GENTLEMAN JEKYLL AND DRIVER HYDE (1950) – Educational short films are often hilarious snapshots of their era. Driver’s Ed shorts are especially vulnerable to seeming outdated given how quickly car designs can change in certain decades.
This particular item is Canadian-made, proving that the Badfilm aesthetic is unfazed by international borders. (Yet Time Zones fill it with a vague sense of unease. Go figure.)
At any rate, Gentleman Jekyll and Driver Hyde obviously takes its cue from Stevenson’s story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. A pair of Canadian furniture movers – one tall and heavy, the other short and slender – bicker like a comedy team while discussing statistics which indicated that in 1950 a Canadian had a better chance of getting killed in a car accident than in a war.
Which I find to be a silly statistic. If it’s peacetime you probably have a better chance of dying from a piano dropping on your head than from a war. Wouldn’t it have been more ominous to say a person had a better chance of dying in a car accident than from heart disease or whatever physical ailment that a 1950 stat would indicate?
After some horrifically strained jokes “Laurel and Hardy, Eh” get to the meat of the matter: The way perfectly polite people can turn into figurative monsters when they get behind the wheel of a car. A kind, considerate man who just interacted with our two leads literally turns into a B-Movie monster thanks to editing and cheap makeup as he drives off. Continue reading
JUST A DAMNED SOLDIER aka One Damned Soldier (1988) – Balladeer’s Blog concludes its look at all ten films of Italian cult action icon Mark Gregory, real name Marco De Gregorio. I know IMDb states that he also appeared in the made for tv movie Rainbow, but I watched that film and he’s not in it. The error seems to have been made by someone who saw the name MARY Gregory in the closing credits and, because the font for the credits is a bit stylish, mistook the y in Mary for a k. 
I’ll wrap up everything by examining Mark’s final two films before he walked away from the business at age 25 in 1989, with no explanation and after having just made his highest amount of money from a movie role. 
Just a Damned Soldier features Mark in an ensemble cast as one member of a trio of badass international mercenaries who take on any dangerous, high-paying job that comes along. Our hero, whose character is also named Mark, serves alongside Cisco (Romano Kristoff) and their boss Bert Ernst (Peter Hooten). 
DELTA FORCE COMMANDO (1987) – Balladeer’s Blog’s salute to cult icon Mark Gregory continues, with two movies that proved he could be just as dynamic as the villain as he was playing the hero, like in his other action flicks. Previously, I’ve reviewed Mark’s two movies in which he played the post-apocalypse/ dystopian biker Trash in 
Because Italian filmmakers were always Enzo-on-the-spot with cash-in imitations of mainstream movie hits, it was inevitable that they would produce flicks coat-tailing on the popularity of Delta Force. Mark Gregory’s screen presence in Delta Force Commando reminded me of what a shame it is that he walked away from his acting career in 1989, just when he was at the peak of his game and his earnings. If only he’d signed up with Cannon films then.
Hell, in Delta Force Commando, Mr. Gregory spices up the schlock as the main villain, even though his character is never even given a name! Hey, that’s Italian exploitation cinema for ya! 
team of communist commandos from Nicaragua in a daring raid on a military base in Puerto Rico. Villain X and his team succeed in making off with a nuclear bomb despite a few firefights, one of which kills the pregnant wife of Delta Force member Lieutenant Tony Turner (Brett Baxter Clark). 
1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS (1982) – Spaghetti-pocalypse movies were to the 1980s what Spaghetti Westerns were to the 60s and 70s. Italian-made ripoffs of post-apocalypse and/or dystopian flicks like The Road Warrior and Escape From New York were everywhere back then. 
The story is set eight years in the future from its 1982 release and presented a crime-ridden New York City run by plutocratic corporations who have every politician in their pocket. So, just think of New York as it is right now. 
THUNDER WARRIOR aka Thunder (1983) – Here at Balladeer’s Blog I’ve reviewed plenty of Spaghetti Westerns and Spaghetti-pocalypse movies, but in this item I examine what could be called Spaghetti Rambo flicks. Mark Gregory, famous as the post-apocalypse action hero Trash 
The story features Mark Gregory’s character Thunder as a modern-day (1980s) Apache who lives on a reservation in Arizona. Assorted corrupt cops and bigoted construction workers are verbally and physically abusing the men and women of Thunder’s tribe.
THE KEEP (1983) – During World War Two, Nazi forces occupy a sinister stone Keep, only to realize they have disturbed a malevolent ancient entity which begins preying upon them. The unleashed force manipulates a prisoner of the Nazis into freeing it from its ages-old prison. 
ANDROMEDA NEBULA (1967) – This movie was adapted from the 1957 novel Andromeda: A Space Age Tale by Ivan Yefremov. Unusual for sci-fi writers in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Yefremov courageously defied some of the political limitations that the blood-soaked dictator and his regime placed on fiction. Ivan is credited for, among other things, breaking free of the Soviet policy that limited futuristic tales to just a few years in the future. He continued that trailblazing in his works after Stalin died.
And that brings us back to Andromeda Nebula. The story is set over a millenium in the future, when an Age of World Unification (under a Soviet system, of course) was followed by the establishment of the Ring aka the Great Circle. The Ring is a loosely affiliated assortment of planets who exchange scientific and cultural information and try to facilitate each other’s efforts to colonize space. 
NEW YEAR’S DAY (1989) – HAPPY NEW YEAR! Balladeer’s Blog welcomes in 2023 with this review of Henry Jaglom’s comedy-drama New Year’s Day, released on December 13th, 1989, and best known for the appearance of an all-nude David Duchovny. Jaglom wrote and directed this movie, as he had so many before it. Henry also plays a major role in New Year’s Day as Drew, a middle-aged writer/ director who recently got a divorce and has moved back to New York City from Los Angeles to start anew. 
Here at Balladeer’s Blog my fascination with Movie Host shows of the past and present is pretty well established. I’ve written about such programs from the 1950s onward. Not long ago I covered “
This program was created, written and produced by Joel Stephens, famous for his many Movie Host programs that combine assorted old movies, cartoons and serials with the tradition of attractive female hosts introducing and commenting upon such superannuated programming. Similar Movie Host shows from Stephens include Frightmare Theater, Six Gun Theater, Mobster Theater, Your Afternoon Movie and others. 
Getting back to Dark Jungle Theater, here is an overview: 
Balladeer's Blog 