BEST OF FEBRUARY 2024

Balladeer’s Blog’s annual end-of-year retrospective continues with this look at February’s Best.

FURIOUS (1984) – The Rhee Brothers star in one of the most joyously bad and disjointed martial arts movies of all time.

My review is HERE.

BALLADEER’S BLOG RANKS THE PRESIDENTS – And I do it the way that ANYONE trying to be objective would do it – by omitting the most recent presidents because there is still too much emotion surrounding the perception of such figures. Click HERE.

AUSTRALIA’S SUPERHEROES OF THE 1940s & 1950s – An examination of Atom-Girl, the Grey Domino, Jet Fury, the Blue Ghost, the Vesuvian and many more HERE.

MY TOP TEN HORROR FILMS OF THE PAST FIFTY YEARS – Click HERE. Some expected titles plus a few surprises.

QUENTIN DURWARD (1971) – A French-German television series about Sir Walter Scott’s lesser-known swashbuckling hero. It was produced in the same spirit as Desert Crusader and The Flashing Blade. My review is HERE.

Continue reading

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REEL WILD CINEMA: EPISODES FOURTEEN TO SIXTEEN

Balladeer’s Blog continues its look at the Forgotten Television item Reel Wild Cinema (1996-1997).

This time around it’s Episodes 14-16.

THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE FOURTEEN (April 21st, 1997)

Title: Gals & Ghouls

Truncated Films Shown:

it's hot in paradiseIT’S HOT IN PARADISE (1960) – This is a film about hot nightclub ladies and their schmoozing manager getting stuck on an uncharted island after a plane crash. They learn that a now dead mad scientist made the place his lair and his experiments spawned dog-sized spiders whose bite transforms people into half-assed human-spider creatures.

The movie was mostly about footage of beautiful women in an island setting. In 1963, all topless scenes were edited out and it was re-released as a horror schlocker titled Horrors of Spider Island. Even so, the flick was still about 95% cheesecake footage and 5% horror story. Boring-bad, not fun-bad. Continue reading

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NEWS, MEMES AND POLITICAL CARTOON ROUNDUP: DEC 4th

Here is another current events roundup from Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog.

GREAT LIST OF THE LITERALLY HUNDREDS OF CRIMES THAT UNDERBOSS HUNTER BIDEN WAS JUST PARDONED FOR. Plus it’s important to remember that a pardon means that Hunter can no longer invoke the 5th Amendment if called to testify regarding any of the crimes that his father and his associates are being investigated for.

           Joe Biden would have to pardon himself and all his co-conspirators to avoid such a situation. He may do that. I wouldn’t be surprised.

ANOTHER GREAT LIST – THIS ONE OF THE LIES INFLICTED ON THE PUBLIC BY DEMOCRAT NEWS OUTLETS.

Nancy Pelosi, whose policies harm the working class and the poor.

TRUMP’S DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY (D.O.G.E.) SET TO TARGET “FEATHERBED”, UNNECESSARY JOBS THAT POLITICIANS LIKE NANCY PELOSI GIVE FAMILY AND FRIENDS AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE.

ARTICLE SAYS “THE WORLD IS HEALING” AS TRUMP IS ALREADY HARD AT WORK.

JENNINGS: “BIDEN IS LEAVING OFFICE IN COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISGRACE.” He has a point. Trump knocked him out of the race in the debate, defeated Joe’s hand-picked successor and there are all the Biden scandals.

VILLAGE PEOPLE MEMBER THANKS TRUMP FOR USING HIS SONG YMCA. Continue reading

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THE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ (1904) BOOK REVIEW

marvelous land of ozTHE MARVELOUS LAND OF OZ (1904) – We’ve all been exposed to countless variations of the adventures of Dorothy Gale and company in Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Therefore I’m starting my reviews of the Oz books with the second in the series – The Marvelous Land of Oz.   

A little boy named Tip lives with the mean-spirited witch Mombi as his adult “guardian.” One day Tip mischievously plans a bit of revenge on Mombi by building a pumpkin-headed figure made of wood, branches and old clothes. He then positions the figure – named Jack Pumpkinhead – to scare the evil witch when she arrives home.

pumpkinhead and tipThe nasty old witch is unfazed and further proves she’s not scared by sprinkling the pumpkin-headed figure with a magical Powder of Life. The powder brings Jack Pumpkinhead to life but he’s very naive and ignorant.

When Mombi threatens to turn Tip into a marble statue as revenge for trying to scare her, the boy steals some of her Powder of Life and runs away with Jack Pumpkinhead as a traveling companion. Tip sprinkles some of the powder on a sawhorse, bringing it to life as a mount for Jack, who is still unsteady on his legs.

Thus begins another adventure throughout the bizarre Land of Oz. Among the other characters encountered by Tip, Jack and the Sawhorse: Continue reading

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A CHRISTMAS CAROL: TALES FROM DICKENS (1959)

Balladeer’s Blog’s Fifteenth Annual Christmas Carol-a-Thon continues! A few days ago I made an encore post about the Susan Lucci version of the Dickens classic.

This time around it’s a Carol version that I’ve never before reviewed.

***

1959 christmas carolFREDERIC MARCH PRESENTS TALES FROM DICKENS: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1959) – Basil Rathbone IS Edgar Winter as Ebenezer Scrooge! Or at least that’s what he looks like with his incredibly long white hair in this television show.

This was one of the 14 episodes of the Frederic March television series in which he hosted dramatizations of assorted stories written by Charles Dickens. The air date of this particular episode was December 27th, 1959. Continue reading

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BEST OF JANUARY 2024

Balladeer’s Blog’s annual end of year retrospective begins with this look at January’s Best.

DICK TURPIN (1925) – My review of this silent movie which starred American cowboy star Tom Mix trading in his rifle and six-guns for a sword and pistols in an exciting film about England’s real-life outlaw Dick Turpin. It’s HERE.

SAM SPADE – I take a look at Dashiell Hammett’s four overlooked 1932 short stories about his hard-boiled detective from The Maltese Falcon. Read it HERE.

SCARFOLK: LIKE MY MILWAUKEE CROSSED WITH LOCAL 58 TV – Richard Littler’s eerie, dark-humored presentations of the lore behind his fictional English town of Scarfolk has been presented as a website and then as a few books. Experience 1984 and Twin Peaks wrapped into one HERE.

SHIRLEY TEMPLE’S STORYBOOK (1958-1961) – This bit of Forgotten Television featured Temple starring alongside some of the biggest celebrities of the day in child-safe dramatizations of classics from children’s literature. Click HERE.

BRITISH-MADE SUPERHEROES OF THE 1940s – My look at forgotten characters like Streamline, Electro-Girl, Captain Magnet, Acromaid, Tiger-Man and over twenty more HERE.

DESERT CRUSADER (1968-1969) – A French tv series about Thibaud (tee-bow), a French knight who has adventures along the road to the Holy Land in between the 1st and 2nd Crusades. My review is HERE.

THE FLASHING BLADE (1967) – A similar French tv series. Dumas meets Sabatini in this swashbuckling tale of Francois, Chevalier de Recci, from 1628-1631. HERE.

ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION: ADVENTURES OF JAMES MASSEY (1714) – A novel about the title character finding an island of giant-sized birds, odd plant-life, bear-sized beavers and strange human beings, both “normal” and ape-like. It’s HERE. Continue reading

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DEC 2nd ROUNDUP OF NEWS, MEMES AND POLITICAL CARTOONS

Here is another current events roundup from Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHY PEOPLE ARE ACTING SO SURPRISED THAT JOE BIDEN, HEAD OF THE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY, LIED ABOUT NOT PARDONING HIS UNDERBOSS HUNTER BIDEN. For years I’ve stated that part of why Hunter deserves so much contempt is because we all know he’ll be pardoned. The country has gone through this type of thing since at least 40 or 50 years ago. 

           Outgoing presidents unleash a flurry of clearly unethical pardons during their last few months in office. It’s disgusting, yes, but it’s hardly a surprise that the Biden Regime, a Banana Republic level of a political sewer, would pursue the same strategy to protect its capos and its Underboss.

STILL, I IMAGINE PEOPLE WANT LINKS TO THE ARTICLES EXPRESSING OUTRAGE, SO I’M PROVIDING SOME HERE. And HERE. And HERE. And HERE

ANOTHER ARTICLE ABOUT THE DAMAGE TO DEMOCRACY BEING DONE BY LETTING CALIFORNIA’S LATE-COUNT MADNESS CONTINUE. It’s like my frequent joke about a Democrat slogan – “The campaign never ends. And neither will our discovery of ‘uncounted’ votes for our candidates.”

CANADA’S BLACKFACE PERFORMER AND POLITICIAN JUSTIN TRUDEAU CRAWLS TO MAR-A-LAGO.

FURTHER REPORTS OF JOE BIDEN’S REGIME PLOTTING TO GIVE ZELENSKY NUCLEAR WEAPONS BACK. Joe Biden would apparently prefer mushroom clouds to his crime family’s atrocities in Ukraine getting exposed. Continue reading

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REEL WILD CINEMA: EPISODES ELEVEN TO THIRTEEN

Balladeer’s Blog continues its look at the Forgotten Television item Reel Wild Cinema (1996-1997).

This time around it’s Episodes 11-13.

THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE ELEVEN (June 30th, 1996)

Title: Evil Rampaging Monsters

Truncated Films Shown:

return of majinTHE RETURN OF THE GIANT MAJIN (1966) – We fans of oddball cinema have long loved Majin, the often-ignored distant cousin of kaiju favorites like Godzilla and Gamera. Majin is a gigantic samurai statue that comes to life periodically in Japan of a few centuries back.

The setting means that instead of miniatures of tanks and cities filled with skyscrapers for the figure to rampage through, viewers get miniatures of cannons, fishing boats and towns filled with period architecture. But let’s not kid ourselves; the MAIN “So Bad It’s Good” aspect of the Majin movies is the way he literally shoots flames from his crotch for some bizarre reason. I’m not joking. Continue reading

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BALLADEER’S BLOG’S POSTSEASON COLLEGE FOOTBALL RESULTS FROM NOV 30th

NAIA PLAYOFFS

ROUND TWO: GAME ONE – The NORTHWESTERN (IA) COLLEGE RED RAIDERS visited the MONTANA TECH OREDIGGERS. A 6-0 1st Quarter edge for the Red Raiders became a 23-14 advantage by Halftime. After the break, the Orediggers rallied but came up just short as Northwestern College held on for a 32-29 win. 

ROUND TWO: GAME TWO – The BENEDICTINE COLLEGE RAVENS took it on the road against the TEXAS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY RAMS. The Rams led 14-7 and then 24-14 in the 1st and 2nd Quarters. From there the Ravens came alive and went on top 28-24 in the 3rd before finalizing a 42-33 triumph in the 4th Quarter. Continue reading

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THE ORIGINAL MS. MARVEL: HER 1970s STORIES

This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the earliest adventures of the original Ms. Marvel – Carol Danvers.

mm 1MS. MARVEL Vol 1 #1 (January 1977)

Title: This Woman, This Warrior

Villain: The Scorpion

NOTE: Ms. Marvel’s secret identity was Carol Danvers, a character that Marvel first introduced in the supporting cast of their original male Captain Marvel series in 1967. Carol was introduced as the head of security at Cape Canaveral, so even before becoming a superheroine she had a very solid role.

Carol made regular appearances alongside Captain Marvel (Kree Captain Mar-Vell) through the cancellation of his first solo series in August 1970. She made a few guest appearances in the pages of The Avengers during the original Kree-Skrull War (1970-1971) and was even impersonated by the Super-Skrull.

Synopsis: Readers are caught up with Carol Danvers’ life via flashbacks. During one of Captain Marvel’s battles with Yon-Rogg she was exposed to Kree technology which accidentally endowed her with super-strength plus the power of flight and a large degree of invulnerability. Continue reading

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