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 …
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 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 – https://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.
Balladeer's Blog 
I’ll bet Randy and Richard had a lot of fun with this one!
You said a mouthful!
Very funny! Randy and Richard must have been the Joel and Mike of their day!
For people in Texas and Oklahoma they sure were!
Pingback: Trang
Thanks! Feel free to spread the word!
Pingback: Mina
Yes it was!
Pingback: Thauy
That is the point of The Texas 27 Film Vault.
Pingback: Paul from L.A.
Randy and Richard livened up all of the old movies they showed!
Pingback: Dent
I don’t piss on the Minnesota show, I just got tired of psycho-Misties claiming The Texas 27 Film Vault imitated MST3K when, in fact, Randy and Richard’s show came FIRST!
Pingback: Ms Gypsy Fortune
I sure did! Thanks for the additional details! I’ll also give a shoutout to you in the article where I incorporate your anecdotes.
Pingback: KRT
Feel free to spread the word!
Pingback: Prince Q
Thanks! Feel free to spread the word!
Pingback: Eric
Nothing I wrote indicates a hatred of anything.
Randy and Richard FOREVER! I used to watch them from southern Oklahoma!
Great! You should email me any memories you have of the show!
I loved this show! I emailed u some stories about it!
Thank you very much! I will credit you when I run reviews of those particular episodes! Spread the word to all our fellow Vaulties!
Seeing them riff on this movie must have been fun!
It was a very enjoyable show!
Funny review and this must have been a funny show!
Thanks and yes it was!
Were Randy and Richard all that funny?
I though they were.
So funny! Randy and Richard sound funnier than Mike and the bots!
Thank you for commenting!
Nothing like making fun of soldiers dying in World War II
I have no idea where you get that’s what this was about.
Randy and Richard should have been on MST3K!
Ha! Interesting thought!
I don’t understand the movie.
Schmaltzy morale-builder based on the premise that seeing a bunch of celebrities in bit parts will make people feel good.
What a strange piece of film history.
I agree.
I sent you an email with my memories of this show from when I was a teenager.
Got it! Thanks~!
This seems better than that awful Mystery Science show we got over here years ago,
Thanks for commenting!
It must have been great when Randy and Richard riffed on this! Mike Nelson is such an overrated idiot.
Thank you for commenting!
Sounds like good laughready campy fun.
It was!