't really
think of many other examples. So it makes me think that what's attractive about this subgenre is not that it's like, oh they are you know, they all have this in common and then they become undead. It's the specific historical resonances of the Nazis. And I think that's I think you're exactly right when you say it's probably as simple as what's the evilest human thing you can think of and then just make it supernatural?
Yeah, yeah, I think so, And it remains a winning formula, Like now more so than ever.
But anyway, the templars thing here, you said that would be one counter example. Okay, here's something else. This is like they're all templars and now they're templar zombies.
Yes, and maybe there's some other examples out there in the film world I'm just not aware of. So if they're if there's something like maybe there's are there zombie Samurai films? I don't know, nothing's coming to mind, but maybe I'm missing something obvious.
Are there zombie Chicago Bears or like a specific sports team.
A zombie that sounds like it could be like a good sort of field goally movie, you know where it's like there's nothing in the rule book that says a team of zombies can't take to the field and try to win the Super Bowl. And then it happens, and it's magical for everybody.
You producers out there, we're just feeding your gold day after day. I know I'm going to send us the checks.
All right, let's get to the elevator pitch for this film. It's pretty simple. Aquatic Nazi zombies left over from World War Two rise from the deep in the Caribbean to hunt down tourists through a desolated beach resort in the mid nineteen seventies.
Yeah, with Peter Cushing. Yes, Peter Cushing just happens to be in the mix.
All right, let's have some of that trailer audio.
You are now in the deep end of horror, shock waves once they were almost human. You mean to say that what we all saw out there is just a mirage. It was a minor underwater disturbance, the hot sky acting on Nicole Current, coming from a mile down below. Something unknown, something unforeseen, something unspeakable, lives below, and it lives to destroy. They have risen.
All right, So who directed this thing?
This film was directed by Ken Viderhorn, director and writer, and while this was his big breakout film, he went on to direct a number of genre features, including Eyes of a Stranger, Return of the Living Dead two, Dark Tower, which I believe is a haunted skyscraper movie. I haven't actually seen it, and he also directed seven episodes of Freddy's Nightmares, as well as A House in the Hills.
I think I have seen Dark Tower. I think somehow I just found that on the internet one night and put it on and it was pretty bad. Return to the Living Dead two I haven't seen, but Return of the Living Dead one is one of my favorite comedy horror movies. That movie is near perfect.
Yeah, Dan O'Bannon on that one. Yeah, that's a great one.
Yeah, but I've heard that the second one is still I've heard it described as still pretty fun, but sort of taking the premise of the first movie to a kind of Looney Tunes elevation.
All right, now, I mentioned Viderhorn. It was one of the writers. The co writer on this was John Kent Harrison, who enjoyed quite a writing and directing career after this, though not a lot of stuff that I'm personally familiar with. But his credits include nineteen ninety nine's You Know My Name starring Sam Elliott, as well as a bear named Winnie, which I think it's like a Winnie the Pooh or it's a maybe it's a biopic about the creator of
Winnie the Pooh. It starred Michael Fassbender as Winnie the Pooh. Michael Fassbender was in I think he was in a Nazi zombie movie, the one directed by Joel Schumacher by the way, Okay, as well as Stephen Frye. I was also in that Wow. Yeah. Also responsible for the Courageous Heart of Irene Sendler starring Anna Paquin. So yeah, this guy went on to do a lot of stuff and is still active.
Did the writer of Shockwaves write mister Hollands Opus.
I don't think so. But that's like the sort of genre of film that he seemed to have gone on to.
Uh huh.
All right, well let's talk about the cast here top billing, and we've already mentioned him. Peter Cushing is in this. He plays SS Commander no given name for this character. They're light on names, that's right.
He never says his name, Yeah.
Yep, doesn't introduce himself.
Also, I don't think he even tries a German accent, does he. I don't recall one.
You know. It's a little it's a little German. It's it's very clearly identifiable as Peter Cushing. It's Peter Cushing, like germaned up ten percent.
Okay, apology for misremembering.
So Peter Cushing, of course lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen ninety four. He's a legend. This is Hammer's Doctor Frankenstein, this is Star Wars Grand Moth Tarkin, enthusiastic war gamer and the man with the sharpest cheekbones and the biz he can.
Use multiple parts of his face as an ice pick.
Yeah. I used to own the Blue Underground DVD of this film and somehow lost it. But I remember in the various extras on that they talked to some of the cast members on this and they talked about working with Peter Cushing, and like everybody else, it seems they just had nice things to say about him. He was
just like a total professional, super nice. And I think the only even slightly negative thing is like is one of the actors said something to the effect of like, yeah, he showed up and he was He just had all his lines memorized and he was so professional that he made me feel like a little crappy for not being as on top of things as he was. But yeah, everybody seems to have loved Cushing.
That's something I'm always kind of curious about when you hear those little things about which actors memorize their lines in which one.
Stone Yeah, cushion was. I think he was one of yea with total pro like. He doesn't matter what caliber of film it was, he showed up and he did the job all right. Did we mention you we did mention. John Carrodine is in this.
Yeah.
He has the distinction of playing the only character with a last name really place. Yeah, he plays Captain Ben Morris.
I don't say really because I am surprised nobody else had a last name. I'm surprised because I didn't remember him having one.
Now, but maybe that was one of his demands. He's like, I'll do it, but you've got to give me a last name. I'm not playing a character with just a first name or no name. You leave that to Cushing.
Oh, he's kind of grizzled in this.
Yeah. So yeah. This is another film legend, certainly a horror screen legend. He was in any and everything from nineteen thirty to nineteen ninety five, yes, seven years after his death. A little film called Jacko that I think you've seen.
Yeah, I don't even know how to describe that one. It's like a It's an mega grade direct to video Halloween themed movie that has him in scenes where he is not on screen with anybody else because I think the footage his footage in the movie appears to have been shot approximately seventeen years before the rest of the film. Otherwise it's got like Linea Quigley and a bunch of teenagers running around getting attacked by this thing with a pumpkinhead.
I think, okay, sounds like a winning concept. So yeah, Kerodeine, he was in a lot of Indian horror films, but we have to remember he was also in the Grapes of Wrath. He was in Stagecoach, he was in The
Ten Commandments, which also featured Vincent Price. Speaking of horror icons. Yeah, and of course John Carrodine was also notable as the patriarch of the Carrodeine family, the father of David Keith and Robert Carrodine, who all carried on this tradition of being in you know, all different sorts of films, but also doing a good job. Like Krodine is always John Canary, He's always watchable.
I was really hoping he would sing a song in this one, though, like you couldn't even do so. He's done the Night Train to Mundo Fie. He could he not come up with a you know, the Island of those shock Waves. It seems like they should have put in the effort.
I've I've I've either read or remember from the digital I'm not Digital Underground Blue Underground DVD, that that he did all of his stunts in this, which don't really amount to a lot, but he was seventy one years old at the time and like he did like all the physicality that was asked of him in this, so oh so quite a trooper.
At the part when you see his dead body under the glass as they have they like ride a glass bottom boat over his corpse and he's there shirtless with his hair swinging around in the water. So that's him. That's yeah, yeah, okay, so yeah, all right.
All right. The so that they these guys get top billing, you know, because they're the horror icons and they're the ones you want to put on your horror post here. But the real star, like our lead and our main hero, is the character Rose, played by Brooke Adams born nineteen forty nine.
I love Brook Adams. Brook Adams is in one of my all time favorite horror movies, the nineteen seventy eight remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which you've never seen is just excellent, just one of the best ever made.
This is the Philip Kaufman win Yes, yes, yeah, So at the time of Shockwaves. She was an Indian TV actor, though she had appeared uncredited. I think a very bit role in nineteen seventy four is The Great Gatsby. But her, yeah, her career took off after Shockwaves. Maybe because of Shockwaves, I don't know. She was in Terrence Malix Days of Heaven the following year. You already mentioned Body Snatchers. She also went on to star opposite Christopher Walken and David
Cronenberg's adaptation of Stephen King's The Dead Zone. She was in The Stuff The Unborn, and she did a whole lot of TV work. And it's a bit of trivia. She's been married to actor Tony Shaloub since nineteen ninety ten.
Oh, I had no idea. Yeah, Broke Adams is great. She's got that great screen presence of the kind of just instantly likable always.
Yeah.
Yeah. She checks off all the major boxes for female lead in the seventies horror film in this while also like having that extra you know, bit of charisma and talent. You know you could it's not surprising that she went on to be in all these other things. You know. There's sometimes just the way she delivers certain lines in this that might otherwise be throwaway lines. She's able to inject a certain amount of nuance or comedy into it.
Yeah, okay, So who's our mustache for the movie?
Oh well, this is Luke Halpin playing Keith. Halpin was born in nineteen forty seven, a handsome fellow with a maximum mid seventies mustache, and his main claim to fame prior to this is that he played the character Sandy Rix, a child in the nineteen sixty three film Flipper opposite Chuck Connors, and then played the same role in the TV show to follow, though in this the TV show did not have Chuck Conners and a dolphin. It had
Brian Kelly and a dolphin. Fun fact, Brian Kelly has a single executive producer credit on IMDb, and it's for Blade Runner. But anyway, it happens good in this. I liked him. Yeah, maybe it's his mustache. I don't know.
We can call him the Mustache Runner from here on out. I always thinking he's very seventies. To me, he looks like one of the members of Still Water, You know that. He looks like he just lost four cases of beer playing cards with Humble Pie.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, he's got a certain I mean he's no, he's no Sam Elliott, you know, but but he has he has a certain laid back mid seventies style to him that it works well on the film. And and he's he's he's also decent at at bringing across a certain level of fear and anxiety that becomes absolutely necessary in a film like this. Yeah.
Now, the rest of the cast just sort of is rounded out mostly by these people playing tourists who are zombie fodder.
Yeah. Yeah, and I'm not sure how many of them are necessarily worth spending a lot of time on, but they're all pretty good in their role. You have this guy Fred Butch I believe it is. I lived thirty five through twenty twelve. Yeah, plays the character Chuck. This is a guy who had various roles in eighties movies,
including Cocoon and Caddy Shack. And he looks like he was in another Florida movie, this time of slasher titled Nightmare Beach from nineteen eighty nine that Romberto Lindsay was involved in and that also featured Michael Parks and John Saxon.
But yeah, I was thinking of Chuck in this movie as Bacardi Man. I didn't know what his name was, so I just called him Bacardi Man the whole time.
Yeah, he has a signature look, often shirtless, sometimes just in tidy white. He's running around on the deck of a ship. He's great because he's kind of like you. You always have to have your your array of characters from detestable to likable or lovable, and he's nicely situated in the middle. You know, you don't really hate him, but he's You're not going to be that disappointed when a zombie kills him.
He also has a seemingly out of character freak out toward the end of the movie. That's pretty amusing.
Yeah.
Yeah, Oh, but then we also have like this angry, aggressive nerd character named Norman.
Yes, Norman is great, played by Jack Davidson born nineteen thirty six. This actor did a lot of small parts in films, including eighty seven's The Secret of My Success eighty three is Trading Places. In this he is a used car salesman on vacation with his wife Beverly, and oh man, he is not satisfied and he will be speaking to your manager.
Yes, he exudes not satisfied with my service. That is his personality.
Yeah, Beverly is great in this too, played by DJ Sidney, but she wasn't really in much beyond this.
Oh, and then there's also Dobbs. He's like Bacardi Man number two. This movie has multiple Bacardi men.
Dobbs is your straight Bcarardy man, though he is going to drink the Baccardi straight, no no mixers, no ice, and he will have it for breakfast. He plays our the dive boats alcoholic cook and I guess like sort of general like boat guy played by a Cola based actor Don Scout who lived nineteen twenty three through two thousand and four. And even he's good and this is kind of a you know, a throwaway role, I guess.
But he's he's amusing, He's this. Yeah, just this, this alcoholic boat guy who you know is not going to make it far into the film. But he is also not you know, you're not he's not hateable.
He has an interesting death scene we'll get too later on.
Yeah, just a small role. But there's a fisherman that shows up early on, played by the actor Clarence Thomas who lived thirty four through two thousand and nine. An actor and according to IMDb, which again can sometimes be incorrect, but IMDb claims he was the first African American Florida Branch president of the Screen Actors Guild from two thousd to two thousand and two. So there you go.
Now, there's one reason I know you must have wanted to do this movie, which is it has an electronic score.
Yes, as far as I'm concerned, one of the and I think this is essential for my understanding of the Florida movie. But yeah, one of the true stars of this film is Richard Einhorn because he is responsible for Shockwave's tremendous score. I think it's absolutely top shelf composed and performed by contemporary classic musical composer Richard Einhorn.
So this is not an Italian composed score, but I would say it feels Italian to me.
Yeah, yeah, it definitely has some of those vibes going on. It's it's worth that a lot of electronic music in the genre score world, they come from individuals who, in some cases they were largely self taught, or they came
up playing for and working with bands. Einhorn, however, was a graduate of Columbia University where he studied electronic music and composition under the of some individuals that are apparently major names in that field of not just popular electronic music but like classical composition and electronic music, like Vladimir
Yusuchevsky and Mario david Offsky. And Einhorn went on to compose such works as The Origin and opera that was inspired by Charles Darwin's life and work with lyrics by poet Katherine Barnett.
Interesting.
Another composition, Voices of Light, was inspired by the Silent Joan of Arc film, and you can find this particular piece of music on Spotify and various other streaming sites.
Buddy also did some trash horror.
Movies YEP, including ultimately several Viderhorn movies. He did Eyes of a Stranger as well as he also did the influential nineteen eighty one slasher film The Prowler.
Oh yeah, that was when we talked about. When I was a guest on Movie Crush with Chuck Bryant and several of our other friends from the office, we talked about slasher movies that one's not I mean, there really are no slasher movies that are like really good movies. Maybe Halloween or something, but that one's just in terms of slasher style, it's got a lot going for it. It's got a very menacing looking killer in terms of the costume, which is similar to what this movie really has going for it.
Yeah, definitely menacing looking adversaries. Now, Einhorn also did Let's See Blood Rage, Dead of Winter, The Dark Tower, but he also composed the scores for, in particular the score for nineteen ninety one's Closet Land. This starred Madeline Stowe and Alan Rickman, and Philip Glass was involved as that as well as creative musical supervision, and from there he
also did various work for documentaries and art films. Now, interestingly, Einhorn lost his hearing at the age of fifty seven, and there's a twenty eleven New York Times article that details how the use of a hearing allowed him to enjoy live music again. So if you're interested, I recommend
looking that article up and reading it. It's quite it's quite breath tacking because it gets into the technology a bit, but also just talking to Einhorn about how, you know he'd lost his hearing, he thought that he'd never be able to enjoy live musical performances again. And then he's trying on this loop and he went to see Wicked, I think, or something like that, and he said, I'm not even a fan of musicals, but the experience reduced him to tears, you know, because he was able to
hear this again. So it's a really great read that's inspiring. Now the score for Shockwaves again, in my opinion, I think it's absolutely great, legitimately jarring, deeply disturbing. I think Shockwaves would have ultimately been an interesting film with a different score, but I'm not sure it would have really succeeded to the level that it does because Einhorn just fills the picture with sonic dread that makes everything else
work ten times as well as it would otherwise. There are bits where he bleeds in the audio of like Chance from the Third Reich, and there are also some really unsettling nature sounds as well, underwater reverberations. There's this disturbing shrieking sound at one point. So the music really really keeps you on your toes.
Let's hear some of it.
Now. I don't think the score is officially available anywhere in digital form. Sadly, you may be able to find some unofficial streams, but Waxwork Records has it out on vinyl, and I'm again I'm not a vinyl collector. I don't do, not have a record player, but this looks absolutely splendid because it's remastered and it's available in Seafoam Green. The actual record is Seafoam Green, and then it has some custom art on the front and on the back and
some new liner notes. So any vinyl fans out there, if you're interested, check this out, and if you already own it, tell me what it is like.
Oh, I may have to order this one. Yeah, it has good art.
All right. I guess a couple of more connections here
in passing. Alan Ormsby was born nineteen forty three is responsible for the special makeup we see in the picture of these Nazi zombies, and while he worked special makeup in a few films previously, including Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things, he also wrote that film and actually served as a screenwriter for many years, with credits that include Paul Schrader's Cat People, the nineteen ninety one horror anthology film Popcorn, The Substitute starring Tom Behringer and its various sequels,
which I think we've talked about and confused it with other films on that previous episodes of Weird House.
I think, on reflection, I have not actually seen that movie. I just find it conceptually funny because it's Tom Barringer looking so stern.
Yeah yeah, I think that's the only thing he does in it. But then also Ormsby has an additional story material credit on Disney's animated version of Mulan, So yeah, strange connections on this one. But yeah, the death Cord troopers in this do look very creepy with the goggles and the model pale flesh and wet seaweed like blonde hair.
This is one of those movies that knows it has a great looking monster and so they just show it. You know. It reminds me of the story about the production of the first Friday the Thirteenth movie when they had oh, what's his name, who's doing the blood the makeup effects, Tom Savini, Tom Savini doing the makeup effects, and they realized the makeup effects looked so good. They were like, wellet we got to put those more on screens. They's just play it. Up. You get the sense that's
what was going on here. I suspect the zombies in this movie ended up looking creepier than the director might have hoped, and so we end up just seeing them a lot.
Well, let's get into the plot breakdown for this film. Let's explore shockwaves.
Okay, Well, this is one of those movies that starts with a Texas chainsaw massacre style grim voiceover before you get any action or meet any of the characters.
Yeah, it wants you to know this really happened, or to a certain extent.
The following is a true story about Nazi zombies.
Yeah, and I'll just go ahead and read it verbatim real quick, you know, in a creepy voice. Shortly before the start of World War Two, the German High Command began a secret investigation into the powers of the supernatural. Ancient legend told of a race of warriors who used neither weapons nor shields, and whose superhuman power came from within the earth itself. As Germany prepared for war, the s s secretly enlisted a group of scientists to create
an invincible soldier. It is known that the bodies of soldiers killed in battle were returned to a secret laboratory near Koblin's, where they were used in a veryvariety of scientific experiments. It was rumored that toward the end of the war, Allied forces met German squads that fought without weapons, killing only with their bare hands. No one knows who they were or what became of them, but one thing
is certain. Of all the SS units, there was only one that the Allies never captured a single member of.
This is not a true story.
No, this is not true at all, but it does. It sets the stage, and you know you're going to see all the soldiers in the photo again in an altered form. And if you weren't paying attention, don't worry. Peter Cushing will come around later in the film and he'll basically tell you everything again.
Oh yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
You get a second exposition dump which somewhat varies from the narration at the beginning, which makes you wonder if Peter Cushing is maybe lying a little bit, or I don't know, or maybe I don't know, maybe I'd only perceive the differences anyway. So we start off with a fishing boat rescue. There are some fishermen who were out on the high seas and they spy a small boat adrift and they pull alongside to help, and we get some more narration, not by the John Laraquet style narration
from the beginning, but instead from Brook Adams. And she's lying there in the boat, and you hear her saying in voiceover, I don't know how long that dinghy floated around with me lying in it. All I can remember was the sound of the water slapping against the side. Then I heard the engine sound getting closer. That was when I realized I was still alive. And it's Brook
Adams in the boat, delirious with terror. She is helped onto the fishing boat by the captain of the fishing boat, and she tries to tell her rescuers what happened, but she seems like she can't speak. She's just sitting there kind of catatonic. And she says in the voiceover that it's only now that she remembers. So we immediately cut to the past and now we're on a pleasure boat,
I guess. So we're not on the boat. We see, like you know, Brook Adams is diving around a reef with flippers and the diving mask, and she says it was the second day on one of those small dive boats that takes you around the islands. The engine had broken down for the second time. And yeah, immediately you noticed something about the boat that I noticed too.
Yeah, small dive boat is not how I would I would describe this. This looks pretty big. I've been on some dive boats and they were all smaller than this.
Yeah, this is a large boat, but it is. It is a large boat, and it is a struggling boat. We have a struggle boat here, chugging around in the water as best it can. But they do communicate that this boat has seen better days. And then no fooling around. We have Carodine. We immediately get Carrodine, as often happened, So Carrodine, there were like two captains of the ship. Or Carodine is the captain maybe and still water boy
with the mustache is the first mate. Maybe, but he's like steering the ship and John Krodine just choose him out a lot. But as often happens, when we first meet John Carodine in this movie, he walks on set looking and sounding like he just ate three jars of ca right before he came onto the camera, he's just he's just briny and dyspeptic. From word one. Absolutely, he's saying, like, keep at half speed, no sense putting strain on a
crank shaft. And uh, there's immediately conflicts between them because I guess you know, you got you got your old cap'ain and you got your young cap'n. And old cap'n is dressed like he's in some kind of auxiliary naval unit. This is, of course Carodine, and young cap'n looks like seventies rock and roll. You know, he's been playing cards with humble Pie and now he's out here not taking
his responsibilities seriously. And there's just some glorious chewing out that goes on at you know, John Carodine's saying, it's north northwest, not northwest, you slob. We must have accurate navigation the sailor's best friend. And oh, and he goes into this speech about how you can't be a good captain just by being good looking. It's his ability to navigate that makes him a good captain. Also, did you
notice that so during the boat piloting scenes. There's a problem that I notice in a lot of movies, which is an implausible amount of characters who are used to doing something talking about what they're doing, you know, So they're just saying back and forth to each other steer one sixty five and keep her steady and that kind of thing. But they're standing right next to each other. It just feels like the kind of thing that they wouldn't need to say out loud.
Yeah, like, even if this is the first day they've worked together, and yeah, even though you have the you know, clearly the elder captain here, you know, trying to instruct the younger seventies guy.
Yeah, Now immediately we get some spooky underwater stuff. We start seeing these shots of a sunken submarine, and it's weird because in some ways, I would say this movie is for the most part, not stylistically anything to write home about in terms of photography and all that. But there they were like a select number of underwater shots and shots of the zombies that are actually very stylish
and cool. And some of the underwater footage here where they capture schools of fish sort of darting around back and forth in unison, and the synchronized swimming patterns in the wreckage of this submarine. We see at the bottom of the water. That's all great stuff.
Yeah, in its best moments, this film feels like a traumatic dream in the best way possible for a horror film.
But okay, so something spooky is under the water. The music lets us know, you know, as we're going around this wreckage there's something wrong with it, something supernaturally wrong. And then something happens with the sun. Everything turns orange. This is not really explained, and I didn't really get what was going on, but suddenly there's just an orange filter on the camera.
Yeah, I think, and I don't know how much of this is me reading into it knowing you know that they were high on the morning of the Magicians when they put this together. But I think this is like some sort of a solar phenomenon, or there's some sort of like like because later we keep hearing from them about how the compass isn't working anymore, you know, and clearly it's had some other weird effects on their surroundings.
So perhaps it's kind of again, maybe kind of Texas Chainsaw MASc here in a way like that film opens up with this implied astrological disorder, and maybe here we're getting a more overt astrological disorder.
Okay, so you know Saturn is in retrograde or something, and that's when the zombies wake up from the bottom of the ocean. I see. So then we start meeting the other characters. We get to meet Norman and his wife Beverly, and they're arguing about whether the captain knows what he's doing, and there's great like Norman decides he's going to go up and help the captain steer the boat. Norman, as I said earlier, is a cranky, aggressive nerd.
Yeah, he's a joy to watch, but he is such a such a complainer, Like he just can't wait for yelp to be invented so he can properly review this dive company.
This guy's he's a terror at restaurants. He gets cashiers fired everywhere he goes. Yeah, but on the way up to chew out the captain, he meets Biccardi Man who I think his name is Chuck, who is more laid back. Bacardi Man is making a house of cards, one might say a bunker of cards. And his characteristics when we first meet him, or that he's got his shirt unbuttoned several more buttons down than Norman does, so you can tell he's cooler. And he just drinks rum and chills out.
Yep, just having having rum and coke and stacking cards.
And then of course we meet Dobbs, the cook we already talked about, who takes his Bacardi straight, unlike Chuck, who likes his with Coca cola. And Dobbs is sort of Coleridge's ancient mariner. He's got strong, unhandbeat graybeard loon energy. Oh and then they all meet up for dinner. And so during this dinner you're supposed to be paying attention to the dialogue because John Carrodine and Norman get into this big blow up about I don't know about whether
the ship is seaworthy or not, I think. But the main thing I couldn't stop paying attention to was this old school can of craft grated parmesan cheese on the table, and the can looks blue. Now that product is decidedly in a green can, and I was trying to figure out, Okay, were these cans blue in the eighties or the color is screwed up on the film.
Yeah, or I get well, this would have been seventy five, so maybe they were blue in the mid seventies, yeah, the seventies, okay, or perhaps that astrological disorder. One of the things it did is it flipped the colors on the graded parmesan cheese cannon products are blue now yeah, yeah, reverse polarity, and also change the color of graded parmesan canisters. Uh huh. But let's get back to Norman's mutiny here.
What is Dobs serving that with? Though he's got the graded parmesan on the boat, did he make it Italian food?
I guess. I mean, we see his kitchen later and it is awful looking, like it's just it's got like just it's pin ups, like plastered to the wall, like like just like a fixed in place with bile or something and chewing them and then just like junk all over the floor. It looks like there has been some just design. I mean, maybe the idea is supposed to have been at that point there's been like rough seas, but I don't know, it just looks it looks gross.
He lights the burner on his stove with old playboys. Yeah, But as I was saying earlier, Norman does not like the way Carrodine is running things. And he I think he basically literally proposes a mutiny, Like he talks to the other he's trying to talk to the other tourists into taking over the boat.
Yeah, they're They're like, what you were gonna take over? He's like, now we'll have one of these other people do it. They're idiots, but they can do it. Like he's he's just awful to have.
He's just like, we'll have daubs drive the boat.
Uh.
And this seems to be a reaction to quote what happened earlier and some unspecified story that Dobb's allegedly told about spooky doings out on the ocean, But again, what actually happened earlier, like the sky turned orange? But I don't get what happened that it is they're reacting to.
Yeah, I don't know, just sort of general Bermuda triangleness occurred. You know, this guy went weird, the sun went weird, compasses aren't working. Maybe they felt weird as well. I don't know.
You know, there's a great scene where Brooke Adams is she supposed to be married to Biccardi man.
No, Oh, it may not be completely clear in the early stages, as we're trying to feel out these characters, but it becomes clear that yeah, they're not married.
Oh okay, okay, but she After this, it's like the middle of the night and maximum mustaches driving the boat and Brook Adams comes up to talk to him and it's great. So it's like nighttime out on the ocean, and we find out from this conversation that he likes to be alone up here and he doesn't know where they are. Oh. But then their little moment is interrupted because a ghost ship comes out of the dark and slams into their boat. Yeah, and so they argue about this.
John Carodine does not believe it. He's like, oh the ghost ship, huh, I bet you believe in fairies too. But then they find a bunch of damage on the hull and they shoot a flare out into the dark and there it is. And this is a good creepy scene.
Yeah, yeah, because what's going on? Where did this ghost ship come from?
But then in the morning, all kinds of problems. In the morning, the boat is beached on a mysterious island. Captain Carrodine is just gone, and so everybody has to go ashore until they can get the ship free. Of the shoal that it has run aground on. Oh and then I mentioned this moment earlier, but while Norman and Beverly are being rowed ashore by Keith, they're being rowed ashore in a glass bottom dinghy, which I've never heard of before. I mean, I've heard of glass bottomed boats,
but those usually tend to be have more passengers. I think.
I guess it's because since this is supposed to be a vacation boat, they have a glass bottom boat on hand. But yeah, it's effective because yeah, they're they're moving right along, and then there's Carradine's corpse just bobbing up against the glass.
Yeah, he's bubbling in the water right, praying to Mundopi. And so anyway on the island, Bacardi man climbs a palm tree, he sees a building and so they're like, okay, that's where we're going. So everybody hikes through the jungle to reach this building, which is a sort of classic Caribbean or Florida kind of Spanish opulent style.
Yeah, so I want to mention real quick, this is pretty fun because this is this is this hotel that we visit here is very much a real place in Florida, This ruined hotel. They apparently paid something like two hundred and fifty dollars to rent the entire thing for the picture, but it was It was subsequently fixed back up a few years later and is known as the Biltmore Hotel. It's in Coral Gables, Florida, just outside of Miami, and you can look it up online. You can go to
build More hotel dot com and see it. It is. It's super fancy. The story here, according to Jason Scott Degan at golf Pass, that's where I always go to get my shirts, my stories about sets in seventies zombie movies. It opened in the twenties and was the sort of fancy Florida destination for the likes of al Capone and
President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But then it was converted into a hospital in nineteen forty two, and it remained one all the way through nineteen sixty eight, and then it was just empty for more than a decade, and that was during that time, that's when they filmed Shockwaves there. But then Coral Gables had it renovated and it opened back up in eighty seven, entered private ownership in nineteen ninety two, and I checked earlier. If you want to get a room there, it's like two hundred and sixty
eight dollars a night or something like that. That probably changes. Don't quote me on that if you're planned to stay there. But the point is they rented the whole thing when it was a ruin for the duration of the filming for just two hundred and fifty bucks. And so there are gonna be some scenes in Shockwaves where they're in like some sizable hallways and you see some columns and
a big fireplace in the background. It's fun because you can pause the film and then you can go grab your computer and you can look up current photos and you can see like those same places that are now super fancy and ritzy and colorful and just you know, done up like a fancy golf course hotel. And I'm looking at that, I'm like, oh man, how many people are walking through that and they don't realize that Peter Cushing was here?
You know, this was Shockwaves, no idea. They've never been on the Shockwaves tour. I was thinking, so, okay, if they had wanted to go a true direction, then with this hotel instead of the you know ss zombies direction. They could have embraced the fact that this was where al Capone and Franklin D. Roosevelt came, so they could have zombie I guess prohibitions like liquor smugglers, and then they could have what I don't know, zombie members of the Spillion Conservation Corps.
I guess dead and zing as well does it. But it could have changed the course, like that's that's of of of media, that's where we would we would have in video games now it would be uh, you know, zombie Bootlegger video games. That would be the big craze.
I can maybe be interesting, I don't know.
I don't know anyway in this film though, Yeah, the place looks it's just an effective Florida ruin, and I think it's one of the things that makes that helps make the movie work is that this is this is like the ruined splendor of Florida, which you inevitably encounter, you know, examples of you know, you can't have you know, coastal tourism exist in a place without things following and falling into disrepair and becoming kind of uh, you know, mysterious or half mysterious ruins.
Yeah, so it's a good setting. And I would say this moment is also where the movie shifts gears and and it goes into what it remains actually for the remainder of the movie, mostly, which is shots of zombies lumen goggle zombies. Again, there's excellent costume and makeup design because it's pretty simple. They're just in these old uniforms and they've got kind of messed up looking skin, and then they have these goggles and the goggles. The goggles are just bottomless pits. It's really good.
Yeah, it all comes together to make a very evocative adversary here. And at first they just seem to be scouting things out like they've been they've clearly been awakened and now they're scoping out the joint.
So meanwhile, our tourists wander through the old hotel Bacardi man and Dobbs, who is also swinging Baccardy. They find a tank full of fish. Are these frogfish? Like your checklist for Florida movies? It has tanks of fish in it.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure off hand what this was. Maybe scorpion fish, but either way, it's got some big zat energy going on and I love it. Yeah, And Dobbs it becomes clear has this this never ending supply of booze on his person. He pulls out the largest flask I've ever seen in some of these these scenes. Like, it's not a hip flask, it's like a leg flask.
It's like a backpack flask.
Yeah.
But also at this point it's Cushing time. So they're they're wandering around. Oh, I think they somehow come across a like a there's like an old phonograph that starts playing warped, creepy music, and everybody comes and finds that thing. And they're standing in this big hallway and then from out of somewhere you get you get Cushing voice, kind of nasal Cushing voice, disembodied eternal, saying why have you come to this place? And they say where are you? And he says, I am near but also far.
Yeah.
And so from this conversation, let's see, they explain how they got here. Cushing tells them he can't help them. They explain the ghost ship that rammed their boat. Actually it is a long wrecked ship that's out on the reef. And then this was pretty funny Cushing just freaks out at this news, and then you see him and he learns the name of the ship and he just sort of busts out running through the forest to go look at it.
It's kind of an interesting twist on what you might expect in a lot of these films, where I mean, not too big of a twist. I guess there's always this idea that the mastermind or the mad scientist involved in a scenario is going to be consumed by his own creations. But there's never even any idea, like even a pretense that he has control over these things, like he's afraid of them as everyone else from the get go. He just has a little more information.
Right exactly, So he goes out there to look at them. He clearly is he's shaken. Meanwhile, the tourists establish camp within Hotel SS. They just like go into a room and they start getting pillows and after we get comfy, yeah, they get comfy, and oh and then there's this great shot. Again. Most of what's the best about this movie is just good creepy shots of zombies with in goggles doing creepy stuff.
One of my favorites is this moment that's coming right up where the zombies have like these little cubicles of coral that they appear to be sleeping in. They're like laying down horizontally in these little boxes around the reef. And there's one scene where one of them reaches up from below the water and grips the part of the reef that protrudes. It's very cool.
Yeah, and again this is one of those things like imagery from a dark dream.
Yeah. But anyway, we're forty minutes in and I think we've just officially reached the zombie attack part of the movie, and that defines the rest of what goes on. There's two main things that happen from here on out. It's zombies being creepy looming looking at you with the goggles, and zombies grabbing people and killing them.
Yeah. And it's pretty effective because you have basically two locations go well three, I guess there's the surf and out in the water there's the sort of Florida coastal jungle, and then they are the ruins of the hotel. And in all of those the the Death Corps troopers here. They man, they just they move around in very interesting ways.
They're not like shambling zombies. They're very deliberate and slow and stealthy, like when they stalk and hunt their prey in this and it's it's it's very unsettling.
There is a moment where the cook Daubs he goes out to get supplies to cook food for everybody. I don't know what he plans to cook it on, but he does that, and I guess he's coming back with food supplies from the boat and he gets attacked by a goggle beast. But the attack is interesting. The goggle beast does not grab him. Instead, it menaces him until he falls to his death in a pool of sea urchins. And I think that is a first and only for me.
I don't think I've ever seen pit of sea urchins otherwise used as a murder weapon movie.
I winced when I saw this. It's been a while since I've seen it, so I'd forgotten about this scene. But I certainly have been around sea urchins, and you know sometimes when I'm in the water with them, and yeah, you have that in the back of your head. I don't want to touch that. I certainly don't want to fall on it with my face like Dobbs does. So this one gave me the all overs.
Yeah. Oh, and then it's funny with everybody discovers that Dobbs has died. When Brooke Adams puts on the bathing suit and decides to go swimming in this fetid pond full of sea urchins.
Yeah, well it's hot, it's hot out there.
Yeah, but she just she literally bumps right into him. So he's all mangled laying there in the reeds and she back strokes into him and then yeah, freaks out. Whoops.
This movie has more finding of drowned characters than any other film I've seen, but it's very well done, Like each discovery is horrific. And even though like all the kill I think all the kills in this film are bloodless, but they're still they tend to be disturbing.
Oh yeah, yeah, they're disturbing because of the atmosphere, the music, the you know, the goggles and all that. It's, yeah, you don't need blood be to be disturbing. In fact, I was actually just talking about this with with Rachel not too long ago, about how when you go back and watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it's surprising how little blood there is in it.
M M yeah, yes, it's definitely similar energy in this, but there's.
Even less in this than there is in that. But anyway, so everybody goes back to the hotel, and in the meantime, I don't know what to make of this. Suddenly they go back to the hotel and there's stuff there that I don't remember seeing the previous time, which is that like Cushing has like swastika crap hanging up. He's like he's like put up Nazi decorations since they were last in his area. Is is that what we're supposed to understand.
I thought it was maybe just a section of this big hotel that we hadn't seen yet, But yeah, he has it decorated with a billion mirrors, which I don't know. Maybe that's some sort of anxiety about things creeping up on him, like his own creations here or and then he has the Nazi flags up. But this is all we see of his life here. There's no mad science lab or anything. There's no even inclination that he's been
up to anything the past, you know what. Ever, since the end of the Second World War, he's just been hanging out here in this ruined hotel, just doing nothing.
What's he eating, what's he surviving on that?
I don't know. He's not doing great though, I mean he looks.
Really shabby, Yes he does.
I don't think I've ever seen Peter Cushing and short sleeves before, but he's got these raggedy short sleeves and a kerchief tied around his neck. I mean he looks he looks shipwrecked the whole time.
That's a good point. I did not notice the Cushing short sleeves. But you're right, and that is a defined I mean Cushing. Cushing is somebody who needs a jacket and tie. That's part of who he is. But here is here we get our exposition dump. Should we have exposition dump music that plays every time we get to that part of the plot. I don't know, Seth. I'll let you decide that anyway. But exposition dump Cushing is
now explains everything to them. He's hanging out with Norman and Chuck and these goobers.
And he's very succinct though, like he doesn't mess around. There's no gloating. He just tells it like it seems to be.
No.
Here are the facts from his exposition dump. It is you are dumb you should have left. Now you will die. Allow me to explain. I was an SS commander in World War two. I commanded a group of aquatic zombie SS troops that could live underwater without ever having to surface. And then there was one part I wanted to quote because it was so weird. He says, we created the perfect soldier from street hoodlums and thugs and a good number of pathological murderers and sadists. We called them the
Totin Core. The Death Core creatures more horrible than any you can imagine, not dead, not alive, but somewhere in between. And then he starts complain about how they wouldn't obey orders and couldn't be controlled. But he says they made them. They just like tried to get pathological murderers and sadists. And then he starts complaining about how they would not
obey orders and could not be controlled. And at the end of the war, Cushing came to this island, I guess, to escape justice, and he sank the ship containing the Death Core, And somehow in the past couple days the ship unsank and the Death Corps are now on the loose. Oh Andy pulls out his Luger, and he says, now I want you to leave. If I see any of you at all, I will shoot on site.
Yep. And they're like, okay, fair enough, gotcha.
So then Cushing he starts running around. I couldn't quite understand what it was he was trying to do at this point, but he goes out waiting in the water, and then did you understand what he was trying to do at this point?
Yeah, So my read on this, and it could be incorrect, is that is that I think ultimately that he was trying to distract them, trying to distract the death core because even though he's like, you guys are dumb. I told you how to get away and you didn't, and now you're just gonna die, like all of us are
going to die. There there are a couple of lines where he admits some level of responsibility for all the deaths that have occurred because of these things, and so there's kind of a sense, but not like a super like Hammy sense, but there's this I kind of got a sense that he was he was trying to distract them, because he's like calling to the death cores and he
always he can't control them. So the only alternative seems to be that he wants to distract them away from the others so that they can possibly escape and live.
It's harder to buy him as remorseful given that he's still hanging up swastika flags where he lives.
Yeah, he's not like, I'm not saying he's a he's not a character you feel for, but that that that's the only thing that makes any sense within the context of the plot, you know, because I otherwise, Yeah, I just I can't think of anything else. The listeners, if you've seen the film and you have an answer to this, let us know. But I think that's what they were going for.
Yeah.
Well, eventually, so he's running around all over the place and at some point he stops and lays down next to a pond to drink some stagnant giardia water, and a zombie just reaches up out of the water, pulls him in, drowns him.
Yeah, good scene, good end of Cushing.
Meanwhile, the tourists are trying to escape on a boat that Peter Cushing has told them about. It's just like a little rowboat. And there was a really funny scene of Norman the aggressive angry nerd carrying around his suitcases while he's trying to get in the boat.
Ye, he still has all of his baggage. He's ready to climb on this tiny boat with several other people, and of course they call him on it. They're like, what are you doing?
I know several of us have died, but I still have five suitcases I need to bring with us.
Yeah, and then when they tell me can't bring him, he like throws them any tantrum. He's kind of like, fine, like I'm mad, I'm mad, don't get to keep my suitcase.
One of the bags he's bringing with him looks like it's a folding one of those bat you transport suits in. So he's got like formal wear with him. Yeah, he's going to need that tuxedo after they escape. So anyway, they're trying to escape on a tiny row boat. This part I thought had some pretty cool shots of them, like paddling around through these mazes of mangrove roots while the Goggle boys are lurking beneath and all around spying on them. This part I thought was creepy. Yeah, yeah, oh,
but then it just turns into a parade of errors. Mishap. After mishap, they run into a mud bank. They have to try to run the boat out of it. Beverly falls out, people go after her. Rose gets knocked out of the boat. That roses Broke Adams and then eventually, after a bunch of screwing around, the boat floats away under sail with no passengers. Whoops.
Yeah, so now they've really failed. Well they failed for the second time here because now there's nothing they can do but run back to the hotel.
Right, So there are various chases now, everybody's running around in different places. Norman gets attacked in the water and killed by by Norman. Brooke Adams gets chased, but there's a there's a cool moment where she manages to kill one of the zombies by knocking its goggles off. Here again, do you understand what was going on here? So the goggles come off and then somehow it's face like rapidly rots.
I think it's like they're susceptible to the light, Like if the light gets in there and the sunlight gets in their eyes, it destroys them. And you know, we were also told that they draw their energy from the earth itself, So I think that's one of the reasons I guess that we have all those scenes of them like in the water, walking along on the bottom of
the seafloor. Like it's nothing like they have some sort of supernatural connection to the earth, m some sort of warped pagan magic that was co opted by the baddies.
Okay, that would make sense anyway. Meanwhile, back at the hotel, so the remaining tourists, Chuck, Keith, Beverly, and Rose, they decided to hole up in a refrigerator overnight. By locking the door hiding in there, we get to watch the zombies walk in.
Yeah. Yes, not like your refrigerator in your house, right, but a big one, a big walk in freezer thing.
And it doesn't have power, so it's not like cold, but there is that. We get to watch the zombies wrecking the hotel. They're just like smashing mirrors and everything. And then inside the fridge, this is the moment I mentioned where Chuck has this kind of out of character freak out. He just starts ranting and screaming and hyperventilatings hyperventilating. He's saying, let me out, I'll take my chances. Maybe he's claustrophobic or something I guess, so, Yeah, but it's
revealed he's got a flare gun. He starts pointing the flare gun at people and he accidentally shoots it. I think this blinds Beverly. And it's during the scene where they like all have to run out of the refrigerator because Chuck has shot this flare gun inside it that I noticed finally that Keith is wearing bell bottoms, and I suppose he has been the entire movie.
Oh but of course, of course he has. Makes perfect sense.
So then we're into endgame basically, like Chuck is running around, he's showing off his muscles and he's trying to fight back against the zombies. But he falls into a pool and he gets killed by zombies.
Yeah, he effectively close lines one of them. Yeah, then they get him and that pool death scene is pretty horrifying. Now again, the sort of vacation world ruins of this place.
Yeah, Keith and Roe is actually successfully hide till morning, I think inside a furnace. They like open this metal grade and hide in there, and then in the morning when they come out, they find Beverly dead in a fish tank, and they find Chuck dead in a pool, so then it's just to escape mode. It's you know, they're trying to escape in a boat. Keith doesn't do
so well either. He gets dragged out of the boat multiple times, and eventually we get yet another sighting of a corpse through the glass bottom, and it is only Brooke Adams who makes it out, but even does she really Like the other Florida movies we've watched, this one has a downer ending where really nobody wins.
Real gut touch of an ending, because first of all, everyone except Rose has been murdered by the Death Corps, like everybody except well the fishermen and his son. At the beginning, they're going, yeah, they're okay, Yeah they're doing right, but everybody else dead. And even though she survives being adrift at sea for days without water, she's obviously left terribly traumatized. And the account that she's been writing down
in her journal. There's this really awesome scene there at the end where the camera pans around and we see she's been writing. We assume she's writing the narration, she's writing her story, but then we see that her journal is filled with nothing but nonsensical scribbles so you have this this very classic weird horror ending, as our protagonist has survived physically but not mentally from a brush with supernatural horror.
This is actually extremely close to the ending of Zat, where it seems like all of the human characters who are not catfishified are either dead or there's one who was apparently saved but now just wants to march into the ocean.
Yeah. I guess the thing is that at least you feel good for doctor Leopold, because it's like, well, doctor Leopold won, he got what he wanted, and I guess it's good for the fish. But in this like nobody really wins, like the I mean, I guess the Death Corps wins, but they don't really want things. They just murder, you know. So it's just it's kind of a nihilistic
ending but feels, you know, honestly nineteen seventies. You know, it's kind of the It also reminds us a little bit of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where in that our final girl gets away, but she's like laughing maniacally. There's a sense that, yeah that perhaps she has not survived completely survived physically but not you know, mentally or emotionally.
Oh well, I guess you could read it that way, But then again, I don't know. I can scarcely think of a movie ending where the protagonist escaping danger is as arctic and feels as rewarding as the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. True, like when she gets into the truck and gets away at the end of TCM, like that is probably like the biggest, like just absolutely visceral in the body sense of relief I can think of in any movie I've ever seen.
You're right it, really it does feel like a victory at the end of TCM, like she has gotten away. Leather Face is defeated and gets it. In this though, yeah, the batties for the most part didn't get it, and she's in kind of a sad state. So yeah, it's a like I say, I got punch of an ending, but one that feels, you know, on message.
For this film, we don't get to see the Death Corps doing Chainsaw ballet on the beach like we do with the Leather Pace.
All right, So let's say Florida movie checklist. We had Florida ruins, we had oppressive Florida wilderness, We had marine life in tanks, we had electronic music, and we had a dark ending. So really the only things we're lacking that were present in previous movies are well, I was gonna say shots of animals in the wild, but we do have some fish scenes early on, so see urchins. Yeah, just yes, the urchins are in there, just maybe not as much wildlife as we saw in Frogs certainly or
in Za. And also we don't have an ecological message.
That's true this one. Uh, those two movies both, even if it was maybe not super well articulated, Yeah, they've got an ecological message. I don't think this movie really has any message at all. Yeah, none that is intended. If it is, it's just like, don't create a death core. You do not screw around with making undead superhuman Nazi soldiers.
Yeah, or properly research your your scuba outlets before you gone a vacation. But yeah, this one I think is pretty effective. I remember seeing I think I saw the last maybe thirty percent of it on TBS or TNT back in the day, like all during the day at my grandparents' house and was really creeped out by it. And it's a it's Actually, it's a great horror movie to have seen during the day because most of the action takes place in the day. Like it, it makes
daytime in Florida horrifying, you know, effectively horrifying. It doesn't have to be dark in Florida for you to be afraid.
Actually, this violates a lot of rules about movie monsters. Usually, I think movie monsters are better when seen, less when kept in the dark more, you know, following the Jaws rule, like if you're going to finally see the monster, you want to wait towards the end of the movie to do it. This movie, no is just putting its monsters front and center, tons of screen time, showing you all the time. Much like that, actually, but very different from Za.
The monsters look very menacing in this and that actually works better when you see a ton of them.
Yeah. Yeah, And in fact, there there's one scene in particular where I think we've effectively killed one of them at this point once you pull the goggles off, and then we still see there's so many and I mean chalk it up to a good film. I was when that happened. In my recent reviewing of it, I was like, oh my goodness, Like I felt my heart sink there were so many of them, even though I knew what was going to happen.
I wonder what those goggles actually were were They were like welding goggles. What do you think that was they were wearing.
I don't know. They looked familiar, but I don't know where I've seen them before. But good find costuming department on that. Yeah, good job, all right. So you're probably wondering where can I see Shockwaves? Well, I mentioned that I used to own it on Blue Underground on DVD from Blue Underground, and I think it's on Blu Ray from Blue Underground as well. I misplaced it over the years, but it's really good. It's got a lot of good extras.
It's a great restoration of the film. I think to a certain degree, there's a certain seventies graininess to this film that I think is essential, Like I wouldn't want to see it into fine a quality you know it needs. That's seventies ness to it. But yeah, the Blue Underground edition is nice, has some fun extras. You can also rent it digitally, buy it digitally most places and if you want, if you if you want to find like
a a sort of a loophole to get it. I have noticed that if you do a free trial of the Full Moon Entertainment channel, like you can get through like Amazon Prime, you know, like a seven day trial, you can you can watch shock Waves through that channel.
There's a Charles Band app now.
I guess it's an app. Yeah, it's at least it's an Amazon Prime channel, and I think you can get it on. It's probably on like Roku and stuff like that. I don't I'm not superversed in all that, okay, but but yeah, there's there are some ways to see this if you don't if you don't want to, you know, straight up rent or buy it or pick up that DVD, but subscribe.
To band Tube.
I didn't check too B to see if it was on two B.
Oh, yeah I didn't either.
Yeah.
You know, you were talking about the look of this movie. One thing, last thing I have to say I realized is the look of this movie is a blue can of craft graded parmesan cheese from the seventies. That's what the esthetic is.
Yes, all right, Well, on that note, we would love to hear from everyone out there about your memories, especially you know from older listeners. Your memories of craft cheese canisters of the mid nineteen seventies. When did it change? Why did it change? Did it change? I don't know. Have you seen this movie? Did you see it on TVs back in the day when you were a child and when we're partially traumatized by it like me, or you know, did you check it out later? Let us know.
We'd love to hear from you and you just in general about other films we've done on Weird House Cinema, films you think we should cover in the future, or like a lot of our listeners, just continue to write in about Sean Connery's accent and Highlander and to what degree it makes sense and what kind of backflips we have to do mentally to have it make sense.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.