John Corey, Andy Rau, Bradley Dumont
87 episodes listed below
Zombie cinema, sorted by strain.
Zombie Strains treats zombie movies as a long, strange family tree rather than a pile of interchangeable monsters. John, Andy, and Brad move through gothic Hammer, spy television, Italian myth adventure, science-horror oddities, and lurid 1960s mysteries with jokes kept close to the research.
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Zombie Strains is a genre-history conversation built around the many shapes a zombie can take on screen. The organizing idea is simple. The results are not. John, Andy, and Brad move through zombie films and nearby zombie appearances with enough structure to track the lineage, and enough looseness to let a strange detail breathe. One episode might linger on a creepy organ, beach-night lighting, suspect lists, and 1960s counterculture slang. Another might turn a Hammer film into a conversation about voodoo, witchcraft, gothic manners, and the peculiar stiffness of Victorian evil. The show is fond of these movies, but it is not gullible about them. Cheap effects get noticed. So do good visual choices, odd performances, plot machinery, and the moments when a silly premise unexpectedly works. The panel often returns to one useful question: what kind of zombie is this? Sometimes it is a controlled body with no will. Sometimes it is a tragic victim with scraps of memory. Sometimes it is a science experiment, a Nazi remnant, a mythic servant, or a television contrivance wearing the right label. That taxonomy gives the show its backbone. The talk around it stays relaxed, dry, and interruptible, with research notes bumping into quick corrections and side comments. There is room for movie trivia, alternate titles, poster art, old dubs, cabaret scenes, color saturation, and the occasional Michigan sports aside. The show works because it treats marginal horror as culturally useful without pretending every movie is secretly a masterpiece. It is careful enough for genre obsessives and informal enough for listeners who simply enjoy watching a panel make sense of weird old cinema.
Made for: For horror and cult-film listeners who enjoy old genre movies, movie context, monster taxonomy, and dry conversational analysis. It especially suits people who like tracing how familiar horror ideas changed across decades and formats.
What sets it apart: The show treats zombies as a changing set of screen traditions rather than a single monster type. Its film-by-film approach makes room for gothic horror, spy television, myth adventure, science experiments, voodoo, tragic victims, and strange transitional hybrids.
Zombies rule the world of horror cinema--fast zombies, slow zombies, voodoo zombies, and so many other strains. How did zombies evolve into the monsters we know and love today? Join John and Andy as they shamble through zombie film history, one movie at a time.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Zombie Strains turns film-by-film discussion into a running argument about zombie cinema's shifting rules, victims, and visual language.
Zombie Strains keeps asking what counts as a zombie, then tests the answer against one film at a time. John, Andy and producer Brad find useful complications in the margins of horror cinema: the victim who retains a trace of memory in Dr.
Like a midnight repertory screening, only you leave arguing whether Hercules counts as zombie cinema.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A 1967 zombie oddity that finally puts the genre in the decade it was made.
The Deadly Organ (1967) stands out as a curious one-off: a zombie film rooted in the 60s, with a haunted organ, musical clues, beach-at-night imagery, lurid club scenes, and harsh lighting that makes the woods feel close to noir.
A dub-warped zombie oddity with tragic family stakes.
This stop on 1965's Dr. Orloff's Monster treats the film as a puzzle of control: what animates the body, who carries the blame for the violence, and why the zombie feels less like a machine than a damaged person.
A fond, lively tour through The Frozen Dead, with science zombies, wartime baggage, and a few memorable grotesqueries.
The Frozen Dead gets a warm, loose-limbed review from three hosts who seem to enjoy the movie's odd little pleasures. They linger on the severed head, the arms in the wall, and the lab work without pretending the film is anything other than gloriously cheesy, then widen out to…
A messy Hercules zombie tale that becomes a clear discussion of how the movie works.
The episode treats Hercules in the Haunted World as a Hercules quest, a zombie story, and an Italian beefcake movie all at once, and that juggling act gives the discussion its shape.
A graveyard oddity that turns zombie lore into a dry, worthwhile detour.
Zombie Strains spends this episode on Terror Creatures from the Grave, the 1965 Italian gothic horror film with an evil incantation, a creepy nursery rhyme, and plenty of theremin and other eerie effects.
Three friends recap Daredevil, Fallout, and new releases scene by scene, in Spanish.
Slasher talk with sharp teeth.
The show opens on a zombie film that actually belongs to the 1960s.
Zombie Strains is the internet's only international zombie podcast, watching zombie films from around the world.
Zombie Strains goes back to 1966's The Frozen Dead because the hosts had to swap in a rerun while busy schedules were packed.
Zombie Strains turns to Hercules in the Haunted World and immediately gets tangled up in the title, the zombies, and the hero's quest.
Zombie Strains visits *Terror Creatures from the Grave*, the 1965 Italian gothic horror film dressed up with an evil incantation, a creepy nursery rhyme, and plenty of theremin and creepy sound effects.
Zombie Strains reviews the 1943 15-chapter Columbia serial 'Batman,' re-released in 1965 as 'An Evening with Batman and Robin,' for its zombie element, in which Dr.