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
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
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) – 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. 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
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
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
*** * *** *** *** *** 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
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. The wall was where Humpty Dumpty had decided to sit. Humpty Dumpty could be found on the wall, sitting. Sitting was the activity Humpty Dumpty was engaging in and the wall was the place he had chosen to sit. Everyone agreed that the wall was where Humpty Dumpty was sitting.
It was of no avail to wistfully pretend that Humpty Dumpty was seated elsewhere. With an air of resignation all and sundry were forced to agree that the wall, despite how much they might desperately wish for it to be otherwise, was indeed where Humpty Dumpty sat.
The wall had first been constructed eighty-seven years earlier by two laborers named Stanislaw and Ernst. Throughout his workday Stanislaw often reflected on how he might think of Ernst as the most beautiful man in the world, if not for the fact that, if the truth be known, he considered Ernst to be the most physically repugnant man he had ever seen. Or smelled, for that matter. Still, though, Stanislaw couldn’t help but wonder and it made his pulse quicken each and every time. Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season, humor
Tales of Hoffmann
Yes, as if I wasn’t boring enough already I’m also into opera! Now, I know traditionally “the” Halloween Opera has always been Don Giovanni , but I’ve never bought into that notion since there’s really only one scene in the whole opera that qualifies as spooky and supernatural.
At this time of year I prefer Offenbach’s Tales Of Hoffmann. Not only is it full of appropriately eerie and menacing elements, but it’s also the perfect opera for you to share with someone who’s seeing their very first opera.
One of the reasons for that is that it’s in short segments, surrounded by a wraparound opening and finale. Offenbach adapts short stories written by E.T.A. Hoffmann, who in real life was a pre-Edgar Alan Poe author of eerie short stories in his native Austria during the 1800s. At any rate since this opera’s in short segments novices to the artform won’t have time to Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season
Balladeer's Blog 