The Original Apocalypse Film - The World, The Flesh and The Devil (1959)

Podcasts Jul 13, 2025

The wind kicks up against the side of the buildings, the empty storefronts and vacant display cabinets seem to mock as you wander further, looking for shelter.

To kick off our next unit David and Patrick are joined by ‪@DarthdYT‬ to discuss and analyse 1959's The World, The Flesh and The Devil, the progenitor of an entire genre's aesthetic.

Glossary: https://zeroindent.com/apocalypse/

Patrick Lovern: It really made me think about why those tropes are the way they are, and what ideas they evoke and stuff.

Patrick Lovern: I was like, oh, okay.

Patrick Lovern: This was such an educational film for me.

D.C. McNeill: Oh, cool.

Patrick Lovern: Yeah.

Patrick Lovern: Apocalypse just generally, I think, it's such a fascinating genre, like so intriguing.

Patrick Lovern: I think it's very broad as well.

Patrick Lovern: I've recently come across the thought that Star Wars is post-apocalyptic.

Patrick Lovern: I mean, this is a bit more explicit, but Dune is also post-apocalyptic.

Patrick Lovern: It's like post-post-apocalyptic kind of thing.

Patrick Lovern: And then there are post-modern takes like that.

Patrick Lovern: But then there are more straightforward takes in modern times of the apocalypse genre that just like crank the nuance up to, you know, like 11, like The Last of Us, the video game, part one, stuff like that.

Patrick Lovern: There's just like so much in this genre that you can do.

Patrick Lovern: And it's so versatile.

Patrick Lovern: And it's always like, just so interesting if you do it right.

Patrick Lovern: Yeah.

D.C. McNeill: Yeah.

D.C. McNeill: I think I Am Legend is such a good pull for this film in particular.

D.C. McNeill: Like the zombie film is like weirdly present in this film in a way that's like, it's like present in the abstract, where it's like all the pieces are here.

D.C. McNeill: They just haven't put zombies in it yet.

D.C. McNeill: Like it's that.

D.C. McNeill: It's so weird.

D.C. McNeill: And yeah, I mean, the zombie moment that comes with The Walking Dead, that obviously sort of, I guess you would argue was then replaced by like the vampire moment that was then replaced by like the young adult dystopian moment.

D.C. McNeill: But yeah, interesting that you referenced The Last of Us, because the discourse around The Post Apocalypse is such an interesting thing to try and contend with, because I think a lot of modern critics have this problem where they imagine that the wave of the zombie media coming off the back of The Walking Dead is like, that's like the emergent genre, which is just like not true.

D.C. McNeill: You know, Post Apocalypse has been around since like the 20s.

D.C. McNeill: It's at least, you know, contemporary aesthetics.

D.C. McNeill: It gets exacerbated by the nuclear arms race.

D.C. McNeill: And then obviously in our modern time, just everything feeling like it's going wrong.

D.C. McNeill: And then, you know, the Fallout games and The Last of Us and all of these things are all just riffing off the same source material, which is like ostensibly after London, you know, Geoffrey's novel.

D.C. McNeill: And we'll talk, I guess, throughout the unit about the different sub genres of The Apocalypse story, because obviously this story in particular is really the very quick collapse story and then a survivor story.

D.C. McNeill: Slash almost restoration, kind of maybe almost.

D.C. McNeill: So yeah, keen to, keen to unpack some of that.

D.C. McNeill: And as you say, Pat, if this was educational, I'm really interested to see like, yeah, which bits stuck out to you, because this is a film where like five things happen.

D.C. McNeill: I love films like that, where you're like, this is a lot of people in rooms arguing with each other about the same stuff.

D.C. McNeill: Yeah, Darth, what about you?

D.C. McNeill: What's your what's your relationship aside from being absolutely jazzed to do this ever since I pitched it like a year ago?

Darth: Ironically, as Patrick was talking, I was trying to have a little bit of self-realization about why I love this genre so much because I've always very much loved anything post-apocalyptic.

Darth: Even as bad as the Resident Evil series is, any crappy B film that's post-apocalypse, I will happily watch it.

Darth: And then I realized I grew up when I was elementary school and younger, like ancient Egypt and archaeology.

Darth: That was one of my favorite topics.

Darth: And it's that aspect of the post-apocalypse that I find so fascinating, like the Shannara Chronicles, the ruins of the old world.

Darth: That's why I love it.

Darth: Because when you see the bits of history, and you're seeing how that history that we're living in led to this potential future, like that's what's so interesting to me.

Darth: So anyway, all of that said, yes, I absolutely love this genre.

Darth: And some bits of it are more my favorite than others.

Darth: Like zombies are fun, but also then I can't sleep for a couple days.

Darth: So it's like not by absolute preference.

Darth: I love the take that the Shannara whole series did, where it was a lot more magical, and they brought in the dwarves and all this stuff, but it's still like heavily tied to our real world, at least physically.

Darth: And then this film was very interesting because I almost never go back and watch old movies, because it almost like hurts, because the field has just changed and grown so much.

Darth: And particularly with this one, the sound design was the number one thing that stood out to me.

Darth: Like it blew my mind how much, like how the craft of Foley, meaning when you add in sounds after the movie is filmed, and you're trying to emulate, this is what a falling rock sounded like, this is what a man walking on concrete would have sounded like.

Darth: All of that has just developed so much over the past 70 years since this was made.

Darth: And anyway, like story aside, I was just blown away from looking at how they did the map paintings for all the backgrounds and like physically how they shot this film back in 56, 59, whenever it was that it was filmed.

D.C. McNeill: Yeah, it's like an impossible film that exists.