Tag Archives: glitternight.com

June 21, 2025 · 12:01 am

1940s MARVEL SUPERHEROINES

This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the neglected superheroines of Marvel Comics, known in the 1940s as Timely Comics.

SILVER SCORPION 

Secret Identity: Betty Barstow

First Appearance:  Daring Mystery Comics #7 (April 1941) Her final Golden Age appearance came in 1942.

Origin: Betty Barstow, a feisty secretary for private investigator Dan Hurley, donned a costume and investigated a case her boss was refusing to look into, a case involving unusual activity at a graveyard. She wound up capturing a ring of counterfeiters and resolved to continue fighting crime as the Silver Scorpion.

Powers: The Silver Scorpion was in peak physical condition and excelled at jiu-jitsu and other martial arts. In addition, she was as agile as an acrobat. 

Comment: Since the only things “silver” on the Silver Scorpion’s costume were her wristlets, boots and the scorpion logo on her cape, I think they should have made her wristlets into revolving bracelets which fired long silver needles coated in scorpion venom. Non-fatal scorpion venom, of course, but painful and inducing temporary paralysis. Continue reading →

10 Comments

Filed under Superheroes

Tagged as , , , , , ,

June 19, 2025 · 5:09 am

THIRTEEN HEAVY METAL HORROR FILMS FROM THE EIGHTIES

Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at a baker’s dozen of movies from the 1980s subgenre of Heavy Metal-related horror. Why only thirteen? Because I already reviewed Black Roses and Rocktober Blood years ago.

PAGANINI HORROR (1989) – Directed by Luigi Cozzi, better known to us fans of psychotronic movies as the Italian Ed Wood. Three women and one man constitute a heavy metal band desperate for a hit song. They strike a Faustian bargain with the mysterious Mr. Pickett, played by Donald Pleasence.

Pickett takes their souls as payment for a lost musical composition by the long-dead violin virtuoso Niccolo Paganini. The rockers adapt the piece of music as a heavy metal work and decide to film the song’s music video in a mansion once owned by Paganini himself. 

Playing the piece while filming at the mansion causes Paganini to rise from the dead and lets loose other forces of Hell. Those characters not butchered by the masked, undead maestro via a knife that pops out of his violin are slaughtered by the supernatural forces now at large in the house.

Cozzi being Cozzi we also get the kitchen sink in the form of time loops, portals to Hell, family curses, cosmic Lovecraftian concepts and some of the daffiest death scenes imaginable. Some victims die by wood fungus, an inexplicable car fire and even by having invisible walls close in and crush them. Insert your own mime joke here.  Continue reading →

12 Comments

Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

June 17, 2025 · 8:25 pm

COTHURNUS (C 405 B.C.) ANCIENT GREEK COMEDY

The Ruins of the Theater of Dionysus in Athens.

Balladeer’s Blog takes another look at an ancient Greek comedy. This time around I’m examining  Cothurnus by Philonides, a comic poet who may also have acted and produced for the Athenian stage as well. It cannot be definitively determined if the “Philonides” referred to in those capacities are all one and the same or separate figures.

THE PLAY  

Like most ancient Greek comedies Cothurnus has survived only in fragmentary form and with very few fragments at that. The title refers to a type of footwear of the time period. A cothurnus could be worn on either the left foot or the right foot because of its softness and looseness. Because of this the word “cothurnus” also became a sarcastic term for a politician who tried to position themselves on both sides of an issue, claiming victory no matter which way the political winds blew.

This is certainly another element of Old Comedy that we can still relate to 2,400 years later. Philonides was specifically using this term and this comedy to target Theramenes.

To give a comprehensive look at Theramenes’ political juggling act would take too much time, suffice it to say he would flip-flop not just on specific issues but would retroactively claim to have supported whichever side won, would change political affiliations again and again and even set up other public figures to take the fall for his own failures (like arranging for six generals to be blamed and executed for his own part in the Arginusae travesty). Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Ancient Greek Comedy

Tagged as , , , , , ,

June 17, 2025 · 11:47 am

THE YOUNG REBELS (1970-1971) FORGOTTEN TELEVISION

THE YOUNG REBELS (1970-1971) – With the 4th of July approaching, here’s another seasonal post. Harve Bennett himself was involved with this series that ran for 15 hour-long episodes. A group of young men and one young woman help fight for American Independence in 1777 Pennsylvania.

Louis Gossett, Jr. starred as former slave Isak Poole, Richard Ely played Jeremy Larkin, Alex Henteloff was Henry Abington and Hilarie Thompson portrayed Elizabeth Coates. The quartet served as spies and guerilla fighters against the British. Philippe Forquet guest starred in 14 episodes as the Marquis de Lafayette, who gave orders to our heroes.

Jeremy led the foursome while hiding his rebel activities from his father (Will Geer), a Tory mayor. Isak was the group’s best fighter and Elizabeth was their best spy. Henry was an inventor who devised gadgets for the Young Rebels.  Continue reading →

10 Comments

Filed under Forgotten Television, Revolutionary War

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

June 16, 2025 · 7:15 pm

HAPPY BLOOM’S DAY 2025

jamesjoyceYes, it’s the 16th of June, better known to James Joyce geeks like me as Bloom’s Day. The day is named in honor of Leopold Bloom, the advertising sales rep and Freemason who is one of the major characters in Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The novel also brings along Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of his earlier novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

For those unfamiliar with this work, Ulysses is Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness novel in which he metaphorically features the events from the Odyssey in a single day – June 16th, 1904, in Dublin. (The day he met Nora Barnacle, the woman he would eventually marry after living together for decades)

Bloom represents Ulysses/Odysseus, Stephen represents Telemachus and Leopold’s wife, Molly Bloom, represents Penelope. Continue reading →

6 Comments

Filed under Neglected History

Tagged as , , , , , ,

June 15, 2025 · 10:17 am

THE DEVLIN CONNECTION (1982) FOR FATHER’S DAY

THE DEVLIN CONNECTION (1982) – HAPPY FATHER’S DAY! Balladeer’s Blog marks the occasion with a look at this short-lived detective series starring Rock Hudson and Jack Scalia as father and son investigators.   

Hudson played Brian Devlin, a retired private investigator (but see below) who is now the director of the Los Angeles Arts Center. One day he is reunited with the son he never knew he had with an old flame. That son is Nick Corsello (Jack Scalia), a private investigator who works out of a bar (4 episodes) or a health club (9 episodes).

Before I cover the schizophrenic nature of this 13-episode series I’ll describe the father-son relationship. Brian and Nick try to form a bond, but Brian often puts a strain on their relationship by unofficially helping his son with the cases he’s working on despite his son wanting to accomplish things on his own.

Viewers get some laughs from Hudson’s character trying to hide his parallel investigations from Scalia and from the bickering between the pair when the son inevitably gets wise to Dad’s meddling. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under Forgotten Television

Tagged as , , , , , ,

June 14, 2025 · 6:43 pm

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH PART 3-D (1982) ON THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT

Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault! In the middle 1980s, way down on Level 31 Randy and Richard, machine-gun toting Film Vault Technicians First Class hosted this neglected cult show. Balladeer’s Blog continues its celebration of the program’s 40th anniversary year.

ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: Saturday February 14th, 1987 from 10:30pm to 1:00am. Broadcast throughout Texas and Oklahoma. 

SERIAL: None this week. The movie, Film Vault Corps comedy sketches and commercials filled up the entire two-and-a-half-hour runtime.

Randy and Richard firing their machine guns at giant rats, cellumites and other subterranean creatures.

FILM VAULT LORE: This episode marked the second time The Texas 27 Film Vault came with a warning about violent content. It was also at least the second time they riffed on a movie that was originally in 3-D. Randy and Richard did various jokes about wearing 3-D glasses and 3-D effects coming out of the screen at them as they watched the movie.

FOR A LOOK AT THE 3-D TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT POSTER (courtesy of Randy Clower) –https://glitternight.com/2013/03/18/movie-hosts-the-texas-27-film-vault-poster/  

THE MOVIE: Friday the 13th Part 3-D was the most notoriously lame sequel in the Friday the 13th film series during the 1980s. Not only was it part of the laughable 1980s attempt to revive the 3-D craze of the 1950s but it’s also infamous for its DISCO VERSION of the iconic Friday the 13th theme. However, it’s essential viewing for horror fans because it was the first time Jason Voorhees put on the hockey mask that is so closely associated with the character.  Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season, Movie Hosts

Tagged as , , , , ,

June 14, 2025 · 12:01 am

SUPERHERO WEDDINGS FROM MARVEL

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at several weddings for Marvel characters.

INVISIBLE WOMAN & MR. FANTASTIC 

It’s June, the traditional month for weddings and since summertime is also the season for superhero movies I figured why not take a look at a superhero wedding. And since the movie reboot of the Fantastic Four will be coming out soon I’m going with the wedding of Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) and Sue Storm (Invisible Girl then, Invisible Woman now).

The actual comic book in question was the October of 1965 issue of Fantastic Four Annual # 3 and it featured virtually all the superheroes and supervillains in the then-young Marvel Comics Universe.

The heroes were guests invited to the wedding, Nick Fury and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. were providing security for the event and the Fantastic Four’s arch-enemy Doctor Doom was mentally controlling the various supervillains into crashing the ceremony and trying to kill the heroes. Bedlam at the Baxter Building was the title. Continue reading →

10 Comments

Filed under Superheroes

Tagged as , , , ,

June 13, 2025 · 5:32 pm

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH (1907)

friday-the-thirteenth-novelFRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH (1907) – Written by Thomas William Lawson, a writer and stock manipulator who made a fortune from shady stock deals … in between advocating for cleaning up Wall Street to shut down those fleece jobs. The reforms Lawson campaigned for were taken up decades later when Franklin Roosevelt appointed future Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to head the Securities Exchange Commission.

Coincidentally enough the overall feel of Friday the Thirteenth put me in mind of FDR’s cousin, Theodore Roosevelt. The novel did that with its New York setting, with the way the story takes place late in T.R.’s presidency and most especially with the way it dealt with ethics in the marketplace.  

lawson-cartoon-betterJim Randolph, one of the novel’s main characters, is in the T.R. mold: he may be a bloated rich pig but at least he’s a bloated rich pig with a sense of noblesse oblige. Jim shares Teddy Roosevelt’s disdain for the Trusts and for con men who use the stock market to rip off their clients.

It’s not as if Jim Randolph is as fiery as Teddy Forstmann was in his opposition to Leveraged Buy Outs during the 1980s, but like Forstmann he has a sense of what makes for a healthy economy and frowns upon the fly-by-night operators who thrive on irresponsible “frenzied finance” as Randolph calls it.   Continue reading →

10 Comments

Filed under opinion

Tagged as , , , , ,

June 12, 2025 · 6:41 pm

CAPTAIN MORS THE AIR PIRATE (1908-1911) STORIES FORTY-SIX TO FIFTY

For Balladeer’s Blog’s overview of the entire Kapitan Mors der Luftpirat series click HERE.

SECRETS OF THE METEORITE – Once again Kapitan Mors and his crew take off from their secret island base on a space exploration mission. Among the crew of Mors’ spaceship the Meteor are the regulars – Executive Officer Lindo of India, Engineers Stern and Schrecken, Ship’s Astronomer Van Halen, plus Science Officers Anita and Lucy Long.

Van Halen has discovered a previously unknown meteor but when our heroes approach it they become snared by a tractor beam. They soon realize the seeming meteor is the camouflaged spaceship of a “race” of crystalline robots – and not all of them are friendly. Continue reading →

8 Comments

Filed under Pulp Heroes

Tagged as , , , , , ,