Balladeer’s Blog continues celebrating the FORTIETH anniversary year of this neglected cult show which debuted Saturday night February 9th, 1985. As I often mention, before MST3K came The Texas 27 Film Vault. Before Joel and Mike came Randy and Richard. Before Devil Dogs, Pearl and Deep 13 came Cellumites, Laurie Savino and Level 31.
This show was broadcast throughout Texas and Oklahoma on Saturday nights from 10:30PM to 1:00AM.
MOVIE: The Food of the Gods (1976).
ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Sometime in 1985, possibly February or March. Some info points to this being the first episode in which Randy and Richard used their machine guns and “prop-pack” mini-copters to fight giant rats from deep in the Earth. Given how central the giant rats would be going forward IF that can be verified it would make this a pretty pivotal episode of The Texas 27 Film Vault.
SERIAL: IF the February or March of 1985 date is correct – and that’s still up in the air – then the serial episode would definitely have been from The Lost City (1935). That serial dealt with a mad scientist and his futuristic city hidden in the African jungle.
COMEDY SKETCHES: The Film Vault Corps (“The few, the proud, the sarcastic”), led by Randy, Richard and Ken “Tex” Miller POSSIBLY taking on the first of many packs of giant rats. The effects, models and dolls of the human figures would – for humor’s sake – have been INTENTIONALLY as cheesy as the kind Bert I. Gordon used in The Food of the Gods and so many of his other “gigantic monster” films.
THE FOOD OF THE GODS – This was one of the many, MANY “size change” movies of Bert I Gordon, “Mister B.I.G.” himself. (Amazing Colossal Man, Attack of the Puppet People, Earth vs the Spider, Beginning of the End, War of the Colossal Beast, The Cyclops, Village of the Giants, Empire of the Ants, etc.)
The Food of the Gods was very loosely based on part of H.G. Wells’ novel of the same name. Gordon’s Village of the Giants, about a gang of giant-sized teenagers, was likewise loosely based on an often-forgotten section of that novel.
This movie starred Marjoe Gortner, the child evangelist turned B-movie legend, as football star Morgan (no fuller name given), who travels to a remote Canadian island for a vacation. Unfortunately, thanks to a very embarrassed- looking Ida Lupino, her farm animals plus other wildlife have begun eating “the Food of the Gods”, a white substance from deep in the Earth.
Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault
That food has caused various forms of animal and insect life to grow to enormous size, setting up the usual rampage scenes from Bert I Gordon films. Ralph Meeker, Jon Cypher and Pamela Franklin are also along for the ride in this movie.
As always in films by Mr. B.I.G. the real fun comes from the laughably awkward and cheap special effects used for the “gigantic” creatures. This film gives us attacks by cheaply rendered enormous chickens, roosters, wasps and, of course, rats.
At the end a flood wipes out the giant rats (despite the fact that rats can swim), who have besieged our surviving cast members in Ida Lupino’s farmhouse. After the epilogue with Marjoe and friends there’s a teaser for a sequel which features a toddler drinking milk that has accidentally been mixed with some Food of the Gods.
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 2015. 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.
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