Tag Archives: monster movies

ZUMA (1985) AND DAUGHTER OF ZUMA (1987)

Halloween month rolls along with Balladeer’s Blog’s salute to Zuma, the king of Philippine horror movies, and his sequel film Daughter of Zuma.

ZUMA (1985) – Category: Enjoyably bad movie elevated by its obscurity value      

There’s an old saying that goes “Once you have a big green bald guy with pythons growing out of his neck you never go back.” Or something to that effect. This monstrous figure is Zuma  himself, the Freddy Krueger of the Philippines in the 1980s. Big, muscular and green like the Hulk, bald like Mr Clean and with pythons growing out of his neck like the late Michael Jackson. (Disclaimer: The preceding remark is probably not true)

Originally a comic book character in the Philippines, Zuma took the film industry of the islands by storm with his debut film in 1985 and a sequel in 1987. Copies of these films have been Continue reading

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THE KINDRED (1987) MOVIE REVIEW

Kindred largerTHE KINDRED (1987) – This monster movie was the third horror project from the writing and directing team of Stephen Carpenter and Jeffrey Obrow.

The duo got started while they were film students at UCLA and released the regulation 1982 slasher movie Death Dorm aka Pranks aka The Dorm That Dripped Blood. Next came The Power (1984), about a cursed Aztec relic.

Neither of those works were exceptional nor were they trying to redefine the genre, but there was noticeable improvement between the 1984 project and the 1982 debut film. The Kindred continued that professional refinement and is the most watchable of “Carpbrow’s” early horror efforts.

THE Kim Hunter is in a few early scenes as Amanda Hollins, a biochemist who was engaged in some ethically questionable research before a car accident left her in a coma for years. She has just emerged from that coma and wants her son John (David Allen Brooks) to go to her old beach house and destroy all of her work, including her notes.

Rod Steiger, just one year away from his outrageous tour-de-force performance in the slasher film American Gothic (with YVONNE DE CARLO), plays Dr Phillip Lloyd, the villain of the story. The mad Dr Lloyd has been trying his own hand at the kind of research that Amanda Hollins excelled at. To that end he’s been paying an unscrupulous ambulance driver to covertly provide him with accident victims to use as human guinea pigs.   Continue reading

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MONSTER BASH 2018 COMING TO MARS, PA

monster bash 2018

There will be three Monster Bash Events this year. June, August and October.  The June and October shows will be the large scale gatherings at the Double Tree in Mars, PA (North Pittsburgh Double Tree location). August will be a movie marathon at the grand Palace Theatre in Canton, Ohio with vendors.  

Here are some of the basics on the forthcoming June show:

MONSTER BASH – Double Tree Pittsburgh North, Mars, PA (Cranberry Township)/June 22-24, 2018 Continue reading

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SPOOKIES (1986) – A NEGLECTED BAD MOVIE CLASSIC

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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BAD MOVIE – PULGASARI (1985): THE MONSTER MOVIE MADE BY THE LATE KIM JONG IL

Pulgasari (1985)Kim Jong Un has North Korea in the news again for all the wrong reasons. He’s continuing his insane and despotic family’s policies like starving his own people, constantly threatening nuclear activity against other nations, having his secret police abduct countless people in the middle of the night and running a barbaric prison system. 

So here’s a helping of my review of the lone venture into the area of filmmaking that Kim Jong Un’s equally crazed father Kim Jong Il engaged in. Of course I’m talking about Pulgasari, the only kaiju movie produced by a man who combined the insanity of Idi Amin with the paranoia of Josef Stalin and the cinematic mastery of Ed Wood.

PULGASARI (1985) – Category: Bad enough and with a classically weird premise but not fun-bad enough for my highest rating     North Korea’s thoroughly deranged dictator Kim Jong Il was responsible for this film and even gives himself a producer’s credit. It’s the least he could do for himself after having his underlings literally KIDNAP SOME FILMMAKERS from South Korea and forcing them to take part in this bizarre film venture. If you doubt me just use a search engine to find out about the making of this movie. He even made those unfortunate people rot in one of his prisons for four years before he finally got around to setting them to the task he had kidnapped them for in the first place.

It was all part of Krazy Kim’s desire to initiate North Korea’s entry into the kaiju monster film market. (Their previous attempt decades earlier resulted in the equally laughable film Yongary, Monster From The Deep ) The story of the kidnapping and the filmmakers’ subsequent escape would have made a much better movie than this monster flick.

Pulgasari (No, Dennis Rodman, not Pao Gasol, Pulgasari. NBA fans will get it) is the title monster in Kim Jong Il’s attempt to imitate Godzilla and Gamera and other Japanese monsters. Since the story is Continue reading

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