Tag Archives: badfilm

THREE BAD MOVIES FOR HALLOWEEN

Blood SongHalloween month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog! Links to previous lists of Halloween Turkeys are below.

Right now here’s a look at three more classically bad horror flicks for the season.

BLOOD SONG (1982) – Singer Frankie Avalon as a 1980’s- style slasher villain! The godfather’s Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana) as a co-star and co-producer! Who could possibly resist that? Frankie plays a homicidal maniac who escapes from an insane asylum with his beloved flute/recorder type thingee.

Turns out years earlier a girl played by Donna Wilkes – soon to star as Angel herself – got a blood transfusion from Psycho Frankie. In this movie’s logic-free universe that means that she has a mental link with our mad slasher. This link is causing him to track her down to kill her with the single-minded fury that Mike Myers showed toward Jaime Lee Curtis in the Halloween movies. Continue reading

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NAKED FEAR: FIVE ODDBALL HORROR FILMS FOR HALLOWEEN

The Nude Vampire

The Nude Vampire

Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues with this look at five unusual movies with that certain seasonal feel.

5. THE NUDE VAMPIRE (1970) – France’s Jean Rollin is one of those love-them-or-hate-them directors. The snooty French often bashed his films for their devotion to style over all else. Don’t believe reviews which claim that his movies have no comprehensible storylines. Personally I find him more straightforward than Lynch or Jodorowsky. At any rate the central figure of this arthouse Euro-horror is indeed a beautiful female vampire in skimpy outfits and less.

Members of a Suicide Cult have taken to offering themselves up to a vampress who turns out to be science-spawned rather than supernatural. Throw in various allusions to evolution, morality and mortality for good measure. There’s plenty of eerie and macabre imagery to go with the subtext which not only addresses the previous concepts but also examines the way in which the older generation of any time period always considers the younger generation to be figurative “monsters” who will quite literally inherit the Earth.

I’m not sure if Anne Rice was influenced by Rollin’s films but Continue reading

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ELEVEN OF THE MOST NEGLECTED BAD MOVIE CLASSICS FOR HALLOWEEN

Laughing at bad movies is one of the greatest pleasures in life. Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are very familiar with my Bad Movie page where I focus on various film flops that I feel deserve larger audiences because of how dementedly enjoyable they are. Since it’s the Halloween Season this list will present eleven of the most neglected bad horror movie classics, many of which deserve Plan 9- sized cult followings. These are short takes. For my full-length reviews of these and other cinematic turkeys see my Bad Movie page. https://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

MORE HALLOWEEN MOVIE TREATS: MEXICAN MONSTERS https://glitternight.com/2011/10/31/a-halloween-mexi-monster-bestiary/

BLAXPLOITATION HORROR: https://glitternight.com/2011/10/26/a-very-blaxploitation-halloween/

11. THE LIFT (1983) – A killer elevator is the unique menace in this joyously absurd horror film from the Netherlands. A heroic elevator repairman tries to stop the bloody reign of terror of a sentient elevator which the movie’s ads described as “the perfect killing machine”. (?) The flick was also advertised with the tag line “For God’s sake, take the stairs” which never fails to make me laugh.

10. ATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES (1983) – The surviving passengers and crew of a sunken luxury liner find themselves on an uncharted island full of ponds and streams that dissolve human flesh. The island is home to the title creatures, who are Continue reading

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THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977)

The Dragon Lives Again

THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977) – CategoryBrucesploitation with an enjoyably absurd twist   

Even for the bizarre sub-genre of Brucesploitation films this movie is out there! The film starts with the recently – deceased Bruce Lee arriving in the afterlife, where the concubines of the King of the Dead gather around to gawk at the bulge in the pants of the late martials arts superstar. (Just in case you thought NO opening could be more tasteless than the one in The Clones Of Bruce Lee ) In a bit of alleged comic relief the bulge turns out to be caused by a weapon, not Lee’s organ. (Corpse schlong jokes! Who doesn’t love them?)

As head-shaking as that bit is at least it’s coherent, unlike virtually everything else that happens from this point on in the movie. And the time-honored tradition of Brucesploitation films having Continue reading

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THE GOLDEN BAT (1966) JAPANESE CULT FILM

The Golden Bat: the ugliest superhero in the world.

The Golden Bat: the ugliest superhero in the world.

THE GOLDEN BAT (1966) – Ogon Batto is the name of this film in its native Japan. The movie was based on the title character, Japan’s very first comic book superhero who debuted in 1930. That 1930 date puts him years before Superman and Batman in the west!  

At any rate for the 1966 movie Japan’s perennial action star Sonny Chiba played the leader of a group of science-oriented commandos in what looked like aluminum foil suits. Chiba and his gang have fancy aircraft like England’s Thunderbirds and their debut mission finds them trying to save the Earth from collision with a rogue planet called Icarus.

Chiba’s outfit has constructed a giant laser cannon to destroy Icarus before it can reach our planet. Trouble is it needs a final component to be found only on a lost island. When Sonny Chiba’s Mighty Aluminum Foil Power Rangers explore the ancient city on that island they uncover the tomb of … the Golden Bat! Continue reading

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SCREAMTIME (1984)

Screamtime 1Screamtime is one of the forgotten horror anthology films from the 1980’s. Supposedly the three main horror tales were originally filmed as individual episodes of a British tv series. Depending on which source you use either the series was cancelled (or never picked up) OR the episodes were deemed to be of too poor a quality.

The trio of horror stories were then edited into movie format for theatrical release with a wraparound story set in New York City. The oddity of the hard-assed New Yorkers watching three veddy, veddy British horror tales is part of the fun of this lame but bearable film. VHS it ain’t. Hell, it’s not even Beta Continue reading

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THE MUMMY AND THE CURSE OF THE JACKALS (1969)

Mummy and the Curse of the JackalsBy request here’s an encore presentation of one of my most popular reviews of a bad movie.

THE MUMMY AND THE CURSE OF THE JACKALS (1969) – Category:A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following     Depending on which film book you read this movie either did or did not have any theatrical release but thankfully it’s available on video. Part of the bad movie fun is provided by how poorly lit some scenes are, even though that prevents us from getting better looks at 1960’s Las Vegas, where the story takes place. In this film Anthony Eisley portrays an archaeologist who, hilariously enough, can’t pronounce the word “archaeological” (he says “arkological”). He also refuses to clean the cobwebs out of his house for some reason, which can be pretty distracting in some scenes.

Like an idiot, he willingly brings the title “curse” upon himself and begins nocturnal transformations into a were-jackal so goofy looking he could pass for the mascot of a sports team. And check out Eisley’s pasty-white neck skin showing under the awkward jackal mask he’s wearing on his face. Eventually Eisley finds himself vying with the fattest mummy in human memory for the affections of an undead Egyptian Princess named Acana. 

Said mummy (who is so bulky you could swear they’ve got Tor Johnson wrapped up in those bandages) has a face that looks like a cross between Popeye the sailor man and the Toxic Avenger. Said Princess is under orders from the goddess Isis herself (in a joyously demented cameo appearance) to revive the worship of the ancient deities and provide them a home and a temple in the Mojave Desert.

Other characters include Eisley’s bland friend Bob and Bob’s blander girlfriend Donna, plus the man who may have appeared in more movies than Bronson Canyon itself, John Carradine, who plays Eisley’s one-time mentor. Continue reading

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BLOOD (1974)

Blood!BLOOD (1974) – Category: Laughably, enjoyably bad, but not fun-bad enough for my highest rating.         This movie is by Andy Milligan, so bad movie buffs know what to expect.  This time out our Staten Island auteur gives us a story about the son of the wolfman and the daughter of Dracula being a married couple. No, it’s not the premise for a wacky new sitcom, it’s an actual attempt at a horror film.

Wolfie Jr is trying to ween his undead bride off her addiction to human blood by substituting a sap produced by his man-eating plants (He creates these plants in his botanical laboratory so he’s both a werewolf and a mad scientist all wrapped up in one)

Trouble is, those plants only produce that sap after devouring a human victim, so what’s the difference? Somebody still winds up dead just to keep this high-maintenance bride nourished. Wolfie Jr could eliminate the middle man by just letting his wife bite people’s necks old-school! Of course, if he did that, we wouldn’t have this movie, and I’ll let you decide for yourself if that’s a Continue reading

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CURSE OF THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN (1974)

CURSE OF THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN (1974) – This neglected beauty twists a classic horror story in a way that even Paul Naschy himself must have stood in awe of.

The Washington Irving tale set in Sleepy Hollow gets transplanted to the American West, and instead of a Hessian soldier beheaded by a cannonball this Headless Horseman is  Continue reading

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WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY (1977)

Welcome to Blood CityFrontierado is coming up on Friday, August 7th!

WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY (1977) Even for a Weird Western, this baby is OUT THERE! The best way to describe it is like a cross between Westworld and the original Patrick McGoohan series The Prisoner.

The opening will likely remind people of the television series Lost with our heroes, led by Keir Dullea, finding themselves in a strange landscape  dressed in prison garb with no recollection of what circumstances led them to this plight. They eventually are rounded up and taken to Blood City, a town straight out of the Ollllllllld West. Continue reading

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