Tag Archives: blogging

THE OZIDI SAGA OF NIGERIA: PART FOUR

FOR PART ONE CLICK HERE. FOR PART TWO CLICK HERE. FOR PART THREE CLICK HERE.     

PART FOUR: When our previous installment ended, Ozidi had killed and beheaded three of his father’s murderers, bringing his soul that much closer to being freed from the deadlands limbo where it was stranded.

He and his sorceress grandmother Oreame began planning to deal with Ofe, the leader of the conspirators who murdered Ozidi the Elder so that they could rule Orua through the elder Ozidi’s mentally unfit brother, King Temugedege. Ofe was growing to fear Ozidi the Younger after the power and skill he had demonstrated in killing his first three opponents.

Ofe manipulated one of his other co-conspirators, Akpobrisi the Net-Wielder Whose Touch Was Death, into attacking Ozidi at the home of his uncle, King Temugedege. And not one-on-one like the three dead and decapitated men Ozidi the Younger had already slain, but with an army of men at his side. Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under Mythology

HUGH ANDERSON: NEGLECTED GUNSLINGER

This year the Frontierado Holiday falls on Friday, August 7th. Frontierado always celebrates the myth of the Old West, not the grinding reality.

HUGH ANDERSON – Born in 1851, Hugh was the son of a successful Texas rancher. Anderson learned every aspect of the business from his father but had a tendency to fall in with rowdy crowds and sometimes engaged in hell-raising with mad dog gunfighter John Wesley Hardin.

In the summer of 1871 Hugh and his father were running a cattle drive from their Texas ranch to the new railhead at Newton, Kansas. Enroute to Newton, the Andersons and their cowboys were overtaken by John Wesley Hardin, who was on the trail of gunman for hire Juan Bideno for killing his friend Billy Cohron in a gunfight.

Hugh agreed to ride with Hardin on his revenge quest. How Anderson’s father felt about his promising but volatile son running off on this side quest in the middle of a cattle drive is anybody’s guess. Continue reading

10 Comments

Filed under FRONTIERADO

SPECIAL BLOG POST: THE ELMER AWARDS FROM SPOOKS HOTEL

Balladeer’s Blog’s love of Movie Host Shows is no secret. Recently I thanked Mike Pieper from Spooks Hotel (1985-1993, 1999-2000) for providing corrections and clarifications on that neglected Bad Movie Show hosted by Joan Kelley-Cordt as Angie LaBanshee and later as Mrs. Spooks. Mike also provided the details about Spooks Hotel‘s Elmer Awards episodes, shown once annually in 1991, 1992 and 1993.

The awards were named after one of the show’s supporting characters, Elmer the Mummy Bellboy, played by Pieper for the first three years of this program. The Elmer Awards let the Spooks Hotel team “honor” various categories from that season’s Bad Movies.

*** THE 1991 ELMER AWARDS – The awards were presented as the episode’s Host Segments. The Golden Turkey being shown was Bela Lugosi’s anti-classic The Corpse Vanishes.  Hosting the Elmer Awards were Joan as Mrs. Spooks, owner of Spooks Hotel, and her seldom-seen husband, mad scientist Dr. Spooks (at left). Elmer himself accepted on behalf of each winner. 

MOST RIDICULOUS LOOKING CREATURE: Nominees – The Sea Creature in The Creature from the Haunted Sea … Zontar in Zontar, the Thing from Venus … The Giant Gumby Rock Creatures from Missile to the Moon … The Giant Brain in The Brain from Planet Arous. WINNER: The Sea Creature.

BEST SCREAM: Presenters – Aunt Hagatha and Uncle Charlie (sort of a proto-Seth Rogan type). Nominees – Bubbles Cash in Mars Needs Women … Lenita Lane in The Bat … Margie Dean in The Quatermass Experiment … Peggy Webber in The Screaming Skull … Candace Hilligoss in Carnival of Souls. WINNER: Peggy Webber.    Continue reading

12 Comments

Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts

ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION: THE AUTOMATIC MAID (1893)

primitive robotTHE AUTOMATIC MAID-OF-ALL-WORK. A POSSIBLE TALE OF THE NEAR FUTURE (1893) – Written by female author M.L. Campbell. Obviously, I shortened the title for my blog post headline. Balladeer’s Blog’s look at “ancient” science fiction continues with this 1893 robot story.

Well-to-do John Matheson and his wife are having a hard time keeping a maid. To satisfy his hard to please wife, the inventor works away in his laboratory/ workshop to perfect his new idea: a mechanized “Maid-Of-All-Work” hoping this will solve the domestic staff issue. Continue reading

12 Comments

Filed under Ancient Science Fiction

SARTANA: MY SECOND FAVORITE SPAGHETTI WESTERN SERIES

As Frontierado fast approaches – Friday, August 7th this year – Balladeer’s Blog is here with another seasonal post. The Frontierado holiday is about the myth of the old west, not the grinding reality.

SARTANA: For the record, the Sartana movies starring Gianni Garko as the gambler-gunslinger are my favorites. His personality is a bit lighter than that of my top favorite Spaghetti Western gunslinger – Franco Nero in the original 1960s Django and its only official sequel, Django Strikes Again

      In addition, Sartana’s films generally stay away from negative emotions like the original Django carried around with him. Sartana’s world is filled mostly with gunmen as cold-blooded and professional as himself. They deserve to be killed and Sartana recognizes that he deserves it, too, it’s just that he proves harder to kill than his enemies ever do. 

      The Sartana movies start out pretty grounded (for Spaghetti Westerns) but as the franchise goes along the installments grow closer to Robert Conrad’s Wild, Wild West series and our hero’s trick guns almost equal James Bond’s gadgets. Sartana himself stops just short of being a swashbuckler as he boldly tweaks the villains with more and more audacity.   

      In this post I will first review the movies in which Gianni Garko played this unusual hero, then George Hilton’s “official” Sartana sequel, then touch on a few of the oddities. Like Django, Sartana inspired many, many “unofficial” sequels – several of which bear the name of the character in the title but not in the actual movie.   

IF YOU MEET SARTANA … PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH (1968) – Sartana shadows a gold shipment being handled by stagecoach across the desert in one of the most distinctive Spaghetti Western entrances this side of Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West. From there, the double-crosses fly like shrapnel among the main characters.

Lasky (William Berger) and his outlaw gang ultimately succeed in robbing the shipment, but our snuff-sniffing villain slaughters his gang members when betrayal seems to be in the air. The only one he lets live is his buddy Morgan (THE Klaus Kinski) and the pair decide to try adding to their haul by blackmailing the banker and other supposedly “respectable” citizens who wanted the gold stolen. Continue reading

31 Comments

Filed under FRONTIERADO

TEEN TITANS (1971-1973)

This weekend’s light-hearted and escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at a particular arc of stories from DC’s original Teen Titans series.

TEEN TITANS Vol 1 #32 (Apr 1971)

Title: A Mystical Realm … A World Gone Mad

Teen Titans Roster: Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Speedy (should be Red Arrow), Lilith (later called Omen) and Malcolm Duncan (their black member who later became Hornblower and then the new Guardian)

Villain: Jupiterius

Synopsis: Mr. Loren Jupiter, the eccentric billionaire who finances the Teen Titans, tries to experiment with time travel. He accidentally sends Mal back to prehistoric times and Kid Flash is sent back to retrieve him. The two run afoul of a teen caveman called Gnarrk (soon to join the team) and accidentally cause his death.

When they return to their own time period it turns out that Gnarrk’s death caused a butterfly effect and the “present” is now ruled by an evil version of Loren Jupiter called Jupiterius. He rules the world with Lilith’s (on stairs) sorcery, monsters and the evil counterparts of what would have been the other Teen Titans.    Continue reading

4 Comments

Filed under Superheroes

THE CIMARRON ROSE: LADY OUTLAW? FACT AND LEGEND FIGHT IT OUT OVER ROSE DUNN

Frontierado falls on Friday, August 7th this year. As always, the Frontierado holiday is about the myth of the Old West, not the grinding reality. 

CIMARRON ROSE DUNN – Poco wrote a song about her. She appears in a 1915 Silent Film about Oklahoma Outlaws. She’s often mistakenly believed to be the subject of the 1952 western The Rose of Cimarron. And it’s not even certain if that’s really her in one of the alleged surviving photos of her. Rose Dunn may embody the embellishments that fight with the truth when it comes to various figures from the Old West.

Even today, online entries and articles about this woman tend to fall into one of two categories. 1. Rose Dunn was an outlaw ally of the Doolin Gang in their rustling and bank & train robbing antics, and she later become a bounty hunter alongside her brothers. Or 2. Rose Dunn was involved in a couple actions with the Doolin Gang but otherwise was as innocent as an angel.

Dunn lived well into the 20th Century but refused to discuss her past, either to avoid notoriety or because there was nothing to tell, take your pick. Still, iconic Old West lawman Bill Tilghman wrote about her criminal career in his supposedly non-fiction book Oklahoma Outlaws.  

The future Rose of Cimarron was born September 5th, 1878 in either Winfield or Cowley, Kansas (sources vary). She had two sisters and seven brothers. Growing up with so many older brothers, Rose could ride and shoot better than some men. When Rose’s father William Dunn died, her mother later remarried to a physician known as Dr. Call and at some point moved to Ingalls, Oklahoma near the Cimarron River. Continue reading

8 Comments

Filed under FRONTIERADO

FOOL KILLER PART SEVENTY-ONE: MAY 1914

Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore. FOR PART ONE, INCLUDING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT IN THE 1850s, CLICK HERE.

PART 71 – Some of the Fool Killer’s targets on both sides of the aisle in the May 1914 edition of James Larkin Pearson’s version of the folk figure:

*** President Woodrow Wilson, for his economic policies which Pearson and his Fool Killer blamed for bringing back the anti-working class (Grover) Cleveland Times.

*** The Government Printing Office which the Fool Killer deemed not worth the money spent on it because all they print is the Congressional Record and what amounts to tiresome government pronouncements.

      (How slow a news month must it be to bother going after the Government Printing Office? Too bad the National Egg Council wasn’t around yet.)

*** Bootleggers who were hurriedly transporting as much whiskey as they could from Virginia into North Carolina, where booze was now illegal. They did this because they could charge much more for liquor in a state where it was officially banned. 

*** Pompous High Society members who looked down their noses at farmers.

*** Readers who demanded Pearson work only with printers who belonged to a union, even though he lived in a part of North Carolina where none were available.  Continue reading

6 Comments

Filed under Mythology

2 B-MOVIE HOSTESSES FROM “SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE PARTY” (1962-1965)

SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE PARTY (1962-1965) was also called simply SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE and PAT’S SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE in the tantalizingly few surviving pieces of information available about this cult Movie Hostess show. SFMP aired Saturday nights at 10:30 (one ad says 10:20) on KMTV in Omaha, Nebraska from September 1962 to the end of summer 1965.   

From 1962-1964 the program was hosted by “Science Fiction Pat” real name Pat Jones and from Summer 1964-Summer 1965 by Ronnie Bounds and her Siamese cat Yatchie. I’ll examine each hostess momentarily, but for the full context of what made Science Fiction Movie Party stand out it’s important to credit the contribution of KMTV’s Program Director Lou Jeffery.

Mr. Jeffery assumed that position in 1961 and by September of 1962 he had carefully assembled campy and low-budget science fiction films that weren’t exclusive to any of the nationwide syndication packages of the time. Lou’s work in securing such a custom package of flicks would have been a big advantage for Science Fiction Movie Party from the show’s outset.

SCIENCE FICTION PAT – Patricia Jones was a multi-talented woman enrolled at the University of Nebraska. On the side she played guitar, sang and recited beat poetry in Omaha coffee houses of the period. On SFMP Pat wrote her own material and designed various mostly black outfits for herself to wear during her Host Segments.

Guitar in hand, Jones would engage in the time-honored tradition of Bad Movie Shows by sarcastically commenting on the bizarre and low-budget nature of the So Bad They’re Good films shown on SFMP. Her sense of humor was versatile enough that she even composed and performed occasional beatnik poems about the schlockers she presented, including Robot Monster (1953), that staple of Bad Movie Shows for decades. Continue reading

8 Comments

Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts

JOHNNY RINGO (1959-1960) FORGOTTEN TELEVISION

JOHNNY RINGO (1959) – Don Durant starred as the one and only Johnny Ringo, the real-life gunslinger. The fictional setting of this program takes place between Johnny’s original rise to fame during the Mason County War in Texas and his final years in Arizona as part of the Clanton-McLaury Crime Faction led by Curly Bill Brocius. Aaron Spelling was the producer.

Ringo is depicted being weary of his life as a gunfighter, so he tries to turn over a new leaf by becoming the Sheriff of the fictional town of Velardi in Arizona Territory. An odd gimmick of the Johnny Ringo television series was the fact that Johnny wielded a special seven-shot pistol designed by the real-life gunmaker Jean LeMat.

Other regular cast members were Mark Goddard as William Cully aka Kid Adonis, Ringo’s deputy; Karen Sharpe as Laura Thomas and Thomas Mitchell as Laura’s father Case Thomas, town drunk turned sheriff’s deputy. Johnny Ringo ran for one pilot episode followed by 38 regular season half-hour episodes. Star Don Durant wrote and sang the theme song.   

THE EPISODES: Continue reading

20 Comments

Filed under Forgotten Television, FRONTIERADO