With Veterans Day coming up here are links to Balladeer’s Blog’s many World War One posts over the years.
ELEVEN MEDAL OF HONOR WINNERS FROM WORLD WAR ONE – CLICK HERE
AMERICAN FLYING ACE J.M. SWAAB – CLICK HERE
NEGLECTED U.S. NAVAL BATTLES OF WORLD WAR ONE – CLICK HERE
VINTAGE SCI-FI ABOUT WORLD WAR ONE – CLICK HERE
SEVEN AMERICAN FLYING ACES OF WORLD WAR ONE – CLICK HERE
SGT YORK OF WORLD WAR ONE – HERE Continue reading
Filed under Neglected History
First, Happy Birthday to college football! It was on November 6th, 1869 that Princeton and Rutgers played each other in the very first intercollegiate football game “on the banks of the Raritan” as the old fight song goes.
HEADLINES
LINCOLN TOPPLES NCAA DIVISION TWO – The unaffiliated LINCOLN (CA) UNIVERSITY OAKLANDERS took it on the road against NCAA Division 2’s BLUEFIELD STATE BIG BLUES. In a blow to the pride of the upper divisions, the Oaklanders emerged with a 20-17 Upset win in this Instant Classic.
KNOCKING OFF NUMBER SEVEN – In NCAA D2 the 24th ranked UNIVERSITY OF WEST GEORGIA WOLVES traveled to face the number 7 team in the country – the DELTA STATE STATESMEN. The Statesmen led 14-7, 28-17 and 35-24 in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Quarters respectively. In the 4th, the Wolves exploded for 28 points and a 52-42 comeback victory.
NUMBER TWO TAKES A FALL – Down in the NJCAA the number 8 COFFEYVILLE COLLEGE RED RAVENS welcomed the 2nd ranked IOWA WESTERN COLLEGE REIVERS yesterday. Believe it or not the Red Ravens held the Reivers to just 7 points and those came in the opening Quarter. Coffeyville led 16-7 at Halftime before winning the game 23-7. Continue reading
Filed under college football
This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero blog post comes a little earlier than usual. This one examines various stories in the Thing’s team-up series titled Marvel Two-in-One after two adventures in Marvel Feature.
MARVEL FEATURE Vol 1 #11 (September 1973)
Title: Cry: Monster
Villains: The Leader and Kurrgo
Synopsis: The Thing and the Hulk get pitted against each other as part of a conflict between the Hulk’s archenemy the Leader (lower right) and the Fantastic Four’s old foe Kurrgo, the former dictator of Planet X. The Leader chose his greatest foe the Hulk as his champion in this fight, while Kurrgo chose the Thing, a member of his team of enemies the Fantastic Four.
The villain whose champion wins the battle will win the prize – abducting BOTH monsters to serve them in their plans. In the Leader’s case, to take over the Earth, and in Kurrgo’s case, to conquer and once again subjugate his people.
While the battle goes on in a ghost town in the American west, Kurrgo cheats by secretly amping up the Thing’s strength via periodic cosmic energy transmissions. This causes the Leader to declare Kurrgo the loser by default. Meanwhile, the Hulk and the Thing battle Kurrgo’s high-tech robot. Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
THE SCIENTIFIC ADVENTURES OF BARON MUENCHHAUSEN (1915-1917) – Written by the iconic Hugo Gernsback in the years before he launched his own publication, these sci-fi tales presented the 1700s Baron being alive and having wild adventures. (The cover spelling does not match the one Gernsback used.)
Like most people I know, I just roll my eyes at the Baron Muenchhausen tall tales, so that’s why I used Hugo’s name in the blog post title. Hugo as the writer of this series of short stories is the REAL draw. The following items first appeared in the magazine Electrical Experimenter.
I MAKE A WIRELESS ACQUAINTANCE (May 1915) – Gernsback’s fictional counterpart I.M. Alier is a radio enthusiast and one day picks up transmissions from THE Baron Muenchhausen. The Baron tells him that in the 1700s he was injected with special embalming fluid which actually put him in suspended animation.
He emerged from that state a few years back and, forced to flee Germany over past offenses, has been having amazing scientific adventures. Alier is skeptical, but the Baron proves his claim by using some of the advanced science he has discovered to change the color of part of the moon. This convinces the narrator.
HOW MUENCHHAUSEN AND THE ALLIES TOOK BERLIN (June 1915) – Alier learns that the Baron has been helping the French in the World War. Among his inventions was a tunneling device for launching sneak attacks but the Central Powers were able to reverse-engineer the technology, resulting in another deadlock.
The Baron and his friend Professor Flitternix have devised anti-gravity screens for a spaceship. They plan to fly the vessel – called the Interstellar – to the moon. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
As we approach the Thanksgiving/ Christmas/ New Year season here’s a look at Balladeer’s Blog’s Big Three favorites when it comes to bourbon.
IRON SMOKE BOURBON – Hunker down with some Iron Smoke Bourbon to help you and yours celebrate.
The people at Iron Smoke amusingly call their cask strength bourbon “Casket Strength.” It’s ONE-HUNDRED TWENTY PROOF, making it the most potent potable on this list.
Remember, to be one of my favorite whiskeys it’s got to have incomparable taste PLUS be strong enough to let you blow flies out of the air right after you take a drink. Continue reading
Filed under opinion
LA ROSE DE FER (1973) – This film’s title was translated into English as The Iron Rose even though The Rose of Iron would be a more literal translation, but that’s just a tiny nitpick. La Rose de Fer was the fifth movie from Jean Rollin, whose horror productions can range from brilliant to So Bad They’re Good level.
The Iron Rose is possibly the greatest example of the “love it or hate it” nature of Rollin’s films. Personally, I love it and consider it one of his best works, but I can certainly understand why some viewers dismiss it as dull, pretentious and self-consciously artsy.
There IS a body count in The Iron Rose, but there is certainly no blood and gore. As our story begins, a beautiful woman (Francoise Pascal) lounges on the beach and regards an iron rose that has washed in with the tide. After tossing it aside she goes about her business, and before long is on a bicycling date with a young man (Hugues Quester).
Eventually the couple – listed as Le Femme and L’homme in the credits – end up taking a walk through one of those bizarrely scenic European graveyards which were tailor-made for this kind of atmospheric, artsy film. A creepy female clown and a sinister-seeming old woman are among the few other people our main characters encounter in the sprawling cemetery.
Viewers have had a few hints along the way that neither one of these young people are one hundred percent stable, but things soon go to the next level. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
HEADLINES
KNOCKING OFF NUMBER THREE – In the NAIA the number 6 team in the nation – the BETHEL (TN) WILDCATS – traveled to face the 3rd ranked LINDSEY WILSON COLLEGE BLUE RAIDERS. A 7-7 tie at Halftime turned into a 21-13 Wildcats lead to end the 3rd Quarter. In the 4th Bethel U. held on for a 21-16 Upset of the Blue Raiders.
NUMBER SEVEN TAKES A FALL – Down in NCAA Division Three the 19th ranked SUSQUEHANNA UNIVERSITY RIVER HAWKS played host to the number 7 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BLUE JAYS. The River Hawks put the Blue Jays on Upset Alert at the midpoint with a 14-12 edge. Each team scored 12 points in the 2nd Half for a 26-24 Susquehanna victory.
DOWN GOES NUMBER NINE – Up in NCAA Division 2 the storied HILLSDALE COLLEGE CHARGERS welcomed the number 9 ASHLAND UNIVERSITY EAGLES. After a 7-7 1st Quarter tie the Chargers led 14-10 at the Half and then 22-20 in the 3rd Quarter before winning out by a final score of 36-20. Continue reading
Filed under college football
For this weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero blog post we’ll do the DC characters called the Creature Commandos.
WEIRD WAR TALES Vol 1 #93 (November 1980)
Title: The Creature Commandos
Villains: Nazi soldiers
Synopsis: This story introduced Project M, a fictional 1942 War Department effort to unleash supernatural monsters upon the Axis armies. The members of these Creature Commandos:
*** Warren Griffith, an institutionalized teenager who irrationally thought he was a werewolf, so the scientists of Project M turned him into a real, biological man-wolf who could become his monstrous self at will.
*** Marine Private Elliot “Lucky” Taylor, who blew away much of his body by stepping on a land mine. Government scientists used patchwork body parts to reassemble him into a huge, yellow-skinned Frankenstein’s Monster figure.
*** Army Sergeant Vincent Velcro, who was given a choice of 30 years of hard labor for crippling a superior officer or being a human guinea pig for chemical injections derived from bat blood. The injections turned him into a science-spawned vampire.
*** Lieutenant Matthew Shrieve, Army Intelligence, a normal human placed in charge of the Creature Commandos.
In their first mission, the Commandos are sent into France to attack Castle Conquest, where the Nazis and French collaborators are designing android duplicates of high-level politicians from Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on down. The plan is to use the nearly completed robots to replace the originals and surrender to the Axis Nations. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season, Superheroes
Balladeer’s Blog’s recent looks at Eight Neglected Monsters for Halloween Season and Six More Neglected Monsters for Halloween Season were big hits with readers, so here are four more.
MALDOROR
First Appearance: The Songs of Maldoror (1868)
Cryptid Category: Malevolent Unearthly Entity
Lore: Maldoror repeatedly lied about his nature and origins, casting doubt upon everything except the unspeakable vileness of … whatever he was. He/ It was possessed of greater than human strength, sadistic cunning and the ability to sprout tentacles, wings or other appendages from his shoulder blades.
This supernatural menace glided through the world with a serial killer’s mentality and viewed all other living things – even children and animals – as nothing but potential victims. Maldoror’s graphic violence against those he preyed upon was so disturbing that it would know no equal until the most depraved murderers of the 20th Century came along.
The monstrous entity encountered many other oddities like a hermaphrodite, a philosophical mad gravedigger, a large black tarantula, the Angel of the Lamp and others. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
THE RIDER OF THE SKULLS aka El Charro de las Calaveras (1965) – Halloween is fast approaching, so here is another seasonal post from Balladeer’s Blog. Regular readers know how much I enjoy the campy, so-bad-they’re-good horror films from Mexico. I reviewed several of them HERE years ago.
El Charro de las Calaveras was written and directed by Alfredo Salazar, brother of Abel Salazar, the Brainiac himself from that 1961 horror movie. This was Alfredo’s first turn in the director’s chair but he had written many, many Mexican horror flicks, including the original Aztec Mummy trilogy, Wrestling Women movies, you name it.
This particular movie is a textbook example of a fun-bad film. The Rider of the Skulls (Dagoberto Rodriguez) is a masked gunslinging hero in Old Mexico, clad all in black including a big sombrero but with drawings of skulls on his back and on each shoulder. Well, at first. The shoulder skulls change to one on each breast in the second act.
Our hero has been fighting the forces of evil ever since his parents were slain by criminals years earlier.
El Charro arrives in a nearly deserted town with a dilapidated cemetery in which assorted skulls lie around in piles. The masked hero encounters the first of three monsters he will fight in this flick – a ridiculous looking werewolf with a headpiece so large it makes him look like the mascot of a sports team. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
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