May 14th will see the Scream Factory releasing Blu-Ray editions of Quatermass II: Enemy from Space plus Quatermass and the Pit. NOTE: These are the THEATRICAL RELEASE versions. If you want the original 1950s British television versions of the Quatermass Serials they are available but sometimes just on Region 2 DVD.
To pre-order these Blu-Ray editions: Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
Balladeer’s Blog’s recent Robert Ginty Movie Marathon has been so popular that I’m throwing in a bonus Ginty flick here. FOR THE GINTY MARATHON CLICK HERE
SCARAB (1983) – Robert Ginty AND Rip Torn … TOGETHER! Somebody pinch me! A Spanish horror film that does NOT star Paul “Jacinto Molina” Naschy! Somebody pinch me!
Ginty plays Murphy, a reporter stationed in Spain. Torn stars as Khepera, a mad scientist who becomes a globe-trotting cult leader after one of his experiments causes him to become possessed by an entity claiming to be the scarab-headed Egyptian god Khepera (sic).
Murphy is presented as being irresistible to women for some reason. We meet him as he climbs into bed with an Ambassador’s wife at a diplomatic function he’s supposed to be covering for his newspaper. (What a professional!) This earns him a black eye from the Ambassador and a chewing-out from his Editor (Sam Chew of Rattlers fame). Needless to say all of the secretaries at the paper are hot for Ginty, too. (By the way, Hot For Ginty was my favorite Van Halen song.) Continue reading
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The world fell in love with him as “Artichoke Picker” in Bound For Glory and the rest, as they say, is history! All kidding aside, I think Robert Ginty’s actual life was a hell of a lot more entertaining than any of his movies or television shows. As a musician he performed with Hendrix, Hooker and others. In his acting career he showed up in some high quality productions.
However, this is Balladeer’s Blog, so I’m taking a look only at a handful of Robert Ginty’s less-than-terrific action flicks which have made him a very familiar face to the Psychotronic-minded. I may be ” … in over my HEAD heahh” as our hero said in Warrior of the Lost World, but I’m taking a stab at the rundown for a Robert Ginty B-Movie Marathon.
WHITE FIRE (1985) – CASTING DIRECTOR: Let’s see … the hero of this Turkish-made action flick is an international smuggler who uses a chainsaw to fight rival criminals and is so hot for his own sister that he eventually pays to have a prostitute transformed via plastic surgery into a duplicate of his sister then oinks and boinks with her … (snaps fingers) Get Robert Ginty on the phone, NOW!
Ginty plays Boris “Bo” Donnelly. As a child he and his sister Ingrid (Belinda Mayne) saw their parents slaughtered by ruthless criminals. After that they were raised and tutored, Fagin-style, by an older crook who trained the siblings to become expert smugglers on the international scene.
Bo and Ingrid are among the many criminals vying for the White Fire Diamond, a jewel which actually turns out to be radioactive (don’t ask). Moustaches are EVERYWHERE as Ginty teams up once again with his Warrior of the Lost World co-star Fred Williamson to battle a virtual menagerie of facial-hair styles. Odd-colored blood flows from wounded human beings, lesbian cultists perform underground plastic surgery and Bo Donnelly openly ogles his sister’s naked body every chance he gets.
If you liked the chainsaw-wielding hero in Black Shampoo you’ll love Robert Ginty’s “Bo” in White Fire.
THE EXTERMINATOR (1980) – How can you NOT like a movie in which a standard bad-ass street vigilante uses a FLAME THROWER to kill the criminals he targets?
Robert Ginty IS John Eastland, a Vietnam War veteran who takes the law into his own hands when his ex-GI buddy Michael Jefferson (Steve James) falls victim to street punks. Apparently deciding that guns are for pussies, Eastland uses an actual damn flame thrower to kill evil-doers during his nocturnal crusade. (“I know what you’re thinking … Does his flame thrower shoot flames six feet or only five?” Had to be said.) Continue reading
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CHROME AND HOT LEATHER (1971) THE one and only Marvin Gaye made his big-screen debut in this relentlessly absurd example of the bad biker films of the 1960s and 1970s.
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. Continue reading
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February 16th to 17th is when the 2019 Boston Sci-Fi Marathon will happen.
More info is below, but first a list of this year’s eleven movies:
SOURCE CODE (2011)
SUNSHINE (2007)
DR CYCLOPS (1940)
DESTINATION MOON (1950)
INNERSPACE (1987) Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, opinion
January 8th is the combined marking of Elvis Presley’s birthday and the Battle of New Orleans, in which General Andrew Jackson and French Pirate Jean Lafitte defeated the British in the final battle of the War of 1812.
In the past Balladeer’s Blog has observed this date with looks at the musical Rock ‘N’ Roll vs The Red Coats and with an article on the whole Orion/Elvis situation. This time I’m taking a quick look at some early Elvis movies.
LOVE ME TENDER (1956) – Elvis was the latest reason that the saga of the Reno Gang/ Reno Brothers got distorted on the big screen. The need to turn the Reno story into a vehicle for Elvis Presley made this attempt the most unintentionally funny of them all.
Favorite Part: A scene between Elvis, playing Clint Reno, and Richard Egan, playing Vance Reno. Despite the fact that the long-missing Vance was given up for dead and Elvis married his mourning girlfriend in the meantime the Side-Burned One actually asks “What’s troublin’ you, Vance?” That question has been a catch-phrase for me ever since I first saw this flick on late-night tv.
Favorite Weirdass Song: Let Me Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Uncategorized
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
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Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault!
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the mid-1980s.
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, Forry Ackerman 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. This episode featured 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.
SERIAL: For this episode the movie was preceded by a chapter of Mysterious Doctor Satan in which a mad scientist called Dr Satan commanded a goofy robot and was opposed by a pulp-style hero called Copperhead.
HOST SEGMENTS: The most memorable Host Segment Randy and Richard did during this New Year’s-themed horror film was a bit where, as Midnight Dallas Time approached, they staged a countdown and then a raucous celebration of the arrival of … December 28th, 1986. Ken “Tex” Miller, Joe “The Hypnotic Eye” Riley and other Film Vault Corps members joined in the festivities in a great example of the wry humor of this pre-MST3K program.
Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault
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. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts
Here at Balladeer’s Blog I’ve always had a soft spot for the Resident Evil movies. I’m not implying that they’re good by any means, but as guilty pleasures I consider them pretty watchable in a Spaghetti Western sense. You don’t expect logic or well-maintained continuity in the original Django or Sartana series any more than you do from the Stranger or Hallelujah flicks or any of the other lower-level pulp series of Italo-Westerns.
To me the six Resident Evil movies (2002 – 2017) can be viewed the same way – as unpretentious B-movies with a kind of relaxing sameness and stories that are so unchallenging you can chit-chat with friends or loved ones while they’re on.
Seventies chop-socky films are another example. You might watch them but you sure as hell can’t defend them from criticism.
Milla Jovovich’s Alice is, to me, the main reason to watch these films. She’s believable in the action scenes and deserves recognition for the way she kicks post-apocalyptic butt in SIX movies as the same character. No other leading female figure has matched that feat in THEATRICAL RELEASE, English-language films. Not Lara Croft and not even Ellen Ripley. Continue reading
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Balladeer’s Blog reviewed the hilariously bad New Year’s Eve horror film Bloody New Year several years ago. One of my favorite bits is the odd but quirkily enjoyable song that plays over the opening credits. Here is the group behind that song – Cry No More – with Recipe for Romance.
Filed under Bad and weird movies, opinion
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