More like The Boy With The Ham-Fisted Message if you’ve seen this flick.
Tag Archives: badfilm
GHOSTWATCH (1992): FILM REVIEW
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.
The casting for this production was well-done in that it contains virtually NO recognizable faces. Usually when watching BBC items from back then viewers can’t help but play Spot the Doctor Who/ Sherlock Holmes/ British Murder Mysteries Actor. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Forgotten Television, Halloween Season
HIGH SCHOOL CAESAR (1960) FOR BACK-TO-SCHOOL TIME
For back-to-school time here’s my review of the 1960 Juvenile Delinquent classic High School Caesar.
HIGH SCHOOL CAESAR (1960) Category: Bad, youth-oriented 1960 movie that is incredibly campy This movie may have a 1960 release date but it is the most classically campy example of the Juvenile Delinquent movies of the 1950’s.
That genre spawned many “so bad they’re good” films like High School Hellcats, Untamed Youth and many others featuring fast cars, silly slang and misunderstood or just plain malevolent teenagers. High School Caesar renders itself even more laughable than other Juvenile Delinquent films with its wonderfully absurd premise.
Yes, this movie takes its cue from the Edward G Robinson gangster movie Little Caesar and depicts the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency as if it’s a High School ROTC version of organized crime.
The title character is a kind of leather-jacketed Don Corleone overseeing a high school operation involving hallway protection rackets, rigged student elections and a black market of stolen exam answers. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, humor
THE GOLDEN BAT (1966): FILM REVIEW
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
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Superheroes
NEIL BREEN’S LATEST FILM: TWISTED PAIR (2018)
My fellow Human Breens will be thrilled to hear that the one, the only Neil Breen (PBUH) has released his latest cinematic effort. He once again wrote, starred and directed. This addition to the Breeniverse is titled Twisted Pair and features Neil sharing the starring role with the only man who could possibly hold their own with him on the big screen: himself.
As if one Neil Breen pompously setting straight the human race about what moral lepers we are wasn’t enough we now get Breen Times Two or Breen Squared or however you would prefer to describe it. Neil portrays identical twins Keith and Kale, who merge with a form of Artificial Intelligence, gain super powers from it and then set out to save humanity from itself. Same ol’ same ol’ in other words.
We get some Sheer Breenius right off the bat as the twins are listed in the credits as Keith and Kale but are referred to as KANE and Kale in the dialogue. Don’t ever change, Neil.
Anyway, Keith (Or Kane) and Kale are “Identical Neil Breens/ All the way/ They walk alike/ They fly alike/ They even give tiresome lectures with an air of moral superiority alike/ … What a Twisted Pair!/ You will lose your mind/ When Neil Breen/ Is Two of a Kiiiind!”
Conflict is the essence of drama, of course, and though Keith and Kale just KNOW they are the Supreme Breens fit to reform humanity the twins disagree about the way to approach their mission. The two members of this Breen Trust clash when one of them decides the human race must be browbeaten into submission while the other decides that the human race must be SAVAGELY browbeaten into submission. Fifty Shades of Grey takes on new meaning here.
Anyway, in Twisted Pair the number of computers destroyed may be larger while the body count and the women’s breasts may be smaller but otherwise it’s pretty much Breen-ness as usual.
Remember the tagline to the Christopher Reeve Superman movie: “You’ll believe a man can fly.” Well in Twisted Pair you WON’T believe how hard you’ll laugh when you see Keith and Kale fly. If you’re a heathen who’s not familiar with the Breen Scene my look at his first four films can be found HERE
The Twisted Pair trailer is below: Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977): BRUCE LEE EXPLOITATION
The Dragon Lives Again
THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977) – Category: Brucesploitation 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 martial 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 leading men who don’t even look like Bruce Lee is well-represented in this flick, but at least here they try to explain it away by talking about how a person’s face and body change after death. Which, of course, makes no sense since this is supposed to be Lee’s soul, not his body.
Anyway, Bruce somehow persuades the King Of The Dead to grant him a chance to return to the world of the living, and is told he can return if he outfights all the other inhabitants of this odd netherworld.
You see, this isn’t just any bland version of the afterlife our hero finds himself in. It’s kind of a Valhalla of cult movie characters and Bruce spends the rest of the movie fighting all of them in various combinations. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
FRIDAY THE 13th: THE ORPHAN (1977)
FRIDAY THE 13th: THE ORPHAN (1977) – H.H. Munro must have turned over in his grave at this adaptation of one of his short stories. This quasi-horror film was re-released in 1979 as just The Orphan and despite the original title it has no connection to the Friday the 13th series of slasher flicks. At least, no REAL connection. I’m surprised some unscrupulous distributor never tried sneaking this into theaters in the 1980s as a “prequel” to the slasher movies by presenting the insane young boy in the movie as the grandfather of Jason Voorhees.
Even so the title makes it hard not to think of our wealthy young protagonist “David” (Mark Owens) as an ancestor of the hockey- masked slice and dice man from Crystal Lake. In the 1920s David’s mother accidentally shoots his African Big Game Hunter father Kevin to death during an argument about his frequent overseas trips. David not only witnesses this but sees his mother put the gun in her mouth and kill herself immediately afterward.
Next David gets VERY disturbed when a presumed family member (an uncredited Christopher Lloyd in a “blink-and-you’ll- miss- him” appearance) forces him to kiss his dead father as he lies in his coffin.
The young man’s Aunt Martha arrives to take care of him (and yes, obscure movie buffs, she sometimes does dreadful things). Turns out Martha was dating David’s father before he callously dumped her to marry her sister. Martha takes her resentment of the father out on David and even chews him out about a cough he inherited from dear dead Dad. I’m sure you can tell where all this is headed. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
SUPERNATURAL (1933): TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT
Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault!
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the mid-1980s.
EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday April 19th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.
EXTRAS: This episode featured footage of our Film Vault Technicians First Class Randy and Richard’s promotional appearance at Six Flags Mall in nearby Arlington, TX. 
HOST SEGMENTS: One particular Host Segment featured one of the show’s behind-the- scenes people portraying Commando Cody complete with helmet and rocket pack. He was portraying the character because the Commando Cody serial Radar Men from the Moon was the current serial being shown before the movie each week on The Texas 27 Film Vault.
Since Randy Clower still outranked his co-host Richard Malmos (at least until a few episodes later) in the fictional Film Vault Corps (“The few, the proud, the sarcastic”) their relationship often featured the type of abusive “Host and Second Banana” dynamic like that between Dr Morgus and his lab assistant Chopsley or Zacherle and his wife My Dear or Dr Forester and TV’s Frank. 
At any rate this Host Segment featured “Commando Cody” befriending Randy and setting out with him for a night of partying on the town while the two leave Richard behind to do all the grub work in their barracks.
SERIAL: As noted above Radar Men from the Moon was the current serial being shown. This episode featured Chapter Ten titled Mass Execution.
THE MOVIE: Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts
CORPSE EATERS (1974)
CORPSE EATERS (1974) – No, not The Brain Eaters and not The Worm Eaters, both of which are real movies, but Corpse Eaters without any “the” in front. This 57 minute wonder actually manages to overstay its welcome, believe it or not, which is just as well because the similar low-budget film Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things did everything better than this film does.
The people behind Corpse Eaters know JUST what horror fans want to see … water-skiing and plenty of it! This baby takes the concept of padding to the next level with interminable footage of two couples having a great time boating and otherwise whooping it up at lakeside. I’m not old enough to have ever sat through a suburban family’s hellishly boring home-movies but thanks to this film I can experience it as if I was alive back then! Sweeeeet!
The aforementioned lakeside footage comes after the audience is treated to several loooong minutes of a mortician and his assistant talking about what a creepy job they have. Then it’s on to our “stars” if that isn’t too strong a word for them. The frolicing couples note that it’s Friday the 13th and decide to spend the night in a graveyard just for the heck of it. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP (1980): BAD MOVIE
HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP (1980) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following
Okay, this movie is better known than many of the other joyously bad films I review, but it still hasn’t acquired the reputation or the following it deserves as Midnight Movie or Movie Host material. Vic Morrow IS the heavy and Doug McClure IS another bland and unmemorable hero in this film, one of the many horror flicks that tried to imitate Alien.
Roger Corman executive- produced and his gang alone would turn out a few other movies that were , shall we say – “reminiscent” – of Alien, namely Forbidden World and Galaxy of Terror (If you ever wanted to see Joannie from Joannie Loves Cha-Chi explode from within this is the movie for you!) Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
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