Tag Archives: badfilm

HEX (1973)

Cristina Raines

Cristina Raines

HEX (1973) Category – Enjoyably bad movie but not fun-bad enough to earn my highest rating        Hex, which was also released under the title The Screaming, belongs to that joyously bizarre subgenre of motorcycle horror films.  

That  peculiar cinematic niche also plays home to flicks like Werewolves On Wheels, about a biker gang that hassles Satanists who transform them into werewolves, to Psychomania, about a biker gang that forms a pact with Satan  which permits them to commit suicide and then return from the grave as invincible, soulless marauders and to Blood Freak, about a biker who turns into a turkey monster (no, really).   

Hex trumps all of those other films for sheer weirdness, partly because it is set in the early 1920s and partly because its western locale makes it a candidate for my Weird Western series during the Frontierado Holiday season during the summer.

The underrated beauty Cristina Raines stars in this incoherent mishmash as Oriole, a half-breed witch who uses the Native American magic taught to her by her father to defend herself and her sister Acacia from a roaming biker gang.  Continue reading

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THE LOSERS (1970)

Losers biggerTHE LOSERS (1970) – Two of the gods of biker cinema, William “Big Bill” Smith and Adam Roarke, star in a film which takes a minor footnote in history and RUNS with it, using it as its premise! In real life the Hell’s Angels were for a time clashing with Vietnam War protestors whom the Angels considered cowards for not wanting to fight in the conflict.

Peace was negotiated between the two parties by Ken Keasey and Hunter S Thompson if you believe  Thompson’s book on the Hell’s Angels and Thompson’s biography.

LosersTo make it clear that the Hell’s Angels still disagreed with the protestors’ position on the war even though they had ceased beating them up, Sonny Barger, the Angels’ “Maximum Leader” at the time, released a public statement offering the services of the Hell’s Angels as “a gorilla (sic) force” (LMAO) in the war.

LBJ and Nixon strangely declined to take Barger up on the offer but director Jack Starrett made it the center of this classic bomb. Continue reading

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WAYNE ROGERS R.I.P – DR SEX AND ASTRO-ZOMBIES

Wayne RogersThe one and only Wayne Rogers passed away recently and since everyone else will be covering his time on M*A*S*H, House Calls, Stagecoach West, City of Angels and more, Balladeer’s Blog will do its usual oddball salute. Here’s a look at Doctor Sex (1964) and The Astro-Zombies (1968), two of the films Rogers co-wrote and co-produced with bad movie legend Ted V Mikels. Wayne even has a tiny role in Doctor Sex!   

Doctor SexDOCTOR SEX (1964) – Like Doris Wishman, Russ Meyer, Herschel Gordon Lewis and so many others, Ted V Mikels got his start as a director doing Nudie Cuties. For newbies to the realm of Psychotronic Psynema, Nudie Cuties were big in the 1950s and 1960s and despite their name NEVER featured nudity.

Toplessness and some butt-shots were all you got, with strategically and/or improbably placed branches, shrubs or rail fences covering pubic regions. Fans of Peter Sellers will remember the classic sendup of those nudie cuties that he worked into one of his Inspector Clouseau films.   

The appeal of these movies is barely understood today, when you can find any visual stimulation you want with just a few clicks on your keyboard but decades ago Nudie Cuties really packed ’em in. Enter Doctor Sex.

The titular doctor is holding a brainstorming session with his fellow psychiatrists Dr Schmutz and the gorgeous Dr Lovejoy. They plan on co-authoring a book to put the recently released Kinsey Report to shame.

To that end they share stories about some patients of theirs who suffered exceptionally peculiar sexual fixations. The tales are told through flashbacks and feature:

Dr Sex drawinga) A patient who fixates on having a dog’s-eye view to watching the sexy female owner of a pooch take her bath and other activities.

b) A patient whose work at a department store includes dressing and undressing mannequins and holding make-believe tea parties with them and otherwise treating them like they’re real women. In a horror film they would come to life and tear the man limb from limb or something but in this movie the patient just imagines that the mannequins come to life as incredibly beautiful women who want to hang around with him.

c) A female patient who loves taking her clothes off and, in a rags to even fewer rags story she becomes first a nude model and then a stripper.

And d) A patient who – in another idea torn straight from a horror anthology instead of a Nudie Cutie – lives in a house haunted by beautiful nude female ghosts. The ghosts do housework for the guy. No, I’m not kidding.  

To wrap up their presumably successful venture Dr Sex and his colleagues cut loose with some lascivious behavior of their own. In the wildest moment Dr Schmutz turns into a dog and plans to use this canine form to land a sexy female owner so he can watch her bathing and in various stages of undress. Continue reading

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THE PSYCHOPATH (1975)

The_Psychopath_RMCjpgTHE PSYCHOPATH (1975) – Category: The 70s version of camp, with a premise and plot elements that would have been banned in previous decades  

If you’ve ever wanted to see Mr Rogers and/or Pee Wee Herman and/or Barney The Purple Dinosaur go on a killing spree this is the movie for you! Tom Basham plays Mr Rabbey, the host of a popular kiddie show. The key to Mr Rabbey’s success – his knack for knowing what children want to see – is no accident, since Rabbey himself is soon revealed to be a crazed, child-minded nutcase. Picture how much creepier Paul Reubens’ Pee Wee Herman character would be if it was no act and he really, honestly behaved that way 24/7. That’s Mr Rabbey.

The victims of Rabbey’s murder spree are people who beat and otherwise abuse their children, so it’s not all that hard to take the death scenes. You see, it turns out Mr Rabbey himself was the victim of an abusive parent, and when he realizes some of the children he visits on a charitable trip to the hospital have been beaten by their parents he sets out to kill those parents. (The original title of this movie was Eye For An Eye, which is why the film opens up with an extreme closeup of one of Mr Rabbey’s eyeballs) Continue reading

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FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER (1965)

Frankenstein Meets the Space MonsterFRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER (1965) –Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following      

The original title of this incredibly fun bad movie was Mars Invades Puerto Rico. You see, there is no Frankenstein Monster in this flick, just a NASA robot called Frank who gets damaged and then looks like Freddy Krueger with a Mohawk from one angle.

The actual premise of this movie is that Frank battles Martians intent on replenishing their nuclear war-ravaged planet by kidnapping beachgoers in Puerto Rico to use as breeding stock. Sounds like a comedy … stings like a bee! Continue reading

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FOR YOUR HEIGHT ONLY (1981)

Weng Weng and Lola

Weng Weng and Lola

FOR YOUR HEIGHT ONLY (1981) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9– sized cult following.

This hilariously bizarre film is just so chock full of inane dialogue and WTF moments that it’s a challenge to write a review that isn’t novel-length.

For the essentials: this is a Philippine action movie starring the midget novelty celebrity named Weng Weng as Secret Agent OO (yes, Double O). It sounds like a comedy but what makes it great is that IT’S NOT!

It’s played seriously and features Weng Weng using firearms and fancy gadgets like James Bond, engaging in martial arts fights like Bruce Lee, drooling over regular-sized women like Herve Villaichez, sword- fighting as skillfully as Zatoichi and sporting a poorly- concealed bald spot like Ryen Russillo. 

Weng Weng works for an outfit called simply “The Secret Agency”, so I’m guessing it’s one of those generic intelligence services that is MUCH cheaper than name brands. Hell, the head of the Continue reading

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MARDI GRAS MASSACRE (1978)

Mardi Gras MassacreMARDI GRAS MASSACRE (1978) – Category: A neglected Bad Movie classic, but its hard-core gore will prevent it from ever having a Plan 9-sized cult following

It takes a twisted sort of genius to make multiple disembowelment murders look boring, but that’s exactly what Jack Weis accomplishes in Mardi Gras Massacre! Today may be Fat Tuesday, but let’s rechristen it “Splat Tuesday” in honor of this late 70s splatterfest. 

The actual “massacre” part of this movie is an incredible disappointment. An insane, hate-filled man with a Continue reading

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TRUMBO (2015): HOLLYWOOD HYPOCRISY IS HILARIOUS

The political intolerance of the shallow, uninformed and emotionally unstable fools of Hollywood knows no bounds. They unabashedly call for the personal and professional destruction of everyone who votes differently than they do while ignoring the fact that they are practicing their own – even more fanatical – form of McCarthyism. 

This movie is further proof that American Liberals are the biggest hypocrites in history.

This movie is further proof that American Liberals are the biggest hypocrites in history.

TRUMBO (2015) – How about “Are you now or have you ever been a racist or imperialist or Islamophobic or privileged?” Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog know how sick I am of the increasingly meaningless “Liberals vs Conservatives” paradigm. It’s just that right now American Liberals are far more pompous and hubristic and in need of being cut down to size.

Case in point: the movie Trumbo. Only American Liberals could be so lacking in self-awareness that they would – in this age of non-stop harassment of Trump supporters, Political Correctness Police and SJW persecutors – trot out (for the millionth time) the story of Dalton Trumbo and some of the other figures who were black-listed during the Communist Witch Hunt of decades ago.

For the past few decades Left-Wing Archie Bunkers  have been the ones black-listing and inflicting draconian punishments on people who dare to hold different political opinions than they do.

We are still suffering under the “Racist” and “Privilege” Witch Hunts that American Liberals continue to pursue with the same sickeningly judgmental attitude and spurious statistics that Joe McCarthy was accused of. How many careers (and therefore lives) have we all seen ruined by the cold, merciless asses of the political left? Often over  simple remarks or organizations the victims belonged to or political contributions they made YEARS earlier. Plus DemoKKKrats accuse people of being racists as a scare tactic the way accusations of being a Communist were used back then.

Anyone under 30 (maybe even 40) who watches Trumbo needs to focus on the OBVIOUS parallels to the way American Liberals hound and persecute Trump supporters and any behavior they choose to interpret as “racism” or more generally as “hate.” When you watch right-wing zealots obsessively looking for “pernicious communism” and “secret communist messages” in Trumbo’s screenplays make a point of noting the similarities to the way DemoKKKrat zealots obsessively look for “racism”, “xenophobia”, “imperialism,” “colonial narratives” and on and on through the entire list of their paranoid fixations.  

American Liberals are monumental hypocrites who thrive on censoring dissenting ideas and black-listing people who hold those ideas even though they pretended to disapprove of censorship and black-listing when those tactics were used against them. They love re-staging old battles in which the outcome is known and wrap themselves in a cloud of self-satisfaction that blocks out anything like self-reflection or introspection. Continue reading

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CHROME AND HOT LEATHER (1971)

chrome-and-hot-leatherCHROME AND HOT LEATHER (1971) THE Marvin Gaye made his big-screen debut in this relentlessly absurd example of the bad biker films of the 1960s and 1970s.

When a Green Beret’s fiancee (played by THE Cheryl Ladd) is killed he and some of his service buddies pose as bikers to track down the motorcycle gang responsible for her death.

Words cannot describe how enjoyably awful this movie is from start to finish. Continue reading

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DIAL: HELP (1988)

 DIAL: HELP (1988) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9- sized cult following. 

This 1988 horror film from Italy (but dubbed into English) deals with a young model, played by Charlotte Lewis, who finds her life turning hellish when she begins being tormented by living phones … yes, living phones. As always with me, I love to laugh at bad horor movies like this that are NOT trying to be funny, but are so disastrously bad and have such ludicrous premises that they are unintentional comedy classics.

Remember my reviews of movies like Death Bed, about a killer bed; Deafula, about a deaf vampire and The Lift, about a killer elevator? Lump this flick in with those. 

Hardcore horror fans will be stunned to learn that the man behind this laughable mess is none other than Continue reading

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