Category: Reviews

Hell of a Summer (2025)

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We’ve only got a couple more weeks of Camp Crappabuttawipe here at B-Movie Enema. But, you know what? It’s been a hell of a summer, hasn’t it?

Yeah, we’ve had franchises, comedies, a star-making laugh riot, and an incredibly endearing coming-of-age movie at a girls’ camp. But we’ve most definitely had a lot of slashers. I mean, that’s what you expect whenever you see a movie that is going to take place at a summer camp, right? Some guy going around and hacking and slashing frisky counselors.

Well, very clearly that’s what Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard expect because these two young actors got together to make a film in 2022 that we’re going to cover this week – Hell of a Summer. The origin of this movie actually began after the two Canadians met on the set of Ghostbusters: Afterlife. At the time, Wolfhard was roughly 16, and Bryk was around 20. After hanging out and chatting about the movies they like, they realized, fairly quickly, they had similar senses of humor. They decided to make a slasher with some humorous nods to Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead.

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Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

It’s time for a palette cleanser here at Camp Crappabuttawipe, my Enemaniacs!

We’ve had a bit of a rough patch here, guys. I think the only way to get B-Movie Enema back to feeling good about, well, life, is to revisit a classic from my childhood. Like with Ernest Goes to Camp, this movie, concerning a group of campers, is one I watched a TON as a kid. It’s time to bring out the Peanuts gang and talk about Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown.

This was chosen for the Camp Crappabuttawipe summer theme, not because it’s crap or something I wanna wipe-a my butt-a with. No. This was chosen because I dearly love this movie and knew, at some point, I needed a pick-me-up if things got dire during this summer. I finally needed my buddy Charlie Brown to come off the bench and pitch me a shutdown inning before things got out of hand with bad movie after bad movie.

And, trust me, after Return to Sleepaway Camp, I needed Chuck to help me out.

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Return to Sleepaway Camp (2008)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema’s summer-long exploration of camp movies (movies that actually take place at a camp, not campy horror movies), Camp Crappabuttawipe!

Oof magoof, we are really in the dregs of this theme series now. Okay, we’ve had some real bangers here this summer, but the last couple of weeks have been pretty shaky. But now, it’s time to completely pull the rug out from under all of us because this week, we have a movie that is truly, outrageously awful. It’s one of those situations in which I hate putting myself into – the commitment to an entire franchise. For every Sleepaway Camp in a series, there is also a Return to Sleepaway Camp.

Alright, so a quick catch-up here, once again. 1983’s Sleepaway Camp from writer/director Robert Hiltzik became a surprise hit and a bit of an instant cult classic among horror and slasher fans. Its blend of over-the-top performances, repetitive slashings seen by an off-screen murderer (a la the original Friday the 13th), and a truly unforgettable climax instantly made this the classic it is largely regarded in the genre today. Five years later, director Michael A. Simpson and writer Fritz Gordon revived the series with two hit-or-miss sequels, thanks to original producer Jerry Silva still owning the rights to the franchise. The most memorable thing about either movie was the performances by a new woman being cast as killer Angela Baker, Pamela Springsteen. Sleepaway Camp II and Sleepaway Camp III mostly focused more on the lighthearted touches and comedic use of slasher tropes in a time when serious slashers were largely dying out. While being far more goofy and less interested in true horror, viewers’ mileage may vary on those first two sequels.

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Madman (1981)

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Gather ’round the campfire, kiddos and Enemaniacs… This week’s B-Movie Enema review is going to tell you the harrowing tale of Madman Marz!

Welcome back to Camp Crappbuttawipe! This week, we go to 1981 for Joe Giannone’s Madman. This one is a very interesting movie. Madman has a split audience. On one hand, this movie sucks. Well, maybe not so much that it sucks as much as it has a dual legacy. Critics, of course, hated the movie, with some calling it unremarkable or inept. But, it also has a pretty serious cult following. I think a lot of it is because the Madman Marz character has a cool name, and the type of look Madman Marz has seems more reasonable for a killer that lives in the woods and will kill people at a camp or hanging out in cabins.

I think there are a few things that allowed Madman to grow that cult following. For one, it is one of only three films that starred Gaylen Ross. Ross came from good ol’ Indianapolis, Indiana, the home base of B-Movie Enema Industries. While Creepshow and Madman have their fans, I don’t think anyone would say that’s where they know Ross from. No, there is only one movie that you can link Gaylen Ross to, and that’s the greatest horror film ever made, George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. I already mentioned the character of Madman Marz, with his cool name and cool crazy look.

The third thing that might help this movie be a cult classic is the inspiration for this movie – the legend of Cropsey.

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Twisted Nightmare (1988)

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It’s week #8 of Camp Crappabuttawipe at B-Movie Enema!

I think we’ve been on a pretty good run over the entirety of this summer camp business we’ve had going on as of late. Okay, sure, you can potentially say the two Sleepaway Camp sequels are far behind the best of the best thus far in the theme season, but… They weren’t thaaaat bad, were they? Ernest Goes to Camp, while far from Shakespeare, and I mean Todd Shakespeare from Corydon, Indiana (who did you think I was referring to?), it was fun reliving a part of my beloved childhood before I grew up and realized the world kinda sucks shit.

Largely, we’re on a hot streak with the likes of Little Darlings being kind of a revelation, Marshmallow being an excellent micro-budget gem, Meatballs being a movie that gave the world of cinema Bill Murray and Harold Ramis working perfectly together, and Wet Hot American Summer.

Well, it’s time to fuck that shit up for a couple of weeks… Yeah, we’re in the back half of Camp Crappabuttawipe, and these long, hot summer days are starting to signal that feeling inside when you really just want to go the fuck home. You’re tired of archery. You’re tired of making wallets and other leather-working stuff. You’re fucking sick of that muddy-ass lake you toss yourself into without the knowledge of whether there are leeches waiting to grab hold of your scrotum. We need to dig deep and just power through because I’m starting to feel like I really frontloaded this theme series.

So, maybe appropriately, this week’s movie is 1988’s Twisted Nightmare.

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Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

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Hello and welcome back to Camp Crappabuttawipe at B-Movie Enema!

What do you get when you bring together a couple of stars from the 90s with some of the biggest and funniest people in comedy of the 21st century together in a single movie? Well, you get this week’s movie, Wet Hot American Summer! A couple of weeks ago, I talked about Ivan Reitman’s 1979 comedy that launched both his career as a director AND Bill Murray’s career as a leading man in comedies for decades to come, Meatballs. While I think it’s safe to say that Wet Hot American Summer and Meatballs are kind of in the same vein of a camp movie that focuses on the shenanigans the adult counselors get up to, Wet Hot is not as much of a straight comedy. No, this is meant to be more of a satire or parody of the archetypes of the adult counselors.

Wet Hot American Summer was directed and co-written by David Wain. Wain was influenced to make this movie based on his experiences as a kid going to Jewish camps. He specifically thought back to time spent at Ohio’s Camp Wise and Maine’s Camp Modin. Now, I’m glad I held off doing this movie until the middle of July (even though it would have been a much better choice for July 4th weekend with “American” in the title and all) because this movie does parody some movies we’re very familiar with and ones we’re especially recently familiar with. Yes, this is a bit of a homage to Sleepaway Camp, Little Darlings, and Meatballs.

See? Maybe I do know what the fuck I’m doing with scheduling movies at this site.

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Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)

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TEENAGE WASTELAND, oh, yeah… TEENAGE WASTELAND!

Oh, hi, Enemaniacs. You’ve caught me singing along to one of my favorite songs from The Who, “Baba O’Riley.” And that brings us to week #6 here at B-Movie Enema’s summer-long theme of Camp Crappa Buttawipe! This week, we bounce back into the Sleepaway Camp franchise with Sleepaway Camp III: Baba O’Riley… er… I mean Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland!

There’s not much more to say about the behind-the-scenes business that wasn’t covered last month when I talked about the first sequel. Both sequels were made back-to-back to save on overall production costs. The first of the two movies was the more expensive of the two, coming in at about a million and a half bucks. This movie used the rest of the $2 million that was granted to make the two movies. Both films were written by Fritz Gordon, and his appreciation for playing around with character names is still on display here. The last film used the first names of the Brat Pack and other young stars of the era. This film uses character names from sources like West Side Story, The Munsters, and The Brady Bunch.

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Meatballs (1979)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

Welcome back to the start of month #2 here at Camp Crappabuttawipe at B-Movie Enema!

Alright, as we get into July, the months are getting hotter and, naturally, it’s time to really heat things up here at camp, Enemaniacs. Aside from another stop off in the Sleepaway Camp franchise, we’re really ratcheting up the comedy, sexual shenanigans, and horror this month. But we kick things off this July 4th weekend here in the States with… a Canadian comedy. My ability to read a calendar and select the most appropriate movie for that date/weekend knows no bounds.

Especially with what’s coming up in a couple of weeks…

Anyway, 1979’s Meatballs is a significant movie for multiple reasons. First, this is the movie that propelled Bill Murray from Saturday Night Live stardom to movie stardom. This was his first top-billing in a movie. Within a year from this release, he would leave SNL (though part of that is due to changes behind the scenes with Lorne Michaels and NBC), and begin to rattle off hit after hit with Caddyshack, Stripes, a role in Tootsie, and eventually leading to the big blockbuster Ghostbusters. This would also be the first collaboration that Murray would have with Harold Ramis. Ramis was largely known for being a comedy writer, and a very good one. Like Murray, he spent the late 70s on TV on SCTV with the likes of Eugene Levy, John Candy, and Rick Moranis. In 1978, Ramis co-wrote National Lampoon’s Animal House, which, itself, would go on to become a massive influence on comedies through the 80s. If you can think of a comedy from the 70s and 80s that remains funny decades later, it’s very likely it was written in some part by Ramis.

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