TERROR ON TOUR - "The Names Remain Insane" (1980)

 This Saturday Night Special puts the emphasis on the word turd in Sa-Turd-ay, but then maybe that's not such a bad thing!

This thing is called "Terror On Tour" and was made in 1980, and probably should have only been a three or four minute music video!

 I spent about 30 minutes trying to find out if the guys in The Names were the actors who play The Clowns in the movie. IMDB didn't tell me, but finally by going to their Facebook page and looking at a picture of an article written about them, I was able to match up the names. 

The Names are from Rockford, Illinois, and are actually a pretty good band! It seems the music they created for the film was heavier than their normal music, but then The Clowns were known for decapitating mannequins onstage!

 Here's a pretty cool rockin' power pop tune called "Baby You're A Fool" by The Names that's way better than anything in this movie in my opinion!

 P A R T E E! 

 The Clowns are a concept rock band, and now somebody is putting on their style of makeup and costumes and killing whores, drug dealers, and groupies!

 Women are getting killed all around them, so what do The Clowns do?

 P A R T E E ! !

 There's not a whole lot of thought process going on here.

There's lots of shots of putting on makeup, doing drugs, meaningless dialogue, dancing, and big knives like this!

 P A R T E E !!!

 I wonder if this film helped or maimed The Names career!

 It was like either two or three girls got killed in this make out room in a couple of days, and they never cleaned it, and the cops just looked at it and said okay, so I guess she deserves it, because good lord, it had to stink in there!

 Everybody becomes so indifferent to the killings, that this dancer even gets killed on stage and nobody notices!

 The grooviest thing about "Terror On Tour" is the list of credited female characters that includes Mod Girl, Freebase Chick, Next Girl, Well Endowed Lady, Young Girl, Screaming Girl, Operating Woman, Food Girl, Scantily Clad Girl # 1, Scantily Clad Girl # 2, Bleeding Woman, Girl With Pigtails, Girl In The Alley, Dead Victim Etc. Etc.

 Big shoes to fill, another famous rock band from Rockford looks more like clowns than these guys, Cheap Trick!

 By the way, if you seek more information and you do a search for a band called The Names, you're going to mostly find out about about a post punk band from Brussels, Belgium formed in 1978, so it was basically the same era. I don't know who has the rights to the name The Names, but Rockford wins the rock showdown musically!

YEAH I DID IT, WHAT THE HELL YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT??

Hee, Hee, Hee, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ho, Ho, Ho!!!

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL / Republic 12 Chapter Serial - 1941

In today's thrilling serial, on a scientific expedition to Siam, young Billy Batson is given the ability to change himself into the super-powered Captain Marvel by the Wizard Shazam, who tells him his powers will last only as long as the Golden Scorpion idol is threatened. After finding the idol, the scientists realize it could be the most powerful weapon in the world and so they remove the lenses that energize it, distributing them among themselves so that no one would be able to use the idol by himself! Back in the US, Billy Batson, as Captain Marvel, wages a battle against an evil hooded figure, the Scorpion, who hopes to accumulate all five lenses, thereby gaining control of the super-powerful weapon...

Stars are Tom (THE PHANTOM) Tyler, Frank (MEN OF BOY TOWN) Coghlan Jr., William 'Billy' (THE MAGNETIC MONSTER) Benedict and Louise (CITIZEN KANE - lived to be 100!) Currie

Here are our main characters...

And, who is The Scorpion?..

Inside a tomb in Siam, young Billy Batson meets the Wizard Shazam, who gives him the guise of the superman, Captain Marvel, to combat the criminals in search of The Golden Scorpion and its awesome powers.

Now, here are some 'next week' chapter title cards...

Those are some great titles!!

Here's The Scorpion with his cohort, discussing ways to to get all the lenses to The Golden Scorpion in their possession, and wreak even more havoc!

Through all 12 chapters, Captain Marvel confronts a bevy of evil traps!

There's always confusion as to who's a good guy and who's a bad guy!

Whitey calls Billy on the radio and warns him of a bomb in his airplane, Billy sez "Shazam" and turns into Captain Marvel and jumps out just before the plane explodes!

Captain Marvel is one strong mofo, the bad guys drop an engine on him, he catches it and tosses it like it's nothing! This is one of the funniest parts in Firesign Theatre's J-MEN FOREVER! So, check in tomorrow as Eegah!! gives it his all to bring you something special... Good Luck!

THE SPIDER WOMAN - "Mistress of Murder Vs Sherlock Holmes" (1946)

I think it's about time we had a "Was Ist Los Wednesday," and this is a good movie to do it to!

 Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are one of the original dynamic duos, that's for sure!

 If I counted right, "The Spider Woman" was the 8th movie of fifteen in the 30's and the 40's where Basil Rathbone played Sherlock Holmes! I haven't seen every one I don't think, but I'd be willing to bet that every one of them is worth watching!

 A bunch of guys have suddenly been committing suicide, and nobody can figure it out!

 Sherlock Holmes isn't interested, and really doesn't care, because he's out enjoying himself fly fishing with Dr. Watson!

 Then the unimaginable happens, Sherlock has a dizzy spell, and falls in the stream, not the river but the stream, and drowns! Watson is powerless to do anything!

 Some days later, this courier shows up at Watson's door, and freaks out the good Doctor when he finds out it's Holmes in disguise! (He needed to disappear so he could get to the bottom of these suicides undetected!)

 Gale Sondergaard as Adrea Spedding is a bitch in every sense of the word! Gale is very good at being bad, and should really enjoy a greater role in celluloid villainess history!

Sherlock Holmes is now in disguise as Rajni Singh. He's showing her how to take a selfie!

 Now this is an awesome shot!

I love that stairwell, and the lighting and the placement of everything else is perfect!

 So evil Adrea Spedding has got this scam going that involves spiders and suicides!

 Sorry, it's hard to see in this shot, but that's the spider that just got skewered by Holmes pretending to be a sleeping Rajni Singh.

 These movies are serious, but there are always comedic moments like Watson thinking this Entomology expert is just Sherlock in disguise again!

 This weirdo kid is a cross between one of those Chinese hopping vampires and Renfield's son!

He hops around and catches flies!

 Adrea Spedding leaves the boys a little gift, the dust of a plant called Radix pedis diaboli, or the devil's foot, that when burned is deadly! The devil's foot is a totally fictional plant, created by the mind of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of all the Sherlock Holmes books.

 Sherlock and Watson go out searching for more information!

 The curator of this place is acting very strange, and cannot even pronounce the name of this spider, and just calls it a large spider instead!

 What a phony! The spider woman needed a better stooge than that to fool Sherlock Holmes!

 Fittingly so, "The Snake Woman" ends in an arcade complete with a sideshow!

 The "Obongo From The Congo Prancing Pygmy" show is closed down for some strange reason!

Sherlock smells a rat!

 (I don't think they plan on re-opening it in this century)

 This arcade features a fun full size shooter game using real bullets of revolving dictators like Hitler and Mussolini for the kids to shoot at (Remember, this is 1946). 

 

The spider woman's henchmen have Holmes tied to the back of the Hitler target, and the metal plate heart target has been removed

 Wow! What could be worse than having your best pal, the crack shot Dr. Watson, fire the final shot!?

Sherlock Holmes is such a gentleman, that even after the spider woman has tried to kill him three of four times, he lets her walk off uncuffed so she can retain some dignity!

Bad move! 

In the Weirdsville Departamento, Gale Sondergaard returns to the screen as the spider woman three years later in a supposed sequel without Sherlock Holmes, as a completely different person with an evil affinity for spiders in, "The Spider Woman Strikes Back!"