Balladeer’s Blog’s annual end of year retrospective continues with this look at May’s best.
MINNIE’S BOYS (1970) – My review of the original production of this stage show about the hilarious comedy team the Marx Brothers. Click HERE.
FORGOTTEN TELEVISION – Frontier Circus (1961-1962) about a circus traveling the wild old west HERE; The Great Adventure (1963-1964) dramatizations of historical action HERE; Everglades (1961-1962) about a law enforcement ranger whose beat is the Florida Everglades HERE; and Together We Stand (1986-1987) starring Dee Wallace, “Short Round” and Elliott Gould HERE.
THE MICHIGAN BRIGADE – A Memorial Day look at this Union Army Cavalry unit from the Civil War. Click HERE.
JOHN DEREK: HIS SWASHBUCKLER FILMS – The man who married Bo Derek, Ursula Andress, Linda Evans & Pati Behrs also starred in swashbuckler movies like Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950), The Sword of Monte Cristo (1951), Prince of Pirates (1953) and The Adventures of Hajji Baba (1954). Click HERE.
ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION – A Trip to the Moon by Mr. Murtagh McDermot (1728) a clever man encounters various life-forms on the moon HERE; The Mad Scientist (1908) about the title character and his inventions unleashing an incredible war in the U.S. HERE; and Wonderworlds (1911) an Earth crew explores our solar system and then the Alpha Centauri system HERE.
THE SILENT FILMS OF ALICE GUY-BLACHE – This pioneering woman was for a time the only female director in the industry. I reviewed her works from the 1890s to 1920, including comedies, dramas, westerns, black cast movies, love stories and horror movies like Esmeralda (1905) – the first known film adapting The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Click HERE.
APOCALYPSE CULTURE (1987) – Before the internet there were books like this collecting some of the most daring, iconoclastic, demented and just plain perverse writings of the late 20th Century. Click HERE. Continue reading
A REDNECK CHRISTMAS CAROL (1997) – Written by John Yow & T. Stacy Helton and illustrated by David Boyd this is a reasonably funny adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Think of the type of jokes that Jeff Foxworthy was telling back when this book came out and you’ll know what to expect. 
EUBIE SCROOD, the main character of this adaptation, owns and operates Eubie’s Bait and Tackle Shop near Lake Water Moccasin. Everyone in Sand Mountain, AL considers Scrood to be cheap and mean-spirited. 
CHAMPIONSHIP GAME – The defending champs – the COLLEGE OF SAN MATEO BULLDOGS – battled the GOLDEN WEST COLLEGE RUSTLERS. A 7-0 opening Quarter edge for the Bulldogs became a 21-7 lead at the Half. 28-7 was the score to close the 3rd Quarter and a missed PAT ended a valiant Rustlers rally in the 4th as San Mateo held on to win 28-27.
FIRST SEMIFINAL – The KEISER UNIVERSITY SEAHAWKS took the field against the visiting COLLEGE OF IDAHO COYOTES. The Seahawks watched their 9-0 1st Quarter lead morph into a 21-9 College of Idaho advantage by Halftime. The 3rd Quarter ended with Keiser pulling to within 21-16 of the Coyotes and an explosive 4th ended in a 36-27 victory for the Seahawks. 
SPIDER-MAN Vol 1 #176 (Jan 1978) 
Peter becomes Spider-Man and gets to the apartment that Harry shares with Flash Thompson. He finds Flash unconscious on the floor and the Green Goblin ransacking Harry’s bedroom. Spider-Man attacks the villain, assuming it’s Harry in the costume, but in a few issues it will turn out to be Dr. Hamilton himself, who manipulated his patient Harry Osborn to find his late father Norman Osborn’s Green Goblin costume and weaponry. 
SCREAMBOOK (1984) – This low, low budget horror anthology film was written, produced and directed by THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD Joseph Zaso. 
WINK MARTINDALE, RIP: HE DID MORE THAN JUST GAME SHOWS – I reviewed some of Mr. Martindale’s other productions, like his role on the sci-fi series Mars Patrol (1953-1955), the Rock and Roll movie Let’s Rock (1958), the 26-minute short about life in the future titled 1999 A.D., and the PureFlix series Hilton Head Island. Click 
FOR APRIL 1st, THE THIRD FOOL KILLER LETTER – From June 28th, 1861. 
FORGOTTEN TELEVISION – Bracken’s World (1969-1970) Leslie Nielsen as the head of a Hollywood studio with as many stars as The Love Boat. Click 
ARGENTINA’S SUPERHEROES – I examined the country’s male and female heroes like Caballero Rojo, Cybersix, Sonoman, El Cazador, Alien Girl, Arana Negra and many more. Click 
DECEMBER 11th, 2019 – On the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, cave art was discovered that has been recognized as the world’s oldest example of pictorial storytelling, dating to approximately 43,900 years ago. 
A DIVA’S CHRISTMAS CAROL (2000) – Balladeer’s Blog’s Sixteenth Annual Christmas Carol-a-Thon continues with a look at this Vanessa Williams venture. Due to the nature of this adaptation of the Dickens classic it is often categorized as one of the “African-American versions.” Among other such Carols I have reviewed are Christmas is Comin’ Uptown with Gregory Hines and John Grin’s Christmas starring Robert Guillaume. 
SEAN FLYNN: ERROL’S SON IN MOVIES – The son of swashbuckler Errol Flynn and Lili Damita starred in several overlooked films, among them The Son of Captain Blood, The Sign of Zorro, and Temple of the White Elephant (think Indiana Jones adventures). 
FORGOTTEN TELEVISION – The Blue Palace (1974-1976): A German sci-fi series that was like a cross between Doomwatch and The X-Files. Click 
MARIE WALCAMP: THE DAREDEVIL OF SILENT MOVIES – Forgotten by everybody except us Silent Film geeks, Marie did most of her own stunts and from 1913 to 1920 starred in adventure serials like The Lion’s Claws, Liberty: A Daughter of the USA, and the Fu Manchu-inspired The Dragon’s Net. She also did jungle adventures like The Jungle Queen, A Daughter of the Jungle, and Cast Adrift in the South Seas. Plus westerns like The Red Ace and her 9 flicks as female gunslinger Tempest Cody. Click 
I WAS A TEENAGE TIME LORD – Young me and Bad Movies like Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, From Hell It Came, The Creeping Terror, Robot Monster, Teenagers from Outer Space and more 
APPOINTMENT WITH ADVENTURE (1955-1956) – This forgotten program from the 1950s presented LIVE performances that were filmed and could be aired as reruns in the future. Appointment with Danger ran for 53 half-hour episodes and featured writers like Rod Serling as well as actors like Paul Newman and Gena Rowlands. If you don’t like black & white, some episodes have been colorized. 
FIVE IN JUDGMENT – Paul Newman and Jack Lord star in this drama about two brothers who take shelter from a storm in a small-town diner filled with other patrons waiting out the dust storm. News reports make the locals suspect that Paul and his brother are a pair of fugitives who just murdered a 16-year-old girl. Patricia Breslin and James Gregory also starred. 
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