Tag Archives: Halloween

October 27, 2016 · 9:28 pm

SPOOKIES (1986)

Spookies 1SPOOKIES (1986) – Halloween month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog with a look at a bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult. I mean who does this movie have to sleep with in order to be better known?

Spookies is loaded with laughable and outrageous monsters, acting that porn stars would dismiss as amateurish and gore effects that go from wincingly realistic to childishly weak and back again throughout the flick.

The reason for the uneven tone is that Spookies is yet another example of a bad film that was not completed and then was later combined with new footage to slap together a movie with a long enough running time for theatrical release. They Saved Hitler’s Brain, Monster A Go-Go, The Pink Angels plus Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny are four of the best-known examples of these hybrid monstrosities.  

For obvious reasons the characters in the original footage and the completion footage can never interact in the film and part of the fun for lovers of bad movies lies in the awkward lengths the filmmakers go to to try to hide the cut-and- paste nature of their movie. Continue reading →

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October 26, 2016 · 10:44 pm

CARMILLA (1871) BY SHERIDAN LE FANU

carmillaCARMILLA (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 →

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October 26, 2016 · 12:35 am

CROSS OF THE SEVEN JEWELS (1987)

Cross of the Seven Jewels 1Halloween 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

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 →

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October 25, 2016 · 10:35 pm

MORE AMERICAN HORROR LEGENDS

Dalton Changeling 2Balladeer’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 →

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October 25, 2016 · 12:56 am

THE LOST STRADIVARIUS (1895): HALLOWEEN READING

lost-stradivarius-2

*** * *** *** *** *** 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 →

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October 24, 2016 · 7:46 pm

ANNE RICE: HUMPTY DUMPTY

6a00d8341cedea53ef00e5539859d58833-pi (300×319)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.

Brick WallThe 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 →

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October 23, 2016 · 7:53 pm

MONSTER RALLY 2016

Here’s a look at seven of the neglected monsters Balladeer’s Blog has covered over the years. These horrific figures deserve as much love as the better known characters like Dracula or La Lorona.

barenhauter-2THE BARENHAUTER

First Appearance: Isabella of Egypt (1812)

Cryptid Category: Living Dead Servant

Lore: A misanthropic mercenary soldier grown disgusted with the human race accepted a bargain with Satan: in exchange for a period of years spent without shaving or bathing and wearing nothing but a bearskin he would be rewarded in the end. That reward: after finally shaving and bathing at the end of his time as a hermit he was incredibly handsome and well-built. 

On top of that the Devil granted him a fortune in jewels and coins, making him the ultimate catch – physically perfect AND wealthy. In return Satan claimed the souls of the Barenhauter’s dumped former lovers, who would take their own lives in despair. (It was implied that the Barenhauter also had incomparable amatory skills on top of wealth and handsomeness.)  

After death the Barenhauter paid his own price for his deal with the Devil. Anyone who came into possession of any part of his former treasure could summon him from his grave to serve them in any way they wanted (usually for evil purposes). The revenant’s perfectly-preserved body never tired and felt no pain. Continue reading →

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October 21, 2016 · 11:11 pm

THE BODY SHOP (1973)

 THE BODY SHOP (1973) – Category: A neglected bad movie classic that deserves a Plan 9-sized cult following

The horror film titled The Body Shop is one of my all-time favorite bad movie gems. It includes all the little extras that separate mere bombs from the truly legendary turkeys and, like another neglected classic, The Wizard of Mars (see my Bad Movie page for the review), just keeps getting worse and worse and weirder and weirder all the way to the end. Continue reading →

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October 20, 2016 · 9:27 pm

TALES OF HOFFMANN FOR HALLOWEEN

Tales of Hoffmann

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 →

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October 18, 2016 · 11:34 pm

THE MESSENGER (1897): GOTHIC HORROR

messenger-or-black-priestTHE MESSENGER (1897) – Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween continues with another neglected work of horror – this one penned by Robert W Chambers, author of The King in Yellow, which I reviewed HERE 

The story – also known as The Black Priest or The Black Abbot – is set in 1896 in the mysterious Brittany region of northwest France. Richard Darrel, a wealthy American knickerbocker (upstate New York gentry) has bought a Breton estate with assorted household staff. He lives there with his beautiful (of course) wife Lys, a native of Brittany.  

Landscaping work near Richard’s estate has uncovered thirty-eight skeletons: men killed in a battle between English invaders and Breton defenders back in 1760. A bronze cylinder in the mass grave holds a delicate parchment with a message written in human blood at the time of the burial. The writing is in the ancient language of Brittany, which only the clergy of the 1760 time period were literate in.  

Our American hero senses that the local authorities are withholding vital information from him. He is also intrigued by the revelation that there were thirty-nine men buried in the pit but only thirty-eight skeletons have been found. Continue reading →

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