The day after Thanksgiving means two things: college football and leftovers.
WAVELENGTH (1983) – Robert Carradine, Cherrie Currie and Keenan Wynn play a reclusive rock singer, his new girlfriend and his eccentric neighbor who get caught up in a government coverup about extraterrestrial life.
Captured aliens telepathically contact Cherrie Currie’s character and plead to be rescued from the government facility where they are being held. Our heroic trio attempt to save them only to discover the aliens may have brought a world-destroying disease with them. CLICK HERE
SCORPION THUNDERBOLT (1983) – From Balladeer’s Blog’s old friend Godfrey Ho comes this horror film that has absolutely NOTHING to do with either scorpions OR thunderbolts.
As always Godfrey Ho edits some of his newly-shot footage of fading action star Richard Harrison into an odd and bloody Asian movie. Get ready for snake-monsters who walk on two legs, a High Priestess with claws like Freddy Krueger’s razored glove, a blind night watchman (seriously) and kung-fu fights for no good reason. CLICK HERE
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TALES OF THE THIRD DIMENSION (1984) was yet another of the six 3D movies released in the 1980s by Balladeer’s Blog’s old friend Earl Owensby. Earl was known as “The Dixie DeMille” since he and his film company operated almost exclusively out of North Carolina. To me he’s always seemed more like Roger Corman, however, since Owensby’s flicks were mostly just unpretentious B Movies made with so little money they were guaranteed to turn a profit. 
THE DEAD PIT (1989) – This horror film was the directorial debut of the very prolific director Brett Leonard. While not a four-star movie The Dead Pit is enjoyable enough for the Halloween Season and should certainly appeal to anyone into 1980s horror flicks. This movie’s hybrid of zombie elements and slasher elements is both its charm AND the reason behind its love-it-or-hate-it status. 
From 1979 to this calendar year the movies in this under-appreciated horror franchise forever changed the way we look at funeral homes. And funeral home directors. And Roman Numerals for that matter. For better or worse writer/director Don Coscarelli never sold out, never let the sinister Tall Man become an outer-space joke like Jason Voorhees or a Borscht-Belt Charles Manson like Freddy Krueger. (And it’s hard to believe the first Phantasm was rated X for violence in 1979.) 
Welcome back to Balladeer’s Blog’s month-long celebration of Halloween!
He tries to liven up his boring gig on local radio by suggesting some unorthodox public behavior to his listeners and is as surprised as his female producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) when people around the area begin taking him up on the suggestion. As reports continue to come into the tiny radio station it soon becomes apparent that the population isn’t just extremely receptive to suggestion, many of them have become living zombies with a desire to kill anyone not similarly stricken. 
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