Frontierado is coming up on Friday, August 3rd. For the holiday season here is another “Frontierado Carol.” It’s Linda Ronstadt with Desperado.
Tag Archives: glitternight.com
CLIVE BARKER’S THE SCARLET GOSPELS (2015)
THE SCARLET GOSPELS (2015) – Written by Clive Barker, or I guess I should make that “Written by Clive Barker” (wink). I notice from other reviews of this disappointing novel that I’m far from alone in thinking Barker wrote only the Prologue and a ghost writer completed the work. Probably Damon Lindelöf. (I’m kidding!)
How do you go wrong with a novel featuring Barker’s recurring Occult Detective Harry D’Amour taking on the Hell Priest aka Pinhead (or “Lead Cenobite” as he was known to the ancients. Hellraiser fans will get it.)? How do you do it? With horrific writing that is worse than most fan fiction, that’s how.
Let’s start with the good: the Prologue. This prologue is so tantalizingly good that the jarring plunge in quality the rest of the way makes reading The Scarlet Gospels feel like some exquisitely refined brand of torture being pioneered by the Cenobites and their Order of the Gash. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
FEMALE MARSHALS IN THE OLD WEST
FRONTIERADO IS COMING UP ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 3rd!
As always, Frontierado is a holiday dedicated to the myth of the old west, not the grinding reality. Here is a look at a handful of ladies who served as gunslinging Marshals.
ADA CURNUTT
Around 1889 or 1890 Ada Curnutt moved to Oklahoma (formerly Indian Territory) with her sister and her brother-in-law. By some accounts Ada chose to head west to get out from under the influence of her Methodist Minister father and equally devout mother.
When she was 20 years old, Curnutt started working as a Clerk of the Court in Norman, OK. Finding a desk job too dull for her, Ada soon became a Deputy Marshal for United States Marshal William Grimes. Her duties included serving writs and warrants, escorting dangerous prisoners from one jurisdiction to another and, of course, making arrests.
In 1893 alone, Marshal Curnutt arrested at least 19 criminals wanted for various offenses. In December of that same year the gunslinging heroine traveled to Oklahoma City and dramatically got the drop on a pair of outlaws in the Black & Roger Saloon in front of a large, admiring crowd. Continue reading
Filed under FRONTIERADO
RAVURAVU: FIJIAN GOD
Balladeer’s Blog’s recent look at The Gods of Fiji has been a hit! For another deity from Fiji here is Ravuravu, whom I also went ahead and added to the main article. For more than 20 other gods from Fiji see my blog post HERE
RAVURAVU – One of the evil deities defeated and driven from Skyland by the demigod Tuilakemba.
Ravuravu was the patron god of murderers and after his initial fall from Skyland he assumed human form and lurked in Navukeilagi, where he killed several men and women. Continue reading
Filed under Mythology
BILLY GET YOUR GUNS FROM YOUNG GUNS II
With Frontierado coming up on Friday August 3rd here’s another song for the season. It’s Jon Bon Jovi with Billy Get Your Guns from the Young Guns II soundtrack.
Filed under FRONTIERADO
THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977): BRUCE LEE EXPLOITATION
The Dragon Lives Again
THE DRAGON LIVES AGAIN (1977) – Category: Brucesploitation with an enjoyably absurd twist
Even for the bizarre sub-genre of Brucesploitation films this movie is out there! The film starts with the recently – deceased Bruce Lee arriving in the afterlife, where the concubines of the King of the Dead gather around to gawk at the bulge in the pants of the late martial arts superstar. (Just in case you thought NO opening could be more tasteless than the one in The Clones Of Bruce Lee ) In a bit of alleged comic relief the bulge turns out to be caused by a weapon, not Lee’s organ. (Corpse schlong jokes! Who doesn’t love them?)
As head-shaking as that bit is at least it’s coherent, unlike virtually everything else that happens from this point on in the movie. And the time-honored tradition of Brucesploitation films having leading men who don’t even look like Bruce Lee is well-represented in this flick, but at least here they try to explain it away by talking about how a person’s face and body change after death. Which, of course, makes no sense since this is supposed to be Lee’s soul, not his body.
Anyway, Bruce somehow persuades the King Of The Dead to grant him a chance to return to the world of the living, and is told he can return if he outfights all the other inhabitants of this odd netherworld.
You see, this isn’t just any bland version of the afterlife our hero finds himself in. It’s kind of a Valhalla of cult movie characters and Bruce spends the rest of the movie fighting all of them in various combinations. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies
FLASHMAN IN THE OPIUM WAR: LOST FLASHMAN PAPERS
For Flashman Down Under click HERE Balladeer’s Blog moves on to another Harry Flashman adventure referred to but never completed before George MacDonald Fraser’s death.
Projected Title: FLASHMAN IN THE OPIUM WAR
Time Period: Late in the Second Opium War in China (1859- 1860)
The Setup: In Flashman and the Dragon (1985) readers learned that our antihero Colonel Harry Paget Flashman had been serving in Hong Kong and mainland China long enough to become fluent in the language. Flashman in the Opium War would detail Harry’s adventures in the closing period of the Second Opium War up until the start of the Anglo-French military expedition to Peking.
The Second Opium War is still an incredibly controversial conflict from Queen Victoria’s reign. Even at the time passions ran very much against the war AND against the fact that HMG was seen as accommodating the opium trade in Chinese ports.
To the most critical eyes – then and now – the Empire seemed to be facilitating the market in opium so that certain British businessmen could get rich and if the drug’s use had a very negative, epidemic downside for the Far Eastern customers, that was callously perceived to be a fringe benefit.
As I say, that is the most critical view. More sympathetic figures point out that in the 1800s the world did not have the same derogatory view of the drug trade as now and the drug trade was LEGAL in the Far East. If it hadn’t been British merchants making money off the opium trade then any gaps would have been filled by the Chinese merchants who had been dealing in drugs for centuries.
The Story: Continue reading
Filed under Neglected History, Pulp Heroes
GOD COMICS: A DIVINE SUPERHERO
With superheroes taking over movies, television and even Halloween cosplay this seemed like a good time for a shoutout to one of my all-time favorite parody comic books. And remember, I take shots at ALL religions, including Islam, so I’m not one of those cringing cowards who only shows irreverence to Christianity.
Filed under humor, Superheroes
THE PRISONER: CHECKMATE
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the 1967 science fiction/ existential drama The Prisoner. For Part One, in which I examined the themes and concepts at play in the series click HERE
Episode Title: CHECKMATE … In the ongoing debate about the exact numbering of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner I place this as the 4th in the series.
Peter Wyngarde portrays this episode’s Number Two, the rotating series of executive figures running the futuristic prison city called the Village. Balladeer’s Blog’s readers may remember him from my reviews of his shows Department S and Jason King. X-Men fans will recognize him as the obvious model used by Chris Claremont and John Byrne for Mastermind’s “Jason Wyngarde” persona in The Dark Phoenix Saga.
The episode begins with the Prisoner witnessing yet another sudden unleashing of “Rover” the bioelectrical synthetic creation which the Villagekeepers use to subdue outbreaks of disobedient behavior among the Villagers. As usual everyone freezes in their tracks, knowing Rover will attack anyone perceived as resisting.
For once, one of the residents shows no fear of Rover. An elderly man with a walking stick (George Coulouris from Citizen Kane) continues strolling along, ignoring Rover, who shows unprecedented deference to the man before moving on to subdue whichever Villager has raised the ire of the Villagekeepers.
Our protagonist is intrigued by this and follows the Man With A Walking Stick. The two share a casual conversation in which each man is wary of the other, given that nobody can ever be sure if a fellow Villager is secretly working for the conspirators behind the Village.
Walking Stick Man invites McGoohan’s character to a game of chess he is heading to. The Prisoner goes along and finds that the game is played with human chess pieces in one of the least subtle of the program’s metaphors.
Walking Stick Man is one of the two “players” who sit above the game shouting their moves through bullhorns. The Villagers serving as chess pieces move accordingly. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television, Prisoner (tv series)
BON JOVI: BLAZE OF GLORY
With the Frontierado Holiday coming up on Friday, August 3rd here’s another song and video appropriate to the season. It’s Bon Jovi’s Blaze of Glory from Young Guns II.
Filed under FRONTIERADO
