Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault!
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the mid-1980s. Thanks to my research through VERY old newspapers, interviews with Randy Clower and emails from fellow fans of T27FV here is another in a series where original broadcast dates of episodes can be determined.
Episode originally aired: Saturday April 6th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.
Serial: Before the movie our machine-gun toting “Film Vault Technicians First Class” Randy Clower and Richard Malmos showed an episode of The Lost City, the legendarily campy and bizarre sci-fi serial from 1935.
Film Vault Lore: Thank you to my fellow T27FV fan Dolores for this episode’s date, the serial and for this quote about Ken Miller, who played “Tex” on the show: “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.”
The Movie: The Giant Claw is another of those staples of bad movie shows. It’s been presented by just about every Movie Host program at one time or another. Because of the film’s familiarity I will keep this review short. Continue reading

Usually on President’s Day Weekend Balladeer’s Blog reruns my review of the hilariously bad and weird 1960s superhero cartoon Super President. 
FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958)
EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956)
THEY SAVED HITLER’S BRAIN (1963/ 1968) 
THE MANIPULATORS (1970) – The words “gritty” and “streetwise” seem never to be used when describing vintage television programs from Canada but they certainly apply to The Manipulators (Originally the title was to be The Clients). 
It’s been just over two weeks since the finale of the 18 episode run of new Twin Peaks chapters on cable. Like many other fans I’m still digesting some of those new episodes in light of the gloriously dark and nightmarish conclusion, so this particular blog post applies ONLY to the original Twin Peaks television series, the 1992 film Fire Walk With Me and its deleted scenes from The Missing Pieces.
Most of the tales of supposedly bizarre events floating around the internet usually wind up being exaggerations or outright fabrications. Not so the strange story of the Eriksson Twins, Ursula and Sabine. Their brief spurt of wildly eerie behavior on a British motorway in 2008, the murder of a man who tried to help one of the twins and the many unanswered questions surrounding the case are eerily perplexing. (What WERE they doing with all those cell phones that didn’t belong to them?)
Say what you will about Mondays, I don’t know how anyone can feel anything but great today after last night’s developments in Twin Peaks: The Return.
I was one of the people who was actually okay last week with Philip Jeffries being reincarnated as a teapot-kinda-thingie because hey – David Bowie’s dead in real life. With that voice actor imitating Bowie pretty well maybe they’ll give us a brief scene of old Bowie footage with this guy dubbing in new dialogue for a Jeffries Tulpa. 
