Tag Archives: Balladeer’s Blog

June 23, 2025 · 5:01 pm

ROCK HUDSON’S SWASHBUCKLER FILMS

Time for a look at Rock Hudson’s overlooked swashbuckler movies.

SEA DEVILS (1953) – As England and other nations battle France in 1800, English Captain Gilliatt (Rock Hudson) has abandoned his career as a fisherman to become a smuggler. He excels at the task and over the past few years he and his ship the Sea Devil have gained quite a reputation.

The wily and sea-savvy Gilliatt’s latest cargo to smuggle is Droucette (Yvonne De Carlo), a fugitive French aristocrat acting undercover to save her brother from the guillotine in Revolutionary France.

Amid much swordplay and other action during frequent trips across the Channel, Gilliatt struggles to keep her alive and understand the motives of this beautiful woman with whom he has fallen in love.

Droucette for a time seems to secretly be an agent for Napoleon but then turns out to be a double agent who is really working for England after all. Gilliatt prevails in the end, thwarting Napoleon’s plot to invade England and rescuing Droucette from death on the guillotine.    Continue reading →

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June 22, 2025 · 5:56 pm

UNITED INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE: COOL NAMED SPORTS TEAM

Time for another Balladeer’s Blog tip of the hat to a college sports team that’s not going by the overused Eagles, Tigers, Bulldogs and Wildcats.

UNITED INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE Continue reading →

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June 21, 2025 · 6:13 pm

BALLADEER’S BLOG IS NOW FIFTEEN YEARS OLD

THANK YOU once again to all of you readers for making Balladeer’s Blog so enjoyable to write. As I always say, the unusual and controversial items I sometimes churn out here mean that readers have to be open-minded and very secure in their own beliefs not to just take offense and leave. You folks are the greatest!  

Here are some of my most popular blog posts from the past 12 months.

BAD MOVIES – “Teenage” Monsters from the 1950s HERE, The Bionic Boy (1977) HERE, Fist of Fear, Touch of Death (1980) HERE, Television Spy HERE, Ron Ely’s Spaghetti Westerns HERE, Keith Richards movies HERE.

ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION – The Air Battle (1859) HERE, Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686) HERE, In the Deep of Time (1897) HERE. Conquest of the Moon (1887) HERE. The Aleriel Novels (1874-1893) HERE. A Voyage into Tartary (1689) HERE. Elektropolis (1928) HERE.

FORGOTTEN TELEVISION – The Swamp Fox with Leslie Nielsen as Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion HERE, Wildside (1985) HERE, Reel Wild Cinema episodes HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE. The Best of Broadway HERE. Big Hawaii (1977) HERE. The Blue Palace (1974-1976) HERE.

SILENT FILMS – Rin Tin Tin’s silent movies HERE. Seven silent films about the American Revolution HERE. Samson in silent films HERE. Rudolph Valentino’s silent movies HERE. Mabel Normand’s silent films HERE. 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1916) HERE. Astrea the Strongwoman HERE.

FRONTIERADO – The original Deadwood Dick Dime Novel (1877) HERE, O. Henry’s original Cisco Kid story HERE. Shotgun John, neglected gunslinger HERE. The real Judge Roy Bean HERE. The Buffalo Soldiers HERE. Red Sun (1971) with Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune and Alain Delon HERE.

FOURTH OF JULY SEASON – Neglected battles: February 1777 HERE, Anna Maria Lane and Sally St. Claire HERE, the Black Soldiers of the Chasseurs-Voluntaires de St. Domingue HERE. The Black Coat, forgotten Revolutionary War superhero HERE. Blackheart Rum for the 4th of July HERE. Continue reading →

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June 21, 2025 · 12:01 am

1940s MARVEL SUPERHEROINES

This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the neglected superheroines of Marvel Comics, known in the 1940s as Timely Comics.

SILVER SCORPION 

Secret Identity: Betty Barstow

First Appearance:  Daring Mystery Comics #7 (April 1941) Her final Golden Age appearance came in 1942.

Origin: Betty Barstow, a feisty secretary for private investigator Dan Hurley, donned a costume and investigated a case her boss was refusing to look into, a case involving unusual activity at a graveyard. She wound up capturing a ring of counterfeiters and resolved to continue fighting crime as the Silver Scorpion.

Powers: The Silver Scorpion was in peak physical condition and excelled at jiu-jitsu and other martial arts. In addition, she was as agile as an acrobat. 

Comment: Since the only things “silver” on the Silver Scorpion’s costume were her wristlets, boots and the scorpion logo on her cape, I think they should have made her wristlets into revolving bracelets which fired long silver needles coated in scorpion venom. Non-fatal scorpion venom, of course, but painful and inducing temporary paralysis. Continue reading →

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June 19, 2025 · 5:09 am

THIRTEEN HEAVY METAL HORROR FILMS FROM THE EIGHTIES

Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at a baker’s dozen of movies from the 1980s subgenre of Heavy Metal-related horror. Why only thirteen? Because I already reviewed Black Roses and Rocktober Blood years ago.

PAGANINI HORROR (1989) – Directed by Luigi Cozzi, better known to us fans of psychotronic movies as the Italian Ed Wood. Three women and one man constitute a heavy metal band desperate for a hit song. They strike a Faustian bargain with the mysterious Mr. Pickett, played by Donald Pleasence.

Pickett takes their souls as payment for a lost musical composition by the long-dead violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini. The rockers adapt the piece of music as a heavy metal work and decide to film the song’s music video in a mansion once owned by Paganini himself. 

Playing the piece while filming at the mansion causes Paganini to rise from the dead and lets loose other forces of Hell. Those characters not butchered by the masked, undead maestro via a knife that pops out of his violin are slaughtered by the supernatural forces now at large in the house.

Cozzi being Cozzi we also get the kitchen sink in the form of time loops, portals to Hell, family curses, cosmic Lovecraftian concepts and some of the daffiest death scenes imaginable. Some victims die by wood fungus, an inexplicable car fire and even by having invisible walls close in and crush them. Insert your own mime joke here.  Continue reading →

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June 17, 2025 · 8:25 pm

COTHURNUS (C 405 B.C.) ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY

The Ruins of the Theater of Dionysus in Athens.

Balladeer’s Blog takes another look at an ancient Greek comedy. This time around I’m examining  Cothurnus by Philonides, a comic poet who may also have acted and produced for the Athenian stage as well. It cannot be definitively determined if the “Philonides” referred to in those capacities are all one and the same or separate figures.

THE PLAY  

Like most ancient Greek comedies Cothurnus has survived only in fragmentary form and with very few fragments at that. The title refers to a type of footwear of the time period. A cothurnus could be worn on either the left foot or the right foot because of its softness and looseness. Because of this the word “cothurnus” also became a sarcastic term for a politician who tried to position themselves on both sides of an issue, claiming victory no matter which way the political winds blew.

This is certainly another element of Old Comedy that we can still relate to 2,400 years later. Philonides was specifically using this term and this comedy to target Theramenes.

To give a comprehensive look at Theramenes’ political juggling act would take too much time, suffice it to say he would flip-flop not just on specific issues but would retroactively claim to have supported whichever side won, would change political affiliations again and again and even set up other public figures to take the fall for his own failures (like arranging for six generals to be blamed and executed for his own part in the Arginusae travesty). Continue reading →

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June 17, 2025 · 11:47 am

THE YOUNG REBELS (1970-1971) FORGOTTEN TELEVISION

THE YOUNG REBELS (1970-1971) – With the 4th of July approaching, here’s another seasonal post. Harve Bennett himself was involved with this series that ran for 15 hour-long episodes. A group of young men and one young woman help fight for American Independence in 1777 Pennsylvania.

Louis Gossett, Jr. starred as former slave Isak Poole, Richard Ely played Jeremy Larkin, Alex Henteloff was Henry Abington and Hilarie Thompson portrayed Elizabeth Coates. The quartet served as spies and guerilla fighters against the British. Philippe Forquet guest starred in 14 episodes as the Marquis de Lafayette, who gave orders to our heroes.

Jeremy led the foursome while hiding his rebel activities from his father (Will Geer), a Tory mayor. Isak was the group’s best fighter and Elizabeth was their best spy. Henry was an inventor who devised gadgets for the Young Rebels.  Continue reading →

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June 16, 2025 · 7:15 pm

HAPPY BLOOM’S DAY 2025

jamesjoyceYes, it’s the 16th of June, better known to James Joyce geeks like me as Bloom’s Day. The day is named in honor of Leopold Bloom, the advertising sales rep and Freemason who is one of the major characters in Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The novel also brings along Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of his earlier novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

For those unfamiliar with this work, Ulysses is Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness novel in which he metaphorically features the events from the Odyssey in a single day – June 16th, 1904, in Dublin. (The day he met Nora Barnacle, the woman he would eventually marry after living together for decades)

Bloom represents Ulysses/Odysseus, Stephen represents Telemachus and Leopold’s wife, Molly Bloom, represents Penelope. Continue reading →

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June 15, 2025 · 10:17 am

THE DEVLIN CONNECTION (1982) FOR FATHER’S DAY

THE DEVLIN CONNECTION (1982) – HAPPY FATHER’S DAY! Balladeer’s Blog marks the occasion with a look at this short-lived detective series starring Rock Hudson and Jack Scalia as father and son investigators.   

Hudson played Brian Devlin, a retired private investigator (but see below) who is now the director of the Los Angeles Arts Center. One day he is reunited with the son he never knew he had with an old flame. That son is Nick Corsello (Jack Scalia), a private investigator who works out of a bar (4 episodes) or a health club (9 episodes).

Before I cover the schizophrenic nature of this 13-episode series I’ll describe the father-son relationship. Brian and Nick try to form a bond, but Brian often puts a strain on their relationship by unofficially helping his son with the cases he’s working on despite his son wanting to accomplish things on his own.

Viewers get some laughs from Hudson’s character trying to hide his parallel investigations from Scalia and from the bickering between the pair when the son inevitably gets wise to Dad’s meddling. Continue reading →

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June 14, 2025 · 6:43 pm

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH PART 3-D (1982) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault! In the middle 1980s, way down on Level 31 Randy and Richard, machine-gun toting Film Vault Technicians First Class hosted this neglected cult show. Balladeer’s Blog continues its celebration of the program’s 40th anniversary year.

ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday February 14th, 1987 from 10:30pm to 1:00am. Broadcast throughout Texas and Oklahoma. 

SERIAL: None this week. The movie, Film Vault Corps comedy sketches and commercials filled up the entire two-and-a-half-hour runtime.

Randy and Richard firing their machine guns at giant rats, cellumites and other subterranean creatures.

FILM VAULT LORE: This episode marked the second time The Texas 27 Film Vault came with a warning about violent content. It was also at least the second time they riffed on a movie that was originally in 3-D. Randy and Richard did various jokes about wearing 3-D glasses and 3-D effects coming out of the screen at them as they watched the movie.

FOR A LOOK AT THE 3-D TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT POSTER (courtesy of Randy Clower) –https://glitternight.com/2013/03/18/movie-hosts-the-texas-27-film-vault-poster/  

THE MOVIE: Friday the 13th Part 3-D was the most notoriously lame sequel in the Friday the 13th film series during the 1980s. Not only was it part of the laughable 1980s attempt to revive the 3-D craze of the 1950s but it’s also infamous for its DISCO VERSION of the iconic Friday the 13th theme. However, it’s essential viewing for horror fans because it was the first time Jason Voorhees put on the hockey mask that is so closely associated with the character.  Continue reading →

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