Quantcast
Channel: Bad and weird movies – Balladeer's Blog
Viewing all 482 articles
Browse latest View live

RETURN OF THE FLY (1959): ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT – AUGUST 9TH, 1986

0
0

*** FEATURING A MAJOR MILESTONE IN THE SHOW’S HISTORY ***

Return of the FlyBEFORE MST3K THERE WAS … THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT!

In the mid-1980′s The Texas 27 Film Vault was the show to watch on Saturday nights to see “Film Vault Technicians First Class” Randy Clower and Richard Malmos show and mock bad and campy movies preceded by episodes of old Republic serials. Machine-gun toting Randy and Richard would also have comedic sci-fi adventures before and after commercial breaks. 

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult series via my research into really old newspapers, my interview with Randy Clower and recollections from my fellow fans of this show. Keep those emails and comments coming “Vaulties”. Here’s my latest review of the movie shown by Randy and Richard when a date can be verified.  

EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday August 9th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1am.  * Special thanks to my fellow T27FV fan Spearman for the date. Before the movie an episode of either Flying Disc Man from Mars or Canadian Mounties vs Atomic Invaders was shown. Sources vary. 

FILM VAULT LORE: The previous week our boys of the Film Vault Corps (“the few … the proud … the sarcastic”) had shown the original version of The Fly. Like this week’s showing of Return of the Fly it was used to promote Randy and Richard’s upcoming public appearance at the Dallas debut of David Cronenberg’s remake of The Fly. (More on that public appearance after the movie review) Spearman also tells me this August 9th episode even featured R&R’s interview with Vincent Price.

THE MOVIE: Return of the Fly is a black and white sequel to the technicolor original film. Brett Halsey, who played driven and tormented teens in a few films back then plays the driven and tormented Philippe DeLambre, the son of Andre DeLambre from the original film The Fly. It’s supposed to be 15 years later, but Vincent Price, reprising his role as Francois Delambre, Andre’s brother, hasn’t aged a bit!

Philippe is obsessed with finishing his father’s work in perfecting a matter transporter, like the kind on Star Trek years later. Francois will have none of it but reluctantly gives in when Philippe threatens to sell his half of the family business to finance the research himself.

Return of the Fly2Because of the dark stories people tell about his father’s fate, Philippe freaks out around flies in some unintentionally HILARIOUS scenes. Whenever our hero hears a fly buzzing around he stops talking in mid-sentence, stops moving and looks around in a wild-eyed panic. For the life of me he looks like he’s thinking “Oh my God, WHAT’S THAT NOISE? I’M SCARED!” Angry fits in which he makes a point of killing every fly he encounters might have been less absurd.

Philippe’s frenzied reactions to flies set up the reason for him winding up like his father in the first film. A man helping Philippe and Vincent Price work on the transporter turns out to be an industrial spy and when Philippe catches him red-handed trying to steal the plans for the scientific device the spy knocks him out. He then places Philippe in the matter transporter and just for spite puts a living fly in there with him. (Once again, you can ignore IMDb reviews in which people make it sound like a complete accident that a fly and a man wind up in the transporter again. Do they even watch the movies they review?)

Just like in the original film we have a man’s body with the head and arm of a fly and a fly with the head and one limb of a man, complete with the fly whining “Help me! Help me!” in a helium-high voice. Halsey in the fly-head is incredibly silly-looking. The head is SOOOOO ridiculously oversized he looks like he’s suiting up to be the mascot of a football team called The Fighting Flies. (Paging Lee Corso!)

Return of the Fly3Philippe in man-fly form goes looking for revenge on Alan, the industrial spy, and his accomplice, the comically villainous funeral director who is really a covert fence for stolen industrial secrets. (Snidely Whiplash played the villain role a little less broadly than this guy!)

Along the way we get a HYSTERICALLY funny look at a fly with Brett Halsey’s head superimposed on it. Think of David Letterman as ”Head of Homicide” in that one sketch in the 1980′s with his disembodied head superimposed on a cop car’s chassis. You’ll also roll on the floor laughing at the sight of a man with guinea pig parts and a guinea pig with man parts … more transporter mischief caused by Alan.

SPOILER: It all ends happily this time as Halsey in monster form kills off all the bad guys, and then the fly-man and man-fly are both captured alive. They are placed in the transporter together and Philippe is made whole once again. 

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

MORE FILM VAULT LORE: As for that public appearance at the Dallas  premier of Cronenberg’s The Fly:  This was a promotional stunt cooked up by Randy and Richard’s new producer – Greg Bransom, who was Movie Host royalty himself, having played Professor Cerberus on The Museum of Horrors in 1970′s Dallas.

For how it turned out, here’s Randy Clower in his own words from EGor’s site:

“We were to show up as the Film Vault guys at the movie theatre. People were told that if they dressed as Film Vault personnel they’d get in free. Well, Rick and I weren’t in a great mood that night. Didn’t really want to make any personal appearances that evening since we were both fighting with girlfriends and such. We grumbled all the way to the theatre. We really didn’t expect much of a turnout.

“When we arrived there was a line around the place and 50% of those in that line were dressed in Film Vault-styled uniforms of their own creation, most of which were better than ours! We were FREAKED! Rick, who is usually the most extroverted guy you will ever meet in your life, got a panic attack and almost didn’t go in.

“I loved it and (dragged) him along until we were both having a blast with the crowd. It was our first realization that this tiny late night show actually reached people and that we had fans! I think Rick felt for a moment that we didn’t ‘deserve’ such attention and geeked. 

“But like I said we went in and had a great time. It was almost like Trekkies. These people started asking questions about Film Vault procedures and details of past episodes until I was confused beyond measure!” 

IN THE NEAR FUTURE BALLADEER’S BLOG WILL PRESENT MORE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT MILESTONES. Be here to share the Film Vault Corp’s mission of “safeguarding America’s schlock-culture heritage”.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO ON THIS SHOW – http://glitternight.com/texas-27-film-vault/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. 



BAD MOVIE SHORT: IT’S WONDERFUL BEING A GIRL (1966)

0
0

ModessIT’S WONDERFUL BEING A GIRL (1966) – This 22 minute educational film about menstruation features one of my all-time favorite lines from female hygiene shorts. That line is “You CAN have fun while you’re menstruating!” To me that remark is even more fun than the line from Molly Grows Up which goes “Menstruating girls should avoid square dancing.” (That’s good advice for anybody, really, even if they’re not menstruating.)

Mom is about to introduce her 12 year old daughter Libby to the facts about “that time of the month”. When Libby states that she’s not sure if she’ll like it Mom reminds her “You said you couldn’t wait to grow up.”

Soon Libby has a virtual PhD in menses as Mom uses Modess Sanitary Napkins (the sponsors of this short, to the surprise of no one) to prepare her daughter for the future. “See this blue polyethylene on the side? That’s a special moisture-proof shield!” she tells Libby with WAY too much enthusiasm.

By film’s end Libby is experiencing her first period (insert your own hockey joke here) but thanks to Mom and Modess Sanitary Napkins she doesn’t have to miss out on a roller-skating trip with her friends.

FOR MORE BAD MOVIES CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.    


TERROR TRAIN (1980) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT – DECEMBER 27TH, 1986

0
0

Terror TrainBefore MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault!

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the mid-1980′s with the 6th review in a series where exact broadcast dates can be determined. My research through VERY old newspapers, my interviews with the show’s co-star and co-creator Randy Clower plus emails and comments from my fellow fans of the program are helping us piece together bits and pieces of the show’s history. Keep those Texas 27 Film Vault memories coming, ladies and gentlemen.

Episode originally broadcast: Saturday December 27th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

Extras: Randy Clower and Richard Malmos, as machine-gun toting Film Vault Technicians First Class and members of the fictional Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) had two and a half hours to work with each week. Interviews with figures like Vincent Price, Ben Johnson and others were featured and the movies being shown and mocked were often preceded by episodes of old Republic serials like Radar Men from the Moon and others.

For this episode the movie was preceded by a chapter of Mysterious Doctor Satan. Another extra was Randy and Richard’s interview with Ben Johnson, whom they had interviewed at his ranch earlier in the year. Johnson also appeared in the episode’s film.

TERROR TRAIN (1980) – A New Year’s Eve slasher film set on a train carrying a load of partying passengers who plan to ring in the New Year in each time zone of the United States. As required by law at the time, Jamie Lee Curtis starred since it was a slasher flick with a seasonal theme. (Look under the Federal Halloween, Halloween II and Prom Night Act of 1980 if you don’t believe me)

A few years earlier Curtis and her college buddies played an initiation trick on a freshman by tricking him into bed with a female corpse. The guy had a nervous breakdown from the ugly near-necrophiliac experience (like sleeping with Barbra Streisand must feel) and is supposedly still in a mental hospital because of it.

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

Curtis and company are among the partiers on the Auld Lang Syne Express mentioned above and a ridiculously costumed slasher (guess who) begins knocking off her college friends as the train rolls across the countryside. Veteran actor Ben Johnson plays the heroic Train Conductor standing in for Dr Loomis in this flick and David Copperfield himself plays a professional magician … and is utterly unconvincing, oddly enough. Viewers are forced to endure Copperfield’s act which is trite and boring but it makes Terror Train one of the Big Four horror film turkeys that use pointless magician’s acts as filler. (The other three being The Body Shop, Boardinghouse and Funhouse.)

Viewers can also look out for a young Vanity, still going by D.D. Williams, but she doesn’t get to do much in the movie.

This New Year’s baby has not aged well and is fun to laugh at because of the ubiquitous cliches, dull death scenes, lack of logic and its Sleepaway Camp style twist ending. The scene where the killer’s costume makes him look like a crazed Gene Shalit is a lot of fun, too. If Terror Train had been a huge hit maybe we would have gotten other slasher films with titles like Fear Bus and Apprehension Subway. Probably not.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE BALLADEER’S BLOG WILL PRESENT MORE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT MILESTONES. Be here to share the Film Vault Corp’s mission of “safeguarding America’s schlock-culture heritage”.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO ON THIS SHOW – http://glitternight.com/texas-27-film-vault/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  


BAD MOVIE SHORT: THE MEANEST MAN IN THE WORLD (1954)

0
0

United FundTHE MEANEST MAN IN THE WORLD (1954) – This heavy-handed United Fund short was probably effective in its day. Back then people may have felt they were being too callous by openly laughing at the antics in this public service message.

Our central character, “Jim”, comes home late at night after a marathon work day. He startles his wife, who, in typical 50′s fashion sleeps in a separate bed. In fact he startles her SO much you get the impression she had a man on the side who may have left her bed a little too close to Jim’s homecoming for comfort.

Jim’s got even bigger problems, though. Money is tight, so tight that Jim tells his still-paniced wife that this year they won’t be able to afford their usual contribution to the United Fund. Our hero then falls asleep, while the disgusted narrator of this ham-fisted production sneers at his alleged callousness.

Now the real fun begins. This joyously tasteless  production tries to equate being unable to afford a United Fund contribution to monumental acts of deliberate cruelty. Jim’s dream counterpart stalks up to a hospital and viciously KICKS THE CRUTCHES out from under a poor crippled boy, then STANDS THERE LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY while looking down at his fallen victim.

Other patients, in wheelchairs and sporting other signs of injuries, look on with what they must have felt were expressions of horror on their faces. Instead, though, they seem strangely unaffected by what they’ve just witnessed. If they had calmly muttered “seen it before” and yawned it would be showing the same level of concern.

Jim, like a proto-Freddy Krueger, now shows up at the Salvation Army, where he gleefully strips clothing off the backs of the needy and disdainfully throws those clothes to the floor in another unintentionally hilarious display of cruelty.

Jimbo moves on to a day nursery for children from homes where both parents must work. He contemptuously regards the children while they eat breakfast, no doubt reproaching them in his mind for not going out and finding jobs, then steps forward and literally SWATS a glass of milk from the hands of one little girl in mid-drink. She and the other children seem to take it in stride, though, making the viewer laugh some more and wonder what kind of treatment these unfortunate kids endure on a regular basis at the day nursery if they can handle this outrageous behavior in such a blase manner.

The Jimster hovers menacingly over the little girl for a few moments, looking like he’s just DARING her to try to do something about what he did to her. Then he moves on to an orphanage, where it’s nighttime all of a sudden and the children are all sleeping. Jim the Dream Demon barges right in, flashlight in hand, and wakes the slumbering urchins up by hammering a sign on the wall.

The roused orphans gather around Jim and read the sign he’s nailing to the wall. It says “All children without parents must get out and shift for themselves. This place is closed!” The plucky orphans are as emotionless about this as Jim’s other Vulcan victims, although one (oddly smiling) little girl tugs beseechingly at Jim’s suit-coat, giving him the opportunity to regally smack her hand away before he stalks off.

Rising to new heights Jimbo moves on to the site of devastation from a tornado in Oklahoma. Disgusted at the wimpy doctors and nurses dispensing medical care to severely injured survivors our protagonist knocks medical supplies and charts out of the hands of some of the medical staff. He’s just getting started though, and in the most surreally tasteless scene in the whole short he grabs a pair of scissors and literally SNIPS THE I.V. LINE OF AN UNCONSCIOUS PATIENT! 

While the viewer is convinced they must be imagining this whole astonishing thing by now Jim follows this up by grandly washing the patient’s blood from his hands Pontius Pilate-style in a nearby bucket.

Jim glides along to a doctor’s office to unwind and get a few laughs from a doctor telling his patient and the patient’s wife that the man is dying from cancer. Jim, apparently regretting the lack of an accompanying laugh track, provides his own chuckles, smiling even more broadly as the M.D. tells his unseen patient that he could have been saved if not for decreased contributions to the United Fund. The smile vanishes when the camera pans around to reveal, to the surprise of no one, that the unseen “patient” is Jim himself.

Jim wakes up, but thankfully isn’t screaming  ”NOOOOOOOOO” like people usually do on the screen. He repents, recalling all the mayhem inflicted by his astral alter ego in quick flashback scenes. The recollection of knocking the milk from the little girl’s hand is ineptly shown via A BAD TAKE from the scene, one in which the milk goes flying and splatters the camera lens. 

Thoroughly chastened, Jim realizes (in the twisted view of this short) that not donating to the United Fund means he “might as well” have been committing the atrocities he did in his dreams. He and his wife, called only “honey” throughout the short, surrender to the ham-fisted guilt trip inflicted by the producers of this short and decide to make their annual contribution to the United Fund no matter HOW tough times are.

FOR MORE BAD MOVIES AND SHORTS CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.   


BAD MOVIE: HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! LOVE, GEORGE (1973)

0
0
Despite the movie poster's warning this flick won't even untie your shoelaces.

Despite the movie poster’s warning this flick won’t even untie your shoelaces.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! LOVE, GEORGE (1973) – Category: Bad movie elevated by kitsch value in the casting.

Directed by THE Darren McGavin and featuring his wife Kathie Browne in a small role, this hilariously bizarre film is also known as Run, Stranger, Run. “Run, Potential Viewer, Run” would be a more appropriate title. Happy Mother’s Day Love, George (henceforth HMDLG) is often described as a psycho-sexual thriller but actually it is nothing more than a melodramatic soap opera with a few murders and VERY few scenes of blood and gore. Those blood and gore scenes are so over-the-top they are completely at odds with the low-key, almost made-for-tv mildness of the rest of the movie.

This was a theatrical release but is so subdued and slow-paced it seems like a telefilm. You and your friends can keep yourselves entertained making jokes about the recognizable cast members to kill time since the first murder doesn’t happen until we’re more than an hour into this flick.

Ron Howard IS Johnny, a teenager who has come to town to discover who his birth parents are but who mostly just stands around staring at people and ESPECIALLY at houses. He seems completely taken aback that the townspeople find this somewhat creepy. Johnny is intrigued by the rash of missing persons plaguing the small town and feels they are connected to the secret of his past.

Cloris Leachman IS Ronda (no ”h”), Johnny’s real mother, as we learn very early in the film. Ronda is in such dire financial straits she had to hock the “h” in her name for rent money. (I’m kidding!) She never speaks to her sister, sleeps with a gigolo passing through town and serves up meals along with expository dialogue.

Patricia Neal IS Cara, Ronda’s sister. Cara wears a ratty old fur coat, chews the scenery and overacts so badly she’ll have you laughing with every distraught line of dialogue she spouts. She doesn’t so much spit the lines out as projectile vomits them out. Cara has a son named Porgie and she’s fond of saying lines like “Don’t call me mother you lazy fart!”

Tessa Dahl (real-life daughter of Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl) IS Celia, Cara’s insane daughter who is childlike in mind but horny as hell. She’s always embarrassing her mother (and embarrassing a woman that demented is NOT easy) by peeping in on neighbors having sex, by sending passionate love letters to half the men in town and by trying to seduce Johnny, who is her cousin on the surface but even closer to her in reality once you figure out the family’s deep, dark secret … like in about the first fifteen minutes of the film.

Bobby Darin IS Eddie, the wandering gigolo who vanishes partway through the film. You won’t miss him a bit.

Simon ”Tony Vincenzo” Oakland IS the town sheriff who wants to run Ron Howard’s character out of town for being the creepy, skulking, surly jackass that he is.  

and Kathie Browne IS the loose woman who stumbles into the most graphically gory scene in the movie. The bubbling, gurgling blood and guts in this scene are so out of place the whole bit feels edited in from an Italian zombie film of the time period.

Skeletons of the missing men turn up on the beach and there are more shots of  the aftermath of the killings but the bulk of HMDLG is one long straight-line for the sarcastic remarks you and your fellow viewers will find yourselves chucking at the screen.

FOR MORE BAD MOVIE REVIEWS CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/bad-movies/   

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.    


BAD MOVIES: SEX SYMBOL CASEY JAMES AND A QUICK LOOK AT SOME OF THE MOST NOTORIOUS BOMBS IN HISTORY

0
0

CasBal4Special thanks to Balladeer’s Blog’s Official Movie Hostess, the achingly beautiful Casey James! In addition to being a world-famous supermodel Casey has great taste in blogs and has agreed to help yours truly spread the word about various movies from the cinematic netherworld.

Men and women who, like the rest of us, are driven CRAZY by Casey’s irresistable charms can follow her antics at http://www.nippsntipps.com 

FOR EVEN MORE CASEY JAMES CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/2013/06/16/supermodel-casey-james-presents-the-strangest-biker-movies-of-all-time/

Usually Balladeer’s Blog examines out-of-the-way bad movies but I’ve been getting plenty of emails asking me to review some of the better-known Golden Turkeys, so here are my quick takes on some of the staples of any list of Worst Movies Ever Made. I will not include any films I have already reviewed.  

PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) - The Golden Turkey that pretty much embodies the saying “so bad it’s good” for many people. Aliens who think Earthlings are too violent to be trusted plan to resurrect the dead as zombies to wipe us out. They only ever revive two dead people so their plan never gets far. The ET’s are defeated in their attempt to destroy us before we can discover the secret of “solarinite” (or “solonite” as the lame hero says) technology. Far too much has been written about this movie for me to add anything new at this point.

CasBal2ROBOT MONSTER (1953) – One lone ape-man in a diving helmet comes down from the moon and wipes out nearly all of humanity. The few survivors are a pack of thoroughly annoying assholes who make you long to see them all dead, even the children. In fact ESPECIALLY the children. George Nader, who always portrayed smug pricks in movies, is in rare form here. The “Post-Apocalyptic Lawrence Welk Bubble Machine Polka” ending has made this honey a favorite for several generations of bad movie fans.

BILLY THE KID VS DRACULA (1966 ) – John “He’s probably even in the Zapruder Film if you look hard enough” Carradine stars as Dracula, who has traveled to the American west and runs afoul of the legendary Billy the Kid and a female doctor. Highlights include awkward dialogue like “Where can I find this pill-slinging backwoods lady doctor?” and inane action scenes like the one where Billy uses up all his bullets against Dracula to no effect, then throws his empty gun at the vampire and KNOCKS HIM OUT COLD! See also Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter.   

CasBal3THE CREEPING TERROR (1964) - A spaceship lands on Earth and unleashes a monster who looks like a long carpet draped over a long line of crawling people and which devours every human being it encounters despite the fact that it moves so slowly and awkardly that even Daleks could outrun it. After an eternity of repetitious scenes of people falling victim to the creature it gets destroyed only to have the spaceship unleash ANOTHER one of the synthetic beasts from its belly. The story about the scam behind the making of this film would make a great movie on its own and can be found in the Medved brothers’ classic books on Golden Turkeys.

FROM HELL IT CAME (1959) – Radiation and black magic combine to spawn a walking tree monster animated by the spirit of the wronged leader of a native village on a South Seas island. The monster looks like a cross between a Sesame Street character and the mascot of a sports team (“The Fighting Elms”). The usual assortment of bland white people and one-dimensional natives struggle to stay alive against this arboreal menace gone berserk.

ATTACK OF THE MUSHROOM PEOPLE (1963) – Long before a certain legendary crash-landing soccer team this movie made the phrase “I ATE them!” popular. Japanese partiers bring shame to all viewers as they chow down on cursed mushrooms that transform them into walking – well, waddling – mushroom people. All this plus a very odd and interminable song. Insert your own “you are what you eat” joke here.

THE KILLER SHREWS (1959) – 1959 was a very good year for Golden Turkeys. This latest entry on our list features a gathering of hopeless alcoholics stuck on an island where they must battle giant shrews spawned by the typical mad scientist shenanigans. The giant shrews are really just dogs with VERY poor shrew costumes casually draped over them. The “escape in overturned metal barrels” scene is so hilariously awkward it must be seen to be believed. 

TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE (1959) Yet another flick from that milestone year. Extraterrestrial teenagers who look even older than the faux teenagers on Happy Days come to Earth in a spaceship. Our planet will make a wonderful breeding ground for their chief food source, called gargans, who will overrun the world and devour all life-forms as they grow. Gargans are really just gigantic lobsters, well, actually they are the SHADOWS of lobsters projected on the film to look gigantic. Naturally the aliens’ plan to use our planet to raise their free-range gargans is thwarted when one of their own falls in love with an Earth girl.

ASTRO-ZOMBIES (1969) – John Carradine and THE Tura Satana appear in this groan-inducing hybrid of science-fiction and horror. A mad scientist plans to use electronically controlled zombies as astronauts to avoid jeopardizing human astronauts. His research is sought by rival intelligence agencies from around the world who want to use the astro-zombies instead as … well, as what is never actually spelled out. Probably as an undead army or such. The creatures are powered by sunlight and there is a scene where an astro-zombie running low on power holds a flashlight up to its head to keep itself running.

MANOS, THE HANDS OF FATE (1966) – This unbelievably bad movie was already a cult film by the 1980′s when it was featured in books like Incredibly Strange Films and the Medved Brothers’ books. In 1993 it became an even bigger hit, of course. A married couple and their child get lost while driving around and wind up trapped in a house where a Satanist (or something) called Manos (“hand” in Spanish) periodically arises from some sort of supernatural hibernation. Manos has a goat-legged lackey named Torgo, a pack of deadly dogs and a harem of undead wives. Words can’t describe the air of ineptitude that suffuses every moment of this laughable attempt at a horror film.     

In the future I’ll look at more of the essential bad films that are out there. Meanwhile for my reviews of films that are even worse and weirder than these read on:        

FOR MORE BAD MOVIE REVIEWS CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/bad-movies/   

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


HUMPHREY BOGART AS AN UNDEAD MAD SCIENTIST: THE RETURN OF DR X (1939)

0
0

Return of Dr XTHE RETURN OF DR X (1939) – Category: Enjoyably campy bad movie elevated by kitsch-value in the casting.    

Yes, it’s the famous “Humphrey Bogart as a zombie mad scientist” movie. The tale goes that Jack Warner inflicted this role on gangster-flick star Bogart as punishment for resisting being cast in too many formulaic crime films. This was, of course, before The Maltese Falcon made Bogie a big-time star and long before actors had the kind of contracts that they have these days.

Bogart plays the titular Dr X, but not the same Dr X that Lionel Atwill played in a movie of that name earlier in the decade. This Dr X is Dr Maurice Xavier, a mad scientist executed in the electric chair for, among other things, bizarre experiments on infants (a pretty ballsy story element in those pre- Auschwitz awareness days). The “return” mentioned in the title refers to the fact that Bogart’s Dr X has been brought back from the dead by the film’s secondary menace, Dr Flegg (and let’s face it , The Return Of Dr Flegg just doesn’t have the same sinister  appeal).

Flegg can bring people back from the dead but needs Dr X’s help to perfect “synthetic blood” without which his ressurrectees die again after a period of days. That’s right, Flegg seems to think nobody will be interested in his method of restoring life to the recently deceased just because his subjects don’t live indefinitely! (Early heart transplant operations anyone?) The revived Bogart takes to surgically draining real blood from unwilling victims to keep himself alive while he and Flegg work on their “new, improved” synthetic blood.

The whole film has the feel of one of Bela Lugosi’s laughable PRC horror flicks from back then complete with an annoying smart-alecky reporter, a supposedly handsome young doctor as our romantic lead (to give you an idea of this physician’s level of lameness, at one point he says “Interesting stuff, blood” and seems to mean every word of it) and a female partner for him who has the rare blood type Dr X needs from the victims he drains. Adding to the PRC feel is Huntz Hall from the Bowery Boys as a newspaper librarian and a blustering, impatient editor for our reporter. (Annoyed at the grisly details of the Dr X story the jolly journalist insists on covering the editor at one point calls the reporter, who hails from Kansas, “Wichita Frankenstein”. Now that’s a movie I’d pay to see!)

The whole picture is Bogie, though, in the role he loathed, sporting pale face makeup and a strange white streak in his hair that makes him look like the lead in a movie called Attack Of The Skunk Man, or maybe like Pepe le Peu in human form. We first see Bogart stroking a rabbit that he kills so Dr Flegg can bring it back to life later in the movie and we last see him when Dr X gets gunned down in a shootout with the cops during a scene that can’t help but remind you of Bogie’s early gangster-on-the- run movies. Since I’m kind of odd it also reminded me of the zombie-gangster movie from the 50′s titled Creature With The Atom Brain. For you Casablanca fans wouldn’t you love to see Bogart’s undead Dr X take on Conrad Veidt as the zombie Cesare from the 1919 film The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari?

****** If you want to complete the Hat Trick of unrelated Dr X movies there’s also The Revenge Of Dr X, from decades later, about a mad American scientist who travels to Japan. Once there he acquires a lab assistant whom the dialogue constantly refers to as ugly and hunchbacked even though he’s neither. This Dr X also creates a ridiculous-looking plant/man hybrid with huge Venus flytraps for hands and feet. (No, really.)

The real claim to fame of this final Dr X movie is the fact that it is supposedly based on a previously unproduced script by Ed Wood himself. I have no idea if that’s true but some of the dialogue is certainly inane enough to have been penned by Wood (“All our past mistakes are in the past now”). And, though the screenplay would have had nothing to do with it, the ending, where the monster falls into a volcano and dies, is cobbled together from incredibly mismatched footage that makes the end of Wood’s film Bride Of The Monster look positively coherent by comparison.

FOR MORE BAD MOVIES CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


BAD MOVIE: HORROR OF PARTY BEACH (1964) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT: MAY 25TH, 1985

0
0

Horror of Party BeachIn the middle 1980′s/ Way down on Level 31 …

Before MST3K there was The Texas 27 Film Vault, hosted by Randy Clower and Richard Malmos. Balladeer’s Blog’s examination of this neglected 1980′s cult show continues. Here’s the 8th review of episodes where an original broadcast date can be determined.

EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday May 25th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

EXTRAS: With 2 1/2 hours to work with every episode our machine-gun toting “Film Vault Technicians First Class” Randy and Richard had plenty of time to show (and mock) episodes of old Republic serials before showing (and mocking) the night’s bad movie. Before Horror of Party Beach our boys showed an episode of The Phantom Empire, in which Gene Autry played a singing cowboy  who saves the world from an advanced underground civilization.

horror of party beach3Also, a comedy sketch (which Randy Clower told me he still has footage of) from the episode featured Richard jamming a bunch of hot dogs in his mouth to resemble the absurd, multi-tongued sea creatures in Horror of Party Beach.     

FILM VAULT LORE: Special thanks to my fellow Texas 27 Film Vault fan Jana for the date of this episode and which serial preceded the movie. She did not remember which  chapter of the serial Randy and Richard were on, but you can’t have everything!

Here’s more in Jana’s own words: “My boyfriend and I at the time were at SMU and on Saturday nights everybody on campus was partying so much we had no peace and quiet to watch Randy and Richard’s show. It horror of party beach2was  Memorial Day weekend and The Texas 27 Film Vault had only been on for about 3 or 4 months by then so my boyfriend was the only other person I knew who watched it. We went to his parents’ place nearby to watch Randy and Richard that Saturday night. We did it a lot more times after that. We loved the show and wished it had lasted more than the few years it did.”

Keep those T27FV memories coming, my fellow Vaulties!

THE MOVIE: Horror of Party Beach is one of those flicks that is on EVERYBODY’S Worst Films of All Time list and has been for several decades. In the 1980′s the Medved Brothers’ books on Golden Turkeys helped secure its reputation. Just about every Movie Host show has presented this film at some point.

Radioactive waste dumped in the sea spawns a tribe of large, goofy-looking, carnivorous sea monsters who walk on two legs and have so many big tongues they seem to have bouquets of hot dogs in their mouths. The monsters, referred to as “zombies”

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 as they host their 1985-1987 show The Texas 27 Film Vault.

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 as they host their 1985-1987 show The Texas 27 Film Vault.

even though that’s NOT what they are, are eventually destroyed with salt. That solution was recommended by Eulabelle, a black maid who plays the African American stereotype so broadly that even Mantan Moreland looks like Samuel L Jackson compared to her.

The overall feel of this black and white cult classic is a sort of “Frankie and Annette Crossed With Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster” vibe. There are plenty of beach bums, a biker gang and lots of memorably odd rock songs  provided by The Del-Aires. So much has been written about this quintessential example of “fun-bad” schlockers of the past for me to add anything new at this point.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE BALLADEER’S BLOG WILL PRESENT MORE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT MILESTONES. Be here to share the Film Vault Corp’s mission of “safeguarding America’s schlock-culture heritage”.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO ON THIS SHOW – http://glitternight.com/texas-27-film-vault/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  



THE GIANT CLAW (1957) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT: APRIL OF 1985

0
0

giantclaw02Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault!

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the mid-1980′s. Thanks to my research through VERY old newspapers, interviews with Randy Clower and emails from fellow fans of T27FV here is the ninth in a series where original broadcast dates of episodes can be determined.

Episode originally aired: Saturday April 6th, 13th, 20th or 27th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am. (Sorry but on this one that’s as close as I can get at this point. Always looking for more info, though so a more precise date may be determined in the future)

Serial: Before the movie our machine-gun toting “Film Vault Technicians First Class” Randy Clower and Richard Malmos showed an episode of The Lost City, the legendarily campy and bizarre sci-fi serial from 1935.

The Movie: The Giant Claw is another of those staples of bad movie shows. It’s been presented by just about every Movie Host program at one time or another. Because of the film’s familiarity I will keep this review short.

giant claw3Global UFO sightings turn out to be sightings of a gigantic (and ridiculous-looking) flying buzzard from outer space. As if that isn’t silly enough the destructive creature is also an ANTI-MATTER gigantic flying buzzard from outer space. We’ll just ignore the fact that NOTHING made of anti-matter could exist in a universe of matter without instant annihilation.

Eventually the movie’s Bland White Hero comes up with a way of destroying the interstellar menace and wins the love of the movie’s Bland White Woman, but that goes without saying for a 1950′s schlocker. The real fun in this flick comes from the hilariously absurd shots of the giant buzzard chowing down on parachuting fighter pilots after destroying their aircraft, the giant buzzard attacking the U.N. building and other landmarks in a sort of “Western Kaiju” series of scenes and … well, absurd shots of the giant buzzard doing ANYTHING.

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

The poor actors in this mega-turkey seem oblivious to how laughable the special effects shots of the anti-matter buzzard were going to be. They give it their level best to make the creature sound truly terrifying and soul-scarring, but soon we get more shots of that ludicrous buzzard and the players all wind up looking even sillier.

For fans of old television trivia the monster looks even less threatening than the bird that would periodically drop down on Groucho Marx’s gameshow You Bet Your Life.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE BALLADEER’S BLOG WILL PRESENT MORE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT MILESTONES. Be here to share the Film Vault Corp’s mission of “safeguarding America’s schlock-culture heritage”.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO ON THIS SHOW – http://glitternight.com/texas-27-film-vault/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


SUPERMODEL CASEY JAMES PRESENTS THE STRANGEST BIKER MOVIES OF ALL TIME

0
0

Casey James biker 1Special thanks once again to Balladeer’s Blog’s Official Movie Hostess, the maddeningly lovely Casey James. Not only does she embody everything that men and women dream about but she also enjoys bad movies! Casey’s beauty, brains and ability to kick the butt of anyone who gets out of line with her make her the ideal hostess for a look at bizarre biker films. For information on how to follow Casey’s antics even further read on:

WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS (1971) – You just knew this was the movie I would start with. A biker gang hassles a group of Satanists in the usual biker way in films. The Satanists get revenge by cursing some of the bikers to start turning into werewolves and preying on the others. Werewolves on Wheels gets worse as it goes along and degenerates into a VERY weird acid trip of a horror movie before completely collapsing in its final minutes. Severn Darden plays the lead Satanist and the biker gang “boasts” Barry “Eve of Destruction” Maguire and Billy “Father Knows Best” Gray among its members.

MOTORCYCLE SQUAD (1937) – This neglected little honey is one of the earliest, if not THE earliest, biker films. Kane Richmond and Wynne Gibson star in a story about a motorcycle cop who is dishonorably discharged from the police force as part of a ruse to send him undercover. Seems a pack of motorcycle-riding crooks are at large and our hero’s skill with a chopper makes him the ideal next recruit for their gang, all the better to bring them down.

With my weird sense of humor I get a huge kick out of this film’s cleaned-up 1930′s version of what would become biker movie tropes in later decades. Motorcycle Squad uses motorbikes in the same gimmicky way that Murder By Television used nascent tv technology and Radar Secret Service used radar. Text-Message Squad would be a modern-day equivalent, maybe featuring a cop going undercover to bring down Flash-Mobs. 

Casey James biker 2PSYCHOMANIA (1973) – Nicky Henson stars in this British horror film about a motorcycle gang which makes a pact with Satan. The various members kill themselves in assorted gruesome ways and then come back from the dead as invincible marauders who can’t be killed since they’re already dead. The hilariously petty acts of vandalism the bikers commit with their newfound immortality are good for a few unintentional laughs. Grocery stores look out! George Sanders joined the likes of Bela Lugosi, Veronica Lake and Michael Rennie in having a cult turkey like this be their final screen appearance. The venerable Sanders commited suicide after making this movie, while Roger Moore walks around alive to this very day. Makes ya think, doesn’t it? 

THE SIDEHACKERS (1969) - Ross Hagen was the poor man’s William “Big Bill” Smith when it came to biker films. In this flick Hagen portrays Vince Rommel (Seriously. Rommel.), a former carousing biker trying to go straight with a five day a week job. In other words, working “Five the Hard Way“, the movie’s alternate title. Rommel (LMFAO) runs a motorcycle repair shop with a friend and is looking to marry a Standard Movie Blonde while also competing in “Sidehack Racing”, a laughably pointless and very silly-looking attempt at a motocross “sport”. 

Sidehacking, which went on to become the hugely successful 1970′s equivalent of the X-Games (I’m kidding), brings Rommel (LMFAO) to the attention of J.C. (Michael Pataki). J.C. runs a drug-addled kind of biker stunt show and wants Rommel (LMFAO) to incorporate Sidehacking into the act, presumably as comic relief. Rommel (LMFAO) refuses the offer and also spurns J.C.’s lady, inciting a rape and murder as well as a deadly quest for vengeance, all of which the movie makes unintentionally HILARIOUS.    

BLACK ANGELS (1970) – The African-American biker gang in this movie is NOT called the Black Angels, they’re called the Choppers and they clash with a white biker gang called the Serpents. Both the whites and the blacks are presented in the lowest, most stereotypical way imaginable and that makes the movie a lot of fun to laugh at.

This orgy of tastelessness features gratuitous gay-bashing, nun-hassling, two on one rape, drug-taking, boozing and incredibly lame rock songs. The most ineptly staged fight scenes in cinema history are also on display in this surreally bad film which was also released under the title Black Bikers From Hell. And did I mention the raccoons and the mountain lion?    

Casey James biker 3SHE-DEVILS ON WHEELS (1968) Herschell Gordon Lewis presents a biker movie as only he can, complete with a beheading and a character getting dragged on concrete behind a motorcycle until their face resembles ground chuck .. well, papier-mache ground chuck with caro syrup on it. The movie features an all-female biker gang called the Maneaters and a title song with great lyrics like ”We are the hellcats nobody liiiiiikes/  Maneaters on motor biiiikes”. They just don’t write them like that anymore!

On top of the usual biker mayhem our heroines flaunt a “stud line” where men line up to be bedded and the winner of the Maneaters’ latest race always gets first pick. Since this was a non-Hollywood movie the female protagonist winds up choosing to continue her life as a biker at movie’s end and turns her back on her Bland White Fiancee.     

DARKTOWN STRUTTERS (1974) Exploitation filmmakers figured if female bikers and black bikers are good for a quick buck, then bikers who are black AND female must be worth their weight in gold, baby! Syreena leads her three-wheeled biker gang into inner-city Los Angeles where they clash with racist cops and try to get to the bottom of a rash of disappearances plaguing black neighborhoods.

This surreal satire also pits our heroines against a white villain who owns a plantation in L.A. and who is behind the disappearances. Seems he’s  kidnapping African-Americans to serve their ribs in his chain of restaurants and has an even uglier master plan in mind. For my full-length review click here: http://glitternight.com/2012/03/10/eight-blaxploitation-films-that-deserve-a-closer-look/ 

CHROME AND HOT LEATHER (1971) THE Marvin Gaye made his big-screen debut in this relentlessly absurd  movie. When a Green Beret’s fiancee (played by THE Cheryl Ladd) is killed he and some of his service buddies pose as bikers to track down the motorcycle gang responsible for her death. Words cannot describe how enjoyably awful this movie is from start to finish.

Bad acting, bad script, bad rock songs, bad action scenes, you name it, this bomb has it! In the finale our heroes use stolen Army weaponry to bombard the bikers into submission. The cast is a trivia lover’s dream come true, reuniting William “Big Bill” Smith with Laredo co-star Peter Brown and also featuring Bobby “Boris” Pickett, Erik Estrada, Kathy Baumann, Dan Haggerty, Lee Frost and Wes Bishop (Joey Bishop’s son).  

Casey James biker 4BIGFOOT (1970) – Bikers battle Sasquatch!This neglected landmark in Golden Turkey history unites nearly all the bad movie Mafia from the American Southwest and throws in Haji, Doodles Weaver and a few Mitchums for good measure. Its crowning choice in casting finds Balladeer’s Blog’s buddy John “He’s probably even in the Zapruder Film if you look hard enough” Carradine along for the ride.

The cliques of Robert Slatzer, Coleman Francis, Tony Houston  and others are well-represented throughout this movie, with half the cast of The Hellcats turning up at some point. Bikers, forest rangers, female skydivers, skinnydippers and side-show con-men all run afoul of a VERY lame rendition of Bigfoot, a conflict climaxing in the funniest faux-explosion you’ve ever witnessed!

THE BLACK SIX (1973) -The story of an African-American biker gang portrayed by a half-dozen big names from the NFL, like Mean Joe Greene, Mercury Morris, Gene Washington and others. The Black Six roam the American south building homes for poor people (and Jimmy Carter thought it was all HIS idea) and clashing with redneck racists.

This is a very educational film which taught me things like: a) even small towns in the south have shuck and jive pimps, in this case a guy called Copperhead, b) redneck diners stock their jukeboxes with soul tunes but their patrons will inflict grievous bodily harm on African-Americans who actually PLAY those tunes, c) the already laughable cliche of a black kid being good at football can be made even funnier by having the young man play the unexciting position of place-kicker (“the best on the team” the coach eulogized the slain young man as I laughed myself unconscious), d) black bikers can kill literally HUNDREDS (yes, hundreds) of white racist bikers with no legal repercussions and e) “Honky better watch out! Hassle a Brother and the Black Six will return!” Any questions? 

HEX (1973) – Hex fuses biker horror-films with western horror-films and is set in a time period even earlier than Motorcycle Squad! Shortly after World War One a group of former flying aces from the war have formed a biker gang, riding the American West on 1919-1920-vintage motorcycles. Their plan is to head for Hollywood to become stunt pilots in silent movies about WWI fighter pilots. That plan gets derailed in the Nebraska town of Bingo.

Our bikers battle with hostile locals led by Dan Haggerty, then seek shelter with a pair of sultry sisters, one of whom is an expert in the Native American sorcery taught to her by her father. The bikers are horny of course and Oriole, the witch-sister (Cristina Raines), uses her dark power to start knocking off the intruders. Also starring are Keith Carradine, Scot Glenn, Robert Walker Jr and Gary Busey, fresh off his stint as second-banana on the neglected Tulsa movie host show Mazeppa. For my full-length review click here:  http://glitternight.com/2011/10/01/bad-movie-page-hex-1973/  

THE LOSERS (1970) – Two of the gods of biker cinema, William “Big Bill” Smith and Adam Roarke, star in a film which takes a minor footnote in history and RUNS with it! In real life the Hell’s Angels were for a time clashing with Vietnam War protestors whom the Angels considered cowards for not wanting to fight in the conflict. Peace was negotiated between the two parties by Ken Keasey and Hunter S Thompson if you believe  Thompson’s book on the Hell’s Angels and Thompson’s biography.

To make it clear that the Hell’s Angels still disagreed with the protestors’ position on the war even though they had ceased beating them up, Sonny Barger, the Angels’ “Maximum Leader” at the time, released a public statement offering the services of the Hell’s Angels as “a gorilla (sic) force” (LMAO) in the war. LBJ and Nixon strangely declined to take Barger up on the offer but director Jack Starrett made it the center of this classic bomb. Hell’s Angels are serving as covert operatives in Vietnam and Cambodia, riding their motorcycles into action despite the fact that such vehicles would be USELESS in the jungle. And you thought the Phoenix Project was a bad idea! When the Angels are sent to free a captured presidential advisor they find themselves betrayed and left to die by U.S. politicians with their own agenda.         

THE PINK ANGELS (1971) – A group of gay bikers take center stage in this movie that is so bizarre it must be seen to be believed. It’s NOT a gay-bashing movie because the Pink Angels are the good guys, who endure being hassled by cops and macho bikers when they’re not hassling people themselves, like old ladies in grocery stores and hunky male hitchhikers. The movie opens with some of the strangest imagery this side of Glen or Glenda and doesn’t let up on the weirdness the rest of the way.

See Dan Haggerty in pigtails and lipstick! See cult stars Michael Pataki, Tom Basham and John Alderman in action in one film! See sex scenes even Russ Meyer would have deemed too damn weird to be committed to film! The Pink Angels is one of those films that remained unfinished and were then combined with new and unrelated footage that the filmmakers hilariously attempted to pretend was part of the original flick. (Think of They Saved Hitler’s Brain and Monster-A-Go-Go among others). The linking footage depicts our heroes as pawns in a homophobic general’s plot to trap and kill gay people. Based on a play by Tennessee Williams (I’m kidding!) For my full review click here: http://glitternight.com/2011/06/21/bad-movie-page-the-pink-angels-1971/ 

FANS OF CASEY JAMES CAN FOLLOW HER AT http://clips4sale.com/66673/8546337 and  http://www.nippsntipps.com

FOR MORE MOVIES WITH CASEY JAMES – http://glitternight.com/2013/05/13/bad-movies-sex-symbol-casey-james-and-a-quick-look-at-some-of-the-most-notorious/ 

FOR MORE BAD MOVIES: http://glitternight.com/bad-movies/ 

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


PUSH THE ENVELOPE PLEASE: SEX SYMBOL CASEY JAMES AND HORROR FILM DIRECTORS WHO PUSHED THE ENVELOPE

0
0

Special thanks once again to Balladeer’s Blog’s Official Movie Hostess, the spectacularly beautiful Casey James. When Casey isn’t busy breaking the hearts of countless men and women around the world she’s a fan of offbeat movies and has excellent taste in blogs. For more info on Casey read on:

Casey James envelope 1

SHINYA TSUKAMOTO – Our first director hails from Japan and is noted for his surreal, nightmarish excursions into the darker side of transformative industrial technology … especially any technology that impacts the human anatomy. Noteworthy films include:

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) – From the early shots of a man removing one of his own bones and replacing it with a piece of metal viewers knew this was a work of true genius. Tetsuo becomes more and more relevant by the year, especially with the advent of nanotechnology and its potentially invasive effect on the human mind and body. The anatomies of the film’s characters become distorted and mutate into metal figures that challenge preconceived notions of beauty, ugliness, gender and even what constitutes life. This movie features transcendent images that are horrific yet hypnotic and will stay with you forever after.

Hiruko the Goblin (1991) – Tsukamoto’s memorable take on a more traditional sort of horror. An archaeologist stripped of his credentials becomes involved in excavating an ancient tomb, unleashing an infernal force. Human bodies get played with like sculptor’s clay in Tsukamoto’s inimitable style as the horror unfolds. Elements of Shinto mythology also play a part in this surreal tale.

Tetsuo 2: Body Hammer (1992) – This sequel is less satisfying than the original, but expands upon many of the themes of the original. Metal fetishists abound in this story, which deals heavily with weapons technology. Human bodies are distorted into killing machines in perverse and inventive ways that even the maddest of mad scientists never dreamed of before. Body Hammer has an astronomically high body count compared to the original Tetsuo, which makes it more commercially appealing but less cerebral. The third film in the series, Tetsuo the Bullet Man, was so commercial as to be almost unrecognizable as a Tsukamoto movie.

Casey James envelope 2JORG BUTTGEREIT – The “Death King” himself! Germany’s auteur of the taboo is noted for not just pushing the envelope but for slicing it to ribbons and burning the remains. Noteworthy movies include: 

Nekromantik (1987) - This film’s protagonist works for a service that disposes of the dead, mangled bodies that result from accidents on the high-speed Autobahn. He’s obsessed with death in all forms as is his girlfriend. The lead character takes body parts and eventually whole corpses home with him to spice up his sex life with his partner. The woman becomes addicted to threesomes with a particularly attractive male corpse which the couple have pierced with a metal rod to serve as a makeshift penis for her to mount. Yes, they use a condom on the metal rod if you were wondering. Soon the young lady prefers the corpse to her living partner, setting even more horrors in motion.  

Der Todesking (“The Death King“) (1989) – An anthology featuring seven episodes of death by murder of various kinds and even by suicide. The seven segments, each set on a different day of the week, are punctuated by shots of a neglected corpse in various stages of decay. Buttgereit’s most experimental film, this is a non-stop melding of the arthouse and abbatoir sensibilities.

Nekromantik 2 (1991) – Buttgereit’s sequel to his best-known film was the subject of a landmark decision by the German Supreme Court which banned the movie and ruled that all copies and the negative be destroyed. Naturally this just enhanced the film’s reputation and made it an international sensation. The lead character this time is Monika, a woman who has turned to necrophilia because other sex acts have failed to stimulate her to orgasm. She takes to dismembering dead partners and then mixing and matching body parts from other men she kills in order to construct the perfect dead lover.

Schramm (1993) – The central character of Schramm is a serial killer known as The Lipstick Killer. He kills victims, poses them for various, often suggestive, photos and moons over his neighbor, a prostitute. Get ready for amputations, nightmarish hallucinations, dentists who extract eyes instead of teeth and our protagonist’s fondness for self-mutilation, which includes nailing his penis to a piece of wood.     

Casey James envelope 3COFFIN JOE – Our top director is Jose “Mojica” Marins, Brazil’s notorious King of Horror. Marins’ most famous character is Ze do Caixao aka Coffin Joe, a figure who belongs alongside Dracula, Freddy Krueger, La Llorona and other horror icons from around the world. Noteworthy movies include :

At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul (1963) – Brazil’s first-ever home-grown horror film was also the very first appearance of Coffin Joe, an undertaker who relishes exploiting and mocking the religious beliefs of the community. The transgressive, hypnotic figure lords it over those he considers to be ignorant peasants and lesser beings. Ze’s reign of terror sees him inflict physical and psychological torture on his victims, including gouging their eyes out with his incredibly long fingernails. The vile but charismatic monster is searching for a superior woman to mate with while killing off male rivals as well as women who don’t meet his expectations.  

This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse (1967) – In this sequel Coffin Joe is even more powerful and depraved as he subjects Sao Paulo to another reign of terror. Ze is still searching for the perfect woman to bear his child and inflicting all manner of torture on his victims but this time around the viewer is treated to even more of the villain’s bizarre philosophy, which seems to be composed of equal parts Nietzche and de Sade with a healthy sprinkling of Aleister Crowley tossed in. This film is black & white like the original but features the acclaimed color portion featuring a trip to a Hell ruled by Coffin Joe himself. 

The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968) – Marins’ excellent anthology film presents three horrific tales: The Dollmaker, about a master dollmaker and his daughters who get attacked by would-be robbers and rapists;  Obsession, about a hideous ballon peddler who sees the beautiful woman he is obsessed with get murdered on her wedding day. Barred from the funeral the peddler breaks into the funeral home after hours for a macabre tryst with the woman’s corpse;   and Theory, in which a demented professor (a sort of proto-Hannibal Lecter)imprisons and tortures a colleague and his wife. This nightmarish tour de force includes Marins’ usual bizarre amoral philosophizing as well as a healthy dose of cannibalism. 

Casey James envelope 4The End of Man (1970) – Marins entered Jodorowsky territory with this film in which he played a wandering sage called Finis Hominis (“End of Man”). Very episodic in nature but very heavy on dark humor and social satire, making it a prime example of Brazilian Boca do Lixo cinema. Finis Hominis returned in When The Gods Fall Asleep in 1972.   

The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe (1974) – Long before Wes Craven’s New Nightmare Marins went “meta” with his ouevre. Playing himself as actor and director Jose Mojica Marins, our hero tries to convince the world that Coffin Joe is just a character he plays. Horrific events surround  Marins wherever he goes in this clever flick in which he also plays his most famous character, who orchestrates all the horror from a realm somewhere between fantasy and reality. Marins would do double duty again as both himself and Ze in Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind in 1978.  

Embodiment of Evil (2008) – The final chapter in the saga of Coffin Joe. Ze is released from a prison for the criminally insane after several decades of imprisonment and is still obsessed with continuing his blood line by finding the perfect woman to mate with. Coffin Joe finds a cadre of disciples ready to help him in his work of torture and killing as that quest continues. SPOILER: Coffin Joe is finally killed off for good, appropriately enough by a priest who impales Ze’s heart with a large crucifix. At the villain’s funeral, attended by his disciples and various  murderer fetishists we see that some of Coffin Joe’s most recent female subjects are pregnant, meaning his mission of passing on his bloodline was at long last completed.  

FOR CASEY’S OTHER ANTICS CLICK HERE: http://clips4sale.com/66673/8546337 

FOR MORE HORROR FILMS THAT TEST THE BOUNDARIES CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/2012/10/23/four-gruesome-but-neglected-horror-films/

FOR MORE MOVIES WITH CASEY CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/2013/06/16/supermodel-casey-james-presents-the-strangest-biker-movies-of-all-time/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


ALIEN LOVER (1975)

0
0
Alien Lover

Alien Lover

ALIEN LOVER (1975) – Category: Enjoyably campy bad movie elevated by kitsch-value in the casting.             Pernell Roberts and a really young Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) in her pre-Ryan’s Hope and Mrs Columbo days add the additional comic value to this made-for-tv horror/sci fi hybrid. It was an hour and a half with commercials so with them edited out it’s just 60-some minutes long.

Kate plays a teenaged recovering loony who starts communicating with a teen from another dimension via a broken tv set in the attic of her home. The tv set can absorb people from our dimension into the alien dimension.
 The 70′s sitcom-style lighting makes you expect to hear laughter and applause from the studio audience every now and then. (Or at least recognition applause when cult figures like Pernell Roberts make their entrances) The whole laughable film plays like a half-hour Twilight Zone episode stretched out to an interminable length and the soap-opera-ish acting has you laughing so hard you may actually be surprised by the down-beat ending.
An episode of the campy 1950′s sci-fi show Johnny Jupiter would make the perfect desert after watching this movie!

FOR MORE BAD MOVIES CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


FRONTIER MARSHAL (1939) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT: OCTOBER 25TH, 1986

0
0
A movie guaranteed to contain absolutely NO accurate information.

A movie guaranteed to contain absolutely NO accurate information.

BEFORE MST3K THERE WAS … THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT!

Welcome to a special Frontierado Edition of Balladeer’s Blog’s look at this neglected cult show from the 1980′s. The Texas 27 Film Vault featured Randy Clower and Richard Malmos as members of the fictional Film Vault Corps ( “The few, the proud, the sarcastic” ) showing and mocking bad and campy films preceded by episodes of old Republic Serials.

ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday, October 25th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00 am.

OPENING SERIAL: An episode of The Undersea Kingdom (1936). (I have not yet been able to determine the exact episode number.)

THE MOVIE: Frontier Marshal, directed by Allan Dwan, has a well-deserved reputation as the worst and weirdest cinematic depiction of the events leading up to the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Randolph Scott turns in his usual bland performance as Wyatt Earp with Cesar Romero a very unlikely Doc. As usual Doc steals the show from the hopelessly dull and straight-arrow Wyatt. Ward Bond shows up as a cowardly lawman, Lon Chaney, Jr, who also appeared in the serial before the movie, plays one of Curly Bill Brocius’ thugs and Balladeer’s Blog’s old friend John Carradine is the movie’s main villain … Carter. No, not Clanton or even McLaurey but “Carter”.

Wyatt and Doc trying to cut the rear projection screen off at the pass.

Wyatt and Doc trying to cut the rear projection screen off at the pass.

Here’s just some of the hilariously distorted bits from this Parallel Universe version of the events in Tombstsone, Arizona:

Doc Holliday’s name is Halliday for some reason and is pronounced “Hale-i-day”. Characters say ”Hale-i-day” so many times that if you made it a drinking game you’d be dead of alcohol poisoning about half-way through.

Doc Holliday, excuse me – Hale-i-day – drank only milk in the west until the woman he loved back in Georgia (his cousin in real life) showed up in Tombstone. Then he started drinking whiskey to escape the pain of seeing her again.

Wyatt was the only Earp in Tombstone. Not one of his brothers shows up in this rendition.

Doc was out west for just two years by the time he rolled into Tombstone. Like most of the distortions of the facts there is no reason for this in the context of the story. It’s just wrong for the hell of it.

Doc was a medical doctor in this version, not a dentist. (To be fair there are other movies that get that part wrong.) A hilariously maudlin tale gets told about Doc risking his life to deliver a baby back in Georgia.

Wyatt became a lawman in Tombstone when the previous badge-holder was too frightened to arrest a drunk Mexican.

Wild West comedian Eddie Foy delivered deadlier kicks than Jackie Chan.

Doc Holliday, er, Hale-i-day, is killed by the bad guys even BEFORE the gunfight at the OK Corral. In real life Doc lived until years after that event. Here he is buried in Tombstone under the last name “Halliday”. Needless to say his year of birth is VERY wrong on the gravemarker.  

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault.

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault.

The famed gunfight at the most famous Corral in history takes place AT NIGHT and Wyatt’s only ally is A WOMAN – a cheap saloon girl who had a thing for Doc.

Throw in typically awkward faux-western dialogue, a couple of cringe-inducing songs and a stage-coach chase that features the all-time worst rear projection ever seen in a movie. And I mean EVER!

At the time this episode of The Texas 27 Film Vault aired Cesar Romero was starring on the prime-time soap opera Falcon Crest, which no doubt provided some additional comedy fodder for Randy and Richard.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE BALLADEER’S BLOG WILL PRESENT MORE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT MILESTONES. Be here to share the Film Vault Corp’s mission of “safeguarding America’s schlock-culture heritage”.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO ON THIS SHOW – http://glitternight.com/texas-27-film-vault/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. 


BAD MOVIE: STAR SPANGLED RHYTHM (1942) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT: JULY 6TH, 1985

0
0
Starring All Kinds of People Who Died Before Your Grandparents Were Born

Starring All Kinds of People Who Died Before Your Grandparents Were Born

In the middle 1980′s/ Way down on Level 31 …

Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault!

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the mid-1980′s with the 7th review in a series where exact broadcast dates can be determined. My research through VERY old newspapers, my interviews with the show’s co-star and co-creator Randy Clower plus emails and comments from my fellow fans of the program are helping us piece together bits and pieces of the show’s history. Keep those Texas 27 Film Vault memories coming, ladies and gentlemen.

Episode originally broadcast: Saturday July 6th, 1985, from 10:30pm to 1am. Special thanks to my fellow T27FV fan Roberta for the date.  

Extras: With 2 1/2 hours to work with each week Randy Clower and Richard Malmos, as machine-gun toting “Film Vault Technicians First Class”, would usually present and mock episodes of old Republic serials, then still had time to follow that up with a bad or campy movie AND their comedy sketches. Those sketches centered on their fictional Film Vault Corps, “the few, the proud, the sarcastic”, the men and women who “protected America’s schlock-culture heritage” in the form of the Golden Turkeys beloved by bad movie buffs.

Star Spangled Rhythm was so long that, with commercials plus Randy and Richard’s comedy sketches, there was no time for a serial episode before the film for this episode of The Texas 27 Film Vault.

The Movie: Star Spangled Rhythm was a

The movie's soundtrack album! Send $4.95 if you want to buy it, $9.95 if you DON'T ...

The movie’s soundtrack album! Send $4.95 if you want to buy it, $9.95 if you DON’T …

schmaltzy light-hearted morale booster for the United States, which at the time of its release had been involved in World War Two for less than a full year. The simple-minded plot sounds like a rejected script for I Love Lucy from several years later. A security guard at Paramount Studios has convinced his son (Eddie Bracken), who is serving in the Navy, that he is instead an executive with the studio. When the man’s son and Navy buddies show up at the studio on shore leave the security guard and a Paramount secretary (Betty Hutton) who wants to marry the guard’s son are on the spot.

Through some monumentally lame and labored lies and subterfuges the son and his service pals are convinced of Dad’s executive status while interacting with almost every star in the Paramount stable at the time. Figures like Preston Sturges, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Fred MacMurray, Veronica Lake, Dorothy Lamour and countless other recognizable faces provide fodder for Randy and Richard, given the duo’s encyclopedic memories for movie and pop culture trivia. Bing Crosby’s son Gary shows up in the movie, too, so you can insert your own dark joke about Bing’s alleged abuse of Gary here.

Viewers will also see Susan Hayworth, Paulette Goddard, Franchot Tone, Ray Milland, Rochester, Dick Powell, William Bendix and Alan Ladd. Though occassionally there are incidents of INTENTIONAL humor that will make you laugh most of the humor is unintentional. You’ll split your sides laughing at the telegraphed jokes, over-produced song and dance numbers plus the outdated social attitudes, especially regarding the African Americans in the cast.

And of course, there is the ham-fisted, hit-you-over-the-head, forced patriotism of the whole affair, climaxing with Bing Crosy singing Old Glory in front of a scale-model of Mount Rushmore. There’s nostalgia for seemingly simpler times and then there’s outright simple-mindedness and unfortunately Star Spangled Rhythm is mostly the latter.

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 as they host their 1985-1987 show The Texas 27 Film Vault.

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 as they host their 1985-1987 show The Texas 27 Film Vault.

FILM VAULT LORE: Randy and Richard, both sons of military men, had come up with a very detailed back-story for their fictional Film Vault Corps. Back before the Corps members found themselves protecting old movies from gigantic rats and celluloid-eating cellumites the FVC got its start during the Great Depression.

FDR’s Works Progress Administration engineered the first Film Vaults beneath America’s major cities. Each subterranean vault was as large as an aircraft carrier and they were originally used to store the monumental film collection of FDR crony Larry Alexander Finley of Frankfort, KY. Eventually the vaults were used to house the superannuated Golden Turkeys and camp classics that local television stations across the country filled their late-night hours with. The vaults also housed other bits of cultural kitsch like old commercials and tv shows and such.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE BALLADEER’S BLOG WILL PRESENT MORE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT MILESTONES. Be here to share the Film Vault Corp’s mission of “safeguarding America’s schlock-culture heritage”.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO ON THIS SHOW – http://glitternight.com/texas-27-film-vault/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  


IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT: JULY 12TH, 1986

0
0
It! The Terror From Beyond Space

It! The Terror From Beyond Space

IN THE MIDDLE 1980′s/ WAY DOWN ON LEVEL 31 …

Before MST3K there was The Texas 27 Film Vault! Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the 1980′s. Randy Clower and Richard Malmos, our machine-gun toting members of the Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) do their usual bit of showing and mocking an old serial then showing and mocking a bad movie.

Thanks to my interview with Randy Clower, the show’s co-creator and co-star and thanks to my research through VERY old newspapers plus emailed memories from other T27FV fans I’m taking a look at another episode of the show where an exact broadcast date can be determined.

ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday July 12th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

SERIAL: Before the night’s movie Randy and Richard would often present old serials. In this episode of the show our “Film Vault Technicians First Class” showed a chapter of Canadian Mounties vs Atomic Invaders (1953), a hilariously campy Cold War relic pitting “the Red against the Reds!” as the posters boasted.

FILM VAULT LORE: This episode of The Texas 27 Film Vault was the first to come with a Viewer Discretion warning. Gore effects fans (And what T27FV fan WASN’T a gore effects fan?) were in Nirvana this night as Film Vault Corps member Joe “The Hypnotic Eye“ Riley was given full reign for some of his most graphic effects work during the comedy sketches or Host Segments if you prefer. 

Howling!

Howling!

Direct from the Film Vault Corps Academy in Leadville, Colorado, the Academy’s Little Theater Group was touring Film Vaults across the country. Tonight they were performing on Level 31 of the Film Vault underneath Dallas, where the show was set. The Little Theater Group was reenacting scenes from famous alien monster movies and since It! The Terror From Beyond Space was a partial inspiration for the original Alien, the chest-burster scene was reenacted in darkly comic glory! (As if the chow in the Film Vault Commissary wasn’t unappetizing enough already!)

THE MOVIE: It! The Terror From Beyond Space is one of the consummate low-budget schlockers of the 1950′s. It embodies the “so bad it’s good” aesthetic that so many Movie Host shows have always reveled in. In the far-off year 1973 (LMAO) a very fake-looking space-ship on an even more fake-looking matte-painting of a Martian landscape has come to rescue the sole survivor of the previous mission to the Red Planet. (So far it sounds almost like Queen of Blood, shown on T27FV in May of 1986 and reviewed previously)

The sole survivor of the first mission, Colonel Edward Carruthers (Marshall Thompson) is suspected of having killed all his crew-mates. In reality a Martian monster (our title menace) slipped aboard Carruthers’ ship and killed off the crew. That same creature stows away on the rescue ship and on the journey back to Earth begins killing off the new crew, clearing Carruthers. After a running battle throughout the ship the few remaining crew members slip into their pressure suits and open the airlock to kill the monster.

To cite just a few of the many laugh-inducing moments from the film:  

* The dopey monster suit. Barney the Purple Dinosaur looked more menacing.

* The terrible special-effects for the dead bodies of the monster’s victims, all drained of moisture and bone marrow.

* The way the crew members casually SMOKE on the spaceship.

* The 1950′s way that the female astronauts - a Doctor and nurse - serve coffee to the male astronauts.

You've come a long way, baby!

You’ve come a long way, baby!

* The inept crew member who leaves an exhaust vent wide open, allowing “IT” to sneak onto the ship.

* The “shades of Alien” moments when the monster drags its victims into air ducts.

* The countless external shots of the spaceship traveling through space, simulated by showing the cardboard model go up, up and away until out of the shot each time.

* Edward Cahn’s usual limp direction.

* The lawn chairs that serve as furniture on the spaceship.

* “Crash” Corrigan himself wearing the monster suit.

* Obvious radio equipment serving as the control panel of the ship.

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

* The crew’s reckless tendency to let loose with gunfire and even GRENADES aboard the ship when fighting the monster.

* The aftermath, where Earth’s authorities decide that the presence of hostile life forms on Mars means they will BYPASS MARS and instead explore other planets in our solar system! Yeah, who wants to bother studying the first-found examples of alien life anyway.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE BALLADEER’S BLOG WILL PRESENT MORE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT MILESTONES. Be here to share the Film Vault Corp’s mission of “safeguarding America’s schlock-culture heritage”.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO ON THIS SHOW – http://glitternight.com/texas-27-film-vault/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.



BAD MOVIE: THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977)

0
0
The Dragon Lives Again

The Dragon Lives Again

THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977) - CategoryBrucesploitation with an enjoyably absurd twist   

Even for the bizarre sub-genre of Brucesploitation films this movie is out there! The film starts with the recently – deceased Bruce Lee arriving in the afterlife, where the concubines of the King of the Dead gather around to gawk at the bulge in the pants of the late martials arts superstar. (Just in case you thought NO opening could be more tasteless than the one in The Clones Of Bruce Lee ) In a bit of alleged comic relief the bulge turns out to be caused by a weapon, not Lee’s organ. (Corpse schlong jokes! Who doesn’t love them?)

As head-shaking as that bit is at least it’s coherent, unlike virtually everything else that happens from this point on in the movie. And the time-honored tradition of Brucesploitation films having leading men who don’t even look like Bruce Lee is well-represented in this flick, but at least here they try to explain it away by talking about how a person’s face and body change after death.  Which, of course, makes no sense since this is supposed to be Lee’s soul, not his body.  Anyway, Bruce somehow persuades the King Of The Dead to grant him a chance to return to the world of the living, and is told he can return if he outfights all the other inhabitants of this odd netherworld. 

You see, this isn’t just any bland version of the afterlife our hero finds himself in. It’s kind of a Valhalla of cult movie characters and Bruce spends the rest of the movie fighting all of them in various combinations. Lee is the only figure who’s an actor (kind of), the other shades in this Psychotronic Hell are actually famous characters from various film series: there’s Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name from Spaghetti Westerns, there’s Zatoichi, the blind swordsman, there’s James Bond, there’s Fang Kang, the lead character in the One-Armed Swordsman series of films, there’s The Exorcist and The Godfather, both of whom are played by Asians, for those of you who like laughing at the oddity of Caucasian actors playing characters like Charlie Chan, Mr Moto and Fu Manchu.

For some very odd reason there’s also Emmanuelle from the erotic film series bearing her name plus, for some even odder reason, there’s Dracula, who’s neither living nor dead so you’d think he wouldn’t be here at all. In the film he leads his famous army of … zombies? Yep, instead of a legion of vampires at his side Drac has an army of “zombies” who are really just guys in black costumes with full-body skeleton designs on them like the outfit worn by the Turkish film character called Killing (my head hurts). Later in the film Drac leads an army of mummies, just to make things even more confusing.

Before we bother worrying about all the foregoing weirdness, let me point out that another denizen of this netherworld is the cartoon character Popeye, yes, FREAKING POPEYE, played by a real-life Asian actor who squints and puffs up one of his cheeks in an attempt to look like his namesake. He even eats a can of spinach to increase his strength during a  battle with Drac and his army of mummies.

Oddly, the Ilsa character from Dyanne Thorne’s  infamous tetralogy of films makes no appearance. Neither does the red-haired samurai from the Son Of The Black Mask movies. His movies always had quasi-supernatural overtones so it would have made sense to include him in these proceedings, but that’s probably why they didn’t throw him in. After all, something that made sense might have been too much of a shock to the viewers’ systems. In the end Bruce Lee emerges triumphant over all comers and is permitted to return to the world of the living, just like happened in real life. 

FOR MORE BAD MOVIES CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.  


SEXY CASEY JAMES AND SOME OF THE WEIRDEST JUVENILE DELINQUENT MOVIES EVER MADE

0
0

Casey JD1Special thanks once again to Balladeer’s Blog’s Official Movie Hostess, the beautiful and dangerous Casey James! Not only is Casey the perfect woman but she also enjoys the absurdity of those over-the- top Juvenile Delinquent films of the 1950′s and 1960′s. This world-famous sex symbol is uniquely qualified to be the hostess for this article.

HIGH SCHOOL CAESAR (1960) – John Ashley, who was about as menacing as Ned Flanders, plays a bitter rich teenage punk who runs illegal operations at his high school like a junior version of organized crime. The title is a reference to Little Caesar, the gangster movie with Edward G Robinson. Ashley’s JD character peddles the answers to exams, rigs school elections and bilks money from his classmates. All of this is played so seriously you will die laughing. There’s also the obligatory Drag Race and OF COURSE someone dies while drag racing. My Bad Movie page has a full-length review of this one if you’re interested.

SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROCK! (1956) – In this hilarious movie Rock and Roll music is blamed for the Juvenile Delinquency epidemic of the 1950′s. Not only does one particularly irrational city ban rock music completely but it puts the local rock DJ on trial! They hold him accountable for the vandalism and other JD activities that hit the town because, by their logic, the “wild” music he played CAUSED the teenagers to commit their crimes. This is hilariously bad and stars Mike “Touch” Connors as the scapegoated Disc Jockey.

HOT ROD GANG (1958) – The ever-bland John Ashley strikes again! Teenage slang runs amok in this achingly funny film that also features some of the lamest rear-projection work imaginable during some of the drag racing scenes. Ashley tries to sing like Elvis, races hot rods, gets in fights with some of the local hoods and romances Jody Fair in his spare time. To save the local teen hangout Ashley’s character plans to win the prize money in a car race. To raise the entry fee he disguises himself as a rock singer and, under the alias “Sylvester Dalrymple”, becomes a sensation. 

HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL (1958) – Jerry Lee Lewis sings the opening song in this campy classic! Russ Tamblyn plays Tony Baker, a sneering high school punk looking to get ahead in the drug-pushing game. Mamie Van Doren plays his seductive “Aunt”, Jody Fair plays a jonesing teenager, Jackie Coogan plays a drug lord, Ray Anthony a gunsel and Michael Landon portrays a hot-rod racing football player. John Drew Barrymore, the son of silent film star John Barrymore and the father of actress Drew Barrymore, plays a teen marijuana dealer who delivers an all-slang rendition of Columbus’ discovery of America. It’s very educational! 

Casey JD2

UNTAMED YOUTH (1957) – A predatory cotton farmer manipulates a lonely female judge into sentencing teenage delinquents to work in his cotton fields. Once the evil farmer has the JD’s in his power he treats them as slave labor and even extorts sexual favors from some of the more attractive females. This baby combines the exploitation thrills of women in prison movies with the usual JD potboiler nonsense. Mamie Van Doren, rock singer Eddie Cochran, Lori Nelson and Lawman’s John Russell star in this non-stop orgy of unintentional laughs. Mamie’s singing is as lame as ever in this anti-classic.

DIARY OF A HIGH SCHOOL BRIDE (1959) – A young girl who used to run with “a bad crowd” seems to be turning her life around when she marries a Bland White Guy while she’s still in high school. The wild crowd of JD’s that she used to run with try to draw her back into their lifestyle of criminal “kicks”. So campy it’s virtually a spoken-language opera! Tony Casanova himself sings the title song, which features wonderful lyrics like “The days she was lo-o-nelyyy/ The ni-i-ights that she criiiiiiied/ The diary of a high school briiiiiiiide!” They don’t write them like that anymore!

GIRLS TOWN (1959) – Mamie Van Doren joins Paul Anka – who made his acting debut in this flick – for the title song! The title institution is a reform school for female JD’s and is run by two-fisted nuns. Mamie’s character, named “Silver” like the Lone Ranger’s horse, winds up sentenced to Girls Town when she is mistakenly implicated in the death of her boyfriend Chip (Harold Lloyd, Jr). Her sister, who is NOT named after Trigger or any other horse, is played by Elinor Donahue and was the one really involved in Chip’s death. Mel Torme as a pudgy JD joins Charley Chaplin Jr, Ray Anthony, Dick Contino, Gloria Talbot, James Mitchum and Jody Fair in an unforgettable ride.   

THE PARTY CRASHERS (1958) – Connie Stevens, Bobby Driscoll, Matt Damon, Frances Farmer and Denver Pyle star in this unintentionally hilarious movie about a group of JD’s whose M.O. is to crash parties at upper-class homes, help themselves to food, drink and women and then vandalize the place. Connie is torn between her bland boyfriend and the sleazy leader of the Party Crashers. All the teenagers are spoiled and unlikeable and all the adults are alcoholics or bloated rich pigs. This movie is one long laugh festival!

THE CRY BABY KILLER (1958) – Jack Nicholson made his acting debut in this Roger Corman production. Jack plays a JD who mistakenly thinks he has shot two rival gang members to death and, believing he has nothing to lose, grabs hostages and holes up in a standoff with the police. A media circus results as news crews come in to cover the incident and talking heads ponder the juvenile delinquency phenomenon. In better hands this could have provided riveting social commentary, but because it’s a Corman quickie it’s good just for laughs and a silly title song. Brett Halsey, Carolyn Mitchell, Bruno Ve Sota and Corman himself make appearances in this cult classic.  

FOR MORE MOVIES WITH CASEY CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/2013/06/16/supermodel-casey-james-presents-the-strangest-biker-movies-of-all-time/

FOR CASEY’S OTHER ANTICS CLICK HERE: http://clips4sale.com/66673/8546337 

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.


HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL (1958) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT: SEPTEMBER 7TH, 1985

0
0
High School Confidential

High School Confidential

Before MST3K there was The Texas 27 Film Vault!

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the 1980′s. Randy Clower, Richard Malmos, Ken “Tex” Miller and Joe “The Hypnotic Eye” Riley played machine-gun toting members of the fictional Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) who would show and mock bad and campy movies preceded by episodes of old Republic serials. They would also have comedic sci-fi adventures before and after commercial breaks.

ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday September 7th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

SERIAL: Before the movie our Film Vault Technicians First Class showed and mocked a chapter of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.

FILM VAULT LORE: Randy Clower at E-Gor’s site on Texas 27 Film Vault groupies: “We were a bit wild during that time and having a cult show on late at night opened a few doors around the Dallas area which we were all more than willing to go through and explore.” 

THE MOVIE: High School Confidential has a well-deserved reputation as one of the campiest Juvenile Delinquency films of the 50′s and 60′s. Some of the fun comes from the hilariously heavy-handed anti-marijuana messages sprinkled throughout the movie, most of them delivered by some of the stiffest adults imaginable. Seriously, the grown-ups in this movie are so uptight they make Dragnet‘s Joe Friday seem like Elvis Presley.

Jerry Lee Lewis performs the opening song on the back of a flat-bed truck. Even if you’ve never watched this film you have probably seen the footage of this iconic performance by Lewis.

High School Confidential

High School Confidential

Russ Tamblyn stars as a sneering punk who wants to move up from pushing marijuana to dealing heroin. MAJOR SPOILER: Many of the film’s laughs come from how old Tamblyn and his fellow cast members look for supposed high school students. In Tamblyn’s case it’s because he’s really an undercover cop out to bust the dealers supplying the high school students with dope.

John Drew Barrymore, who is John Barrymore’s son and Drew Barrymore’s father, plays a marijuana dealer too timid to move on to the harder stuff. Barrymore’s use of slang stands out even in this film’s orgy of 50′s teen argot, especially when he delivers an all-slang “history lesson” about Columbus discovering America.

Mamie Van Doren, for once playing a character her real age, plays Tamblyn’s “aunt”, whose husband is out of town and who tries to seduce Russ’s character with howlingly over-the-top vamping.

Jackie Coogan portrays the nefarious drug lord of the piece. His front is a Beat club where some incredibly lame, cornball and funny attempts at Beat Poetry are recited, with Coogan himself playing in the jazz band that accompanies the recitations.

Charley Chaplin Jr, whose father Coogan appeared with in The Kid, plays a seemingly menacing man lurking in the background of many scenes, but who turns out to be one of Tamblyn’s fellow undercover cops.

"No, Frenchies, it was Jerry LEE Lewis, not Jerry Lewis who appeared in this movie!"

“No, Frenchies, it was Jerry LEE Lewis, not Jerry Lewis who appeared in this movie!”

Michael Landon portrays a hot-rod racing jock who races Tamblyn in the film’s obligatory Drag Race. He also leads his fellow football players into battle with the drug lord’s goons in the action-packed, yet absurd, finale.

Ray Anthony, who was married to Mamie Van Doren in real life at the time, plays one of Coogan’s underlings. Ray loves booze which infuriates Coogan in what I guess is supposed to be supreme irony but which really just seems silly.

Lyle Talbot, Ozzie and Harriet’s neighbor, is a cop who delivers some of the film’s most heavy-handed anti-drug proselytizing.

Jody Fair, who was apparently required by law to appear in any and all teen-oriented movies of the 50′s, appears as a jonesing teenager being pushed toward prostitution by Coogan.

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

Some of the slang shrapnel that lodged in my mind from this flick:

“That’s the way the bongle bingles.”

“I’m puttin’ it down … Are you pickin’ it up?” (I’ve owned dogs who seemed to live by that motto.) 

“I’m lookin’ to graze in some grass.” (As in purchasing marijuana, but you can insert your own cunnilingus joke here.)

“Let’s blow this Townsville!” (A Power Puff Girls joke would be way too easy.)

“I’m not no schmoe from kokomo.” (I’m putting that on my business cards.)

” I love a gassy chick like you.” (No comment.)

And of course the words Tamblyn uses to greet his female teacher: “Why don’t we cut out and go to your pad and light it up?” (Smoooooth!)

Naturally in the end the bad guys all go to jail, Russ reveals his true identity to his teacher so they can start a romance and Mamie’s husband returns to take care of her horniness. A ham-fisted voiceover from Lyle Talbot wraps it all up for us, providing one last round of laughs as the film comes to an end.  

IN THE NEAR FUTURE BALLADEER’S BLOG WILL PRESENT MORE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT MILESTONES. Be here to share the Film Vault Corp’s mission of “safeguarding America’s schlock-culture heritage”.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO ON THIS SHOW – http://glitternight.com/texas-27-film-vault/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. 


BLOOD BEACH (1980) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT: FEBRUARY 22ND, 1986

0
0
Blood Beach

Blood Beach

In the middle 1980′s/ Way down on Level 31 …

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the 1980′s. This is the latest review in a series where original broadcast dates can be determined thanks to my research through VERY old newspapers, my interviews with series co-star and co-creator Randy Clower and emails from my fellow fans of this program.

EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday February 22nd, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

SERIAL: Before showing and mocking the movie machine-gun toting Randy Clower and Richard Malmos, as members of the fictional Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) showed and mocked Chapter Two of the Republic Serial Radar Men from the Moon (1952).

FILM VAULT LORE: Our Film Vault Technicians First Class would pull the usual Movie Host duties like providing background info on the films and serials, and would also do comedy sketches centered around their fictional Film Vault Corps before and after commercials. They protected their duty station from menaces like giant rats, cellumites and other threats.

That duty station – Level 31 Core 27 of the Film Vault System was accessed via an industrial park behind KDFI Channel 27′s headquarters off Highway 183 near Dallas. The show was directed by Karl Newman, who often good-naturedly bemoaned Randy and Richard’s tendency to ad-lib. Sometimes in print interviews Newman would joke that if they used a script they would need far too many takes for Clower and Malmos to read their lines right, hence the ad-libbing.

THE MOVIE: Blood Beach (1980) was one of the least effective horror films of the 1980′s. It had a half-decent premise – a monster beneath the sand at a California beach sucking victims down into its hellish maw – but squandered that premise with incredibly slow pacing. The inane dialogue spouted by the annoying characters didn’t help matters.

Crazy!

Crazy!

Mariana Hill, who appeared in the 1970′s infantilism horror film called The Baby, plays Catherine Hutton, who comes back to California when her mother is the first victim of the beach-dwelling carnivore.  

David Huffman, who will actually make you long for a thespian giant like David Hasselhoff, plays Harry Caulder, Catherine’s old flame and a member of the Harbor Patrol. David and Catherine investigate the strange goings-on at the place dubbed “Blood Beach” by the local press.

Burt Young from Rocky and Carnival of Blood staggers and mumbles his way through another film. This time around he plays Detective Sgt Royko, who hates California and constantly makes unflattering comparisons between the west coast and his beloved home town of Chicago. Why doesn’t he just move back there? We never find out.

 John Saxon plays Captain Pearson, the regulation wisecracking, belly-aching cop who acts like the REAL horror of the events at Blood Beach resides in how personally inconvenienced he is by the killing spree.

Darrel Fetty IS Hoagie, a Harbor Patrol partner of our hero Harry. Darrel sports a White Guy Afro, moonlights by singing goofy songs in nightclubs and is so obnoxiously beach-minded all his scenes play like proto-versions of Baywatch.

Stefan Gierasch plays Dr Dimitrios, a creepy coroner who is more mad scientist than pathologist and who speaks in eerie, halting sentences like the guy from the Killer Nerd movies.

Mickey Fox shows up as “Moose”, a decidedly androgynous character who runs a hot dog stand and who looks like the inspiration for the old SNL character Pat.

Eleanor Zee portrays Mrs Selden, the crazed bag lady who sleeps near the beach, witnesses several monster attacks and generally shrieks bag lady gibberish at everyone who crosses her path.

Assorted men and women make appearances as victims who get sucked down into the sand-creature’s mouth. None of them make much of an impression but the female victims are SO faceless and unmemorable there are a few spots in the movie where you find yourself saying “Hey, I thought that was the woman who got killed in the last attack scene!”

Don't worry - every thread of this man's wardrobe will be painstakingly described later in the movie.

Don’t worry – every thread of this man’s wardrobe will be painstakingly described later in the movie.

Memorable moments from the film include:

* When the crazed bag lady dementedly tells Catherine that her mother was raped and murdered and buried on the beach. All of those remarks are based on NOTHING! (?!)

* Our beach-creature’s unpredictable appetite. Sometimes it devours its victim’s whole, other times it just chews up their legs or otherwise disfigures them while on two occassions it bites off a dog’s head and, enjoyably enough, a rapist’s cock in mid-attack.

* The scene where Harry pours what looks like Old Spice cologne on a hot dog he’s about to eat.

* The way the monster might as well be playing match-maker for our two leads. It kills her mother to bring her back into town and kills off the stewardess he’s been sleeping with.

* When John Saxon’s griping reaches its apex. This happens when he gets hauled onto the carpet by local politicians upset about the beach mayhem. Saxon calls one office-holder “a grandstanding twat” and makes a speech in which he basically tells his superiors that unless he and his men get paid more they won’t do shit to stop the Blood Beach slaughter. Sgt Royko loves this tour-de- force example of using the public’s safety as a negotiating tool.  

And speaking of Royko, he steals the movie (insert your own petty theft joke here) in scenes that make him the most quotable Royko since Mike. – For example:

Richard (left) and Randy between takes on The Texas 27 Film Vault.

Richard (left) and Randy between takes on The Texas 27 Film Vault.

a) Royko’s Chicago-centric dialogue includes oaths that he swears “on the grave of Richard J Daley.”

b) After Captain Pearson actually exhorts his men to “get stoned” if they have to to solve the Blood Beach mystery Royko says - “In Chicago they’d have given him a medal!”

c) When “playful” beach bums throw a hot dog from Moose’s at him, saying “We found that guy’s wiener” Royko replies ”Go play in Cicero!”

d) And in response to a citizen screaming in terror at the sight of what’s left of a half-digested victim crawling along the beach – “Get out of the way, jerk off!”

That victim – a CPA – was reported missing by his wife. The scene where she recounts to Sgt Royko what her husband was wearing when he disappeared goes on for what feels like an eternity and redefines the expression “excruciating detail”. Centuries from now if only this fragment of Blood Beach has survived future generations will be able to perfectly reconstruct what this metal-detector-using dweeb was wearing when he left home that morning.

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

SPOILER: Royko actually seems to come in handy during the climactic stakeout for the monster. Just when it looks like the coroner’s mad scientist persona will motivate him into aiding the escape of the creature he finds so “fascinating” Royko will have none of it and detonates the explosives, blowing the monster to bits …

… Unfortunately the film’s epilogue shows us that each individual smithereen that the monster was reduced to has regrown as a whole beach monster in its own right. Happily, though, there was NEVER a sequel to this Grade Z level version of a B Movie.  

IN THE NEAR FUTURE BALLADEER’S BLOG WILL PRESENT MORE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT MILESTONES. Be here to share the Film Vault Corp’s mission of “safeguarding America’s schlock-culture heritage”.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO ON THIS SHOW – http://glitternight.com/texas-27-film-vault/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. 


GIRLS ON PROBATION (1938) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT: MARCH 2ND, 1985

0
0
Girls on Probation

Girls on Probation

In the middle 1980′s/ Way down on Level 31 …

Before MST3K there was The Texas 27 Film Vault! Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the 1980′s with another review of an episode where an original air date can be determined. My interview with Randy Clower, my research through VERY old newspapers and emailed memories from my fellow Vaulties are helping in this attempt to reconstruct elements of the show’s history.

EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday March 2nd, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00 am.

FILM VAULT LORE: This is the 2nd oldest episode I’ve reviewed. The oldest episode was the February 9th, 1985 airing of Trunk to Cairo with Audie Murphy. Special thanks to my fellow T27FV fan Jessica for the serial episode and a comedy sketch from the episode.

One of the comedy sketches in the show was a mock commercial for Blue Arrow Bus Lines, the fictional bus line in the movie. The phony ad hyped the bus line as the Official Bus Line of female fugitives on the run.

SERIAL: Before showing and mocking the movie machine-gun toting Randy Clower and Richard Malmos of the fictional Film Vault Corps (“The few, the proud, the sarcastic”) showed and mocked a chapter of the notoriously campy sci-fi serial The Lost City (1935).

THE MOVIE: GIRLS ON PROBATION (1938) was one of the countless Warner Brothers B-movies that future president Ronald Reagan starred in before his career in politics. Reagan had just been inaugurated  for his second term less than two months earlier so the Reagan jokes from our Film Vault Technicans First Class no doubt flew hard and fast. The Texas 27 Film Vault also showed Bedtime for Bonzo, another infamous Reagan pic, but I have yet to narrow down the exact date of that episode.  

Reagan is the romantic lead in this flick, portraying lawyer Neil Dillon, the Knight in Shining Armor for misunderstood girl Connie Heath (Jane Bryan), one of the title females. Connie is the victim of bad company and of so many unfortunate coincidences that it will put you in mind of the much later MST3K episode Teenage Crimewave. Her sleazy and easy “friend” Hilda Engstrom constantly entangles her in illegal actions and leaves her holding the bag for some of them.

Susan Hayward appears in the film for about a minute and a half total, despite her prominence on this poster.

Susan Hayward appears in the film for about a minute and a half total, despite her prominence on this poster.

The flick plays like a campy 30′s version of Les Miserables as the bitchy girlfriend of Reagan’s character viciously insists on pressing charges against Connie for wearing a dress shanghaied from the cleaner company that Connie and Hilda work for. Naturally Hilda really stole the dress but loaned it to poor Connie who gets fingered for the theft. Later Connie is in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets implicated in a bank robbery attempt by Hilda and her mad-dog boyfriend Tony Rand (Anthony Averill).  

Naturally in the end Rand gets his in a  hail of bullets from the cops thanks to quick thinking from Connie and she and Dillon (Reagan), now an Assistant District Attorney, live happily ever after. Even the uber-bitchy Hilda gets accidentally shot to death by Tony during the climactic shootout and her final words are hilariously campy. Talking to an attending priest she says “I’m on my way to meet your boss.” You’d be able to guess that line was from a Warner Brothers B-movie even if you didn’t know it.

Other enjoyably bad moments in the film include:

* Connie’s semi-psychotic father, who sounds like Mr Tudbole from The Carol Burnett Show but whose behavior is verbally, emotionally and even physically abusive to Connie and her mother. The man regally and impatiently demands his supper and a morning cup of coffee in the same quasi-threatening manner that he belts out his vicious remarks to the ladies of the house. “Over the top” doesn’t even BEGIN to describe him.

* A supposedly ritzy nightclub called Hula House.

* The  detective who mutters half his lines to the party on the other end of the phone AFTER taking the phone away from his mouth. Hilarious!

Pure camp from Warner Brothers!

Pure camp from Warner Brothers!

* Reagan’s typically robotic, mild and bland performance as the nice guy lawyer beau of our suffering heroine. All of his characters always act so mellow it’s like they’re ON something.

* The mind-bogglingly funny inaccuracies of the courtroom scenes! Apparently in the Warner Brothers universe lawyers in court function like they’re in a “Point/Counterpoint” debate.

* The trigger-happy cops who simply open fire pell-mell into the crowd during the bank robbery scene.

* The campy female prison inmates during the scenes in the penitentiary. Apparently they’re doing hard time for felony stereotype charges.

* The obligatory catfight between Connie and Hilda while they’re behind bars.

* The outdated and chauvinistic dialogue including gems like “Who can figure dames” and Connie’s father’s remark when she starts to drive: “Another woman driver to make life unsafe on the streets.”

* Tony’s pure Warner Brothers escape from prison. The scene is like an exercise in self-parody and is pure comedy gold, albeit unintentionally. By the way, the prison alarm sounds like the horn that went off to signal the end of Fred Flintstone’s workday. 

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

* The way Connie holds the engagement ring that Ronny has just slipped on her finger up to the telephone and says “Mom, LOOK!” Um. Okay.

IN THE NEAR FUTURE BALLADEER’S BLOG WILL PRESENT MORE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT MILESTONES. Be here to share the Film Vault Corp’s mission of “safeguarding America’s schlock-culture heritage”.

FOR ADDITIONAL INFO ON THIS SHOW – http://glitternight.com/texas-27-film-vault/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. 


Viewing all 482 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images