Frontierado is coming up on Friday, August 4th! Here’s a brief look at two films presented on The Texas 27 Film Vault that match the old west theme of this holiday season: Frontier Marshal and Billy the Kid vs Dracula.
A movie guaranteed to contain absolutely NO accurate information.
FRONTIER MARSHAL (1939)
Original Broadcast Date: Saturday October 25th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.
Serial: An episode of Mysterious Doctor Satan was shown before the movie. This 1940 serial presented the title villain trying to take over the world with a big, goofy robot while being opposed by a masked superhero called Copperhead.
THE MOVIE: Frontier Marshal, directed by Allan Dwan, has a well-deserved reputation as the worst and weirdest cinematic depiction of the events leading up to the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Randolph Scott turns inhis usual bland performance as Wyatt Earp with Cesar Romero a very unlikely Doc.
As usual Doc steals the show from the hopelessly dull and straight-arrow Wyatt. Ward Bond shows up as a cowardly lawman, Lon Chaney, Jr, plays one of Curly Bill Brocius’ thugs and Balladeer’s Blog’s old friend John Carradine is the movie’s main villain … Carter. No, not Clanton or even McLaurey but “Carter”.
Randy (right) and Richard way down on Level 31 hosting The Texas 27 Film Vault
Here’s just some of the hilariously distorted bits from this Parallel Universe version of the events in Tombstsone, Arizona:
Doc Holliday’s name is Halliday for some reason and is pronounced “Hale-i-day”. Characters say “Hale-i-day” so many times that if you made it a drinking game you’d be dead of alcohol poisoning about half-way through.
Doc Holliday, excuse me – Hale-i-day – drank only milk in the west until the woman he loved back in Georgia (his cousin in real life) showed up in Tombstone. Then he started drinking whiskey to escape the pain of seeing her again. Continue reading
The Frogs was another low point in the career of Ray Milland, along with The Thing With Two Heads. Pollution was to cheap monster movies of the 70s what atomic radiation was to cheap monster movies of the 50s. In other words it was the catch-all explanation for anything and everything. 
Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are familiar with my fondness for old Silent Movies. America was D.W. Griffith’s 1924 production about the Revolutionary War. The movie is pleasant enough for the July 4th holiday season, but don’t expect a classic like The Phantom of the Opera, The Mark of Zorro or many other masterpieces of the silent era. 
The Holdens can’t stand the snobbish Montagues and the Montagues pompously look down on the Holdens and the rest of the rebels. Nancy’s father would rather see Nancy married off to the prominent British military officer Captain Walter Butler, played with aristocratic and sadistic flair by THE Lionel Barrymore. 
It may be my fondness for mythology that makes me love to watch particular movies around particular holidays. I say that because many of the well- known myths were recited on ancient holidays when their subject matter was relevant to those holidays. The stories helped accentuate the meaning of the special events and that’s the way I use various movies. 
The Hypnotic Eye is one of the most beloved bad movies of the 1960s. Its hilariously campy trailer, its sinister Eurotrash villain and its Ed Wood-level police work all make it a true anti-classic. 
THE FOOD OF THE GODS was very loosely based on part of H.G. Wells’ novel of the same name. It was directed by Bert I Gordon, “Mr B.I.G.” himself. Gordon’s Village of the Giants, about a gang of giant-sized teenagers, was likewise loosely based on an often-forgotten section of that novel. 
ALIEN: COVENANT (2017) – Balladeer’s Blog’s sources in the industry – and by the industry I mean the business – have assured me that when the very first public showing of Alien: Covenant was over Ridley Scott stood up, faced the preview audience and defiantly said “Now you tell me that’s not funny!”
Director Scott even takes a not-so-subtle poke at the whole “Newt and Hicks die right off the bat in Alien 3″ debacle. He has reasonably famous actor James Franco play the ship’s captain and – get this – Franco’s character dies after about a minute and a half when his cryo-sleep coffin catches fire! Too funny! (But I feel the merchandising tie-in with James Franco Briquettes is a little tasteless!) 
