Category Archives: Bad and weird movies

December 30, 2011 · 3:59 pm

HOLIDAY SEASON BAD MOVIE DOUBLE FEATURE

As the Christmas holiday season for 2011 rapidly nears its close, here’s Balladeer’s Blog’s repost of my two annual Christmas turkeys, The Christmas Martian followed by Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. 

THE CHRISTMAS MARTIAN (1971) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following.    Santa Claus Conquers The Martians gets all the attention, but this almost forgotten Canadian film from the 1970′s is one joyously weird acid trip of a movie! And for that “old-school”  bad movie feel the lips don’t match the dialogue, dubbed into English from the original French. (Yes it was made in that part of Canada!)

A spaceship even Ed Wood would be ashamed of, idiotic characters, a delightfully bad song and special effects that would have been outdated 10 years prior to filming highlight this movie that is perfect for Yuletide. The plot, such as it is, features Continue reading →

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December 22, 2011 · 3:34 am

RANDY CLOWER: BALLADEER’S BLOG INTERVIEWS A MOVIE HOST LEGEND

Clower (right) with co-host Richard Malmos as “Film Vault Technicians First Class” on The Texas 27 Film Vault

Before MST3K there was THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT! Before Joel and Mike lovers of bad movies had Randy and Richard! Before Pearl there was Laurie Savino! Before Devil Dogs, Observers and Deep 13 there came Cellumites, giant rats and Level 31.

In the mid 1980’s The Texas 27 Film Vault was the show to watch on Saturday nights for wry mockery of Golden Turkeys preceded by episodes of vintage Republic Serials like Radar Men From The Moon and Canadian Mounties vs Atomic Invaders.    

The Texas 27 Film Vault is one of the great unsung Movie Host shows of the 1980’s and I was thrilled to get this exclusive interview with Randy Clower, co-star and co-creator of this legendary cult show from the Dallas/ Fort Worth area. “The Film Vault Guys” as they were often called by us fans, or “Vaulties”,  established the pattern that a few other Movie Hosts have since followed.

Clower, Richard Malmos and their friend Ken Miller put together a Public Access television show called The Trivia Guys and in a classic story of talent over budget the trio crafted the program with such care and detail it became a minor hit. The program had a very professional look for a Public Access production and its success prompted a PM Magazine feature on The Trivia Guys. 

Management at Dallas television station KDFI, Channel 27 ( the “27” in The Texas 27 Film Vault ) saw the PM Magazine feature and were impressed with the high- dollar look that Clower, Malmos and Miller had put together on a flyweight budget. They approached the trio about hosting a late-night B-Movie show since the Dallas/ Ft Worth area had been without its own home- grown version of that local tv staple since the days of Greg Bransom’s show Professor Cerberus and the Museum of Horrors.

Warming to the idea, the soon-to-be Film Vault Guys decided that vampires, mad scientists and creepy castles had been done ad nauseum in Movie Host shows by then and ingeniously went in a different direction.  Thus was born the Film Vault Corps, a fictional quasi- military organization that protected America’s schlock- culture heritage by safeguarding the bad, campy but loveable cinematic turkeys of the past. The men and women of the FVC carried out this task in various Film Vaults under every major city in the United States.

These vaults were Continue reading →

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December 19, 2011 · 9:57 pm

KIM JONG IL IS STILL DEAD: A REPOST OF MY REVIEW OF HIS MONSTER MOVIE PULGASARI

North Korea’s demented dictator Kim Jong Il is dead. What better way to mark the passing of an animal who starved his own people, constantly threatened nuclear activity against other nations, had his secret police abduct countless people in the middle of the night and ran a barbaric prison system than by re- posting my review of that nutjob’s lone venture into the area of filmmaking. While Kim Jong Il and his buddy Hawkeye Pierce (rimshot) share cocktails in whatever hellish afterlife is shared by real- world wackos and fictional fools, let’s look once again at my 2010 review of Pulgasari, the only kaiju movie produced by a man who combined the insanity of Idi Amin with the paranoia of Josef Stalin.

PULGASARI (1985) – Category: Bad enough and with a classically weird premise but not fun-bad enough for my highest rating     North Korea’s thoroughly deranged dictator Kim Jong Il was responsible for this film and even gives himself a producer’s credit. It’s the least he could do for himself after having his underlings literally kidnap some South Korean  filmmakers  and  force them to  take part in this bizarre film venture. If you doubt me just use a search engine to find out about the making of this movie. He even made those unfortunate people rot in one of his prisons for four years before he finally got around to setting them to the task he had kidnapped them for in the first place.

It was all part of Krazy Kim’s desire to initiate North Korea’s entry into the Continue reading →

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December 7, 2011 · 12:02 am

BAD MOVIE PAGE – ELVES (1989)

 ELVES (1989) – Category: Enjoyably bad movie but not fun- bad enough for my highest rating          Last Christmas season I reviewed the underappreciated Yuletide turkeys The Christmas Martian and Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny. (see my Bad Movie page for those reviews) This year I’ll address the horror film Elves, which will have you laughing like crazy but unlike a film like Santa’s Slay, it’s not MEANT as a comedy.

Where to begin with this film? We’ve got Dan Haggerty as a washed up ex- store detective and drug addict working as a department store Santa Claus, we’ve got Julie Austin as rebellious teenager Kirsten and our special-effects elf (seen in photo) as our title menace. Yep, right off the bat something to love about this Continue reading →

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November 25, 2011 · 6:05 pm

MOVIE HOSTS: CHRISTOPHER COFFIN (1961? – 1967)

 Christopher Coffin, AKA Reed Pasternak AKA Reed Farrell, deserves to be mentioned with the biggest names in the history of B- Movie Hosts. As you can see in the photo at left Coffin hosted his movies from a wheelchair and when you combine that with his wry, erudite sense of humor and his aristocratic manner I think the best way to describe him would be as a combination of Sheridan Whitehead in The Man Who Came To Dinner and Ghoulardi.  Or maybe I should  make that  a pre- Ghoulardi version of Ghoulardi, depending on what year you accept for CC’s premier.

I want to address the ongoing debate over exactly what year his program debuted. The advocates of a Continue reading →

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November 24, 2011 · 5:38 am

THANKSGIVING DAY BAD MOVIE: SLASHER IN THE HOUSE

Happy Thanksgiving! In the spirit of holiday classics that get trotted out each year here’s a special Turkey Day encore of last year’s review of the laughably bad Thanksgiving Day themed slasher movie from the 1980’s. Until someone makes a horror film about a guy in a Pilgrim outfit slashing people this is what we’ve got.

SLASHER IN THE HOUSE (1981) – Category: Enjoyably campy bad movie  elevated by kitsch-value in the casting   The success of John Carpenter’s Halloween in the late 1970’s launched a frenzy of holiday-themed slasher movies trying to cash in on that film’s success. The most infamous, of course, was the Silent Night, Deadly Night series with the slasher dressed as Santa Claus (and its notorious tag line “You made it through Halloween, now try and survive Christmas!” ), but other holidays got a customized slasher flick, too, like New Year’s Eve (the hilariously bad New Year’s Evil), Valentine’s Day (the original My Bloody Valentine) and Mother’s Day (in a movie of the same name). It even got so Continue reading →

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November 23, 2011 · 3:09 am

THANKSGIVING EVE BAD MOVIE TREAT: THE TURKEY MONSTER MOVIE “BLOOD FREAK”

I first reviewed Blood Freak in the summer of 2010, but considering how its premise makes it appropriate to the Turkey Day holiday I’ll rerun it like they used to rerun The Wizard of Oz every Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

BLOOD FREAK (1972) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following      This film is so comparatively well-known that I considered not including it, but it’s one of my all-time favorites so I’ll include it but just keep the entry short. The lead character in this movie is a biker named Herschell. It’s possible his motorcycle is called Shlomo but I don’t have a second source on that. (Sorry, I was channeling an old Borscht Belt comedian again) No, the director Brad Grinter admits he named the character after  legendary splatter film genius Herschell Gordon Lewis. Herschell gets a job at a turkey farm and at one point eats a turkey (and when I say “eats a turkey” I mean he literally just sits down with a knife, a fork and a whole cooked turkey and wolfs it all down)  treated with experimental chemicals by two mad scientists and … he turns into a man-sized turkey monster with Continue reading →

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November 19, 2011 · 3:54 am

BAD MOVIE PAGE: BLOOD HARVEST (1987)

 BLOOD HARVEST (1987) – Category: Enjoyably bad movie elevated by kitsch value in the casting     As if 1960’s folk singer Tiny Tim wasn’t creepy enough in real life here he is in the 80’s slasher flick that is famous purely because of his presence in it … in clown makeup (AAAAAH!). This review will start off with a major spoiler, so stop reading right now if you actually want to watch this thing as if it was a real movie.

Tiny Tim is NOT the slasher in this film. I often wonder how many copies of this flick have been sold over the years based purely on the fallacious word of mouth that the psychotic- seeming Timster supposedly played a Jason Voorhees style slasher in this movie. Blood Harvest starts out letting the audience THINK Tiny Tim, or Marvelous Mervo as his character is named, is the killer as he hoists a dead body up like a side of beef while singing an eerie parody of a nursery rhyme. We also get a few scenes of Mervo talking to dead bodies and positioning them on furniture like a macabre version of a little girl’s tea party.

Anyone with an eye for movie cliches, though, can tell early on that  Continue reading →

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October 31, 2011 · 12:04 am

A HALLOWEEN MEXI-MONSTER BESTIARY

Brainiac

Brainiac

Mexican horror films of the 1950’s and 1960’s deserve to be as well known as the Hollywood horror films from the 30’s and 40’s. Just as Universal Studios churned out a series of memorable movies featuring the likes of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman and the Mummy, studios from south of the border went on to give the world equally outstanding creatures.

These horror films boasted Universal- style production values and beautiful black & white cinematography combined with uniquely Mexican twists on horror themes as well as more sensuality and lurid violence than Hollywood had dared to present. This list aims to introduce Mexi- Monsters to younger viewers who may not be familiar with them. I’m omitting generic monsters like the various vampires from Mexican horror films (including Fabian Forte, Cristina Ferrare and a descendant of Nostradamus) and the werewolf wrapped in mummy bandages from Face of the Screaming Werewolf.  

Brainiac poster

The Original Poster

7. THE BRAINIAC (1962) – Many may be outraged at my inclusion of this film since it makes many lists (including mine) of the most laughably campy horror films ever made. I would argue that its thoroughly latin theme and brilliantly conceived (albeit cheesily presented) monster earn it a spot on this list.

There’s also the fact that the title creature (seen in the photo above left) symbolizes the Mexican chillers of its period as completely as Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster with the neck bolts and squared head represents the Universal monster movies of earlier decades. The Brainiac is a sorceror who was burned at the stake in the 1600’s and who transferred his spirit into a passing comet as he died. Continue reading →

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October 26, 2011 · 10:34 pm

A VERY BLAXPLOITATION HALLOWEEN

Blackenstein

Blackenstein

When it comes to the tasteless but enjoyably bad blaxploitation horror films of the 1970’s it seems like the lion’s share of the attention always goes to Blacula and its sequel, Scream, Blacula, Scream with a little attention left over for Ganja and Hess, since it features the African American hero from the original Night of the Living Dead in one of his few screen appearances.

In honor of the Halloween season Balladeer’s Blog will take a look at some of the neglected blaxploitation horror movies, all of which deserve to have a larger audience than just me and my fellow bad movie geeks. It’s in the spirit of my recent list of The Eleven Most Neglected Bad Movie  Classics For Halloween, but for this list I’ll go in descending order:

Blackenstein movie poster1. BLACKENSTEIN (1973) – This was one of the first flicks to try and cash in on the coattails of the surprise hit Blacula. A mad scientist named Dr Stein is conducting unspeakable experiments in human genetics. A Vietnam vet who has lost both arms and both legs in the war is Dr Stein’s next guinea pig. He restores the man’s limbs but Continue reading →

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