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EVERGLADES (1961-1962) FORGOTTEN TELEVISION

EVERGLADES aka Lincoln Vail of the Everglades (1961-1962) – This short-lived syndicated series stood out from other law-enforcement programs of its era by not being set in either a big city or the American West. Constable Lincoln Vail of the Everglades County Patrol policed the Florida Everglades in his airboat, giving this series its signature visual appeal.   

Even here in 2025 the shots of the airboat speeding along through Vail’s turf really catch the eye. In the starring role was Ron Hayes, stuntman and devoted conservationist in real life. The unique situations and challenges of law enforcement in an area like the Everglades have ensured this program’s lasting cult legacy, but sadly the expensive series lasted just 39 half-hour episodes.

Lincoln Vail was part wildlife ranger, part liaison with the Seminole Tribe and part traditional cop. The up-and-coming Burt Reynolds, former Florida State Seminoles football star, appeared in 3 episodes of Everglades.    Continue reading

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MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL (1957) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

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

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SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER-VILLAINS (1976) DARKSEID, MANHUNTER AND MORE

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist comic book post from Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at the early stories of a 1970s DC Comics series.

SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER-VILLAINS Vol 1 #1 (Jun 1976)

Title: Attend – Or Die

Villain Roster: Captain Cold, Sinestro, Gorilla Grodd, Copperhead, Mirror Master, Star Sapphire II, the Wizard, Manhunter III, Shadow Thief and Captain Boomerang

Comment: “What are we, some kind of Secret Society of Super-Villains?” (Had to be said.)

Synopsis: Captain Cold and Mirror Master pull off a large jewel robbery and while dividing up their loot they get an invitation to join the title “Society” at a place called the Sinister Citadel in San Francisco.

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.

Suddenly, the Justice League members burst in and attack, but the villains fight and destroy what turn out to be robotic duplicates of the League. The costumed Manhunter III enters the room and tells the villains they passed their initiation by wiping out the robots. He calls himself a representative for their anonymous “host.”

NOTE: Their host is really Darkseid, as will be made clear soon. This third person using the Manhunter alias is one of the “evil” Paul Kirk clones whose organization the Council was thwarted by the lone “good” Paul Kirk clone, who also destroyed all the evil clones. (Paul Kirk was the original Manhunter from DC’s 1940s comic books.) Continue reading

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WONDERWORLDS (1911) ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION

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. 

Wonderworlds is basically what we today call Steampunk. Lord Charles Flitmore has had a spaceship constructed in the form of a large globe which works via antigravity.

Flitmore puts together an expedition to explore the solar system. Members of the expedition include his wife Lady Mietje Flitmore, biologist Professor Heinrich Schultze, Hans Friedung, Schultze’s protege, Johann Rieger, Flitmore’s manservant, and Captain Hugo von Munchhausen, a fat, boastful liar who is a comic relief figure in the mold of the fictional Baron Munchhausen.   

Flitmore’s spaceship, called the Sannah, takes off on its expedition, with two monkeys named Dick and Bobs along for the ride. The Sannah first visits the moon, where our explorers discover that the Dark Side is unexpectedly vibrant with life. There are lush forests and ample sources of water. Continue reading

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THE TOP THREE DEITIES FROM INUIT MYTHOLOGY

Inuit mythology is almost criminally neglected. I’ve enjoyed covering it here at Balladeer’s Blog since 2011. Here’s a review of their top three deities. For nine more on top of that click HERE.

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. Continue reading

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THE BANQUETERS (C 427 BC) ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY

For background info on ancient Greek comedies and my previous reviews of them, click here (also features a list of my source books): https://glitternight.com/ancient-greek-comedies/

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 PLAY

The Banqueters is a comedy that once again lets us feel our shared humanity with the ancient Athenians, in this case over the perennial conflicts caused by Generation Gaps and the tension between pointlessly clinging to the past and pointlessly embracing new ideas just because they’re new, even though they may be just as flawed as the older ideas they replace. This is one of the many comedies of Aristophanes that survive in fragmentary form, not in their entirety. 

SYNOPSIS

An Athenian landowner with staid, old-fashioned views is hosting a lavish banquet in honor of Heracles. The attendees are the landowners’ Phratry- brothers (think of a cross between college fraternity brothers and social lodge brothers) and they are the title banqueters who make up the chorus of the play, offering wry commentary on the action of the comedy, often with jokes that break the fourth wall and address the audience directly.

The landowner is using the event to Continue reading

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CAPTAIN MORS THE AIR PIRATE (1908-1911) STORIES TWENTY-SIX TO THIRTY

For Balladeer’s Blog’s overview of the entire Kapitan Mors der Luftpirat series click HERE. For my look at the first five stories in the weekly text series click HERE.

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.

To avoid the mass casualties of the previous battle at Shaho, Kapitan Mors and his men do a psy-op against his hated Russians. They stage seemingly supernatural events surrounding a “ghost railway” and push the Russian commander to the brink. Continue reading

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CORNING COLLEGE: COOL NAMED SPORTS TEAM

Balladeer’s Blog looks at another college sports team that goes by a nickname far more memorable than the overused Eagles, Tigers, Bulldogs and Wildcats.

CORNING COLLEGE Continue reading

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THE GREAT ADVENTURE (1963-1964) FORGOTTEN TELEVISION

THE GREAT ADVENTURE (1963-1964) – This hour-long series presented dramatizations of well-known and obscure events from United States history.

Twenty-six black & white episodes were made and can be viewed online.

STANDOUT EPISODES:

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.

Jackie Cooper starred, along with James “Dan-O” MacArthur, Wayne Rogers, George “Goober” Lindsay and Jim Nabors.      Continue reading

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SUPERNATURAL (1933) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

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.

Balladeer’s Blog continues its look at the FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY year of this neglected cult show which debuted on Saturday February 9th, 1985.

ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE FOR THIS EPISODE: Supposedly Saturday April 19th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00am. Broadcast throughout Texas and Oklahoma.

Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault

EXTRAS: This episode featured footage of our Film Vault Technicians First Class (EO6) Randy and Richard’s promotional appearance at Six Flags Mall in nearby Arlington, TX.

FILM VAULT LORE: One particular Host Segment featured one of the show’s behind-the- scenes people portraying Commando Cody complete with helmet and rocket pack. He was portraying the character because the Commando Cody serial Radar Men from the Moon was the current serial being shown before the movie each week on The Texas 27 Film Vault.

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. 

At any rate this Host Segment featured “Commando Cody” befriending Randy and setting out with him for a night of partying on the town while the two leave Richard behind to do all the grub work in their barracks.

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.

Now in charge of Roma’s body Rogen’s evil spirit seeks revenge on the criminal accomplice who betrayed her and also seeks to live high on the hog with her possessed victim’s money. Continue reading

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