THE SHERIFF & THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL KID (1979) – I’m often asked about movies that are safe to watch with children around at Christmas time. Here are TWO such films, both starring gruff but likable Spaghetti Western icon Bud Spencer (Carlo Pedersoli) and, of all people, Cary Guffey – the little kid from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The first film, The Sheriff & The Extraterrestrial Kid is also called The Sheriff and the Satellite Kid. Three years BEFORE Steven Spielberg’s E.T. Guffey played an alien child who gets stranded on Earth and meets modern day law enforcement figure Sheriff Hall (Spencer), who helps keep him out of the hands of sinister government officials who want to study the unearthly child.
Cary Guffey’s character is named H7-25 and possesses an alien device similar to a television remote control device. That device lets H7-25 rewind time and other miraculous acts to help Sheriff Hall against their pursuers. The kid often uses it to rewind unpleasant events for the bad guys during the many, many chase and fight scenes.
Sheriff Hall is, typically for Bud Spencer, a brute with a soft heart and muscles of steel whose action scenes are like a hybrid of a Three Stooges short and an old Popeye cartoon.
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A CHRISTMAS CAROL GOES WRONG (2017) – The players from Great Britain’s Mischief Theater Company strike again in their guise as the Cornley Polytechnic Amateur Dramatic Society. After the absolute disaster they made of their 2016 production of Peter Pan (see Peter Pan Goes Wrong), the Society were banned from the BBC. 
From there the Society mount their own production with their highly flawed but immensely likable players, highlighted by Chris (Henry Shields), Annie (Nancy Zamit), Robert (Henry Lewis) and others. Naturally, a LOT goes wrong.
A JETSON CHRISTMAS CAROL (1985) – Christmas Carol-A- Thon 2021, my 12th annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon, continues here at Balladeer’s Blog! This 1985 animated version of the Dickens classic incorporates the characters from the Hanna Barbera program The Jetsons. They were a family who were the far-future counterparts of the Stone Age family The Flintstones. 
JAMES BATMAN (1966) – HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Balladeer’s Blog takes a Turkey Day look at a film from the Philippines. This movie teams up Batman, Robin and James Bond as they battle an evil organization called C.L.A.W. It’s another of the many unauthorized Batman movies from around the world. 
Dolpho is in love with Shirley (Shirley Moreno), but she considers Dolpho boring and has the hots for Batman. Just as Shirley is oblivious to the fact that Dolpho really IS Batman, she has no idea that her sister (Bella Flores) is secretly the sultry costumed villainess called Black Rose. 
THE HOOKED GENERATION (1968) – Directed and co-written by the one and only William Grefe. William is known to me and my fellow fans of bad movies for Florida-filmed cult turkeys like Sting of Death, Death Curse of Tartu, The Wild Rebels and Impulse, with William Shatner. 
IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (1994) – Directed by John Carpenter and written by Michael De Luca, this movie was an unabashed valentine to H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King’s imitations of Lovecraft, and The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers. The King in Yellow, of course, is the 1895 book 
Soon, Trent is visited in his padded cell, where he has used a black crayon to cover his body and the padded walls with crucifixes for protection. His visitor is Dr Wrenn, played by David Warner, the panicked, crucifix-surrounded man from The Omen, now talking to the panicked, crucifix-surrounded Sam Neill in this film. (I admit that’s a sly touch in keeping with the style of the movie. It even has echoes of the victim in Equinox fixating on his protective crucifix.) 
THE CRIMSON STAIN MYSTERY (1916) – This was a 16 chapter silent serial that contained multiple horrific elements. The fact that it is so little remembered these days makes it perfect for this list, given Balladeer’s Blog’s overall theme. A mad scientist calling himself the Crimson Stain experiments on human guinea pigs in an attempt to create an intellectually superior race. His experiments all fail, producing hideous, mutated monsters. The Crimson Stain organizes his misbegotten menagerie into a villainous organization and wages a campaign of terror on the world at large. A heroic detective leads the opposition against them and tries to learn the identity of the Crimson Stain. Chapters in this serial boasted wonderfully campy titles like The Brand of Satan, The Devil’s Symphony, Despoiling Brutes and The Human Tiger. 
MUSICAL MUTINY (1970) – Halloween Month continues here at Balladeer’s Blog with a Barry Mahon movie that’s more frighteningly bad than it is frightening. I’ve recently become obsessed with this made in Florida wonder that features the ghost of a long-dead pirate, the deskbound narrator from Blood Freak and a mad scientist intent on taking over the world with his new beverage which gets drinkers higher than marijuana. There are also three on-stage performances by Iron Butterfly (yes, really), including the full-length version of In A Gadda Da Vida. 
Perhaps most importantly for me and my fellow Bad Movie geeks, this is the earliest movie release done as a promotional piece for Pirates World, the long-defunct Florida amusement park featured in notorious Grade Z films like Jack and the Beanstalk, Thumbelina plus Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny (reviewed in 2010 here at Balladeer’s Blog). In fact, Musical Mutiny is so obscure that as of this writing there are only five user reviews at IMDb. 
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