Tag Archives: badfilm

THE TERRORNAUTS (1967) – BAD MOVIE

the terrornautsTHE TERRORNAUTS (1967) – Simon Oates of Doomwatch fame stars as yet another maverick scientist in this effort from earlier in his career. Oates is running a British version of the SETI project and is forever trying to intercept signals from space … signals that might indicate intelligent life forms.

Conveniently, just when their funding is about to be cut Oates and his team at last receive a broadcast from actual alien life forms. And not just any alien life forms but the exact race that use a cave in France excavated by Oates’ father as a teleportation point from their orbiting space station.

terrornautsWild coincidences like that are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of this ridiculous movie’s plot holes, inconsistencies and lack of logic.

At any rate when Oates and company broadcast a reply of their own the extraterrestrials fly to England and snatch the entire building that the scientists’ project is housed in. The Earthlings, including a cockney female janitor along for excruciatingly bad comic relief, find themselves at the mercy of the space station’s Doctor Who (original series) level special effects renditions of androids, monsters and interstellar cooking devices. Continue reading

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SANTO VS THE RIDERS OF TERROR (1970) BAD MOVIE REVIEW

santo vs the riders of terrorSANTO VERSUS THE RIDERS OF TERROR (1970) – Called Santo Contra Los Jinetes del Terror in its native Mexico, this is one of my all-time favorite hidden gems among the wacked-out movies about the Mexican wrestler called El Santo.

(Many movies about Santo and other Mexican wrestlers were shown on “the Mexican MST3K” show – A Platicar a Su Casa, reviewed HERE.)    

El Santo – often called “Samson” in English-dubbed versions of his flicks – has battled Martians, vampire women, vampire men, witches, mummies, wax figures come to life and dozens of other monstrosities. This particular flick stands out to me because of its joyously tasteless brand of “monsters” – a horseback riding outlaw gang of lepers.

Yes, LEPERS! In a move even Tod Slaughter might have deemed too crass and exploitative a group of bandits deformed by leprosy are at large and pulling off a series of robberies. Continue reading

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HITLER – DEAD OR ALIVE (1942): BAD MOVIE REVIEW

hitler dead or aliveHITLER – DEAD OR ALIVE (1942) – You’ve heard of grindhouse movies? Well, you could consider this a GRINDE-HOUSE movie, because it was directed by Nick Grinde and produced by Charles House.

While we all try to ignore how lame that joke is, I’ll point out that Hitler – Dead or Alive was first released in November of 1942. As the title and date of release would suggest, it was a rah-rah wartime rally movie/ propaganda film about a handful of people trying to collect a million-dollar reward for the Fuhrer – dead or alive.

A few years back, Balladeer’s Blog reviewed The Girl in the Kremlin, a 1957 flick about Stalin faking his death and being hunted down. Given the massive body counts of both Adolf and Joseph, it should be no surprise that this Hitler movie is just as mind-numbingly, cosmically tasteless as the Stalin piece. It’s not just So Bad It’s Good, it’s So SURREALLY Bad It’s Good. 

hitler dead or alive lobbyHitler – Dead or Alive starts out with a pair of stereotypical hungry reporters who bluff their way into a face-to-face meeting with eccentric, unorthodox, Howard Hughesesque tycoon Samuel Thornton. Thornton has just donated a million dollars worth of fighter planes to the war effort, and the snooping reporters ask if there’s any connection to the million-dollar reward he offered for Hitler a few months earlier. Continue reading

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365 DAYS AND ITS SEQUELS: WORSE THAN BOTH TWILIGHT AND 50 SHADES OF GREY

Blanka Lipinska

Author Blanka Lipinska

365 DAYS (2020) – My fellow fans of bad movies have long been leaving comments and sending emails encouraging me to review Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. I’m glad I delayed, because now I can review this even worse book and film series.

You may be wondering why, if I could resist reviewing the tale of a hundred-year-old vampire and a shirt-challenged werewolf fighting over a hopelessly bland teen girl, why have I decided to go ahead and review 365 Days and its sequels? And you may be wondering why, if I could resist reviewing the tale of a deranged billionaire stalker and the hopelessly bland object of his fixation, why have I decided to go ahead and review 365 Days and its sequels?

I can answer with one word … pierogie!

As my last name indicates, I am of Polish-American descent and with the scene where the abducted woman in the 365 Days franchise demands that her gangster captor provide her with “Normal food … pierogie!” I knew I had found my muse! Even though I never got the hoped-for line “Leave the gun. Take the kielbasa.”  Continue reading

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MURDERCYCLE (1999)

murdercycle posMURDERCYCLE (1999) – Okay, I want a Ghost Rider vs Murdercycle film! ESPECIALLY with Nicolas Cage as Ghost Rider. Anyway, despite the title, this movie is a nice throwback to the days before so many low-budget filmmakers were trying to be intentionally over-the-top and campy with their productions and titles in hopes of garnering sales from a reputation for being so-bad-it’s-good.

Flicks like Suburban Sasquatch, Rubber, Lycan Colony and the Birdemic sequels take some of the joy out of bad movies in my opinion with their calculated awfulness. I prefer to soak in films that were trying to be straightforward but whose creative teams lacked the budget or the talent to fulfill the production’s potential.

Murdercycle was at least played straight without those constant winks and nods from the cast like we get in so many would-be Psychotronic movies today. The only cutesy in-joke comes from the names of several characters and it’s never acknowledged by the dialogue (see below).

the murdercycleLet’s take this from the top – an object from space lands near a Top Secret government facility concealed within a seeming shack in the middle of nowhere. It’s not a meteor but an alien weapon and when a man on a dirt bike draws near the fallen object he falls victim to its jack-in-the-box/ face-hugger tech.

In a bit of business that put me in mind of the 1980s Bruce Campbell movie Moon Trap, the alien device fuses with the nameless biker AND his motorcycle. The result is a deadly biomechanical entity that is part humanoid, part motorcycle and part alien Terminator. We have our Murdercycle!         Continue reading

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IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971) – BAD MOVIE

I’ve gotten e-mails asking that I review this movie but I already did in 2010. It’s been on my Bad Movie page here: https://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

If Footmen Tire youIF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? (1971) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following.    

No, it’s not about Quentin Tarantino and pre-Castro Havana nightclubs (Thank you, I’m here all week!) it’s really a Cold War-era warning about what would happen if Communists took over the United States. It’s from Ron Ormond, best known for the bad movie classic Mesa Of Lost Women before he found religion and hooked up with the Reverend Estus W Pirkle for films like this one.

If Footmen Tire you 2Pirkle serves as the narrator of this quirky little mess, ranting on and on in his over-the-top way about how the USA has turned away from the Bible and will suffer the consequences. He’s like a combination of Criswell in Plan 9 From Outer Space and the sermonizing narrator from Blood Freak (qv).

In one of his enjoyably bizarre tangents before he gets to the Soviet conquest of America he also speaks out on the “evils” of dancing, which he calls ”The front door to adultery! What starts on the dance floor is expected to be finished later.” He even says dancing is “as immoral as it has always been”. Continue reading

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DEATH GAME (1977) – MICRO-REVIEW

death game picDEATH GAME (1977) – Also released under the title The Seducers, this horror movie/ psychological thriller was filmed in 1974 but not released until 1977 due to assorted legal entanglements. Sondra Locke and cult queen Colleen Camp starred with Seymour Cassell in this thoroughly bizarre exploitation movie.

Death Game was remade decades later as Knock Knock starring Keanu Reeves. The 1970s original may have been a trippy exploitation flick which spotlighted titillation and violence but so was the Eli Roth remake. And the original actually feels more honest and less cringe because it lacks the corporate cinematic feel of the Keanu Reeves movie, despite Locke co-producing and Camp making a cameo appearance.   

death game posterAfter the oft-invoked nonsense about the film being based on a true story Death Game begins.

Two predatory young women, Agatha Jackson (Sondra Locke) and Donna (Colleen Camp) insinuate themselves into the home of 40 year old George Manning (Seymour Cassell) on a rainy night when his wife and family are out of town. After seducing him they refuse to leave and behave in increasingly menacing and psychotic ways, subjecting him to physical and psychological abuse. Continue reading

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BIG ZAPPER (1973) AND ZAPPER’S BLADE OF VENGEANCE (1974)

Big ZapperBIG ZAPPER (1973) – Linda Marlowe stars as Harriet Zapper, a two-fisted private investigator, in this first of two Zapper movies directed by Balladeer’s Blog’s old friend Lindsay Shonteff. If they ever build a Museum of Britsploitation Films, Shonteff will have an entire wing dedicated to him.

In the past I’ve covered Lindsay’s various pale imitations of the James Bond movies – Number One of the Secret Service, The Man From S.E.X., Number One Gun, The 2nd Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World and others.

harriet with gunOften forgotten were the man’s pair of films about a virtual “Dirty Harriet” with sexy Linda Marlowe as the lead. I’ve read some reviews that bash Marlowe’s performance as Harriet Zapper but all I can say is those critics must never have seen Lindsay Shonteff’s other film projects. NO actor can come off looking talented under Shonteff’s direction.

Big Zapper finds millionaire Jeremiah Horn (Jack May) hiring Harriet Zapper to find his missing son and daughter. Harriet dives into the investigation and learns that both of the teens were murdered by the criminal organization of a psychotic gangster called Kono (perennial Shonteff villain Gary Hope). Continue reading

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MR NO LEGS (1978)

mr no legsMR NO LEGS (1978) – Ted Vollrath, a Korean War veteran who lost his legs due to injuries he suffered during the conflict, became a multiple black belt in martial arts disciplines and established Martial Arts for the Handicapable Incorporated in 1971. In addition to appearing in a documentary titled Let Me Live In Your World he starred as a scene-stealing badass in Mr No Legs, which was also released under titles like Killers Die Hard, Pushers Die Hard, Dope Runners Die Hard and the much less descriptive Gun Fighter.   

Mr No Legs is nowhere near as outrageous as the Hong Kong kung fu movies Crippled Masters, Crippled Heroes and Crippled Avengers, nor is it as exploitative as those flicks. Vollrath plays Lou, the title character, whose wheelchair is equipped with built-in shotguns in the arm rests and Ninja stars connected to the wheels.

mr no legs titleLou himself is deadly in or out of his chair, as he is highly skilled with knives and handguns, but his most dangerous trait is the way he can use his muscular, toned body to kick the butts of all comers in unarmed combat. Lou’s status as the enforcer and hit man for a Tampa drug lord has earned him big money and a buxom blonde lady who sees to his various needs.

A real-life multiple amputee with a James Bond-gimmicked wheelchair and mastery of karate would be enough to ensure Mr No Legs a spot in Psychotronic movie Valhalla, but the film offers so much more.

Consider the following: Continue reading

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JAMES BATMAN (1966): A THANKSGIVING TURKEY

james batmanJAMES BATMAN (1966) – HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Balladeer’s Blog takes a Turkey Day look at a film from the Philippines. This movie teams up Batman, Robin and James Bond as they battle an evil organization called C.L.A.W. It’s another of the many unauthorized Batman movies from around the world. 

James Batman is in Tagalog with English subtitles and stars Filipino actor Dolphy as both Batman and James Bond, who is sometimes called James Wong in the subtitles and sometimes called James Hika. Dolphy also plays millionaire Dolpho, Batman’s secret identity (?). Robin, played by Boy Alano, is Batman’s brother. It’s that kind of movie.

Filipino Batman and RobinDolpho is in love with Shirley (Shirley Moreno), but she considers Dolpho boring and has the hots for Batman. Just as Shirley is oblivious to the fact that Dolpho really IS Batman, she has no idea that her sister (Bella Flores) is secretly the sultry costumed villainess called Black Rose.

Shirley and Bella’s father is the Chairman of the Free Nations, a quasi-United Nations outfit which is given five days to surrender to C.L.A.W. – a communist organization that desires world domination. Continue reading

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