Balladeer’s Blog continues its look at the Forgotten Television item Reel Wild Cinema (1996-1997).
This time around it’s Episodes 17-19.
THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE SEVENTEEN (May 12th, 1997)
Title: Southern Sleaze
Truncated Films Shown:
MOONSHINE MOUNTAIN (1964) – An example of Hicksploitation. H.G. Lewis of all people wrote and SANG for this movie. A country western singer, tired of the artificial feel of mainstream Nashville music, spends some time with his North Carolina relatives to soak up some authentic atmosphere.
The singer gets caught in the middle of feuding mountain families, a corrupt sheriff, moonshiners and the drivers of such “White Lightning” throughout the region. As the violence increases, some dead victims are dumped in moonshine stills, where the whiskey is so strong it dissolves the bodies.
This flick is one weird animal. It’s part Hee Haw, part Dukes of Hazzard, part Deliverance and part Li’l Abner. Continue reading
IT’S HOT IN PARADISE (1960) – This is a film about hot nightclub ladies and their schmoozing manager getting stuck on an uncharted island after a plane crash. They learn that a now dead mad scientist made the place his lair and his experiments spawned dog-sized spiders whose bite transforms people into half-assed human-spider creatures. 
THE RETURN OF THE GIANT MAJIN (1966) – We fans of oddball cinema have long loved Majin, the often-ignored distant cousin of kaiju favorites like Godzilla and Gamera. Majin is a gigantic samurai statue that comes to life periodically in Japan of a few centuries back. 
UNTAMED FURY (1947) – A very early hicksploitation movie. This black & white movie’s stock footage is set in the swamps of the Deep South but everything else takes place on the usual cheap sets we all know and love from Producers Releasing Corporation. 
GODMONSTER OF INDIAN FLATS (1973) – From the maker of Alabama’s Ghost comes this tale of toxic gasses from beneath the Earth spawning a mutated sheep monster which walks erect and looks a little like Mr. Snuffleupagas and Joe Camel. The video cover looks nothing like the creature.
CURSE OF THE CRYING WOMAN (1963) – The Mexican horror film about La Llorona that got U.S. distribution and half-assed dubbing via K. Gordon Murray himself. I’ve reviewed this film in detail previously so for a quick recap for newbies to this flick it’s the old ghost story about an undead woman who sheds tears from her empty eye sockets while making with withering cries. 
THE NAKED WITCH (1961) – For starters, this is the Larry Buchanan film, NOT the Andy Milligan Naked Witch movie from a different year. As usual for Buchanan this was filmed in Texas, and is yet another variation of the tale about a witch who gets put to death but returns a century or more later to slay all the descendants of her killers. 
REEL WILD CINEMA (1996-1997) – This program is still beloved by us fans of Psychotronic movies and the So Bad It’s Good subculture. Reel Wild Cinema helped feed America’s growing appetite for bizarrely awful cinema, an appetite most recently whetted back then by Joel Hodgson’s Mystery Science Theater 3000. 
Similar to Jonathan Ross’ Incredibly Strange Film Show, Reel Wild Cinema also aired interviews with many cult figures from fringe cinema as well as campy trailers for vintage Golden Turkeys. Also like the Jonathan Ross show, Reel Wild Cinema featured an animated opening accompanied by catchy theme music. 
ALL THAT GLITTERS (1977) – With the syndicated late-night soap opera satire Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman becoming a cultural phenomenon in the 1970s, Norman Lear launched this oddball, self-consciously “adult” program which added a touch of parallel world sci-fi stories to the soapiness. 
Want to see women running the business world and men serving as secretaries while getting ogled and sexually harassed? This show’s got it! Want to see a tuxedo-clad groom carrying flowers and walking down the aisle toward his intended bride? This show’s got it! 
It is such a waste that so few installments of National Educational Television Playhouse are available despite video copies still being in their archives. For six years, N.E.T. Playhouse offered up some of the most interesting, profound and innovative productions from around the world. That 1966-1972 run puts what passes for educational television today to shame. 
HAMILE (January 15th, 1970) – A Ghanaian adaptation of Hamlet written by that nation’s Joe C. De Graft and performed by actors from the National Theatre of Ghana. 
YESTERDAY THE CHILDREN WERE DANCING (February 26th, 1970) – A 90-minute CBC drama about the 1964 terrorist attacks in Canada launched by Quebec Separatists and plans for further attacks during the federal elections. 
THE CAPTAIN AND TENNILLE (1976-1977) – Balladeer’s Blog’s recurring Forgotten Television posts look at the variety show hosted by the musical duo called the Captain and Tennille. The pair were married in real life and their full names were Toni Tennille and Daryl Dragon. Since “Captain Dragon” sounds like a superhero, the recording partners just went by the Captain and Tennille. 
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