Yes, from The Rocky Horror Picture Show it’s the opening song Science Fiction Double Feature.
Category Archives: Halloween Season
THE DEVIL OF PEI-LING (1927): NEGLECTED HORROR NOVEL
Halloween Month rolls blithely along as Balladeer’s Blog presents another look at a neglected work of horror fiction.
THE DEVIL OF PEI-LING (1927) – This minor masterpiece was penned by the Bard of the Bowery himself, Herbert Asbury! New York Detective Inspector Conroy tries to stop a reign of terror which is in actuality being inflicted on the world by supernatural forces from beyond the grave and from just north of Hell.
The Inspector was first drawn into the affair by the novel’s narrator, a physician friend of Conroy’s a la Doctor Watson to Sherlock Holmes. The doctor treats a comatose woman following a car accident and notices that she has deep red stigmata on her hands and feet. These stigmata don’t stop at an imitation of Christ’s wounds and begin to sprout nails as well.
The horrors just keep coming from there, as a “living” crimson rope often appears out of nowhere to hang a series of law enforcement figures and jurors who sentenced a murderous magician named Paul Silvio to death by hanging.
As Conroy and his medical friend probe deeper they learn that after Silvio was hanged, his corpse animated itself long enough to threaten vengeance on everyone involved in his execution. Soon after the comatose stigmatic woman appears at the hospital other horrors abound.
Gigantic toads the size of small dogs show up, bloody human sacrifices take place and a bronze idol of a demonic being called Pei-Ling periodically comes to life to murder people. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
SIX RARE HALLOWEEN MONSTERS
HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM BALLADEER’S BLOG! Here’s a look at some of the neglected monsters I’ve covered over the years. These horrific figures deserve as much love as the better known characters like Dracula, Frankenstein, the Crying Woman and many others.
SETHOS
First Appearance: The Squaw Hollow Sensation (1879)
Cryptid Category: Aztec mummy
Lore: Around the year 800 AD an Aztec scholar named Sethos drank the Draught of the Everlasting Covenant and went into a state of suspended animation. In 1879 mining operations uncovered the tomb where he was hidden away.
A scientist of the era mastered the technique of reviving Sethos and successfully restored him to full life. Sethos’ body was hideously mummified but intact except for a gaping hole in his skull in the middle of his forehead from the experiment to revive him. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
HALLOWEEN MONTH IS HERE
BALLADEER’S BLOG’S STAFF PICNIC PHOTO
October 1st means it’s the start of Halloween Month, the time of year when Balladeer’s Blog not only covers all of its usual topics but throws in reviews of neglected and obscure horror films, monsters and stories as well.
Filed under Halloween Season
TWIN PEAKS IN B-MOVIE TERMS
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.
Here at Balladeer’s Blog I’m often surprised at the way so many detractors still try to insist that the show and the movie made no sense. And bear in mind I am NOT referring to the various theories over particular symbolism or the lengthy debates to be had over the ethical and philosophical implications of the storyline.
No, I’m referring to the way some people dismiss the entire project as if it’s a bunch of weirdness with no discernible plot or storyline. There IS SO a (very) easily discernible plot and storyline. And I’ll say again I’m NOT talking about deeper meanings which no two people may ever agree upon, but the basic tale. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Forgotten Television, Halloween Season, opinion
A THOUSAND DEATHS (2014)
A THOUSAND DEATHS (2014) – This 22 minute suspense/ horror piece was directed by Adam Zanzie who also adapted the script from the 1899 short story by Jack London. Last Halloween Season I reviewed that short story HERE
Adam Zanzie’s effort immediately improves on London’s original tale by at least giving the characters NAMES. I’m not kidding, by the way. The 1899 short story was Jack London’s first published work and he neglected to provide names for any character except the mad scientist’s dog, Dan.
Zanzie wisely decided not to retitle this Dan the Dog and Company and instead chose to just make up names for the characters. Ford Fanter portrays the main character Jack (nice little homage on the director’s part) and John Bratkowski plays Jack’s sadistically deranged father, Dr Chaney.
Like Stuart Gordon having to reconfigure Tales of Herbert West, Reanimator for modern sensibilities, Zanzie does an excellent job of “scrumblin’ up” (for Marx Brothers fans) most of the original story’s elements to accommodate pacing AND budget considerations.
Doctor Chaney tests his life-restoring process by using his own son as a guinea pig, killing him over and over in various violent ways. After each unpleasant resurrection he pumps his son for clinical details about how he felt as he experienced each horrific end. All in the name of science, of course. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season, opinion
THE HANGED MAN (1974): WESTERN HORROR
FOR BALLADEER’S BLOG’S LOOK AT OVER TWENTY MORE WESTERN-THEMED HORROR FILMS CLICK HERE
THE HANGED MAN (1974) – Steve Forrest starred in this excellent made for tv movie that was a failed pilot for a series. Forrest portrayed a gunslinger who seemingly meets his end on the gallows early in the film but who supernaturally rises from the dead to atone for his misspent life by combating evil in the 1800s west. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, FRONTIERADO, Halloween Season
DEATH BED (1977)
I got a reader request to review the horror film Death Bed, but I already did in 2011. Here it is again and remember, to see if I already reviewed a movie click here: https://glitternight.com/bad-movies/
DEATH BED – (1977) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following.
A bed that eats everyone who lies on it is the hilarious premise of this actual straight-faced attempt at a horror film. You know how water-beds have water in them? This living bed has digestive juices in it. Its victims are somehow sucked through the membraneous material of the mattress and are broken down and digested by those juices.
The viewer is treated to countless shots of human bodies (plus for variety an apple, a fly and a bucket o’ chicken) dissolving in the acid, looking like they’re being torn apart by millions of tiny piranha fish.
If you’re wondering how a four-poster bed in an abandoned mansion became a living being with a taste for human flesh, we’re told a tree-demon (no relation to the tree-monster in From Hell It Came) temporarily incarnated as a human being to seduce a woman on the bed. At one point in the tale the blood-colored tears of the demon fell on the bed, thus creating our hungry, hungry hero. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
FATHER’S DAY (2011) HORROR FILM
FATHER’S DAY (2011) – Brace yourself for a gory time in this enjoyably outrageous cult classic.
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. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
PSYCHO GOTHIC LOLITA (2010): MOVIE REVIEW
PSYCHO GOTHIC LOLITA (2010) – Also available under the title Gothic & Lolita Psycho, this ultra-violent and blood-soaked movie was Japanese filmmaker Go Ohara’s follow-up to Geisha Assassin from 2008.
Rina Akiyama stars as Yuki, the black-clad title character whose fashion sense combines two Japanese fetish looks in one. The film begins with Yuki already enacting her revenge quest against a bizarre quintet of villainous supernatural figures. Disjointed flashbacks provide background details as the story unfolds, with the most crucial secret being withheld for last.
In fact, I’ll give you my personal guarantee: if you aren’t as blown away as I was by this movie’s climactic revelation … I don’t know what you can do about it. (Just a little something for my fellow Marx Brothers fans out there.)
At any rate lovers of J-Horror know the type of surreal, over-the-top bloodletting and gory violence that awaits in Psycho Gothic Lolita. Yuki’s weapons of choice are umbrellas that are souped-up like the guitars in Once Upon A Time In Mexico and in many Spaghetti Westerns. If you don’t see the logic of her using modified umbrellas just remember it goes with her “look.”
Umbrellas are essential to Goth women to block out the sun and keep their skin pale, so Yuki makes a virtue out of fashion necessity by wielding high-tech bumbershoots that have razor-sharp points, shoot bullets like a machine-gun, are bullet-proof themselves and are stronger than steel. Burgess Meredith, eat your heart out!
Our main character expertly employs these weapons to impale, disembowel and shred her opponents to bloody, fleshy ribbons. Yuki’s most blood-spattered move is to run a foe through with a closed umbrella, then open it while the victim is still clinging to life so they can feel the agony of their torso being torn apart by the opening of the umbrella. Look, you’re either committed to movies like this or you just aren’t. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
