Category Archives: Bad and weird movies

July 1, 2015 · 2:33 am

GORILLA AT LARGE (1954) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

Gorilla at LargeBefore 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 THIRTIETH  anniversary year.

ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday December 6th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00am. 

Mysterious Doctor SatanSERIAL: Before presenting and mocking Gorilla at Large our machine-gun wielding Film Vault Technicians First Class presented and mocked an episode of Mysterious Doctor Satan, a Republic serial from 1940. The serial featured a mad scientist called Dr Satan trying to take over the world with a very, VERY goofy- looking robot while a pulp-style hero called the Copperhead tried to thwart his plans.  

FILM VAULT LORE: This time around the movie ticket give-away from Channel 27 (the “27” in The Texas 27 Film Vault) was for a chance to go see the 1986 release King Kong Lives.

Richard Malmos left) and Randy Clower relaxing between takes on the set of The Texas 27 Film Vault.

Richard Malmos (left) and Randy Clower relaxing between takes on the set of The Texas 27 Film Vault.

HOST SEGMENTS: Gorilla at Large was one of the 3-D films from the 1950’s, and those are always funny and campy as hell, especially in the scenes with objects unnecessarily coming at the camera. The fun Randy and Richard had riffing on 3-D glasses and the whole 3-D phenomenon of the 50’s (and its 80’s revival) seems to have kicked off with this episode. In later episodes we’d get their “3-D interview” with Ben Johnson, a showing of Friday the 13th Part 3-D and even The Texas 27 Film Vault 3-D poster drawn by THE Kerry Gammil. Gorilla at Large is one of the movies represented on that poster.   

Gorilla at Large 3THE MOVIE: Gorilla at Large provided a wealth of material for Randy and Richard to work with. Remember, their previous show had been The Trivia Guys and this film about a murderous gorilla at a circus was packed with opportunities for pop culture shoutouts. To cite just a few:

* George Barrows, the man in the gorilla suit as our title monster Goliath, was the same guy who wore the ape/robot outfit as Ro-Man in that staple of Bad Movie shows Robot Monster (previously shown on The Texas 27 Film Vault).    

* Cameron “Close the F****ing Door” Mitchell, veteran of High Chaparral, The Andersonville Trial and countless bad movies, starred as Joey Matthews, the circus’ barker.   Continue reading →

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June 28, 2015 · 5:10 pm

HEADLESS (2015) THE CULT FILM OF THE YEAR

HeadlessHEADLESS (2015) – Yes, Headless, one of the fictional films-within- the-film in the horror movie Found (2012) was released as a crowd-funded production earlier this year. Keeping consistent with the way Headless was presented in Found, the gore-drenched flick was filmed as if it was a “lost” horror movie from 1978.  

That faithfulness was necessary in this case, so please don’t hold it against Headless even if you’re growing weary of the faux-1970’s sub-genre of movies – a sub-genre that is threatening to become as crowded as found-footage films.

Shane Beasley stars as the skull-masked killer, whose real name is never revealed. Beasley has the perfect “look” for this largely silent role and his tormented eyes convey the suffering his character is revealed to have gone through during his childhood and early teen years. Not that the suffering excuses his grotesque crimes, it’s just presented as back-story, like in the Filipino horror film The Road (2011).   Continue reading →

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June 21, 2015 · 4:53 pm

FATHER’S DAY (2011): A 21st CENTURY CULT CLASSIC

Father's DayFATHER’S DAY (2011) – I DEMAND A TEAM-UP OF AHAB FROM FATHER’S DAY AND ASH WILLIAMS FROM THE EVIL DEAD FILMS (and upcoming television series).

Sorry, I had to get that out of my system right off the bat. Ahab, the eye-patch sporting hero of the Astron 6 horror film Father’s Day is in my opinion the one true successor to Bruce Campbell’s Ash Williams. And considering how unfair the ending of this movie is for Ahab and his two sidekicks a case could even be made for them replacing Ash as the most royally screwed character in the history of gore-soaked horror comedies.     

It’s difficult to review this dark, grotesque gem without resorting to a series of catch phrases like “Goes where Dead Alive and similar movies failed to go” or “What Grindhouse hath wrought” or even “Twink and Walnut: They’re NOT Muppets!” Let me start with a more practical line: Do not watch this movie if you can not handle the most offensive violence, concepts, gore and deranged sexuality imaginable. 

Father's Day 2The overall style of this flick is the faux-1970’s grindhouse style made fashionable by (what else) Grindhouse but for my money Father’s Day is much more entertaining than Planet of Terror or Death Proof. It also doesn’t become a slave to its style like the faux-1980’s movies House of the Devil and Beyond the Black Rainbow.

Father’s Day deals with the Father’s Day Killer, a demented man named Chris Fuchman (pronounced … well, I’m sure you can guess) who rapes fathers, devours their penises and then kills them. Get ready for a series of scenes in which older men who have “Dad Bodies” with pudgy butts get taken from behind by the morbidly obese Fuchman (Mackenzie Murdock). No cutaways. The action is front and center. And that includes the penis-eating. At any rate the Father’s Day murders are just the tip of a Satanic iceberg of evil.   Continue reading →

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June 12, 2015 · 9:56 pm

CULT FILM: PIG (1998)

Pig (1998)PIG (1998) – This cult horror film was a joint project between the legendary Rozz Williams and Nico B. I’m about to commit cinematic blasphemy by pointing out that in my opinion this is one of the most overrated “art” films of all time. Maybe if Pig had come out before Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou from NINETEEN TWENTY-NINE it might deserve the praise heaped upon it.   

As it is, though, not only has this film not stood up under the test of time but it’s even difficult to see why it was so acclaimed back in 1998. By then movies like Tetsuo and both Nekromantik flicks had already pushed past many boundaries that Pig doesn’t even approach, let alone challenge.    

The film is in black & white and depicts a (sometimes) pig-masked serial killer who tortures his prey before killing them. His “calling card” of sorts is his habit of carving the word “PIG” on the bare chests of his victims. An obviously willing and masochistic male victim has a rendezvous with the serial killer and the pair travel to an abandoned, run-down house in the desert, numbered “1334” (the title of the sequel Nico B made years later).    Continue reading →

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June 11, 2015 · 4:56 pm

A METRIC AMERICA (1978)

Presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee’s eccentric decision to make a nationwide switch to the Metric System the premier plank of his political platform put me in the mood for this VERY old 1970s Metric System educational short. 

Here we go, and for more bad movie reviews click here: https://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

Lincoln Chafee: The only candidate brave enough to address the metric elephant in the room.

Lincoln Chafee: The only candidate brave enough to address the metric elephant in the room.

A METRIC AMERICA – (1978) – Category: A classically campy educational and/or safety short

In the late 1970s the notion that the United States was going to convert to the metric system by 1980 was being pushed.

This thought was causing a panic of almost Y2K proportions as government bodies and the Continue reading →

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June 1, 2015 · 10:06 pm

THE MAN WHO SAW TOMORROW (1981) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

Man Who Saw TomorrowBefore 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 30th anniversary year.

ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday November 9th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.

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

SERIAL: None. This time around the pre-movie offering was the 1953 short titled Nostradamus Says So.

HOST SEGMENTS: At one point Randy and Richard read aloud some ridiculously bizarre predictions made in tabloids by “psychics” of the time period.

THE MOVIE: The Man Who Saw Tomorrow was a hilariously melodramatic and irrational documentary playing along with the silly notion that the 16th Century “seer” Nostradamus’ vague and noncommital quatrains predicted major future events. Orson Welles, in his “anything for money” phase, narrated the film.

This movie was up there with the campy UFO and Bigfoot documentaries of the 1970s and 1980s. Welles, who has to hurriedly pluck his cigar from his mouth at one point so that he can be understood, seems on the verge of laughter most of the time. As usual in anything about Nostradamus meanings are forced into his centuries-old poems that make them seem like he was a “prophet” who foresaw the rise of Napoleon, World War Two, the John F Kennedy assassination and just about anything else that true-believers want to read into the man’s vague scribblings. Continue reading →

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May 10, 2015 · 6:16 pm

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! LOVE, GEORGE (1973)

Despite the movie poster's warning this flick won't even untie your shoelaces.

Despite the movie poster’s warning this flick won’t even untie your shoelaces.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! LOVE, GEORGE (1973) – Category: Bad movie elevated by kitsch value in the casting.

Directed by THE Darren McGavin and featuring his wife Kathie Browne in a small role, this hilariously bizarre film is also known as Run, Stranger, Run. “Run, Potential Viewer, Run” would be a more appropriate title. Happy Mother’s Day Love, George  (henceforth HMDLG) is often described as a psycho-sexual thriller but actually it is nothing more than a melodramatic soap opera with a few murders and VERY few scenes of blood and gore. Those blood and gore scenes are so over-the-top they are completely at odds with the Continue reading →

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May 10, 2015 · 3:47 pm

STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977)

Starship InvasionsSTARSHIP INVASIONS (1977) – This Canadian venture (also released as Project Genocide) is a bad movie classic and I don’t know why I kept putting off reviewing it for so long. I’ve been in love with this baby ever since I first saw it long years ago.

It combines the campy fun of the old television series UFO with that of countless 1950’s and 1960’s “invasion of Earth” movies. The ridiculous uniforms of the aliens make it hard to stop laughing as you watch events unfold. They communicate telepathically (in voiceover for the benefit of viewers) so they never speak, which is another source of fun since their facial expressions never seem to change no matter how heated the telepathic conversations get.   

Our movie opens up with a UFO shooting a rather heavy Canadian farmer in an Elmer Fudd hat with a paralyzing ray, then abducting him. While in the aliens’ custody the farmer is confronted by one of his captors – a beautiful nude woman. The two have sex and return the farmer to his home, following which he tries to tell the authorities about his experience but they don’t believe him.   Continue reading →

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May 3, 2015 · 4:37 pm

THE VISITOR (1979): AN INCREDIBLY WEIRD MOVIE

Like the poster? Too bad! It bears no resemblance to ANYTHING that happens in the actual movie!

Like the poster? Too bad! It bears no resemblance to ANYTHING that happens in the actual movie!

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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April 27, 2015 · 8:47 pm

BEAUTIFUL CASEY JAMES HOSTS ANOTHER LOOK AT BAD MOVIES

Balladeer's Blog's Official Movie Hostess, the sexy Casey James.

Balladeer’s Blog’s Official Movie Hostess, the sexy Casey James.

Special thanks once again to Balladeer’s Blog’s Official Movie Hostess, the extraordinarily lovely Casey James. Casey took some time away from stealing the hearts of men and women around the world to host another look at bad films from my archives.

Death Bed

Death Bed

DEATH BED (1977) – My review of this rediscovered lost movie from the 1970’s was one of my most popular posts back in 2010. Death Bed features a water-bed that is alive and has digestive juices inside it instead of merely water. The supernatural bed, spawned by the bloody tears of a demon, devours everyone who lies on it.

No it’s not a joke, it’s a real horror film with one of my favorite weirdass premises. The body count is extremely high as the title menace feeds on literally dozens of victims through the course of the movie. Absurd, bloody and with a narrator who is trapped in a wall near the bed. (Don’t ask.) FOR MY FULL LENGTH REVIEW CLICK HERE:    https://glitternight.com/2011/02/04/a-bed-that-eats-people-who-sleep-in-it-its-death-bed-from-1977/ Continue reading →

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