Tired of college sports teams called Eagles, Tigers, Bulldogs or Wildcats? Here’s another institution whose teams sport a more creative name.
LAKE-SUMTER STATE Continue reading
Tag Archives: blogging
FRONTIER MARSHAL (1939) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT
For some laughs this Frontierado Season, here’s the worst and weirdest version of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the Gunfight at the OK Corral.
A movie guaranteed to contain absolutely NO accurate information.
Before MST3K we had The Texas 27 Film Vault! Before Joel and Mike we had Randy and Richard! Before Pearl and Kinga we had Laurie Savino!
Welcome to a special Frontierado Edition of Balladeer’s Blog’s look at this neglected cult show which ran from 1985-1987, making this its FORTIETH anniversary year.
ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday, October 25th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00 am. Broadcast throughout Texas and Oklahoma.
OPENING SERIAL: An episode of Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940).
THE MOVIE: Frontier Marshal, directed by Allan Dwan, has a well-deserved reputation as the worst and weirdest cinematic depiction of the events leading up to the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Randolph Scott turns in his usual bland performance as Wyatt Earp with Cesar Romero as a very unlikely Doc Holliday.
Wyatt and Doc trying to cut the rear projection screen off at the pass.
As usual Doc steals the show from the hopelessly dull and straight-arrow Wyatt. Ward Bond shows up as a cowardly lawman, Lon Chaney, Jr plays one of Curly Bill Brocius’ thugs and Balladeer’s Blog’s old friend John Carradine is the movie’s main villain … Carter. No, not Clanton or even McLaurey but “Carter”.
Here’s just some of the hilariously distorted bits from this Parallel Universe version of the events in Tombstsone, Arizona: Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, FRONTIERADO, Movie Hosts
THE DEFENDERS: THEIR FIRST ELEVEN ADVENTURES
This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at the first eleven stories of Marvel’s Defenders.
MARVEL FEATURE Vol 1 #1 (December 1971)
Title: The Day of the Defenders
Villain: The Omegatron
Defenders Roster: Doctor Strange (Stephen Strange, MD), the Hulk (Bruce Banner, PhD) and the Sub-Mariner (Prince Namor McKenzie)
Comment: The Defenders were originally far different from the mere “street level” heroics that fans of Marvel Television adaptations associate with the team’s name. In 1971 Marvel had just one Avengers team in addition to the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. The Defenders often fought to save the entire world or even the entire universe or multiverse.
Doctor Strange and the Hulk had been around since the 1960s. The Sub-Mariner was introduced in 1939 (so BEFORE Aquaman), back when Marvel Comics was called Timely Comics.
Synopsis: The evil scientist Yandroth, an old one-off foe of Dr Strange, has been spending his years since his defeat at Strange’s hands mastering sorcery as thoroughly as he had previously mastered science. He is on his death bed after having devised a scheme to ensure that the world will be destroyed shortly after he dies. Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
CASEY JONES (1957-1958) FORGOTTEN TELEVISION
CASEY JONES (1957-1958) – Alan Hale, in his pre-Gilligan’s Island years, starred as the legendary train engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones in this series that’s not only appropriate for Frontierado season but makes for a nice watch with the whole family all year ’round. (It never depicted the incident in which the real Casey Jones died.)
The show lasted 32 half-hour episodes and was set in Tennessee as Casey worked his steam engine the Cannonball Express (just Cannonball in real life) westward and back during the 1890s. Child actor Bobby Clark played our hero’s son Casey, Jr. while Mary Lawrence was Casey’s wife Alice. Eddy Waller portrayed Conductor “Red Rock” Smith.
Dub Taylor played Engine Fireman Wallie Sims, a composite character based on two of Casey Jones’ fellow employees, both of them African Americans – Fireman Sim Webb and Wallie Saunders, who wrote the words to the first version of The Ballad of Casey Jones. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television, FRONTIERADO
“BIG STEVE” LONG: NEGLECTED GUNSLINGER
The Frontierado Holiday falls on Friday, August 1st this year. As regular readers know, Frontierado celebrates the myth of the old west, not the grinding reality. Here’s a seasonal post.
BIG STEVE LONG – Like many gunslingers of the American West, Steve Long served in the Civil War, in his case on the Confederate side. After the war, Long gravitated westward as a gunman for hire, temporary lawman and bounty hunter.
In 1866, now known as Big Steve, Long settled in Laramie, WY where he befriended Ace and Con Moyer, two members of one of the Laramie founding families. Big Steve, Ace and Con established a tent saloon that they called Keystone Hall. Continue reading
Filed under FRONTIERADO
THE AMERICAN ADVENTURER: STORY OF THE SECOND TRAVELER (1879) – ANCIENT SCI FI
THE AMERICAN ADVENTURER: STORY OF THE SECOND TRAVELER (1879) – While looking for new blog posts to mark Frontierado this year I unexpectedly came across this short story that is more sci-fi than Wild West.
Author and poet Don Maguire’s short story collection The American Adventurer is basically an Old West imitation of Canterbury Tales. The title figure is an itinerant peddler in the west who invites other guests at a Little Rock, AR inn to take turns sharing a tale from their life. The individual tales are titled Story of the First Traveler, and so on.
Most of the stories would fit in with Wild West tall tales and the like, but Story of the Second Traveler features wild science fiction elements. An Irishman named Fitzhugh relates how he was once shipwrecked off the coast of South America. (But wait, there’s more as the old joke goes.)
Clinging to a makeshift raft he found an abandoned Spanish ship loaded with gold plundered in the 1500s. Eventually reaching Lima, Peru, Fitzhugh mustered a party to recover the gold and became wealthy beyond his dreams. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
RICHARD DENNING: HIS PSYCHOTRONIC FILMS
Richard Denning is best remembered as the relentlessly affable Governor Paul Jameson on the original Hawaii 5-0 series. He made 74 appearances on that cop show but had previously filled starring roles in other television programs like Mr. and Mrs. North, The Flying Doctor, Michael Shayne and Karen.
This being Balladeer’s Blog I’m focusing purely on Richard Denning’s roles in Psychotronic films for this post.
UNKNOWN ISLAND (1948)
With the latest film in the Jurassic World series now in theaters I’ll start with this dinosaur flick. Denning portrays John Fairbanks, the drunken sole survivor of a visit to a Pacific Ocean Island inhabited by dinosaurs and other extinct creatures.
Fairbanks is hired by an expedition planning to explore that island because their photographer leader (Phillip Reed) was a World War Two pilot who once snapped a sub-Loch Ness Monster level picture of dinos while flying over the island during the war. His wealthy wife (Virginia Grey) is financing the expedition and their ship’s captain – who drinks almost as much as Denning’s John Fairbanks – is played by Barton MacLane.
The foolish photographer winds up getting multiple members of the expedition killed by dinosaurs through his inept, unfocused “leadership.” He also keeps everyone on the island, endangering their lives every minute, long after he has more than enough photos to prove the existence of the dinosaurs and therefore justify additional, heavily armed visits to the Unknown Island. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
INDIANA JONES REBOOT RUMORS
The buzz surrounding the planned reboot of Indiana Jones reminded me of my blog post from five and a half years ago. That post was prompted by the news that Steven Spielberg declined to direct the upcoming fifth movie in the Indiana Jones franchise –
“In the past I’ve mentioned how foolish it is to think that Harrison Ford MUST play Indy in all the movies. James Bond and Tarzan are just two recurring heroes that have survived multiple casting changes over the years.
“The obvious move long ago would have been to cast a younger actor – say, Chris Pratt – as Indiana Jones and detail some of his earlier adventures. I love the Roaring Twenties so I think it would have been great to see Dr. Jones’ activities in that decade.
“Since it would be before Raiders of the Lost Ark even Belloq (maybe Gary Oldman) could appear in a few installments. I can’t possibly be alone in wanting to see some of those “many stimulating encounters” that Belloq referred to having with Indy in Raiders.
“Belloq was French, so do a story with Dr. Jones searching for a lost relic in 1920s Vietnam. Belloq’s hoity-toity family could be among the French plantation owners there, helping to set up a clash with our hero. Or have the two vying with each other to recover ancient Russian artifacts from violent factions of Red and White Russians in the years after the Russian Civil War. Any number of things. Continue reading
Filed under opinion, Pulp Heroes
LAMAR COLLEGE: COOL NAMED SPORTS TEAM
Here’s another college whose teams have a catchier name than the overused Eagles, Tigers, Bulldogs and Wildcats.
LAMAR COLLEGE Continue reading
Filed under Cool names and cool logos
INVADERS FROM MARS (1953) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT
Balladeer’s Blog continues its celebration of this 1985-1987 program’s FORTIETH anniversary year.
In the middle 1980s, way down on Level 31 Randy Clower and Richard Malmos, machine-gun toting Film Vault Technicians First Class (EO6) hosted this neglected cult show.
ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday June 7th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00am. Broadcast throughout Texas and Oklahoma.
SERIAL: Before the movie this week, our members of the Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) showed another episode of the 1950 Columbia serial Atom Man vs Superman. Kirk Alyn starred as Superman with Lyle Talbot as his archenemy Lex Luthor aka Atom Man.
Especially laughable are the bits when Superman “flies” – an effect achieved by switching from live footage of Kirk Alyn to INSERTED CARTOON FOOTAGE of Superman flying. Think of the ‘Toons in Roger Rabbit interacting with the live backgrounds and you have the idea.
A behind the scenes photo of Laurie Savino, who held the rank of Mystery Clip Technician in the Film Vault Corps.
FILM VAULT LORE: This week Laurie Savino, who held the rank of Mystery Clip Technician in the Film Vault Corps once again presented Channel 27’s Movie Ticket Giveaway.
Correctly identifying the Mystery Clip this time around would win a few lucky viewers tickets to the upcoming release of the 1986 remake of Invaders from Mars, starring Karen Black.
HOST SEGMENTS/ COMEDY MOMENTS – According to fan Dr. Solaranite, one of the comedy bits Randy and Richard injected into the film this time involved Jimmy Hunt, who played David Maclean, the child hero of the movie.
Whenever Hunt would say something harmless like “Gee Whiz” the Film Vault Guys would bleep part of it to make it sound like the kid had said “Jesus” and was getting censored. And so it went throughout the movie. Little Jimmy – but, hilariously, NONE of the adults, would occasionally get bleeped misleadingly as if cursing like a sailor.
That is one foul-mouthed little boy!
A word beginning with “sh” would be bleeped like Jimmy was saying “shit”, a word beginning with “f” would be bleeped like Jimmy was saying “fuck”, multi-syllable “m” words would be bleeped like he was saying “motherfucking”. It was like a more profane throwback to the old “Cleveland-style” of movie hosting, dating back to the legendary Ghoulardi (Ernie Anderson) in the 1960s.
THE MOVIE: Invaders from Mars is a very fun-bad movie complete with cheap and unconvincing 1950s special effects, stiff and unbelievable characters and a groan-inducing finale. Some elderly critics praise this movie nostalgically and try to present it as a metaphor for 1950s anti-communist paranoia, like the more-deserving Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts
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