Balladeer’s Blog
Yes, it’s the song from that notoriously bad movie Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. Decades ago The Christmas Martian supplanted this flick in my Bad Movie Lover heart but Hooray For Santa Claus is still a butt-kicking song.
Starting us off is the movie version of the song by the poor man’s Skitch Henderson – Milton De Lugg – and The Little Eskimos.
And here’s the version by Al “Green Hornet Theme” Hirt: Continue reading
Filed under A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Bad and weird movies
FUZZ (1972) – This movie is still marketed as if it’s a vehicle for Burt Reynolds and Raquel Welch but in reality it’s an ensemble movie. And not a very good one. Fuzz is based on the 22nd book – of nearly 60 – in the 87th Precinct series of police novels by Ed McBain aka Evan Hunter. The books were set in the fictional city of Isola, but this movie is set in Boston.
The novel on which this film is based was published in 1968. The book series started in 1956 and had been tried as a television series titled 87th Precinct from 1961-1962. The novels were still being churned out by the original author into the 21st Century, with many characters retained throughout this long run.
Obviously, the science and public image of law enforcement has gone through many, many changes over the decades. The movie Fuzz and its source novel reflect the stylish cynicism and gritty realism of police stories from the period.
The film also attempted to sprinkle in elements of irreverent humor and bawdy sexual hijinks, like it was trying to be F*U*Z*Z in the style of the movie version of M*A*S*H. Unfortunately, the finished product is disjointed and aimless. Let’s take a look at the cast of characters: Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
JAMES BATMAN (1966) – HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Balladeer’s Blog takes a Turkey Day look at a film from the Philippines. This movie teams up Batman, Robin and James Bond as they battle an evil organization called C.L.A.W. It’s another of the many unauthorized Batman movies from around the world.
James Batman is in Tagalog with English subtitles and stars Filipino actor Dolphy as both Batman and James Bond, who is sometimes called James Wong in the subtitles and sometimes called James Hika. Dolphy also plays millionaire Dolpho, Batman’s secret identity (?). Robin, played by Boy Alano, is Batman’s brother. It’s that kind of movie.
Dolpho is in love with Shirley (Shirley Moreno), but she considers Dolpho boring and has the hots for Batman. Just as Shirley is oblivious to the fact that Dolpho really IS Batman, she has no idea that her sister (Bella Flores) is secretly the sultry costumed villainess called Black Rose.
Shirley and Bella’s father is the Chairman of the Free Nations, a quasi-United Nations outfit which is given five days to surrender to C.L.A.W. – a communist organization that desires world domination. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault! In the middle 1980s, way down on Level 31 Randy Clower and Richard Malmos, machine-gun toting Film Vault Technicians First Class hosted this neglected cult show. Balladeer’s Blog continues its celebration of this overlooked Movie Host program.
ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Unknown but definitely before May of 1986. One of the old newspaper articles from early May of that year refers to Glen or Glenda as one of the movies having already been shown on The Texas 27 Film Vault. Anyone with more specific info feel free to contact me.
SERIAL: Unknown. Again, if you have info contact me.
COMEDY SKETCHES: Unknown. We’ve exhausted the episodes where I DO know the date, serial and sketches.
THE MOVIE: Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Forgotten Television, Movie Hosts
THE HOOKED GENERATION (1968) – Directed and co-written by the one and only William Grefe. William is known to me and my fellow fans of bad movies for Florida-filmed cult turkeys like Sting of Death, Death Curse of Tartu, The Wild Rebels and Impulse, with William Shatner.
The Hooked Generation is horribly mistitled. That title makes it sound like one of the many over-the-top, heavy handed anti-drug movies of the past. Instead, the film is really about a sleazy, violent gang of small-time drug dealers who bite off more than they can chew when they try to move up in the crime world.
Balladeer’s Blog
For a glib description, think of it as a “gangsters headed for a bad end” flick like Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Edward G Robinson used to appear in, but with a low-rent cast that is more like the type of overdone hippie/ counter-culture felons you’d see on 60s and 70s episodes of Hawaii Five-O. There’s plenty of violence, drug use and lurid appeal, though.
The small-timers whose abilities don’t match their ambitions use their boat to make a clandestine pickup from their Cuban connections out at sea. Those connections are sailors from Castro’s navy who make side money dealing drugs in between the coasts of Florida and Cuba. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
Halloween month rolls along with Balladeer’s Blog’s salute to Zuma, the king of Philippine horror movies, and his sequel film Daughter of Zuma.
ZUMA (1985) – Category: Enjoyably bad movie elevated by its obscurity value
There’s an old saying that goes “Once you have a big green bald guy with pythons growing out of his neck you never go back.” Or something to that effect. This monstrous figure is Zuma himself, the Freddy Krueger of the Philippines in the 1980s. Big, muscular and green like the Hulk, bald like Mr Clean and with pythons growing out of his neck like the late Michael Jackson. (Disclaimer: The preceding remark is probably not true)
Originally a comic book character in the Philippines, Zuma took the film industry of the islands by storm with his debut film in 1985 and a sequel in 1987. Copies of these films have been Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
MUSICAL MUTINY (1970) – Halloween Month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog with a Barry Mahon movie that’s more frighteningly bad than it is frightening. I’ve recently become obsessed with this made in Florida wonder that features the ghost of a long-dead pirate, the deskbound narrator from Blood Freak and a mad scientist intent on taking over the world with his new beverage which gets drinkers higher than marijuana. There are also three on-stage performances by Iron Butterfly (yes, really), including the full-length version of In A Gadda Da Vida.
Perhaps most importantly for me and my fellow Bad Movie geeks, this is the earliest movie release done as a promotional piece for Pirates World, the long-defunct Florida amusement park featured in notorious Grade Z films like Jack and the Beanstalk, Thumbelina plus Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (reviewed in 2010 here at Balladeer’s Blog). In fact, Musical Mutiny is so obscure that as of this writing there are only five user reviews at IMDb. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
THE NEST OF THE CUCKOO BIRDS (1965) – Halloween Month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog with a review of this low-budget, black & white bomb which played a few theaters in 1965 then was considered lost until 2017. Florida’s Bert Williams produced, wrote, directed and starred in this very strange film which strives for “Psycho Meets Tennessee Williams” levels but falls more into territory occupied by the likes of Spider Baby and Manos, The Hands of Fate.
Williams’ wife Peggy sang the title song, which inspired a later version by the Cramps, believe it or not. Peggy also sang the closing song Lisa.
Our auteur Bert Williams plays Johnson, a Liquor Control Department Agent aka “Revenuer” in the slang of deep south moonshiners. He is sent on an assignment into the Everglades to infiltrate and bring down a violent gang of moonshiners who make their own bootleg whiskey via their still on one of the scattered pieces of solid land found in the swamps of the Florida Everglades.
After an absurdly irrelevant recollection to his chief about a lost love of his from long ago, Agent Johnson departs on his mission.
Johnson’s cover is blown, and he flees into the swamplands to escape the bootleggers, who are led by their murderous boss called Doc. Half wading and half swimming, our exhausted protagonist arrives after dark at another isolated and uncharted little “island” amid the Everglades. He is nearly stabbed to death by a naked woman wearing a wig and a bizarre mask, a woman he at first mistakes for a statue.
The Revenue Agent manages to outfight and escape the woman in an utterly ridiculous fast-motion scene which could use the Benny Hill Theme as accompaniment. Johnson stumbles upon the tiny island’s lone structure – a dilapidated hotel called the Cuckoo Bird Inn, run by some of the strangest people this side of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Eaten Alive. Needless to say, the hilarity horror is just beginning. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
THE CANNED FILM FESTIVAL STARRING LARAINE NEWMAN (1986) – Halloween Month continues at Balladeer’s Blog with this look at a neglected Movie Host show, since Movie Hosts/ Horror Hosts are as associated with Halloween as are monsters and cosplay.
In this post I won’t be covering the entire history of movie hosting and the “So Bad They’re Good” film subculture. For that, there are my many other blog posts covering movie hosting from Vampira and her contemporaries, through Moona Lisa, then Son of Svengoolie, Elvira, and programs like Saturday Night Dead, The Texas 27 Film Vault and MST3K.
THE SHOW: The Canned Film Festival Starring Laraine Newman. From June 21st to September 13th of 1986 this syndicated program sponsored largely by Dr Pepper aired on Saturday nights in various time slots around the United States. Elvira’s show Movie Macabre had run from 1981 to 1986 and was winding down. The Texas 27 Film Vault, which had debuted on February 9th, 1985 was still on the air and would run for roughly two and a half years in Texas and Oklahoma.
Along came The Canned Film Festival, which, with a nationally known name like Laraine Newman attached to it, may well have been the reason that one of the attempted syndication deals for T27FV fell through. Be that as it may, Laraine Newman’s show would – like The Texas 27 Film Vault – show more than just lame horror and sci-fi films and would cover the whole spectrum of bad and/ or campy cinema of the past.
THE HOSTESS: Laraine Newman may be best known for Saturday Night Live and for her character actress work, but she had been a member of The Groundlings improvisational comedy troupe … As had Cassandra Peterson aka Elvira. Newman was also known as an aficionado of horror and fringe cinema. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Forgotten Television, Movie Hosts
ROLLER BLADE (1986) – They’re the Cosmic Order of the Roller Blade and they’re female Jedi Knights on roller skates. Well, sort of. Where does one begin when reviewing this film that is so beloved by all of us fans of bad movies? Let’s start with the setting and then tackle the characters as well as Roller Blade’s legendary director Donald G Jackson (R.I.P.).
This film is set in the future during The Second Dark Age, years after humanity’s “energy weapons” have unleashed an apocalypse which has left the world a ravaged mess of ruined cities yet immaculately maintained roads and highways. Go figure.
Amid the usual tableau of feral gangs and predatory mutants there stands a force for good dedicated to rebuilding the world: a religious order of warrior nuns called the Cosmic Order of the Roller Blade … Even though none of them wear actual roller blades, just regular roller skates.
“Skate or Die” is the ugly motto of the survivors in this kill or be killed future. That’s because the filmmakers absurdly pretend that traveling via roller skates or skateboards is the only way to move swiftly enough to have a chance of evading the dangerous gangs and mutants.
If you have any goods or supplies that you are taking with you the only way to transport them is in metal grocery carts that can roll along with you as you skate through the post-apocalyptic landscape. I’m not joking. This grocery cart nonsense is another idiotic element that the movie takes 100% seriously despite how inane it looks.
Our characters:
MOTHER SPEED (Katina Garner) – The Mother Superior of the Order of the Roller Blade. She is in a wheelchair yet still wears roller skates on her feet since such skates are part of the Order’s sacred garments. Mother Speed, like all the good guys in Roller Blade, speaks in grandiose faux-Shakespearean littered with “thees” and “thous” and “yea, verilies.” ESPECIALLY “yea, verilies.”
Making Mother Speed even more fun is the way she speaks with a weird accent that makes her sound like popular 1980s sex therapist Dr Ruth Westheimer. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
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