Geoff Arbuckle

Drive-In (1976)

Published on March 29, 2024April 5, 2024 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Let’s pile into the car and go to a movie at the local Drive-In!

Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema review. As you can see by the title and my clever little opening salvo for the review, I’m looking at 1976’s Drive-In directed by Rod Amateau. If you look at the poster for Drive-In, and then look at the poster for George Lucas’ 1973 charmer American Graffiti… I think it’s clear that Columbia Pictures was leaning heavily on the coming-of-age style and depictions of the characters used by American Graffiti to sell Drive-In.

It’s obvious others picked up on it as it often was pointed out in reviews at the time. However, what’s interesting that some critics had some positive things to say about a movie that was very easy to call exploitation and trying to suckle at the teet of American Graffiti’s success. Critics pointed out that while not every performance by the young cast works, it’s got appeal. Others just flat-out called it likable for being easygoing. It’s often called funny by retaining a youthful, juvenile energy. So, yeah, this is a movie that, despite me just becoming aware of it over the last six months or so, was somewhat fondly reviewed during its day.

The one standout in the reception section of Wikipedia was good ol’ Gene Siskel. In a negative review, he said he wished the script for Drive-In had been tossed out in favor of the fake movie, Disaster ’76, to have been made instead. Oh, Gene…

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The Cars That Ate Paris (1974)

Published on March 22, 2024March 28, 2024 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome to B-Movie Enema for another review to sate your appetites.

So I was trying to think what would make for a good review for this week. I was driving along the roads of New South Wales in Australia and took a detour into the French countryside. I eventually found my way through my European GPS, which was just some road signs, to a strange little village. That’s when it struck me… I want to talk about Peter Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris.

Turns out, the same inspiration that struck me to talk about this movie with a very peculiar title was the same inspiration that struck Weir to make the film to begin with. He was in Europe and claimed that the road signs on the French roads diverted him into what he called strange little villages. From this, being an outsider from a wholly different continent, he got the idea to make a movie where the inhabitants of a small village, that he named Paris, profit from car wrecks.

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Bong of the Living Dead (2017)

Published on March 15, 2024March 22, 2024 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema. This week, we’re going to have a little more fun with a fairly decent little horror movie released through independent distributor Scream Time Releasing. I’m going to be looking at 2017’s Bong of the Living Dead.

Bong of the Living Dead was directed by Max Groah. Groah has been around as a writer and director since 2010 when he made his first short film, Ringtone: The Gareth Blevins Story. Bong of the Living Dead is his first feature film. In fact, it’s still the only full-length film he’s made, though he did team up with Scream Time Releasing to write and direct a segment in the anthology film 10/31 Part 2.

Groah produced the film through Backward Slate Productions which is a small indie production company out of Columbus, Ohio. There’s a pretty healthy Midwest United States groundswell for indie film, particularly in the horror genre. Being a frequent visitor of HorrorHound in both Indianapolis, the home base of B-Movie Enema Industries, and Cincinnati, as well as visiting Days of the Dead Indy a few times over the years, I have often seen several indie filmmakers from the surrounding areas. It seems as though there are several Ohioan indie horror filmmakers with varying degrees of exploitation, throwbacks to the style of the 80s and 70s, and production quality.

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Meet the Feebles (1989)

Published on March 8, 2024March 14, 2024 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome to another review here at B-Movie Enema, ya filthy animals! Yeah… I suppose that’s a proper way to start because we have some animals who have filthy lives in this week’s movie. This week, I’m going to be digging deep into the nether regions of Peter Jackson’s 1989 musical black comedy Meet the Feebles.

Now, when you think about Peter Jackson, I think what comes to mind is his very polished films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the remake of King Kong he made, or maybe the unpopular, but reevaluated, fun romp that was The Frighteners. The point I’m trying to make is that he’s well-known today as a very top-tier filmmaker. Think of him as the George Lucas of the 90s and 00s. He set up his own special effects company, Weta Workshop. He does nothing half-assed. He has big visions and ideas and it usually pays off in moola for studios.

He’s been nominated for nine Academy Awards (and won three of them), he unearthed and revived a lot of old Beatles footage for a hugely successful documentary, and he’s done more to popularize Hobbits and Elves and Wizards than maybe even Wizards of the Coast has, but let’s back it up a little bit to the early part of his career, shall we?

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Parts: The Clonus Horror (1979)

Published on March 1, 2024July 12, 2025 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

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

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I proudly call myself a MSTie. One of the great things about MST3K is the fact that it often exposed people to movies or shorts that they wouldn’t have known anything about. Granted, there are some more popular movies they covered on the Satellite of Love like a Gamera movie or a couple Godzilla films and even a couple of the late-stage Universal Classics like Revenge of the Creature and The Mole People. I’m even sure that there are a couple of the shorts they covered that I watched in school in the late 80s and early 90s.

But the real treasures tended to be the movies that were obscure but maybe even had a long-running stint on late-night TV or cable. That’s where this week’s featured movie that I’ll be reviewing likely lived most of its existence. I’m going to be taking a look at 1979’s Parts: The Clonus Horror.

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Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues (1984)

Published on February 23, 2024February 29, 2024 by Geoff Arbuckle4 Comments

You’ve got monster!

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema. We’re headed to the wilderness of Arkansas this week. I’m going to review a sequel to a very popular cult hit from the early 70s, Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues. Both 1972’s The Legend of Boggy Creek and Boggy Creek II were directed by Charles B. Pierce. Pierce is an interesting character. He was born in Hammond, Indiana. Hammond is best known for being a sort of suburb of Chicago and the hometown of author Jean Shepherd who used it as the template for Hohman, Indiana in the holiday classic A Christmas Story.

Pierce based his movies on the legend of the Fouke Monster who is said to reside in the wooded area and the creek marshes around Fouke, Arkansas. The Fouke Monster is just the Texarkana version of Bigfoot or the Sasquatch. It supposedly attacked the home of a couple in May of 1971. Pierce, fascinated by the tales told about the monster from that story, made a docudrama about the event which was The Legend of Boggy Creek.

While the movie was a massive hit, Pierce has always admitted that he doesn’t necessarily believe in the legend of the creature, but is far more interested and fascinated by the folklore and tales the people told about the monster.

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Ninja in the Claws of the C.I.A. (1981)

Published on February 16, 2024February 23, 2024 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and welcome back to me going through my backlog of movies that I’ve either picked up from conventions or, as is the case with this month, bought from Vinegar Syndrome.

I think we might have something of a special little movie this week. We’re going to be looking at John Liu writing and directing himself into Ninja in the Claws of the C.I.A. which was originally known as Sah shou ying as well as simply Claws of the C.I.A. and there’s even a version called Made in China. I really don’t know what I want to reveal to the people who haven’t seen this movie, so… I think we’ll just start by talking about John Liu.

When I went googling for John Liu, something really awesome happened. All I was getting were links, articles, and information on John Liu, Democratic member of the New York State Senate. Now, my brain is utterly shattered and broken in terms of being able to work properly. So I think it’s safe for you to bet that I was thinking that guy and the lead of this movie were the same dude. Then, I began thinking about him bringing legislation to the New York Senate floor by way of kicking motherfuckers’ asses. Like, he steps up to the podium, asks for time from the President of the New York Senate, and then after casually removing his tie, he just walks over to some Republican he beefs with and they just kung fu fight.

I wish that was what really happens in state senates and congresses across the country.

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Amazon Jail 2 (1987)

Published on February 9, 2024February 15, 2024 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and the continuation of the Amazon Jail saga with Conrado Sanchez’s Amazon Jail 2!

This month, we’ve got a set of releases from Vinegar Syndrome in 2023. We looked at the first film of the Amazon Jail duology last week. We finish that up this week and move on to some more fun next week. We’re going to be able to get right into the movie very quickly because these movies are wildly obscure so there’s not much of note I can really dive into in the background.

I will follow up on what I discussed for a short bit last week and say this comes from the later days of the Mouth of Garbage exploitation movement in Brazil. That began in the 70s out of Sao Paulo and tackled sex comedies for the most part as well as horror and action films. By this time, a regime change in Brazil led to the loosening of censorship in cinema so porno films began to be produced by the time Amazon Jail 2 was released.

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