CEMETERY OF TERROR (1985) – HALLOWEEN MONTH CONTINUES! Released in Mexico as Cementerio del terror, this overlooked movie makes for some nice Halloween season viewing and is even set on October 31st. Cemetery of Terror is not as campy as Mexican Wrestling Horror flicks or notorious works like The Brainiac, The Curse of the Crying Woman, The Man and the Monster, etc. Instead, its many flaws work to its benefit for that 1980s VHS feel.
Psychotronic Hall of Fame figures like Hugo Stiglitz, Ruben Galindo Jr. and Rene Cardona III were in the creative team of this laughably bad but grim and downbeat movie. Cemetery of Terror is ideal for Bad Movie Fans with strong stomachs because some of the gore reaches Lucio Fulci levels.
Sure, you’ve seen everything in this flick before, but you’ve rarely seen it done with such élan. The energetic camera work overcomes the poor acting, idiotic character decisions and frequent repetition. Let’s dive into the smorgasbord of horror elements jam-packed into this project and ask ourselves “Just how much money did the makers of Pepsi Free pay for the wall-to-wall product placements they got?” Continue reading
THE BOD SQUAD (1974) – Hong Kong Cinema’s Shaw Brothers helped produce this cross-cultural martial arts exploitation flick that plays like an Andy Sidaris film crossed with a WIP movie from the 70s. 
TIMEBOMB (1991) – With Alien: Earth being streamed in recent weeks, it has brought with it the usual remarks from Alien franchise fans about what a raw deal Michael Biehn got when his character Corporal Hicks was killed off with Newt in between films.
Previously, Balladeer’s Blog reviewed various examples of Bruceploitation Movies, that odd subgenre full of martial arts spectacles exploiting and otherwise trying to cash in on the explosion of popularity in kung-fu films that the real Bruce Lee brought to the west. 
BRUCE, KUNG FU GIRLS (1977) – Also released as Bruce’s Angels, Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu Girls and several other titles, but I have a soft spot for this more inane title selection. I really hope that movies titled Bruce, Gone with the Wind; Bruce, Whose Life is it Anyway? and Bruce, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues also exist. But as we’ve established, I’m kind of weird. 
DEADBEAT AT DAWN (1988) – Four years in the making, Deadbeat at Dawn is rightfully called America’s Street Fighter – as in 
Audiences not only wince at the violence in Deadbeat at Dawn, they thrill to the stunts that Van Bebber and his collaborators were able to pull off without the benefit of professional stuntmen or fight choreographers. 
GIANT OF THE EVIL ISLAND (1965) – Also released as The Mystery of the Evil Island, this film starred Mission: Impossible‘s Peter Lupus going by the name Rock Stevens. After mild success in a few Italian peplums, Lupus got his one and only swashbuckler movie with this little honey. 
Pedro’s predecessor as captain of his ship has retired after a career of fruitlessly trying to nab the pirate Moloch. Newly arrived Captain Valverde meets cute with the local governor’s daughter Bianca (Dina DeSantis) and the two fall in “love.” 
TOWING (1978) – How obscure is this flick? As of this writing there are only 2 user reviews of it at IMDb. That actually makes Towing better known than some of the other flicks I’ve reviewed here at Balladeer’s Blog, but the fact that Joe Mantegna, Sue Lyon, Dennis Franz, Mike Nussbaum, Jennifer Ashley and J.J. Johnston are in this movie make it worth examining. 
Towing is about that period in the 1970s when Chicago tow-truck operators scandalously began towing vehicles out of parking lots based on VERY questionable grounds of being in violation of city regulations. The sleazy towing companies would charge the vehicle owners much larger than reasonable fees to get them back. 
WAR OF THE WORLDS (2025) – A new chapter has been added to the history of H.G. Wells adaptations. Ice Cube stars in Amazon’s feature-length product placement for itself. In a moment of Cosmic Comedy, Amazon straight-facedly attached the tagline “It’s worse than you think” to this flick.
Ice Cube Makes Faces should have been this thing’s title, since he does nothing but sit in a chair exercising his facial muscles while spending face time with us and absurdly playing his Big Brother Will Protect You role to the hilt. And lest you fear that this adaptation will be less than faithful to the source material, the filmmakers even included the part where one of H.G. Wells’ characters says “Get your skinny ass over there!”
YANKEE BUCCANEER (1952) – An enjoyable movie but one which throws history out the window in the mind-boggling way that only Hollywood could manage! The real-life American naval heroes David Porter (Jeff Chandler) and David Farragut (Scott Brady) are presented fighting Caribbean pirates during the early 1820s. 
Our heroes become romantic rivals for Countess Margarita La Raguna (Suzan Ball, Lucille’s cousin) as the movie ignores the fascinating REAL relationships between the Porter and Farragut families. Still, Yankee Buccaneer is fun, and naturally the good guys win. David Janssen, Michael Ansara and Tonto himself, Jay Silverheels, co-star. 86 minutes.
Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault, which debuted on February 9th, 1985. 
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