Category Archives: Bad and weird movies

October 18, 2015 · 6:24 am

BLOOD OF DRACULA’S CASTLE (1969) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

Blood of Dracula's Castle 1Before 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 the program’s THIRTIETH  anniversary year.

ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday November 2nd, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

Halloween SafetySERIAL: Before showing and mocking the movie our members of the Film Vault Corps (“The few, the proud, the sarcastic”) usually showed and mocked chapters of old Republic or Columbia serials. For this episode a break was taken from Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. Instead the 1977 Centron Educational short Halloween Safety was shown and mocked for its seasonal relevance.

Halloween Safety was eleven minutes long and is as much fun to riff on as such old shorts generally are. The killjoy Safety Czars at Centron do their best to drain as much fun from Trick or Treating as they can, although they never approach Sid Davis levels of paranoia.

The funniest part of the short is when the little girl is browbeaten by the narrator to change from her black witch costume (poor visibility for drivers) to an all-white witch’s costume, which, with the peaked hat and flowing robe makes her look like she’s auditioning for a role in The Littlest Klansman. Though the little black kid in whiteface is a close second.   

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

FILM VAULT LORE: Randy and Richard often joked that The Texas 27 Film Vault showed just about every movie with the word “blood” in the title. That’s nowhere near true, of course, but they did show a lot of them. Previously Balladeer’s Blog has reviewed Randy and Richard’s airing of Blood Freak, Queen of Blood and Blood Beach. There are a few more to come after this one, too, including Blood Orgy of the She Devils and the infamous bit where the local tv listings refused to run the title of the movie. (Hey, it was mid-1980’s Texas and Oklahoma.)

THE MOVIE: Blood of Dracula’s Castle was directed by Bad Movie icon Al Adamson and is a fun Monster Rally turkey for the Halloween time of year. The Texas 27 Film Vault also showed a few other Al Adamson anti-classics like Dracula vs Frankenstein and Vampire Men of the Lost Planet.     Continue reading →

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October 17, 2015 · 2:56 pm

ELEVEN MORE BAD MOVIE CLASSICS FOR HALLOWEEN

Return of Dr X

Return of Dr X

My month-long celebration of Halloween continues! Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are very familiar with my Bad Movie page where I examine plenty of under the radar movies that are hilariously awful. Previously I ran a list of the top Eleven Neglected Bad Movie Classics for Halloween. That was such a hit here is a list of eleven more neglected bombs. My Bad Movie page features full-length reviews of each of the movies I’m offering a synopsis of here.

THE RETURN OF DR X (1939) – The notorious film in which the legendary Humphrey Bogart played a zombified mad scientist named Dr Xavier who was brought back from the dead by another mad scientist named Dr Flegg. Much of the fun comes from Bogie’s unmistakable disdain for finding himself in the kind of stinker that Bela Lugosi often waded through. Bogie’s Dr X kills Continue reading →

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October 13, 2015 · 8:39 pm

NAKED FEAR: FIVE ODDBALL HORROR FILMS FOR HALLOWEEN

The Nude Vampire

The Nude Vampire

Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues with this look at five unusual movies with that certain seasonal feel.

5. THE NUDE VAMPIRE (1970) – France’s Jean Rollin is one of those love-them-or-hate-them directors. The snooty French often bashed his films for their devotion to style over all else. Don’t believe reviews which claim that his movies have no comprehensible storylines. Personally I find him more straightforward than Lynch or Jodorowsky. At any rate the central figure of this arthouse Euro-horror is indeed a beautiful female vampire in skimpy outfits and less.

Members of a Suicide Cult have taken to offering themselves up to a vampress who turns out to be science-spawned rather than supernatural. Throw in various allusions to evolution, morality and mortality for good measure. There’s plenty of eerie and macabre imagery to go with the subtext which not only addresses the previous concepts but also examines the way in which the older generation of any time period always considers the younger generation to be figurative “monsters” who will quite literally inherit the Earth.

I’m not sure if Anne Rice was influenced by Rollin’s films but Continue reading →

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October 9, 2015 · 7:48 pm

ELEVEN OF THE MOST NEGLECTED BAD MOVIE CLASSICS FOR HALLOWEEN

Laughing at bad movies is one of the greatest pleasures in life. Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are very familiar with my Bad Movie page where I focus on various film flops that I feel deserve larger audiences because of how dementedly enjoyable they are. Since it’s the Halloween Season this list will present eleven of the most neglected bad horror movie classics, many of which deserve Plan 9- sized cult followings. These are short takes. For my full-length reviews of these and other cinematic turkeys see my Bad Movie page. https://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

MORE HALLOWEEN MOVIE TREATS: MEXICAN MONSTERS https://glitternight.com/2011/10/31/a-halloween-mexi-monster-bestiary/

BLAXPLOITATION HORROR: https://glitternight.com/2011/10/26/a-very-blaxploitation-halloween/

11. THE LIFT (1983) – A killer elevator is the unique menace in this joyously absurd horror film from the Netherlands. A heroic elevator repairman tries to stop the bloody reign of terror of a sentient elevator which the movie’s ads described as “the perfect killing machine”. (?) The flick was also advertised with the tag line “For God’s sake, take the stairs” which never fails to make me laugh.

10. ATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES (1983) – The surviving passengers and crew of a sunken luxury liner find themselves on an uncharted island full of ponds and streams that dissolve human flesh. The island is home to the title creatures, who are Continue reading →

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September 28, 2015 · 11:15 pm

THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977)

The Dragon Lives Again

THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977) – Category: Brucesploitation with an enjoyably absurd twist   

Even for the bizarre sub-genre of Brucesploitation films this movie is out there! The film starts with the recently – deceased Bruce Lee arriving in the afterlife, where the concubines of the King of the Dead gather around to gawk at the bulge in the pants of the late martials arts superstar. (Just in case you thought NO opening could be more tasteless than the one in The Clones Of Bruce Lee ) In a bit of alleged comic relief the bulge turns out to be caused by a weapon, not Lee’s organ. (Corpse schlong jokes! Who doesn’t love them?)

As head-shaking as that bit is at least it’s coherent, unlike virtually everything else that happens from this point on in the movie. And the time-honored tradition of Brucesploitation films having Continue reading →

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September 22, 2015 · 10:30 pm

THE GOLDEN BAT (1966) JAPANESE CULT FILM

The Golden Bat: the ugliest superhero in the world.

The Golden Bat: the ugliest superhero in the world.

THE GOLDEN BAT (1966) – Ogon Batto is the name of this film in its native Japan. The movie was based on the title character, Japan’s very first comic book superhero who debuted in 1930. That 1930 date puts him years before Superman and Batman in the west!  

At any rate for the 1966 movie Japan’s perennial action star Sonny Chiba played the leader of a group of science-oriented commandos in what looked like aluminum foil suits. Chiba and his gang have fancy aircraft like England’s Thunderbirds and their debut mission finds them trying to save the Earth from collision with a rogue planet called Icarus.

Chiba’s outfit has constructed a giant laser cannon to destroy Icarus before it can reach our planet. Trouble is it needs a final component to be found only on a lost island. When Sonny Chiba’s Mighty Aluminum Foil Power Rangers explore the ancient city on that island they uncover the tomb of … the Golden Bat! Continue reading →

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September 19, 2015 · 6:38 am

2015: THE YEAR FILMMAKERS GAVE A CRAP

Guess what characteristic Bernie Sanders shares with characters from two 2015 horror films?

Guess what characteristic Bernie Sanders shares with figures from two 2015 horror films?

What is it this year with filmmakers? Permit me to give you the full poop on an odd new trend in 2015. That new trend: pantloads. First in Unfriended viewers got subjected to a character filling her pants on camera and the new release The Visit also features a character having an accidental bowel movement for the audience.

Even worse is the fact that in The Visit, M Night Shyamalan continues his love of plot twists by having the pantload literally flaunted in another character’s face. Feel free to insert your own “getting shitfaced” joke here. Continue reading →

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September 15, 2015 · 3:53 am

THE SECRET OF DORIAN GRAY (1970) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

Secret of Dorian GrayBefore 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 the program’s THIRTIETH  anniversary year.

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.

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.

ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday January 24th, 1987 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

SERIAL: None this week. The movie, commercials and Film Vault Corps comedy sketches took up the entire running time.

HOST SEGMENTS/ COMEDY SKETCHES: There is some disagreement among Texas 27 Film Vault Fans. One faction argues that this was the episode in which Randy Clower – interested in preserving his youth like the main character in the night’s movie – took the nonexistent chemical Multiquixiphiline (see my exclusive interview with Randy Clower). Continue reading →

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August 27, 2015 · 7:58 pm

SCREAMTIME (1984)

Screamtime 1Screamtime is one of the forgotten horror anthology films from the 1980’s. Supposedly the three main horror tales were originally filmed as individual episodes of a British tv series. Depending on which source you use either the series was cancelled (or never picked up) OR the episodes were deemed to be of too poor a quality.

The trio of horror stories were then edited into movie format for theatrical release with a wraparound story set in New York City. The oddity of the hard-assed New Yorkers watching three veddy, veddy British horror tales is part of the fun of this lame but bearable film. VHS it ain’t. Hell, it’s not even Beta.  Continue reading →

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August 21, 2015 · 12:18 am

GIANT FROM THE UNKNOWN (1958) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

Giant from the UnknownBefore 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 the program’s THIRTIETH  anniversary year.

ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday June 8th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

Phantom EmpireSERIAL: Before showing and mocking Giant From the Unknown our members of the Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) showed and mocked an episode of the Mascot Serial The Phantom Empire (1935). 

In that classically campy serial Gene Autry played a singing cowboy who saves the world from  an  advanced underground civilization that comes complete with killer robots who wear cowboy hats.

HOST SEGMENTS/ COMEDY SKETCHES: A handful of Texas 27 Film Vault fans have insisted this is the episode with the comedy sketch where Randy was dressed in a Conquistador outfit. That renowned sketch required a record number of takes since Randy and Richard had shown up for filming after “a very substantial Happy Hour” as Randy put it in my exclusive interview with him.

Giant from the Unknown 2The Conquistador outfit would tie in with the movie Giant From the Unknown so it is definitely possible that this was the week that sketch was performed. However Randy has repeatedly said the sketches did not necessarily always parallel the night’s movie, so we cannot yet be sure. Randy did not recall if the sketch was done for this movie or not. 

THE MOVIE: Giant From the Unknown has been loved by fans of bad movies for decades as the only 1950’s monster movie in which a giant Conquistador comes out of 500 years of suspended animation and goes on a killing spree in California. Hey, at least it was a change of pace from big bugs, aliens and Commies.   Continue reading →

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