Yes, from The Rocky Horror Picture Show it’s the opening song Science Fiction Double Feature.
Tag Archives: Halloween season
THE DEVIL OF PEI-LING (1927): NEGLECTED HORROR NOVEL
Halloween Month rolls blithely along as Balladeer’s Blog presents another look at a neglected work of horror fiction.
THE DEVIL OF PEI-LING (1927) – This minor masterpiece was penned by the Bard of the Bowery himself, Herbert Asbury! New York Detective Inspector Conroy tries to stop a reign of terror which is in actuality being inflicted on the world by supernatural forces from beyond the grave and from just north of Hell.
The Inspector was first drawn into the affair by the novel’s narrator, a physician friend of Conroy’s a la Doctor Watson to Sherlock Holmes. The doctor treats a comatose woman following a car accident and notices that she has deep red stigmata on her hands and feet. These stigmata don’t stop at an imitation of Christ’s wounds and begin to sprout nails as well.
The horrors just keep coming from there, as a “living” crimson rope often appears out of nowhere to hang a series of law enforcement figures and jurors who sentenced a murderous magician named Paul Silvio to death by hanging.
As Conroy and his medical friend probe deeper they learn that after Silvio was hanged, his corpse animated itself long enough to threaten vengeance on everyone involved in his execution. Soon after the comatose stigmatic woman appears at the hospital other horrors abound.
Gigantic toads the size of small dogs show up, bloody human sacrifices take place and a bronze idol of a demonic being called Pei-Ling periodically comes to life to murder people. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
HALLOWEEN MONTH IS HERE
BALLADEER’S BLOG’S STAFF PICNIC PHOTO
October 1st means it’s the start of Halloween Month, the time of year when Balladeer’s Blog not only covers all of its usual topics but throws in reviews of neglected and obscure horror films, monsters and stories as well.
Filed under Halloween Season
SEVEN ZOMBIE FILMS THAT ARE UNIQUE
The living dead emerging from The Dead Pit (1989)
HAPPY HALLOWEEN! If you’re like me you’re bored with zombies and pseudo-zombies. The 21st Century is as mired in tiresome, cookie-cutter zombie flicks as the 1980s were in tiresome, cookie-cutter slasher flicks.
Here is a look at seven films which, while technically classified as zombie movies at least adopt unique perspectives and don’t follow established formulas.
THE DEAD PIT (1989) – This horror film was the directorial debut of the very prolific director Brett Leonard. While not a four-star movie The Dead Pit is enjoyable enough for the Halloween Season and should certainly appeal to anyone into 1980s horror flicks. This movie’s hybrid of zombie elements and slasher elements is both its charm AND the reason behind its love-it-or-hate-it status.
Don’t expect non-stop Resident Evil-level action but DO expect to see some in-your-face gore very early in the flick for lovers of guts and decomposition. A physician (Dr Swan) at a mental hospital discovers the secret sub-basement where a rival MD (Dr Ramzi) is subjecting hopeless patients to horrific experiments involving a combination of science and the supernatural. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
BROTHER VOODOO: COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU!
Halloween Month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog! Marvel Comics’ Doctor Strange movie is coming out soon.
With every single Marvel Comics character apparently coming to a large or small screen near you it’s only a matter of time before we’re treated to Brother Voodoo – another of their neglected horror heroes.
And here’s another look: Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
THE WEREWOLF (1896): FEMALE WEREWOLF
THE WEREWOLF (1896) – By Clemence Annie Housman. Halloween month continues at Balladeer’s Blog! This neglected story features a female author writing about a FEMALE WEREWOLF so that makes it a bit special right there.
The Werewolf is set in 1890s Denmark. Amidst werewolf attacks plaguing the countryside a Danish family finds itself being charmed by a sultry, seductive woman who calls herself White Fell. The woman travels alone by night so is obviously the werewolf at large. Unfortunately her potent beauty allays suspicion and even pits brothers Sweyn and Christian against each other. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
CARMILLA (1871) BY SHERIDAN LE FANU
CARMILLA (1871) – By Sheridan Le Fanu. Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues. I would have thought that the classic vampire story Carmilla would be too well known for me to have to cover it. I’m surprised at how many people I encounter who are not familiar with the original story, however, just some of the adaptations. SPOILERS AHEAD!
The vampire Carmilla is really the presumably long-dead Countess Mircalla Karnstein. She fell in love with Laura, the heroine of the story, when Laura was six, so she spared her. As the story begins Laura has turned eighteen, so Carmilla considers her ripe for seduction. The vampire plans to spend eternity with our teenage heroine, in the now-routine element of vampire tales.
A nice novelty is that Carmilla turns into a cat instead of a bat, but otherwise the 200 year-old vampress’ pursuit of Laura followed the usual pattern: “Sickness” strikes dead several girls in the Austrian town near the castle where Laura lives with her father. Eventually she herself begins to show lesser versions of the mysterious illness’ symptoms. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
CROSS OF THE SEVEN JEWELS (1987)
Halloween month continues at Balladeer’s Blog!
CROSS OF THE SEVEN JEWELS (1987) – Cross of the Seven Jewels is easily the worst and weirdest werewolf movie I’ve ever seen. Forget The Werewolf of Woodstock, forget Face of the Screaming Werewolf, forget Werewolf vs the Yeti and all of Paul Naschy’s other lycanthropy flicks.
You can even forget the muddy-faced wolfman from Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein. Marco Antonio Andolfi starred in this film under the name Eddy Endolf plus wrote and directed it as well.
Andolfi was openly influenced by Paul Naschy’s werewolf films from Spain, but produced a cinematic mess that captured neither the eroticism of Naschy’s Waldemar Daninsky movies nor their goofy charm. Marco’s depiction of a werewolf is a bit … eccentric … and can only be described as “just a little something for the laaaadieeessss.”
Personally, I would have titled this film “Ya Call THAT a Werewolf?” but I’m kind of weird.
When Andolfi transforms into a wolfman he somehow loses his clothes (which illogically reappear on his body when he reverts back to human form) and he sprouts long bushy hair in only a few places. The first place is around his face with his mouth left bare, making him look like he’s wearing a big hair-mask with eye-holes. The second place would be his hands and the third place is his crotch, which conveniently becomes bushy enough to block out the sight of his genitals. The rest of his well-built body is butt naked. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
MORE AMERICAN HORROR LEGENDS
Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues …
THE DALTON CHANGELING – In late 1700s Massachusetts a malevolent witch replaces the infant child of the Dalton family with a changeling spawned by a dark ceremony. Can the Freemasons of New England devise a way of dealing with the monstrous child or will it be free to roam the countryside on nightly reigns of terror? CLICK HERE Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
THE LOST STRADIVARIUS (1895): HALLOWEEN READING
*** * *** *** *** *** Jeremy Brett as John Maltravers in a 1966 television adaptation of The Lost Stradivarius.
THE LOST STRADIVARIUS (1895) by John Meade Falkner – More than a century before Anne Rice’s violin-oriented ghost story Violin came The Lost Stradivarius. Halloween month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog with a look at this neglected gem of horror fiction.
The main story is set in the 1840s. John Maltravers, a young man from the British gentry, is attending Magdalen College at Oxford University. Stumbling across an anonymous piece of lost music the talented Maltravers plays the piece on a violin.
This spontaneous recital summons up – among other horrors – the ghost of Adrian Temple, the violinist who composed the eerie piece of music when he was a student at Oxford in the 1750s. That ghost leads John to the hidden location of his (Temple’s) Stradivarius violin. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
