DON’T O
PEN ‘TIL CHRISTMAS (1984)
This is a British horror film about a lunatic killing people dressed in Santa suits for the holidays.
Britain’s scream queen Caroline Munro sings in a brief appearance and there’s the notorious scene where a Santa gets his penis sliced off by our killer and bleeds to death at a urinal.
Yes, it’s another joyously tasteless horror film using the Christmas season as its gimmick. Continue reading
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Randy Clower (right) with co-host Richard Malmos as “Film Vault Technicians First Class” on The Texas 27 Film Vault. They’re way down on Level 31. No, not Deep 13 – Level 31.
Randy Clower and Richard Malmos of The Texas 27 Film Vault (both lower right) featured in a Movie Host article with Stella from Saturday Night Dead and Elvira.
The Texas 27 Film Vault was a great pre-MST3K bad movie show from the mid-1980s. The hosts Randy Clower and Richard Malmos (also the co-creators of the program) were members of the fictional quasi-military outfit called the Film Vault Corps – “the few, the proud, the sarcastic”. Ken Miller, who played the gung-ho Kilgore-esque Tex on the show was also a co-creator. Tragically Miller commited suicide in 1988.
The Texas 27 Film Vault aired for 2 and 1/2 hours every Saturday night from 10:30pm to 1:00 am with Randy, Richard, Tex, Joe The Hypnotic Eye Riley and Laurie Savino the Mystery Clip Technician showing and mocking episodes of old Republic and Columbia serials before showing and mocking the night’s bad or campy movie.
Texas and Oklahoma loved this cult show and it’s rare for Sooners and Longhorns to agree on anything! Here’s a look at some of the more memorable episodes from The Texas 27 Film Vault history.
IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE (1958)
Original Broadcast Date: July 12th, 1986
Serial: Atom Man vs Superman (1950)
Host Segments: Most of the Host Segments in this episode centered around a touring troupe from the Film Vault Corps Academy in Leadville, Co. That troupe – the FVC Academy’s Little Theatre Group – was performing for Randy, Richard, Tex and the others. Joe Riley’s gore effects took center stage as the touring thespians presented comedic reenactments of classic scenes from movies about aliens, including the infamous chest-burster moment from Alien and an unappetizing moment from the 80s remake of The Thing.
The gore in the Host Segments made this the first Texas 27 Film Vault episode to come with a “Viewer Discretion” warning. Their later presentation of the hilariously bad Friday the 13th Part 3 was another.
Movie: It! The Terror From Beyond Space was a joyously bad black & white space travel film from the 1950s. A Martian monster has already wiped out all but one member of the first expedition to the Red Planet. Next up on the menu for this ET who sucks all moisture from his victims: the rescue expedition who belatedly arrive to save the crew of the preceding mission to Mars.
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Forgotten Television, Movie Hosts
Blood Freak (1972)
In the middle 1980s/ Way down on Level 31 …
Before MST3K there was The Texas 27 Film Vault! Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the 1980s with another review of an episode where an original air date can be determined. This time around I’m taking a look at the show’s Thanksgiving episode from the Saturday night before Thanksgiving in 1985.
Randy and Richard showed and mocked Blood Freak, the notorious “Turkey Monster” movie that has been featured by virtually every Movie Host show except MST3K over the years. The Turkey Monster and the main character’s job at a turkey farm have made this a Thanksgiving Season favorite for lovers of bad movies.
EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday November 23rd, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.
FILM VAULT LORE: Our machine-gun toting members of the fictional Film Vault Corps Randy Clower and Richard Malmos used to joke about how The Texas 27 Film Vault seemed to show every movie that had the word “blood” in the title. Previously I’ve reviewed the T27FV episodes featuring the movies Queen of Blood and Blood Beach but there are plenty more coming with sanguinous titles.
Thank you to my fellow T27FV fan Dolores for this quote about Ken Miller, who played “Tex” on the show and who, tragically, committed suicide in 1988: “I loved the random bits of madness added by the gung ho Tex each episode! He always reminded me of Robert Duvall’s character Kilgore from Apocalypse Now. My favorite catch-phrase from Tex was when he would say “Commies don’t watch bad movies!” the way Duvall said “Charley don’t surf!” in Apocalypse Now.”
SERIAL: Before showing and mocking the movie our Film Vault Technicians First Class showed and mocked a chapter of the 1940 serial Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe. Special thanks to my fellow Vaultie Channing for her providing the date and serial for this episode.
THE FILM: BLOOD FREAK (1972) – This movie is about a man who turns into a murderous monster with the head of a turkey after he eats a Continue reading
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From the people who brought you The Titmouse on the Titanic
THANKSGIVING IS ALMOST HERE! ONE OF THE GREATEST HOLIDAYS OF THE YEAR!
And part of the fun comes from the kind of emotional cripples who froth at the mouth at the thought of people celebrating this particular holiday! (Stand by for my Columbus Day Extravaganza in 2016!)
THE MOUSE ON THE MAYFLOWER (1968) – Country western star Tennessee Ernie Ford narrates and supplies the voice of the title character – a Puritan mouse named Willum – who stows away on the Mayflower during its trip to America.
The little rodent (and coincidentally enough “little rodent” is also Michelle Obama’s pet name for Barack) also gets to participate in the first Thanksgiving celebration with a Native American mouse. Continue reading
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With Star Wars Episode Seven coming out soon I figured I would examine the notoriously bad Italian ripoff of Star Wars. I know many people consider Star Crash to be the worst of the Italo-Ripoffs but I’ve always gotten more laughs out of The Humanoid.
The many, many ways this movie steals from Star Wars will become clear as we go along. Let’s deal with first things first:
Richard Kiel plays the title figure. His real name is Golob but the Darth Vaderish bad guy arranges for Golob to be the guinea pig for a treatment that transforms ordinary people into powerful “Humanoids”. As a Humanoid Golob loses his beard for some reason but – even more comically – the beard suddenly reappears when he is returned to normal late in the movie.
Golob in his amped-up Humanoid form has super-strength, is invulnerable to harm and can deflect energy blasts that the Rebel Alliance-style good guys shoot at him. The bad guys plan to use a warhead to expose every man, woman and child on Earth to the bio-treatment, thus creating an instant army of billions of super-powered Humanoids like Richard Kiel. (Good luck controlling them since the treatment will reduce them to mindless animals like Golob.) Continue reading
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Everyman Scott Brady
You can have your Time Lord from Gallifrey or your reporter from INS. When it comes to REAL action against goofy monsters the one and only Scott Brady comes on like Jim Dandy to the rescue. The Pudgy One was always a welcome sight in B-movies from decades ago. Here are four of his most enjoyably bad outings.
DESTINATION INNER SPACE (1966) – In a true rarity Scott Brady got to be the less-than- hunky action lead in this film! THE Sheree North and The Green Hornet‘s Wende Wagner were along for the ride in this flick that plays like an episode from Jon Pertwee’s Doctor Who era recast with Americans.
Scott Brady portrays Commander Wayne, a courageous Naval Officer who might as well be working for UNIT as he saves the world from a potential invasion by a group of sub-aquatic extraterrestrials. The monsters are as ridiculous as the dialogue in this fair-to- middling gem. Continue reading
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FRIDAY THE 13th: THE ORPHAN (1977) – H.H. Munro must have turned over in his grave at this adaptation of one of his short stories. This quasi-horror film was re-released in 1979 as just The Orphan and despite the original title it has no connection to the Friday the 13th series of slasher flicks. At least, no REAL connection. I’m surprised some unscrupulous distributor never tried sneaking this into theaters in the 1980’s as a “prequel” to the slasher movies by presenting the insane young boy in the movie as the grandfather of Jason Voorhees.
Even so the title makes it hard not to think of our wealthy young protagonist “David” (Mark Owens) as an ancestor of the hockey- masked slice and dice man from Crystal Lake. In the 1920’s David’s mother accidentally shoots his African Big Game Hunter father Kevin to death during an argument about his frequent overseas trips. David not only witnesses this but sees his mother put the gun in her mouth and kill herself immediately afterward. Next David gets VERY disturbed when a presumed family member (an uncredited Christopher Lloyd in a “blink-and-you’ll- miss- him” appearance) forces him to kiss his dead father as he lies in his coffin. Continue reading
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Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault! In the middle 1980’s, 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 the program’s 30th anniversary year.
ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday February 14th, 1987 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.
SERIAL: None. The movie, Film Vault Corps comedy sketches and commercials filled up the entire two and a half hours this time.
FILM VAULT LORE: This episode marked the second time The Texas 27 Film Vault came with a warning about violent content. It was also at least the second time they riffed on a movie that was originally in 3-D. Randy and Richard did various jokes about wearing 3-D glasses and 3-D effects coming out of the screen at them as they watched the movie. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts
Owensby’s macabre Grim Reaper/ Fool Killer style monster from A Day of Judgment (1981).
What Larry Buchanan was to Texas …
What Bill Rebane was to Wisconsin …
What William Girdler was to Louisville and Andy Milligan was to Staten Island, Earl Owensby was to North Carolina. “The Dixie DeMille” himself is the subject as Halloween Month continues!
Low-budget filmmaker Earl Owensby occupies a unique niche in American movie making. Like Roger Corman before him, Owensby set out to be absolutely certain that his films made a profit and – again like Corman – a lot of his flicks were unpretentious B-Movies. Owensby notoriously never spent more than a million dollars on a film and never accepted a distribution deal that would net his company less than eight million dollars.
Many of Owensby’s movies are entertaining and boast decent production values, but for the sake of this review I will be looking at three of his lesser efforts that I feel fall into the fun-bad category.
WOLFMAN (1979) – With this movie Owensby completed his move from being a budget Joe Don Baker in vigilante movies like Challenge, The Brass Ring and Dark Sunday to being a budget Burt Reynolds in race-car and prison flicks like Death Driver and Seabo to being a regional horror film producer like Bill Rebane.
In a sprawling southern mansion the aged patriarch of the Glasgow family lies on his death-bed. A minister who is really a Satanist (Ed Grady) is in cahoots with some of Glasgow’s sleazy heirs to pass the family curse of lycanthropy on to the eldest Glasgow male – Colin Glasgow (Earl Owensby). You’d think that would happen naturally if you’re a fan of other werewolf films but Owensby plays by his own rules in this southern-fried wolfman movie. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
As Halloween month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog how about we review a couple of “exercises in horror” (Thank you, I’m here all week!) in the form of Death Spa (1989) and Killer Workout aka Aerobicide (1987).
DEATH SPA (1989) – Originally begun in 1986 but not completed and released until 1989, Death Spa is my favorite of the two Health Spa horror films of the 1980s. Part of the fun comes from the kitsch casting:
Merritt “Captain Kirk’s Son” Butrick plays David, a man whose sister Catherine killed herself under suspicious circumstances, causing him to blame his promiscuous brother-in law for her death.
Ken Foree, the cult horror figure, is wasted as a maintenance man whose role is virtually non-existent yet this lame flick gets shown at Ken Foree film festivals. Go figure. Continue reading
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