THE BODY SHOP (1973) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following
The horror film titled The Body Shop is one of my all-time favorite bad movie gems. It includes all the little extras that separate mere bombs from the truly legendary turkeys and, like another neglected classic, The Wizard of Mars (see my Bad Movie page for the review), just keeps getting worse and worse and weirder and weirder all the way to the end. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
This time around the subject is the 1968 Mexican film Batwoman (La Mujer Murcielago).
For starters this should NOT be confused with the Jerry Warren film The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman, but often is because Warren was the stateside distributor for plenty of Mexican films in the 50s and 60s. This movie is purely a Luchadora film with Batwoman being a wrestler as well as a seasoned crime fighter.
It’s not quite fair to call this a “bad” film, but it is a bit of a weird one. In my view it’s much tighter and more entertaining than most of the El Santo movies from Mexico. And I’m not just saying that because of how incredibly sexy the star Maura Monti is. She has an arresting (see what I did there) figure that’s perfect for her version of the Batwoman outfit: a bikini, boots, mask and cape.
Like the Turkish movie Three Dev Adam, which features Spider-Man, Captain America and El Santo, this little honey did not pay for character rights but slipped under the radar long ago thanks to its south-of-the- border origins. Maura Monti has a certain screen presence that was lacking in other Luchadora flicks like Wrestling Women vs the Aztec Mummy. And this movie is nowhere near the embarrassment that Halle Berry’s Catwoman was. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Superheroes
Readers have requested that I review Zuma, but I already did long ago, along with its sequel so here it is again. To see if I’ve already reviewed a movie you are curious about click HERE
ZUMA (1985) – Category: Enjoyably bad movie elevated by its obscurity value
There’s an old saying that goes “Once you have a big green bald guy with pythons growing out of his neck you never go back.” Or something to that effect. This monstrous figure is Zuma himself, the Freddy Krueger of the Philippines in the 1980s. Big, muscular and green like the Hulk, bald like Mr Clean and with pythons growing out of his neck like the late Michael Jackson. (Disclaimer: The preceding remark is probably not true)
Originally a comic book character in the Philippines, Zuma took the film industry of the islands by storm with his debut film in 1985 and a sequel in 1987. Copies of these films have been Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
What better way to mark the return of the school year than with the absurdity of those over-the- top Juvenile Delinquent films of the 1950s and 1960s?
HIGH SCHOOL CAESAR (1960) – John Ashley, who was about as menacing as Ned Flanders, plays a bitter rich teenage punk who runs illegal operations at his high school like a junior version of organized crime. The title is a reference to Little Caesar, the gangster movie with Edward G Robinson.
Ashley’s JD character peddles the answers to exams, rigs school elections and bilks money from his classmates. All of this is played so seriously you will die laughing. There’s also the obligatory Drag Race and OF COURSE someone dies while drag racing. My Bad Movie page has a full-length review of this one if you’re interested.
SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROCK! (1956) – In this hilarious movie Rock and Roll music is blamed for the Juvenile Delinquency epidemic of the 1950’s. Not only does one particularly irrational city ban rock music completely but it puts the local rock DJ on trial!
They hold him accountable for the vandalism and other JD activities that hit the town because, by their logic, the “wild” music he played CAUSED the teenagers to commit their crimes. This is Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
Blood Beach
In the middle 1980s/ Way down on Level 31 …
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the 1980s.
EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday February 22nd, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.
SERIAL: Before showing and mocking the movie machine-gun toting Randy Clower and Richard Malmos, as members of the fictional Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) showed and mocked a chapter of the Republic Serial Radar Men from the Moon (1952).
FILM VAULT LORE: Our Film Vault Technicians First Class would pull the usual Movie Host duties like providing background info on the films and serials, and would also do comedy sketches centered around their fictional Film Vault Corps before and after commercials. They protected their duty station from menaces like giant rats, cellumites and other threats.
That duty station – Level 31 Core 27 of the Film Vault System was accessed via an industrial park behind KDFI Channel 27’s headquarters off Highway 183 near Dallas. The show was directed by Karl Newman, who often good-naturedly bemoaned Randy and Richard’s tendency to ad-lib. Sometimes in print interviews Newman would joke that if they used a script they would need far too many takes for Clower and Malmos to read their lines right, hence the ad-libbing.
THE MOVIE: Blood Beach (1980) was one of Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts
Frontierado is Friday, August 5th!
For a change of pace I’ll give a brief synopsis of western-flavored horror flicks. In keeping with my blog’s theme of covering out of the way topics I won’t be examining movies that are too well known, like Billy the Kid vs Dracula, Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter or The Terror of Tiny Town. Ditto for more recent movies like Sundown and Billy The Kid In Hell. As for West World and Welcome to Blood City, those are more science fiction than horror, so they aren’t included either.
BLACK NOON (1971) – Roy Thinnes stars as an old west preacher who falls in with a coven of witches in the town of Melas (Salem spelled backwards of course). The witches tempt Thinnes into thinking he’s a prophet and healer, then use his vanity against him and his wife during their dark ritual of the Black Noon, which takes place during a mid-day eclipse.
CURSE OF THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN (1974) – A medical student and his hippy friends try to renovate a dude ranch haunted by the Headless Horseman. No, it’s not the figure from the Washington Irving tale, but an old-west gunslinger who was unjustly hanged, losing his head in the process. The Horseman now roams the dude ranch by night looking for victims to frighten. SPOILER: The Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, FRONTIERADO
No, it’s not either version of the splatter film Maniac, it’s the 1934 bad movie classic. I got an e-mail requesting I review it but since I did already – in 2010 in fact, here is an “encore” version. For more bad movie reviews click here: https://glitternight.com/bad-movies/
MANIAC (1934) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following An actor on the run from the law falls in with a mad scientist, Dr Meierschultz. He becomes an accomplice in the good doctor’s dark experiments involving the reanimation of a dead woman (whose corpse he and Meierschultz steal from a morgue) and the transplantation of Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
SCORPION THUNDERBOLT – Yes, it’s Scorpion Thunderbolt, the horror movie that has absolutely NOTHING to do with EITHER scorpions OR thunderbolts! They could have titled this thing Terms of Endearment 2 and it wouldn’t have been any less appropriate.
Potential viewers will find various years of release listed for this flick like 1983, 1985 or 1988. That’s because this is another of those bizarre cinematic cut-and-paste jobs that we fans of bad movies just love, like They Saved Hitler’s Brain, Spookies, Pink Angels, Monster A Go-Go and so many others.
The original film was titled Grudge of the Sleepwalking Woman and was a Taiwanese horror movie from 1983. Balladeer’s Blog’s old friend Godfrey Ho, the Schlockmeister General of Hong Kong cinema, bought the original movie. That Dr Frankenstein of the editing room padded the film’s run-time by adding some kung fu fights and one of his usual non sequitur movie quickies starring Richard Harrison, then tried to pass the mess off as all one movie. Same ol’ same ol’ for Godfrey Ho, in other words. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
GHOSTWATCH (1992) – This was a British made for t.v. movie that aired on Halloween Night in 1992. Ghostwatch is a nice – albeit boring – little novelty item for the way it anticipated the paranormal “reality” (LMAO) shows of today.
The telefilm also can’t help but put viewers in mind of the Paranormal Activity series and countless other Found Footage horror movies. Ghostwatch involves much older technology of course but for once, since the make-believe t.v. crew is filming their investigation of a haunted house, it MAKES SENSE for people to be filming everything. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
BLACK ROSES (1988) – This legendarily laughable attempt at a horror film belongs to quite a few niche sub-genres. It’s a Canadian horror movie, it’s one of the wonderfully campy Heavy Metal Horror productions of the 1980s and most importantly for trivia lovers Black Roses is one of the Big Three Canadian turkeys to feature Frank Dietz in a supporting role. (The other two are Rock’N’Roll Nightmare and Zombie Nightmare. )
Dietz looked too young to be a police detective in Zombie Nightmare and he looks too OLD to be a high school student in Black Roses. But that’s part of his – and the movie’s – charm. He also plays one of the Black Roses in monster form during the film.
You want more kitsch-casting? How about Julie Adams of Creature From The Black Lagoon playing an elderly frump outraged over Heavy Metal’s supposed “Satanic” element?
How about noted musician Carmine Appice as Vinny Apache, one of the demonic members of the band Black Roses?
How about Vincent Pastore from The Sopranos as a Heavy Metal-hating parent who pays for that by getting mauled by a $1.49 spider-puppet AND getting sucked into a speaker playing Black Roses songs? Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
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