Balladeer’s Blog’s love of old exploitation films is well known.
For everyone else who shares my enthusiasm a new ‘zine launched this month.
It’s titled Drive-In of the Damned: The Preservation of Exploitation. One of the features of this debut issue is a lost interview with Ted V Mikels, the man behind films like The Corpse Grinders, Astro-Zombies, The Doll Squad, Blood Orgy of the She-Devils and many more.
FOR MORE CLICK HERE
Filed under Bad and weird movies
Thanksgiving is this Thursday, which means that on Wednesday Night Balladeer’s Blog will be showing its yearly Thanksgiving Eve presentation of Oliver! Yes, I know there’s no connection between Thanksgiving and that musical based on the Dickens novel Oliver Twist.
The Christmas season is too packed with theme movies so I long ago chose Thanksgiving Eve for Oliver! Here’s the song Consider Yourself as Oliver Twist meets the Artful Dodger:
Filed under opinion
FRIDAY THE 13th: THE ORPHAN (1977) – H.H. Munro must have turned over in his grave at this adaptation of one of his short stories. This quasi-horror film was re-released in 1979 as just The Orphan and despite the original title it has no connection to the Friday the 13th series of slasher flicks. At least, no REAL connection. I’m surprised some unscrupulous distributor never tried sneaking this into theaters in the 1980’s as a “prequel” to the slasher movies by presenting the insane young boy in the movie as the grandfather of Jason Voorhees.
Even so the title makes it hard not to think of our wealthy young protagonist “David” (Mark Owens) as an ancestor of the hockey- masked slice and dice man from Crystal Lake. In the 1920’s David’s mother accidentally shoots his African Big Game Hunter father Kevin to death during an argument about his frequent overseas trips. David not only witnesses this but sees his mother put the gun in her mouth and kill herself immediately afterward.
Next David gets VERY disturbed when a presumed family member (an uncredited Christopher Lloyd in a “blink-and-you’ll- miss- him” appearance) forces him to kiss his dead father as he lies in his coffin. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
THINGS AREN’T WHAT THEY SEEM (2013) – A Liberal college professor finds her hatred of all Christian Conservatives to be ill-founded when she winds up interacting with her new neighbors from Kansas.
By movie’s end she has abandoned her condescending attitude toward them and has resolved to relate to all human beings as individuals instead of as simplistic stereotypes.
Freed from the snobbery of her political prejudices she finds herself on the outs with her slavishly conformist colleagues at the university and must choose between career advancement and standing up for what she believes is right. Continue reading
Filed under Fantastic Movie Reviews
Welcome back to Balladeer’s Blog, with another musical shoutout. It’s the Bostweeds -no, not the Mighty Mighty Bosstones – the Bostweeds with the iconic opening song to the Psychotronic film classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
I’ve always felt that if I get married I’d like my bride-to-be to walk down the aisle to an instrumental version of THIS song. It might even be a deal-breaker!
Filed under opinion
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!”
Turns out there’s a little Mel Brooks lurking inside Ridley Scott, who decided to do to his own Alien and Prometheus films what Brooks did to Star Wars with his Space Balls movie. Looked at in that light Alien: Covenant is pure comedy gold!
Remember how in Alien an interstellar crew gets detoured to a deadly site by a coded distress signal that’s really a warning? Well, in Alien: Covenant an interstellar crew gets detoured to a deadly site by a broadcast of THE JOHN DENVER SONG COUNTRY ROADS, TAKE ME HOME! Hilarious, right? Sure, it’s a little derivative of the aliens in Mars Attacks getting killed by Slim Whitman songs but c’mon, cut Ridley some slack!
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!)
And remember how we all laughed during Prometheus when the crew all took their helmets off on an alien body as if it was perfectly okay? Well this time around Ridley Scott has the crew NOT EVEN BOTHER TO WEAR HELMETS IN THE FIRST PLACE! They just traipse blithely about as if they’d never even HEARD of Security Protocols.
(We know that they have heard of them because sly ol’ funny man Ridley has these dweebs refer to them at one point in the ultimate example of irony. I mean it, dude, not even Leslie Nielsen could have delivered the reference to Security Protocols any more straight-faced than these folks! ) Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, humor
FINALLY, ON THE 87TH TAKE, EVERYTHING SEEMED PERFECT … UNTIL HENRI SUFFERED AN UNFORTUNATE ERUPTION OF FLATULENCE.
Filed under humor
To celebrate the upcoming release of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, the Sleep Matters Club have rounded up 40 bedtime monsters for a fearsome fact file.
As far-fetched as it may seem, some of the most menacing monsters aren’t from the pages of books or the silver screen; they’re from real-world myths and legends. To create the infographic, we’ve scoured the darkest dungeons and most frightening fortresses across the globe.
Each monster has been awarded a danger rating, so you’ll know how safe it is to approach it. You’ll also discover their key traits and where they’re most likely to lurk. It’s short and sweet so you’ll be able to quickly identify them when they’re coming at you!
On the lower end of the scare scale is Frankenstein’s Monster. He’s generally a good guy, but his anger is unleashed when tormented by mad scientists. We (The Sleep Matters Club) think he deserves a danger rating of two.
Continue reading
Filed under Halloween Season, Mythology
Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault!
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the mid-1980s.
EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday April 19th, 1986 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.
EXTRAS: This episode featured footage of our Film Vault Technicians First Class Randy and Richard’s promotional appearance at Six Flags Mall in nearby Arlington, TX.
HOST SEGMENTS: One particular Host Segment featured one of the show’s behind-the- scenes people portraying Commando Cody complete with helmet and rocket pack. He was portraying the character because the Commando Cody serial Radar Men from the Moon was the current serial being shown before the movie each week on The Texas 27 Film Vault.
Since Randy Clower still outranked his co-host Richard Malmos (at least until a few episodes later) in the fictional Film Vault Corps (“The few, the proud, the sarcastic”) their relationship often featured the type of abusive “Host and Second Banana” dynamic like that between Dr Morgus and his lab assistant Chopsley or Zacherle and his wife My Dear or Dr Forester and TV’s Frank. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts, Uncategorized
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