Zombie Strains

When evil sorcerer Aderbal (John Drew Barrymore) invokes the power of a sinister three-eyed goddess to raise an invulnerable zombie army, only one man has the courage (and biceps) to stop him: centurion Gaius (Ettore Mani). This sword-and-sandal epic set in ancient Rome has it all: swords! sandals! beautiful women! bare-chested men! And, of course, zombies. Does this zombie army live up to the hyp...

When three hep cats visit a sinister fortune teller at the carnival, their future takes a turn for the worse. The mysterious Madam Estrella wants Jerry to join her collection of hypnotized, murderous zombies. Will Harold and Angela save their friend before it's too late? John, Andy and Producer Brad gaze into their crystal ball to try and divine whether there's a good zombie flick to be fo...

Three naive young women looking for work. One bitter old crone desperate for eternal life. And one mad scientist creating human/animal hybrids in the basement. Mix these ingredients together and you get a MONSTROSITY (1963) in more ways than one! Will Anita, Bea, and Nina (pronounced NINE-uh) escape this house of horrors? Join John, Andy, and Producer Brad as they venture into the first zombie mov...

What was the scariest part of living in the 1960s? We'd like to think it was all the zombies, but other little factors like massive societal transformation and the threat of atomic annihilation might be contenders too! Like all good horror monsters, zombies work best when they're exploiting the fears and anxieties of viewers. As the Zombie Strains team ventures into a new decade of zombie...

A living decapitated head, a knife-wielding Aztec mummy, and something called the Ring of Death. That's a lot of scary stuff to store in your basement all at once, as a group of gentleman explorers in 1963 Mexico discovers to their peril. How many will die in gruesome Aztec rituals before the curse is ended? Will reincarnated Aztec lovers romantically reunite amidst all these bloody hearts and...

A Criterion Collection film? Fantastic editing, camerawork, and direction? Are we sure Carnival of Souls is in the right podcast? After narrowly surviving a car accident, Mary uproots her life to become a church organist in Utah... but death isn't quite done with her. Her mind begins to unravel, and soon she cannot tell reality from her escalating nightmares. Join John, Andy, and Producer Brad...

What happens when film's most legendary B-horror director turns his unsubtle eye to the zombie genre? You get Tales of Terror, one of many Roger Corman films loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe stories. This anthology film (written by the iconic horror and scifi writer Richard Matheson) is packed with three separate creepy stories, and one of them features a gruesome strain of zombie that doesn&#...

When zombies are after you, only the world's greatest hero can save you. And who is that? It's El Santo, elite luchador and Mexican cultural phenomenon! After a professor vanishes and a sinister masked man unleashes a horde of zombies on a local orphanage, the police know that only the legendary luchador Santo can save the city. John, Andy, and Producer Brad watch in awe as Santo takes on...

What's scarier than a zombie trying to kill you? A zombie teaming up with possessed dolls to kill you! In the Mexican zombie flick The Curse of the Doll People (Muñecos infernales) , foolish adventurers steal a voodoo idol and face a fate is worse than death--unless the courageous Karina (Elvira Quintana) can stop a sinister voodoo master, his zombie assistant, and his horde of murderous dolls...

This week, our bold Zombie Strains investigators chart a course for rural England, where the sinister Dr. Blood (Keiron Moore) is harvesting the still-beating hearts of his victims to empower his insane medical "research." Join John, Andy, and Producer Brad as they brave the dangers of the Cornish Tin Mines, meet scream-queen legend Hazel Court, face their most gnarly zombie yet... and unr...

Everybody's talking about Weapons , an unsettling 2025 horror film about a community in shock after a classroom of grade-school children vanishes overnight. Always on the hunt for modern films with connections to their favorite horror genre, John and Andy take a road trip to American suburbia to investigate for themselves. Don't tell Producer Brad that they recorded this without him. Pleas...

Our first color zombie films is also a throwback to the 1930s! Newlyweds John and Linda (John McKay and Linda Ormond) inherit an old plantation outside of New Orleans, only to discover that their bitter cousin Monica (Monica Davis) has angry, zombie-related plans for them. Will Monica's voodoo magic spell a gruesome end to their honeymoon bliss? John, Andy, and Producer Brad venture into the s...

We've been dreading their appearance ever since we started watching 1950s zombie films, and they're finally here: teenagers! That's right, 1959's Teenage Zombies is not only our first zombie film starring teenagers, but it's also a clear forerunner of the modern teenage-slasher flick. Can this crew of plucky '50s teens foil a foreign plot to turn the entire population of th...

Plan 9 is often called the worst movie ever made. But could there be a zombie gem buried beneath the hilariously bad sets, abysmal acting, and tortured script? John, Andy, and Producer Brad venture into this legendary fiasco and come face to face with a sexy vampire, a gigantic Swedish wrestler, Bela Lugosi’s last performance, arrogant space aliens, and of course the infamous Plan 9 itself. Show N...

The Zombie Strains crew have hit the motherlode of zombie firsts! Invisible Invaders brings together all kinds of famous and familiar zombie tropes in one film: a zombie-created apocalypse, heroes taking refuge in a science bunker, convincing zombie make-up, and a truly compelling tough moral choice. The story follows a sequence that will be familiar to any fan of modern zombie movies, as a small...

Jonathan Drake suffers under an ancient curse! His cruel colonial forbears massacred a South American tribe, and the immortal zombie survivors will not rest until Jonathan is dead. And by dead, we mean injected with an ancient poison, decapitated, and his head shrunken in the lab of the scenery-chewing villain Dr. Emil Zurich (Henry Daniell). Will Jonathan, his daughter Allison, and Lt. Rowan stop...

Sally (Vera Day) is living day to day, just trying to get by. But things take a turn for the sinister when she crosses paths with mad scientist Dr. Moran (George Coulouris). Dr. Moran has plans for the women in his life—plans that involve feeding them to a carnivorous Amazonian plant in order to steal their life essence, extract a serum from the devil tree, and use that serum to bring the dead bac...

Some treasures are best left undisturbed—especially when they're guarded by ancient curses. But if the treasure hunters in Zombies of Mora Tau were smart, we wouldn't get a horde of underwater zombies, a band of backstabbing scoundrels, the world's toughest grandma, and the legendary Allison Hayes ( Attack of the 50 Foot Woman ) as a scheming femme fatale. Don your deep sea diving suit...

Who could possibly survive an expedition to “the weird jungle of cobra plants that feed on women... and rip men apart”? Boris Karloff plays a skeptical scientist who journeys into the heart of darkness alongside a brooding '50s adventurer, a shifty gangster, a plucky assistant, and a zombie. Grab your pith helmet and machete and join John, Andy, and Producer Brad as they brave the unknown terr...

Creature with the Atom Brain takes the science of zombie film to a whole new level. This movie is packed with exciting zombie firsts: atomic-powered zombies, rampaging zombie hordes (finally!), a city put under martial law to contain the zombie threat, and very cheap zombie make-up. Andy, John, and Producer Brad have their hands full sorting through all the zombie goodness on this sci-fi horror B...

The Zombie Strains crew stumbles across an unexpected delight in 1953’s El Monstruo Resucitado (The Revived Monster), the first Mexican zombie film! Set in Czechoslovakia and dripping with atmosphere, this film tells the story of a resourceful journalist (Miroslava) who finds herself tangled up in the hopes and hatreds of a hideously deformed mad scientist with a chip on his shoulder, a brain-tran...

The Zombie Strains crew comes up against Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in this remake of the delightful The Ghost Breakers (1940). George Marshal directed both the original and this 1950s update. The team was eager to explore the new horrors Marshall would concoct this time around, but we were unprepared for the terror of... Jerry Lewis’s performance. Scared Stiff may feature the least impressive zo...

The Zombie Strains team is in for some serious culture shock as they burst into the 1950s. Voodoo masters? mesmerism? mad scientists? All gone! Instead we find aliens, atom bombs, and rocket ships. This is going to take some serious experimentation in the Zombie Strains lab to figure out what is going on in this crazy decade. Release date: July, 1952 Movie poster List of 1952 movies 1952 Academy A...

While Producer Brad is away on special assignment, John and Andy continue to break the rules by talking about zombie movies out of order. In this episode we talk about the biggest zombie events of 2025 - The Last of Us Season 2 (SPOILERS!) and 28 Years Later (NO spoilers). Plus, Andy reports on his participation in an actual voodoo ceremony. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/zombie-s...

Season 2 of Zombie Strains is almost upon us. In this special episode, John and Andy dissect the terrors and anxieties of the 1950s in the Zombie Strains lab. Our goal is to predict how the next wave of zombie movies will exploit the hidden fears of this most paranoid of decades. Join us as we brace for a brand new decade of horror! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/zombie-strains/do...