Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are familiar with my fondness for Movie Host shows of the past and my EXCLUSIVE interview with Randy Clower of the mid-1980s program The Texas 27 Film Vault has proven to be a very popular item on this blog.
Randy and his cohost Richard Malmos, playing machine gun- packing Film Vault Technicians First Class, would show and mock bad and campy films from decades ago and were a huge hit when they were on the air. I feel they get neglected in this age of renewed interest in older Movie Host programs.
The poster also sports features from some of the most popular bad movies Randy and Richard dissected on the program – features like flying brains from the movie Fiend Without A Face, a prop from the Bela Lugosi bomb Devil Bat, Hitler’s disembodied head from the enjoyably awful movie They Saved Hitler’s Brain, an invader from Earth vs the Flying Saucers and much more! Put on your 3D glasses and you can spot all of the hidden items including elements from Gorilla at Large, Just Imagine, Frontier Marshal, the 1961 film The Mask and other T27FV fan favorites. Continue reading
2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS – January 1st of this year saw the publication of the movie review I’d been planning since I started Balladeer’s Blog back in 2010! My favorite bad/ weird post-apocalypse movie reviewed on New Year’s Day of the year in which it was set. How close to reality were its predictions for the future? Nowhere NEAR close but that’s part of the fun of course.
KILLRAVEN, SABRE AND THE SLOW FADE OF AN ENDANGERED SPECIES – My review of the post-apocalyptic adventures of Killraven and Sabre in the year 2020 as told from the 1970s. 
THE LOG OF THE FLYING FISH (1887): ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION – My review of the 1887 novel about The Flying Fish, a craft capable of flying and serving as a submarine. 
I AM SCROOGE – A ZOMBIE STORY FOR CHRISTMAS (2009) – Written by Adam Roberts. This book was a gift from a friend a few years ago and it’s pretty entertaining. Think of The Dead Next Door set at Christmas. 
For Balladeer’s Blog’s review of the first episode of this 1971-1973 series about London by Gaslight detectives from both the Victorian and Edwardian Ages you can simply click 
Episode: ANONYMOUS LETTERS (March 19th, 1973) 
Trostler doesn’t expect any pay and usually goes without any public credit, because if he has resolved the case properly no one will ever know he or his clients played any role in certain events. 
BLACKADDER’S CHRISTMAS CAROL (1988) – My 11th Annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon continues here at Balladeer’s Blog! Long-time readers know what a big fan I am of Rowan Atkinson’s work – especially his Blackadder programs. Hell, I’m even an enormous fan of his more serious work in Full Throttle. And I never tire of telling anyone who will listen that I think he’d make a perfect Dikaiopolis in Aristophanes’ comedy The Acharnians. 
SIX-HUNDRED & SIXTY SIX (1972) – Directed by Tom Doades and written by Marshall Riggan, this film is a very unusual blend of science fiction, horror, post-apocalypse drama and religious message. Cult actor Joe Turkel, perhaps best known as the ghostly Lloyd the Bartender in The Shining, stars as Colonel John Ferguson. 
Obviously, a post-Omen film would not blow their story’s final reveal in the title, like we get with Six-Hundred & Sixty Six.
If it’s the Friday after Thanksgiving then it must be the start of Balladeer’s Blog’s Annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon! As always I review obscure versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol AND well-known versions. I also post new reviews each year PLUS rotate in old favorites from the past. Long past? No, YOUR past. 
Aren’t we all pretty fed up with the same versions of A Christmas Carol being rammed down our throats like Razzleberry Dressing every Christmas season while many of the clever but lesser known variations of the Dickens Yuletide classic languish in obscurity?
Two thousand fishermen from Cape Cod had gone off to enlist in the Continental Army, and in their absence the British had repeatedly landed raiding parties to harass the citizens.
Thanksgiving week rolls along here at Balladeer’s Blog with this look at some of the most enjoyable – on whatever level – B-movies from the one and only Leo Fong! Leo’s been called a poor man’s Bolo Yeung cross-bred with an even poorer man’s Joe Don Baker … but I was drunk when I called him that, so make of it what you will. 
MURDER IN THE ORIENT (1974) – Leo Fong IS Lao Tsu, but not THAT one, in this lethargic treasure quest/ revenge story. Leo (He’s ALWAYS Leo to me no matter what his character is named) learns his sister has been killed by the Golden Cobra crime gang. That gang is after a pair of samurai swords on which Imperial Japanese war criminals serving in World War Two engraved a split map leading to a fortune in stolen gold. 
