In the middle 1980s/ Way down on Level 31 … There was The Texas 27 Film Vault. Balladeer’s Blog continues its salute to the FORTIETH anniversary year of this neglected cult show that debuted on Saturday February 9th, 1985.
ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE FOR THIS EPISODE: Supposedly Saturday March 30th, 1985 from 10:30PM to 1:00AM. Broadcast throughout Texas and Oklahoma.
SERIAL: Prior to showing and mocking the movie Randy Clower and Richard Malmos, the show’s machine-gun wielding “Film Vault Technicians First Class” (EO6) showed an episode of the notoriously campy sci-fi serial The Lost City (1935). That serial featured a super-scientific city lost in the middle of the African jungle plus zombified “giant” African tribesmen, ray-guns, a slinky femme fatale and a tribe of pygmies.
There’s also a Great White Hunter as the hero and a mad scientist whose inventions include a machine that turns black people into white people!
And with typically tasteless Hollywood racism, the “colorization” is considered a REWARD for tribesmen who serve the mad scientist well! All this plus BOTH William Boyds in one serial!
THE TUNNEL WITH THE MINIATURES OF FILM VAULT DOORS.
FILM VAULT LORE: One eye-catching element of The Texas 27 Film Vault was the POV shot and miniatures for the fictional Film Vault that Randy, Richard, Ken “Tex” Miller, Joe Tyler and Laurie Savino worked in.
Randy Clower was kind enough to provide me with the behind-the-scenes photo shown above right.
THE MOVIE: Monster From Green Hell was one of the many, many “Big Bug” films of the 1950s. Most of those “bugs” on the loose were mutated to giant size by atomic radiation but in this flick it was cosmic radiation instead which was the culprit.
Two scientists at a desert testing lab featuring the WORST “paintings masquerading as scenery outside a window” in film history are launching rockets with various life forms aboard. They do that to test the effects of exposure to cosmic radiation on those life forms. One of their rockets malfunctions and crash-lands in the “Green Hell” portion of Africa after exposing its wasp passenger to cosmic rays for over 40 hours. Continue reading
SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER-VILLAINS Vol 1 #1 (Jun 1976) 
Identical invitations are received by the supervillains called Gorilla Grodd, Copperhead, Sinestro and others. Everyone but Catwoman accepts. When they are all assembled in the aforementioned Citadel they meet the new woman using the Star Sapphire nom de guerre. They also meet their butler, Carstairs.
WONDERWORLDS (Wunderwelten) (1911) – Written by Friedrich W. Mader. This novel was published in its native German in 1911 but not translated into English until 1932 under the title Distant Worlds. Some sources mistakenly list 1932 as its original year of publication. 
3. SILA – The god of the weather and of the animating life-force, frequently manifested as the winds, which were looked on as the “breathing of the world.” For this reason he was also the deity governing the breathing of humanity and animals as well, since breath flows like wind in and out of us all. The life force was said to come from Sila and flow back into Sila after death, and then, through the lesser deities, was eventually sent back into the world via reincarnation. Because singing, humming and tale-spinning are also done with the breath Sila was also seen as the god of songs, tales, music and other creative inspiration. 
What Meet the Beatles was to the British Invasion, The Banqueters was to Attic Old Comedy. (Yes, I love silly comparisons) This play was the first comedy written by Aristophanes, the leading light of ancient Greek comedy, and was performed at the Lenaea festival of 427 BC when Aristophanes was nineteen years old. The Banqueters won second prize, making it a very auspicious debut for the man often considered the greatest political satirist of the ancient world. 
THE GHOST RAILWAY BRIDGE ON THE SHAHO – Our masked hero and his crew on their Luftschiff are in the sky above the River Shaho. They observe the Russian and Japanese armies preparing for another monumental battle. NOTE: The Kapitan Mors tales are like the Sherlock Holmes stories in that they often jump around in time. This one is set during the Russo-Japanese War, so much earlier than most of the Mors stories. 
THE GREAT ADVENTURE (1963-1964) – This hour-long series presented dramatizations of well-known and obscure events from United States history. 
THE HUNLEY – In February of 1864 the Confederacy launched the experimental submarine Hunley, named after its inventor Horace Lawson Hunley. Two previous crews had drowned on test runs but on its final voyage the eight-man sub used a torpedo to sink the Union Navy’s warship the USS Housatonic. The Hunley was also destroyed by the blast and the crew killed. 
Before MST3K we had The Texas 27 Film Vault. Before Joel and Mike we had Randy and Richard. Before Pearl we had Laurie Savino. Before Devil Dogs, Observers and Deep 13 we had giant rats, Cellumites and Level 31.
Since Randy Clower still outranked his co-host Richard Malmos (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. Forrester and TV’s Frank. 
THE MOVIE: Supernatural starred Carole Lombard and Randolph Scott in a campy and hilariously bad story of possession. When serial murderess Ruth Rogen is executed her spirit winds up inhabiting the body of Lombard’s character Roma Courtney, a wealthy socialite. 
MINNIE’S BOYS (1970) – HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! This year Balladeer’s Blog looks at the musical comedy Minnie’s Boys, about Minnie Marx, the mother – and show-biz manager – of the five Marx Brothers (Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Zeppo and Gummo). Actors portraying her sons co-starred and conjured up the kind of hilarious chaos you’d expect. 
Let’s face it, trying to do a straight drama about the most anarchic comedians since Edward Lear and Eugene Ionesco would have been foolish, even if their mother is the lead character, not them. The storyline in Minnie’s Boys takes Minnie and her sons from their teenage years in vaudeville to their achievement of stardom. 
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