Author: Geoff Arbuckle

I write and talk about movies. Find me over at Film Seizure where I talk about nostalgic movies on a weekly podcast as well as have a weekly show about monster movies. I also write about B-Movies at my site B-Movie Enema!

Portrait of a Showgirl (1982)

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Well well well… Look at what the cat dragged in… You guys! I love you guys!

Welcome to another review here at B-Movie Enema. This week, we’ve got ourselves a TV movie. Not only that but a TV movie that is also a Primetime Emmy nominee from 1982! This week, I’ll be talking about Portrait of a Showgirl. Now, check it out… Somewhere along the way, this movie also got titled Portrait of a Stripper. My guess is that the second title there was a little sexier and so it became marketable. I’m not sure if the movie could have been aired on network television as Portrait of a Stripper back then. However, could it have been named that for home video or a cable release? It would certainly be a tiny bit more provocative and attract a little more attention.

Either way, the movie stars some pretty recognizable folk who I’ll talk about here shortly. Directing this TV movie is a director who did a bunch of them. In fact, it’s not even the first time I’ve brought him up. Steven Hilliard Stern made this movie four years after directing the season five finale of B-Movie Enema: The Series – The Ghost of Flight 401. Wait… did I say I talked about Steven Hilliard Stern? I’m sorry, that episode was hosted by Geoff Bob Buckle, that smooth-talkin’ film enthusiast from possibly Texas. I sometimes forget that I took that week off. I do know that he was also the director of the bitchin’ Rolling Vengeance that was about a kid customizing his own revenge death machine. I guess you could say that it was a good year for Steven Hilliard Stern here at B-Movie Enema. As for his career, in just under 30 years, he racked up over 60 credits with a vast majority of those being either episodes of TV shows or TV movies like the one we’re looking at today.

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Mesmerized (1985)

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Welcome to November, Enemaniacs!

As I continue to crank through a backlog of movies that I have built over the course of about 13 or 14 years through buying multi-packs of cheap-o movies on DVD, this was a title I’ve been vaguely aware of for more than 30 years, mostly because of the two lead stars in this movie. This week, we’ll be diving deep into 1985’s Mesmerized starring Jodie Foster and John Lithgow. Mesmerized was a co-production between RKO in the United States as well as the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The UK would get the original release in November 1985, and then the US got it about 13 months later.

Obviously, the lead actors stand out the most when you’d be perusing the drama section at your video store, but it’s a period piece and it’s hard to say if it really would have stuck out to too many people in the mid-80s. After all, Jodie Foster’s star was brightest in the late 70s and the 90s. Most of her roles in the 80s went largely unnoticed until her Oscar win for The Accused. John Lithgow had lots and lot and lots of roles in the 80s, as well as a pair of Oscar nominations of his own for The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment. Still, he was largely more in line with what you’d consider a character actor for most of his career up to that point. So it’s possible this movie was not really carrying the star power at that time as you might think it could a decade later.

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The Vampires Night Orgy (1972)

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Happy Halloween and welcome to the annual tradition of the B-Movie Enema special Halloween review!

This year, the annual October theme that I always choose to celebrate not just the earliest days of B-Movie Enema but also the spooky season was 1970s Women-in-Peril films. Now, for the most part, the movies I choose each October will fit some kind of theme. Sometimes the Halloween special will follow the theme and sometimes they don’t. This is one of those years where it kind of doesn’t, but there’s a specific reason why I chose this movie to celebrate Halloween.

The Vampires Night Orgy was selected because it was a movie from the 70s but it’s not really a full-on women-in-peril type film like we’ve seen in weeks past. I selected this because it falls in line with a tradition that I’ve sort of halfway gestured at during the course of this month. If you’ve been around these parts for a while, you know that B-Movie Enema was started in 2014 as a way to do something with a whole bunch of movies that I had from various cheap-o 50-movie multipacks. A few years before that, I had wanted to work with some friends to create a horror host show. These movies let us know what basically was available to us at that time. When that fell apart, I felt I had to do something for a creative outlet and the idea of creating a blog was formed on a random night in September 2014. October 3, 2014, the first review was released – The Eerie Midnight Horror Show. That movie was found in one of these multipacks of movies.

It came from the same set that I looked to for this week’s movie review.

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The Wizard of Gore (1970)

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

A guy I hadn’t yet covered at all to this point is Herschell Gordon Lewis. That’s a little bit of a surprise, isn’t it? This is B-Movie Enema. I’ve covered everything from Batman and Robin to a number of Russ Meyer films to freakin’ Bloodsucking Freaks. It would seem as though Herschell Gordon Lewis, the Godfather of Gore, would have shown up here before now. But, no, this week’s review, 1970’s The Wizard of Gore is his first go around here on the site.

If I am being kind of honest, I’m not entirely sure where I would have entered into the Lewis filmography. Sure, there are several of his movies that are known for his distinctive style (or lack of typical cinematic ability). Naturally, this movie is probably his crowning achievement as being one of the quintessential independent horror films that gave rise to the horror exploitation era of the 70s. Beyond that, there are other movies that are well known for being directed by Lewis like 1963’s Blood Feast and 1964’s Two Thousand Maniacs! While both of those films would have been good choices, they get talked about a lot. I suppose The Wizard of Gore has been too, but… eh. I had to choose something and this fit the criteria for this month of being women-in-peril and a 70s film. The last movie he made before a 30-year break from making films was 1972’s The Gore Gore Girls which was definitely in consideration for a review too.

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And Soon the Darkness (1970)

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Welcome to another installment of B-Movie Enema and the continuation of this month’s women-in-peril theme.

The first week we saw an unbelievable terror for a pair of young women in New York. Last week, we celebrated 450 reviews on B-Movie Enema with a horrific and brutal attack on a New York woman in Connecticut. This week, we go trans-Atlantic to Europe where we follow a pair of ladies from Nottingham, England taking in a cycling holiday in rural France in Robert Fuest’s And Soon the Darkness.

I’m surprisingly well-acquainted with Mr. Fuest’s films. Some of his films I know well because I’ve seen them. Others I know because they are a sequel to a movie or TV show I’m familiar with. Another I’m aware of because it was a favorite of a family member starring someone I’m exceptionally familiar with.

Let’s start with the ones I’ve seen of his. In 1971, one year after the release of this film (and another I’ll be mentioning momentarily), he directed the Vincent Price classic The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Another year later, he directed the sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Then, in 1975, he directed William Shatner and Ernest Borgnine in the infamous film that had Anton LeVay himself as an adviser, The Devil’s Rain. Arguably, these are the films Fuest is best known for making.

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