Category Archives: Bad and weird movies

December 4, 2016 · 4:50 am

JEWISH GAUCHOS (1975)

j-gauchosJEWISH GAUCHOS (1975) – It’s no secret that I love cinematic oddities. For this go-round I’ll examine the movie Jewish Gauchos based on the 1910 novel by Alberto Gerchunoff. The film deals with the musical adventures of a group of Jewish immigrants from Russia working as gauchos (Argentine cowboys) in Argentina in the very early 1900s.

This film plus a few westerns filmed in Israel but set in the American frontier make up the very, very unusual subgenre called Matzoh Westerns (as I’m sure you’ve guessed, those are the Jewish version of the Italian Spaghetti Westerns).

Outside of the bizarre subgenre of amputee kung fu movies from Hong Kong, Matzoh Westerns are my favorite cul de sac in the weirdass movie neighborhood. Continue reading →

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December 1, 2016 · 9:45 pm

TOMMY WISEAU AUDIOBOOKS: BALLADEER’S GIFT BAG

tommy-wiseauSince it’s Christmas Season I figured I would start posting gift suggestions for like-minded eccentrics.

TOMMY WISEAU AUDIOBOOKS – Yes, we all loved Tommy in The Room … well, actually, we loved Greg Sestero more. In fact we had no more feelings at all for Tommy Wiseau, we loved Greg. Yeah, we were all much more into Greg Sestero, to the point where we didn’t love Tommy at all anymore. Greg was the one we loved.

Putting that aside, though, Tommy Wiseau uses his inimitable delivery to bring to life some of the world’s greatest literary works. Whether it’s Finnegans Wake (“River run past Eve and Adam’s, HHHUUUHH?”) or Hamlet (“To be or NAAAAAAAHHHHT to be …”) they take on new meaning as interpreted by the enigmatic Mr Wiseau (Still thirty after all these years!).   Continue reading →

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November 25, 2016 · 4:05 pm

LEFTOVERS: NEGLECTED BAD MOVIES

The day after Thanksgiving means two things: college football and leftovers.

WavelengthWAVELENGTH (1983) – Robert Carradine, Cherrie Currie and Keenan Wynn play a reclusive rock singer, his new girlfriend and his eccentric neighbor who get caught up in a government coverup about extraterrestrial life.

Captured aliens telepathically contact Cherrie Currie’s character and plead to be rescued from the government facility where they are being held. Our heroic trio attempt to save them only to discover the aliens may have brought a world-destroying disease with them. CLICK HERE 

Scorpion Thunderbolt 2SCORPION THUNDERBOLT (1983) – From Balladeer’s Blog’s old friend Godfrey Ho comes this horror film that has absolutely NOTHING to do with either scorpions OR thunderbolts.

As always Godfrey Ho edits some of his newly-shot footage of fading action star Richard Harrison into an odd and bloody Asian movie. Get ready for snake-monsters who walk on two legs, a High Priestess with claws like Freddy Krueger’s razored glove, a blind night watchman (seriously) and kung-fu fights for no good reason. CLICK HERE
Continue reading →

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November 23, 2016 · 1:56 am

TALES OF THE THIRD DIMENSION (1984)

tales-of-the-3rd-dimensionTALES OF THE THIRD DIMENSION (1984) was yet another of the six 3D movies released in the 1980s by Balladeer’s Blog’s old friend Earl Owensby. Earl was known as “The Dixie DeMille” since he and his film company operated almost exclusively out of North Carolina. To me he’s always seemed more like Roger Corman, however, since Owensby’s flicks were mostly just unpretentious B Movies made with so little money they were guaranteed to turn a profit. 

Many of Earl’s film ventures are okay time-wasters but horror was definitely not his forte. Previously I reviewed three of Owensby’s other gems of Bad Movie Goodness: Wolfman, A Day of Judgment and Dogs of Hell. Recently I finally got a chance to watch his horror anthology Tales of the Third Dimension.  

Let’s start with the title. Since we live in a 3-dimensional universe there is nothing eerie or macabre about anything from “the third dimension.” Usually movies reference the fourth or fifth dimension. And that brings us to the film’s biggest problem: it seems to be an attempt at horror-comedy, like some of the elements in the Creepshow movies. That being said I guess it’s possible that the title was supposed to be a joke … kind of.  Continue reading →

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November 13, 2016 · 3:36 am

THE VISITOR (1979)

The Visitor

THE VISITOR (1979) – This Italian-made movie deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following so I’m surprised that it’s still com-paratively unknown. The film is directed by “Michael J Paradise” (Giulio Paradisi) and features appearances by such name stars as Franco Nero, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen, Shelley Winters, John Huston, Sam Peckinpah, Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Mel Ferrer.

Paradisi directs this film in such a way that the actual point of most scenes is lost because virtually every shot includes extraneous footage completely irrelevant to the storyline. The extra footage just distracts from what otherwise might have been a halfway passable sci-fi thriller.  

Never before has anyone used the words “This movie could have used more Kareem Abdul- Jabbar” but they apply to this flick.

All that being said I want to point out that I disagree with the general consensus that The Visitor makes no sense. Sure, it has plotholes, inconsistent behavior from the characters, poorly chosen reaction shots and villains who over-complicate things for themselves, but the basic story DOES make sense. In fact I bet X-Files fans would like it and would immediately understand what’s going on.

The Visitor 4Part of the confusion can be attributed to the edited version that omits so much footage that it’s difficult to understand what is going on. It’s not always easy to understand what’s going on in the complete 108 minute version, either, but at least it retains all the relevant footage. Since so many people seem lost when they first watch this movie I’ll provide a handy synopsis of the film. It’s not quite right to say there are spoilers ahead since most people apparently don’t understand what is going on when they watch the film anyway. Continue reading →

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October 27, 2016 · 9:28 pm

SPOOKIES (1986)

Spookies 1SPOOKIES (1986) – Halloween month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog with a look at a bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult. I mean who does this movie have to sleep with in order to be better known?

Spookies is loaded with laughable and outrageous monsters, acting that porn stars would dismiss as amateurish and gore effects that go from wincingly realistic to childishly weak and back again throughout the flick.

The reason for the uneven tone is that Spookies is yet another example of a bad film that was not completed and then was later combined with new footage to slap together a movie with a long enough running time for theatrical release. They Saved Hitler’s Brain, Monster A Go-Go, The Pink Angels plus Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny are four of the best-known examples of these hybrid monstrosities.  

For obvious reasons the characters in the original footage and the completion footage can never interact in the film and part of the fun for lovers of bad movies lies in the awkward lengths the filmmakers go to to try to hide the cut-and- paste nature of their movie. Continue reading →

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October 26, 2016 · 12:35 am

CROSS OF THE SEVEN JEWELS (1987)

Cross of the Seven Jewels 1Halloween month continues at Balladeer’s Blog!

CROSS OF THE SEVEN JEWELS (1987) – Cross of the Seven Jewels is easily the worst and weirdest werewolf movie I’ve ever seen. Forget The Werewolf of Woodstock, forget Face of the Screaming Werewolf, forget Werewolf vs the Yeti and all of Paul Naschy’s other lycanthropy flicks.

You can even forget the muddy-faced wolfman from Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein. Marco Antonio Andolfi starred in this film under the name Eddy Endolf plus wrote and directed it as well.

Andolfi was openly influenced by Paul Naschy’s werewolf films from Spain, but produced a cinematic mess that captured neither the eroticism of Naschy’s Waldemar Daninsky movies nor their goofy charm. Marco’s depiction of a werewolf is a bit … eccentric … and can only be described as “just a little something for the laaaadieeessss.”  

Personally, I would have titled this film

Personally, I would have titled this film “Ya Call THAT a Werewolf?” but I’m kind of weird.

When Andolfi transforms into a wolfman he somehow loses his clothes (which illogically reappear on his body when he reverts back to human form) and he sprouts long bushy hair in only a few places. The first place is around his face with his mouth left bare, making him look like he’s wearing a big hair-mask with eye-holes. The second place would be his hands and the third place is his crotch, which conveniently becomes bushy enough to block out the sight of his genitals. The rest of his well-built body is butt naked.  Continue reading →

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October 21, 2016 · 11:11 pm

THE BODY SHOP (1973)

 THE BODY SHOP (1973) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following

The horror film titled The Body Shop is one of my all-time favorite bad movie gems. It includes all the little extras that separate mere bombs from the truly legendary turkeys and, like another neglected classic, The Wizard of Mars (see my Bad Movie page for the review), just keeps getting worse and worse and weirder and weirder all the way to the end. Continue reading →

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October 11, 2016 · 10:34 pm

HORROR FILMS FROM “THE DEATH KING” HIMSELF!

jorg-buttgereitBalladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues with this look at some of the films from one of the most envelope-pushing horror directors of all time: Germany’s “auteur of the transgressive,” Jorg Buttgereit.  

 

** EXTREME HORROR AHEAD **

Buttgereit’s noteworthy movies include: Continue reading →

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October 8, 2016 · 10:08 pm

DR CALIGARI (1989): ERASERHEAD MEETS LIQUID SKY

doctor-caligari

doctor-caligari-2DR CALIGARI (1989) – “The Cabaret of Dr Caligari” might make a more fitting title for Stephen Sayadian’s genre-bending Dr Caligari. Long before Dandy Dust there was this fun movie which was sort of a hybrid of Eraserhead and The Rocky Horror Picture Show with sprinklings of Liquid Sky and Repo Man. Nightmarish visuals and deranged sexuality abound. 

Many IMDb reviewers trash this movie but their reviews read like they were penned by someone who has never seen an Alfred Hitchcock film knocking Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety as “not funny.” Just like with the Brooks movie if you’re not familiar with the cinematic styles and productions referenced in Dr Caligari then no, you won’t find it entertaining.

doctor-caligari-3This movie, which is full of absurdly horrific imagery and horrifically absurd imagery is simultaneously a celebration of AND a parody of art films and silent movies – especially of the German Expressionist variety. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari kicked off that cinematic style in 1919 and we’re told that the title character of this 1989 product is the great granddaughter of THAT Dr Caligari.  

Our thoroughly modern Dr Caligari is played by Madeleine Reynal, who camps it up as if she’s part robot, part dominatrix, and part corpse. The good doctor runs the Caligari Insane Asylum, or CIA (remember MK-Ultra?) She’s secretly using some of the asylum’s more hopeless patients as human guinea pigs for her horrifying experiments. Continue reading →

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