IV 15 259-261

[John Bailey]

Re: Zombies. Night of the Living Dead [1968] arguably redefined the
concept of the zombie in the US, and indeed made it a figure of
popular culture in a way it hadn't been before. For the P-listers
around at the time of IV, were zombies really part of the public
consciousness? I know there's been a massive resurgence in popularity
lately but are all of the zombie refs in IV appropriate to the times?

On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 5:50 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> Fritz calls to tell Doc Shasta landed 2 days ago at LAX
>
> Fritz Drybeam-  Interesting name- Given the context, one thinks of the noir
> film director Fritz Lang. Drybeam made me  think of a beam of light.  Film
> noir is all about harsh angular  lighting. FD is using the Arpanet to look
> into hidden things but how useful his searches are is not clear, and on 258
> he tells Doc that the FBI is watching back and asking him why he is so
> interested in Shasta.
>
> The line that jumps for me on this page is "Glenn Charlock is still dead,
> but hey, who cares about the criminal element , right?"
>
> He keeps complaining till Fritz says it's Doc's problem now.   Fritz has
> been spending too much time with the Arpanet and needs to get back to
> chasing down skips and deadbeats. There is a constant tension between
> working to address real crimes of violence and serving the quasi legal
> machinery and interests of the powers that be.
>
> Fritz doesn't want to look into Puck; seems to know this is dangerous
> territory.
>
> Clearly, my reading  in the chapter summary of of the incident with the gold
> copper traces and Noguchi was wrong. I missed the joke with 'calling in the
> lab' and Doc was referring to an historic incident where Noguchi was
> suspended for a month.  No p-listers seem to have noticed or cared.
>
> The recurrent theme of Zombies shows up when Doc watches a Zombie Movie but
> falls asleep before the part at the end that confuses him. Zombies seem to
> be IV's Thanatoids, a rather darker take on the living dead. Still we get
> the idea that Doc thinks about Zombies as  karmically real and doesn't want
> to be one. This movie is about 2 brother's rivalry over a woman , ending
> when one( manipulated buy a voodoo priest) stabs the others wife and he and
> she end up dead, floating in the surf. Maybe P is forecasting how Doc is
> manipulated by Bigfoot into a violent confrontation with AP and PB.
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