All-Martian Invasion all the time with a Four-Pack of ‘zines about War of the Worlds and similar Martian invasion themes of yesteryear. Link to buy is below.
FOR THE OTHER THREE AND TO ORDER THE FOUR-PACK CLICK Continue reading
Tag Archives: Entertainment
THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR (1973): MOVIE REVIEW
Supposedly they are remaking this 1970s Blaxploitation movie, at least according to Balladeer’s Blog readers who requested I review it. As it turns out I did review it in 2012, so here it is again.
For the link to that review – an article where I reviewed several other Blaxploitation films as well, click HERE
THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR (1973) – The title of this explosive film, based on the controversial novel by Sam Greenlee, plays on the old double meanings of the slang expression “spook”. While spook could be used as a derogatory term for a black person it could also refer to a secret agent.
The story’s hero, played by Lawrence Cook, is an African American working in the domestic offices of the Central Intelligence Agency. While outwardly an efficient and capable paper pusher he inwardly regards himself as an undercover operative for his own race, infiltrating the white intelligence establishment.
After five years of learning all he can via secretly reading CIA operations files our protagonist, significantly named Dan Freeman, decides to launch a covert operation of his own to destroy the white power structure and elevate his people to positions of authority. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Blaxploitation
JIMMY KIMMEL: THE BALLADEER’S BLOG INTERVIEW
Jimmy Kimmel, known as “that guy from The Man Show” and as “the wimp people love to hate” has been begging me to interview him for years now. I kept putting him off, given his reputation for grotesque body odor.
Finally I decided I could end the annoyance once and for all with a wager. I bet Kimmel that he couldn’t POSSIBLY get even lower ratings for the Harvey Weinstein Awards than the pathetic dweeb who hosted them last year. If he did, I would interview him. If not, I never had to interview him. Jimmy jumped at the bet.
Turns out he was the repugnant douchebag who hosted them last year! Needless to say, since garbage like Kimmel reeks more and more the longer it sits and festers he got much, much MUCH lower ratings than the previous year.
Anyway, I don’t welch on bets (which I understand is what Jimmy Kimmel’s mother said to the three-time animal-rapist who knocked her up with Jimmy in the first place) so I agreed to finally interview Kimmel to swat him away once and for all. So, let’s deal with this hack who cries himself to sleep every night over the fact that he’ll never be as daring, funny and iconoclastic as Steven Crowder.
BY THE WAY, THE REPULSIVE JIMMY KIMMEL STILL REFUSES TO DONATE MORE MONEY TO CHARITY. WHAT A GREEDY SCUMBAG.
Balladeer’s Blog: So, Jimmy, looks like you did the seeming impossible and got even LOWER ratings than last year for your performance at this year’s presentation of Rapists and Child Molestors Against Trump.
Jimmy Kimmel: Yeah. I hate that Trump guy. He got all those beautiful women all his life and the only woman-ish thing I’ve ever managed to score with is that horse-faced Sarah Silverman. Every day and night I think about that and that’s what fuels my monomaniacal hatred of the Donald.
BB: It’s possible if you showered every now and then or didn’t look so creepy all the time with that half-assed attempt at a beard you might be able to attract an acceptable looking woman.
JK: Personal hygiene is for the in-bred morons who voted for Trump. They’re all so stupid it’s like, what a bunch of stupid-headed stupid heads. I used to BEG Trump to fix me up with women but he always refused.
BB: Do you think your bizarre fixation on President Trump is healthy?
JK: Hell, yeah! In the entertainment industry today even somebody as untalented and unappealing as I am can make okay bucks as long as I bash Trump. It’s like, NONE of the celebrities that I pay to talk to me can believe that American scumbags voted for this guy. Continue reading
Filed under humor, LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, opinion
SMITHEREENS: BEHIND THE WALL OF SLEEP
Balladeer’s Blog strikes again, giving a shoutout to a group of musicians before they’re ALL dead. This shoutout goes to the Smithereens and their song Behind the Wall of Sleep:
Filed under opinion
GREEN DAY: BASKET CASE
Yes, it’s another installment of Give Them A Shoutout Before They’re Dead. This shoutout goes to Green Day and their song Basket Case.
Filed under opinion
BILLY JOEL: SLEEPING WITH THE TELEVISION ON
It’s Give Them A Shoutout Before They’re Dead! Another little shoutout to Billy Joel, this time for his song Sleeping With the Television On.
Filed under opinion
WAVELENGTH (1983)
WAVELENGTH (1983) – This is an unjustly neglected science fiction film that stars Robert Carradine, Cherie Currie and Keenan Wynn in a very unconventional love triangle: both Carradine and Currie are fighting over Wynn. (I’m kidding!)
Robert Carradine plays a moody musician suffering a career lull, Cherie Currie portrays a groupie who becomes a bona fide romantic partner for him and Keenan Wynn barks and snarls in his usual “grouch with a heart of gold” manner. Cherie’s sensitive mind is open to alien brain-waves calling to her from a nearby (seemingly) abandoned government installation. Carradine and his neighbor Wynn help her try to find out what’s going on. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
CEMETERY MAN (1994)
FOR REVIEWS OF SIMILAR HALLOWEEN MOVIES CLICK HERE
Cemetery Man
CEMETERY MAN (DELLAMORTE DELLAMORE) (1994) – This film is based on stories by Tiziano Sclavi, the man at the center of “Sclavian philosophy” from Italy. Michele Soavi directed and Rupert Everett starred as the hero, Francesco Dellamorte. Dellamorte is the gravedigger and custodian of Buffalora Cemetery, Buffalora being a fictional town supposedly in the north of Italy.
If you ever wondered what the Patrick McGoohan series The Prisoner would have been like if it had been done as a horror story rather than sci-fi then Cemetery Man is the movie for you! The film employs the same Kafkaesque themes that The Prisoner did with heavy overtones of Sartre’s work The Myth of Sisyphus.
The dead buried in Buffalora Cemetery tend to come back to life as killer zombies after seven days. Dellamorte, with minimal help from his rotund and simple-minded assistant Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro), destroys the undead monsters. Our hero gets no thanks from the living citizens of Buffalora, however, who treat him like a Village Idiot and spread rumors that he is either impotent or a eunuch. Mysterious benefactors pay Dellamorte well for his thankless job via envelopes of cash that they mail to him. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
MOONA LISA PICTURES COURTESY OF JOHN L.
Very special thanks to reader John L. for providing Balladeer’s Blog with some new photos of Moona Lisa, one of the Movie Hostesses covered here.
I will add them to the Moona Lisa article I did in 2011 as well, but first here they are for all of us fans of Movie Host Shows to appreciate. John L himself sets the scene:
“They are from 1970 or 1971. A friend and I drove to the local KOGO TV station in San Diego, just off the 94 freeway, walked in and told the receptionist we were fans of Moona and asked if we could meet her. The next thing you know, a very pleasant and gracious Lisa Clark (in character), greeted us, gave us a tour of the studio and her Moon Base set, gave us an autograph and posed for pictures.”
Moona Lisa (Lisa Clark) getting ready to watch and comment on the night’s movie double feature from her “private moon base.” Note the Earth below out the window.
Moona Lisa in the stairwell leading to her set. Continue reading
Filed under Movie Hosts
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND: HEROIN
This latest installment of “Give them a shoutout before they’re dead” needs to have its title adjusted to “Give them a shoutout before they’re ALL dead.” The Velvet Underground – during its years when Lou Reed, “the poet of destruction” himself, was its creative heart and soul – was magnificent.
Pictured here are (in rear) Lou “Ostrich Guitar” Reed, Sterling Morrison and John Yule sporting his Dark Lord Satan ‘stache. In the front are the legendary blonde goddess Nico and drummer Maureen Tucker, as always looking like someone photo-shopped a slightly startled 12 year old boy into the group’s picture. (I love Maureen, it’s just a joke.)
Lou Reed is dead but before all the members are gone I decided to do a shoutout to the group that DEFINED being ahead of their time. The Velvet Underground’s influence on music ran so deep it was like the proverbial “Citizen Kane Effect” – its innovations became so universally employed by others that it’s easy to forget there was a time when they WEREN’T being used.
We all know Brian Eno’s legendary line about how – though only 30,000 copies of the Velvet Underground’s 1967 debut album were sold – “everyone who bought a copy started a band of their own.” There are times when it seems like that wasn’t just hype. Hell, I often argue that the Prince song All The Critics Love U In New York seems inspired by the Velvet Undergound piece The Black Angel’s Death Song.
Here’s the song Heroin, one of the group’s most haunting. The way Lou Reed conveys the hopelessness and obsessiveness of heroin addiction makes this the furthest thing from what it was often accused of being – a song glorifying drug use.
Hardly. Reed hammers home every unappealing aspect of enslavement to the drug while taking the listener up and down on the highs and the inevitable crashes. Even sex becomes a mere secondary (maybe even tertiary) consideration as heroin takes over.
Anybody who would listen to this song and say “I gotta try some of that!” was doomed from the minute they crawled out of the womb anyway.
Filed under opinion
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