Welcome to a new review here at B-Movie Enema.

Congratulations are in order this week. You see, the movie I’m going to be writing about isn’t just the loooooong-awaited return of B-Movie Enema favorites Brian K. Williams and Ellie Church, but this week’s movie, Gush, is also the absolutely most recent movie ever covered on the blog. So, hey… Williams and Church, the super couple of low-budget exploitation art, for the win!

Previous movies involving the pair on this site are Space Babes from Outer Space, which was directed by Williams and starred Church, Amazon Hot Box, in which Church was the villainous warden in the vein of Ilsa with Williams in the role of an editor, and Frankenstein Created Bikers, in which Church was featured as Candy. So it’s great to see these two back in the saddle here once again, but I also get to reference another person whose movies I really could also cover on the site. I mean, I definitely could cover more Ellie Church’s filmography, but there are still a couple movies from Williams I could someday cover as well. No, the person I’m talking about is yet another Hoosier, Scott Schirmer.

Yes, Scott Schirmer is a Bloomington, Indiana, guy who has made movies with Ellie Church like The Bad Man, Plank Face, and Harvest Lake – all three of these movies I could definitely review. Brian K. Williams, along with sharing co-directing duties with Schirmer on Gush, edited Harvest Lake. Schirmer’s stuff is good and interesting as well, so I definitely need to get more of his stuff scheduled in the future on this site. Buuuut that’s not all in terms of the Indiana connection here! Gush also features Alyss Winkler, who we saw in both Amazon Hot Box and Space Babes from Outer Space, as well as Jason Crowe, someone who frequently works with Schirmer and Church, but also appeared in Space Babes as one of the regulars at the titty bar the girls go to learn more about human sexuality.

So, yeah, let’s hear it for us Hoosiers!

Now, as we get started here, I gotta say that I was so on cruise control for how I start these articles each week that I tried looking for more information on this movie in the same place I always do whenever I’m about to write an article – by going to Wikipedia. The concept that this was a very small movie that was crowdfunded just kind of escaped me at the time. As I went into the disambiguation page for “Gush,” both what I was doing and something that led me down other avenues of thought struck me. First, duh… This movie wasn’t going to have a Wikipedia article. Second, Wikipedia asked me if I would like to check out the disambiguation pages for other concepts like “Spurt” and “Squirt.” While I totally admit I’m a grosso who allowed my mind, just for a second, to travel down those other avenues (read: gutters), I also can’t deny that I chuckled before moving on with getting this review started.

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s dig into this horror/mystery/romance/thriller/drama that I’ve been dying to dive into ever since my Blu-ray arrived from that crowdfunding campaign some months back.

NOTE: Something I don’t normally do in these breakdowns/reviews, but I need to here. This is still a pretty new movie, and while it hit Tubi a couple of weeks ago, this is something that many have not yet had the chance to see. So, from this point forward, SPOILERS.

The movie begins, as all good movies do, with sex… and maybe a tad bit of violence as Sally (Church) goes between moaning while making love with her husband, Kevin (Crowe), and thinking back to a car accident. As she thinks about the accident, she squirms and winces while Kevin kisses her. She also grabs at the sheets and tenses up like she did when crawling out of the wreckage of her car. All the while, we hear a heartbeat play in the midst of the soft kisses, the sirens, the traffic, and the whimpers, and later cries, of the injured Sally. And it’s at the climax, pun only slightly intended, that we understand the stress and the trauma of what Sally is reliving… She was pregnant at the time of the accident.

To Kevin’s disappointment, Sally asks to stop with the lovemaking. Despite her apology and promises, he wonders if they will ever be the same. Despite offering another go, it’s Kevin this time who declines, opting instead to finish himself off in the shower.

Professionally, Sally is known as S.A. Harkley, the author of such books as Death’s Embrace and Death’s Child. Along with a strained relationship with Kevin and the loss of their baby, Sally is dealing with some other pretty nasty habits. She’s not exactly eating normally, seemingly unexcited for Kevin’s bacon and egg breakfast he brings to her the next morning, and she’s drinking… a lot. Oh, and what’s more? She’s got a pretty serious case of writer’s block.

Behind Sally’s back, Kevin talked to her publisher, Owen. Without telling him every gory detail, it was agreed upon by Kevin and Owen that Sally needs to go to a cabin Owen owns. It’s remote. It’s good for writers who are struggling with their talents. It’s got all she needs to get back on track. Despite Sally feeling like she can’t write horror any longer, she takes the guys up on the deal just so she can write something.

The place… kinda sucks. The place looks a little too rustic and not exactly the cleanest of places. The bed is dusty. The kitchen drawers are loaded with spiders. There’s a closet door in the bedroom that is locked and unable to be jimmied open – at first. What was promised to be a writing room with a computer is a writing room with a typewriter. As she talks to Owen and he tries to lift Sally’s spirit, she’s unaware of a mysterious woman listening in from behind a tree. The mysterious woman not only watches but also messes up Sally’s phone’s reception, cutting off her call with her publisher.

Despite not wanting to write horror any longer, she sits down at the typewriter to start on the third book of her trilogy, titled Death’s End. As she bangs away on the keys and the washing machine runs so she can have not-so-dusty bedding when she goes to bed that night, she begins to get the impression that she may not be the only person in the cabin. However, every time she turns when she thinks she hears the floorboards creak, no one is there.

That night, she’s visited by the mysterious Muse (Winkler) that haunts the cabin. The Muse crawls into bed with Sally. She lifts up Sally’s shirt to get a good look at dem tittaes and generally seems to want to see what she’s going to be dealing with. She lies in bed next to Sally and caresses and watches her sleep. I will say that during this scene, there is some excellent synth music from Aaron Marshall that plays to a late-night cable TV feel from the 80s.

The next day, it’s more drinking, more typing, more jumping jacks to try to jog something in her writing mind, but everything is leading to crumpled-up wads of paper being launched at the writing room’s wastebasket. She’s visited by a local landscaper who wants to mow the lawn and trim some of the hedges around the cabin. She turns him down, opting instead to take his name and number to give to Owen. While Sally tries to find some paper for him to leave that info, the guy peeks inside the cabin only to see the Muse crouching behind the furniture and slowly descending behind it in a particularly eerie shot.

That said, when Sally sees the Muse outside, it’s not eerie or creepy at all; it becomes more of a playful chase through the woods. Again, that lovely 80s style synth score returns as the Muse mischievously scampers through the woods ahead of Sally. Sally even tries to introduce herself to the mysterious woman, but the Muse continues to run away.

Now, when Sally arrived at the cabin, she found a dead cat on the property. The next day, it was that cat that Sally wanted to bury when the Muse arrived for the fun little chase through the woods. When Sally next sees the Muse, she’s carrying the very much alive cat. This calms Sally down after a call with Kevin that might have indicated that he may be interested in another woman.

The next night, the Muse climbs into bed with Sally again, this time during a thunderstorm. Oh, and also this time, she takes off her dress as she lures Sally out of the room and into the writing room. There, the two of them appear to have some erotic funtimes while also inspiring Sally. She begins to write pages almost effortlessly without even remembering that she wrote anything at all.

When Sally realizes she has written several pages, she looks at them almost as if to say, “Hey, wasn’t I just making out with a big-breasted wood nymph of a muse lady? What’s all this??” But there is something peculiar about the Muse’s power. It’s as if Sally is possessed as the Muse dances around her in the red and purple-lit writing room.

When morning comes, Sally takes a break from writing and thanks the Muse for the newfound inspiration. She even allows the Muse to spoon her in bed. But in what appears to be a dream, they are back at Sally’s house. The Muse gets into the shower with the masturbating Kevin to finish him off… to death. Yeah, Sally watches her Muse jerk Kevin off until he dies, and Sally’s like, “Hell yeah, now let me take off my pajamas and join you in the shower, babe!” Except the shower is actually a bloodbath.

Also, if I remember correctly, that image above (or something very similar) was heavily used in the marketing of this movie. This movie very easily cleared its fundraising goals. Not sure if that’s pertinent in this review or not. I’m just sayin’.

Lesbian escapades and fantasies and jerked-to-death husbands aside, it seems Sally is not entirely sure what’s happening to her. Sure, she’s got some of her writing mojo back, but she’s not all that cool with this lady not speaking to her. Yeah, the Muse only screams. She does not speak.

After Sally slaps the Muse for not telling her who she is or what she’s done to her, the Muse leaves. Sally checks her phone to discover a voicemail left by Kevin that is just the sounds of him fucking another woman named Lisa. When Sally calls him, he confesses. Sally takes this pretty well. By smashing her phone with a baseball bat.

The night turns to morning with Sally passed out drunk on the lawn. The weird guy who came by asking to do some landscape work for her comes back. He figures a passed-out girl on the lawn is more than enough consent for him to rape her. Thankfully, the Muse returns to slit the man’s throat with a dagger. Bloodsoaked and hungry for breakfast, and probably mildly hungover, Sally goes inside to get back to writing.

Writing isn’t coming as easily today as it did last night. In fact, it’s about to get downright goopy instead. And no, not because the Muse is massaging Sally’s head and luscious curls. No, she leads Sally to a cave. Inside, hanging from the ceiling like a stalagtite and a dead baby joke had some strange kind of offspring, is the stillborn fetus Sally lost after that car accident.

I joke, but this is a particularly good scene. The Muse brings Sally here to apologize and then bury the baby as a eulogy to allow her to move on from that terrible night that ultimately led to everything from her not being able to continue her career to ruining her sobriety to the irreparable damage in her marriage. But it’s also a chance to give in to some desire and experience sexual release again with the Muse.

However, all this turns out to be a dream as she awakens to a phone ringing in that locked door in the bedroom. She’s still sitting at the typewriter with the Muse still massaging her head. It turns out that the door in the bedroom is actually a whole other bedroom, not a closet. But on the phone is Owen, who asks if the Muse is speaking to her. While he talks about how mysterious and magical the muses are, she finds a photo album of various people, one of whom looks a lot like the Muse visiting Sally and her white cat.

Sally confides to the Muse that she wrote a book about Death having a baby, and just after that was a success, she lost hers in some form of cruel metaphysical joke. She even admits she’s not so sure she even cares about Kevin cheating on her. She asks the Muse who she is and why she is helping her, but that turns into passionate lovemaking between the women. And, yes, that wonderful synthy music is back.

The lovemaking session comes to an abrupt end when the Muse runs away from Sally. Sally finds the Muse throwing up what appears to be milk, or at least a white milky substance that is also pouring out of her body through her vagina. Or, I suppose GUSHing out of her… Hey… We have a title!

Meanwhile, Kevin has broken things off with his side piece and plans to head to the cabin to reconcile with his wife. However, at the cabin, Owen calls Sally and tells her that she may not have realized it, but muses tend to cost a great deal if you enter into an agreement to get their assistance. Owen tells her to be careful what she wishes for, but it sure seems to me that it might be a bit too late.

Sally, finding herself alone in the cabin, not even the cat is around, returns to the typewriter to write the final chapter of the final book in the Death trilogy. This time, she’s a little stuck. She goes outside to collect her thoughts when Kevin arrives. Through a series of difficult things that need to be said between the two of them, Sally reveals that she wished she had also died that night with the baby, and instead of trying to talk it all through together, all he wanted was sex. After refusing to believe that he didn’t know how she felt through all this, she tells him she wishes he was dead.

And so the Muse is all too eager to assist there, too.

This leads to Sally and the Muse continuing their affair and Sally finishing her book. However, this isn’t really what Sally wanted. She won’t type the D on “THE END” until the Muse brings Kevin back like she did the white cat. The Muse complies with the request. Before she types the final letter, she hears a knock on the door to hear Kevin asking to be let in. She finishes the book. Owen arrives to pick up the book. He fades into nothingness as he walks away, and it’s revealed that he and the Muse were the two pictured in that photo album, and the white cat was theirs. Elsewhere, Sally shows a positive pregnancy test to Kevin, and they kiss in celebration.

I think Gush is a very good, and pretty dang interesting, movie. This is a drama that deals with tragedy and how you pick up and move on after said tragedy. It’s also a horror film about how one might get stuck living and looping around and around in that tragedy until you lose everything. Certainly, I think there is an argument to be made that the price owed to the Muse to complete that final book in the trilogy is maybe Sally having to go back to discovering when she became pregnant and having to relive these last couple of years or so over again. Remember, it was a “be careful what you wish for” situation.

The movie is not like other stuff I’ve seen from either Williams or Church for this site. This isn’t a bawdy parody/love letter to women in prison films like Amazon Hot Box or the love letter to the 60s/70s biker films like Frankenstein Created Bikers or the over-the-top silly sci-fi comedy that was Space Babes from Outer Space. This is not even the film of Williams and Church’s I have yet to review for the site, Jessie’s Super Normal Regular Average Day, which is a REALLY over-the-top stoner comedy. This is a more contemplative movie about trauma and, as I said previously, picking up the pieces of a shattered existence. It’s hard to even say exactly what in this movie, outside the obvious element of their baby being dead and Kevin having an affair, that is really happening to Sally. Is the Muse real or part of some pent-up desire or cathartic expression that needs to be freed to be able to carry on another day? Did Kevin die only to be brought back in some sort of very sad and tragic time loop that needs to play over and over again because Sally accepted help from a supernatural creature?

It’s hard to say. Because it’s hard to say, this may not be everyone’s cup of clam chowder. People looking for a straightforward monster horror movie will not be prepared for the more emotional and deeper stuff. It’s a quite serious movie that is drenched in melancholy. There is a sad beauty to it, too, that is hard to put my finger on, but you just know it’s there, and you experience it. Alyss Winkler’s Muse is playfully and sometimes eerily exquisite. The way Ellie Church is shot, at times, is just haunting. Overall, I think this is a gut-wrencher that also happens to have a lot of moments in which Church and Winkler are captured ravishingly.

And, speaking of ravishing, you can’t have an Ellie Church movie without drenching her in blood. I always look forward to that moment whenever I’m watching one of her flicks. Seriously, I don’t think anyone wears blood better than she does.

Now, before I wrap this up, there are a couple of things I do need to state before I put that bow on the top of this whole gushing thing. Included with the extras of this movie is an alternate ending. The way the movie originally ended with Kevin and Ellie arguing over what trauma they experienced together, and how Sally felt utterly reduced in her much more personal and direct involvement in the loss of their baby, to not much more than a slab of meat for Kevin to fuck instead of confronting the real issues at hand in their crumbling relationship. That then led to Sally wishing him dead, and the Muse abiding by that wish. Sally and the Muse have another romp while she finishes her book, but refuses to type the final letter until she is reunited with Kevin. Lastly, and as I perceived the final scene, it would seem that Sally and Kevin are stuck in a loop while the Muse’s husband, from when they were both alive, collects the manuscript and, seemingly, Sally’s soul.

In the alternate sixteen-minute ending, which also includes a slightly different edit and dialogue for the argument between the two of them, Sally is also attacked by the Muse after she killed Kevin. What she sees is similar, but it seems that Sally is much more immediately reluctant to be involved in the ritual the Muse performs as she rides Kevin’s dead body. When she awakens, Sally is duct-taped to the chair in front of the typewriter. Kevin is barely alive with the axe still in his back. The Muse arrives in a much more demonic form and basically demands that Sally finish her book. When Sally refuses and spits in her face, the Muse knocks her out and uses Sally’s hands to type out “The End” on the final page. Before the final letter is typed, Sally continues to resist until the Muse begins toying with the axe in Kevin’s back, until he dies. Then, Sally tells the Muse to bring Kevin back before she types that final letter. The rest of the final scene largely plays out the same, with only a few very minor editing details. That is, until after the celebration of the positive pregnancy test fades back to the cabin, where Kevin is still dead from his axe wound, and Sally is also dead on the writing table, perhaps to become the next Owen and Muse for the next struggling author to experience.

While I think that is an interesting ending, and one I kind of expected to have happen, I prefer the actual ending that appears at the end of the full movie. The alternate showing the Muse to be more of a demon than anything is a little too obvious. I prefer the idea of the Muse being more of a fairy than a demon and being a bit of a trickster than a monster. I like the idea of the price to actually give her back the time when she was happiest, but it’s always going to lead to a horrible accident that will destroy her and send her through all of this once again.

I also want to reiterate that, much like last week’s review of RedLetterMedia’s Feeding Frenzy, it was not ever going to be as truly subjective as it could be. I love RLM’s stuff. I love the stuff that Ellie Church gets involved in, whether that is with her husband Brian K. Williams or someone else. So, yeah, I will also be transparent that, as you see below, I chipped in on the crowdfunding effort and got myself a credit for it.

So, yeah, this one was for me. But next week? I might just have to pay for it. I guess that’s fair. But what’s the most likely amount of pain I should flog myself with for covering a couple of movies that I could, in no way, shape, or form, view with a critical mind? How does Money Plane sound?

Okay, sure. Next time, come back for a review of the 2020 movie that became quite known for being a bonkers bad movie. Kelsey Grammer and a wrestler and Denise Richards fly into B-Movie Enema for some good bad ol’ action schlock. Maybe I need to take an axe to the back from a naked wood nymph muse instead.