Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

Welcome to a brand new B-Movie Enema review!

This week, we’re going back to the world of Italian cinema and, for the first time in quite a while, the horror subgenre of said Italian cinema – giallo. Not only are we going back to those realms but this week is for something kind of new too. This week’s feature, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, was made by Italian horror/thriller/giallo master Dario Argento.

Now, true, I did cover a couple movies he produced, namely Demons and Demons 2. I also talked about him tangentially when I looked at Shock because it starred his ex-wife, Daria Nicolodi, as well as his daughter, Asia Argento, when she appeared in xXx. However, for nearly 60 years, Argento has been known for being a writer, director, and producer of mostly horror films. But… that’s not exactly where he started. When he was working his way up the ladder, he began as a writer. In the mid-60s, Argento worked on scripts for several different movies of different genres. The biggest film he worked on the script for, without a doubt, was 1968’s Once Upon a Time in the West.

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The Beastmaster (1982)

Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema!

This week, we’re traveling to the kingdom of Aruk for this 80s classic from Don Coscarelli. Now, the origin of The Beastmaster actually goes back to 1959. Andre Norton wrote the novel The Beast Master about a Navajo war veteran set in a futuristic and sci-fi setting. When writers Coscarelli and Paul Pepperman adapted the novel, Norton was unhappy. We’re going to come back around to Norton in just a moment, but Coscarelli would eventually sign on as director for the film and Pepperman then took the role of Producer alongside Lebanese producer Sylvio Tabet. Tabet was a producer on movies like Fade to Black and Evilspeak. Later, he was a producer on The Cotton Club and Dead Ringers. So he was not an unknown at the time.

Interestingly, the only film Tabet directed was 1991’s Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time.

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Gleaming the Cube (1989)

Oh yeah, dudes and dudettes, it’s some more radical times ahead for this week’s B-Movie Enema review!

This week, we’re going to be Gleaming the Cube and… well, hopefully… trying to learn what that term even means because it was clearly important enough to name an entire movie around it. This movie comes to us in that sweet period in the 80s that was totally trying to ride the gnarly coattails of tubular fads to the max. We’ve talked about skateboarding before on here. For more grindage, check out my review of 1986’s Thrashin’ from David Winters.

I don’t think I have much more to say, but I will bring up three important people connected to Gleaming the Cube that are of note. The first is the screenwriter for this film, Michael Tolkin. Tolkin was still relatively new to the scene at this point. He had one screenplay prior to this movie, the 1982 unfinished film Gossip. Gleaming the Cube was his first film and he also served as Associate Producer as well. Frankly, this isn’t that bad of an accomplishment. Sure, the reviews weren’t great, but a lot of people my age and slightly younger really like this movie. However, his big splash came in 1992 when he wrote The Player for Robert Altman. This would garner Tolkin an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Later in the 90s, he wrote the blockbuster Deep Impact. More recently, he developed the very highly appreciated miniseries The Offer about the making of The Godfather.

Directing Gleaming the Cube is Australian Graeme Clifford who was at the helm for the 1982 drama Frances that racked up a pair of acting Oscar nominations for Jessica Lange and Kim Stanley. While his directing credits aren’t huge, his editing credits are. He directed the wonderful 1973 thriller Don’t Look Now. He followed that up in 1975 with the all-time cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Then, in 1976, he edited David Bowie’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. He finished out his editing career with Sylvester Stallone’s F.I.S.T. in 1978 and the 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice starring Jack Nicholson and, hey… Jessica Lange. I’m guessing that might have led to her getting the role in Frances.

Let’s be serious, though… The draw of Gleaming the Cube is the hot up-and-coming Christian Slater.

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One Dark Night (1982)

It’s time for yet another B-Movie Enema article (the 425th to be exact)!

This week, I’m looking at a movie that I’ve known for decades. Even going back to when I was a little kid and watching scary movies between my fingers trying to hide my eyes, I seem to remember a movie about a girl spending a night alone inside a mausoleum and ultimately getting attacked by zombies and having to fight her way out. The problem was, every time I tried looking up what that movie was I was trying to remember so I can try to find it to watch again, somehow either I kept getting it mixed up with or finding the result to be 1981’s Hell Night starring Linda Blair.

It’s not that because it’s 1982’s One Dark Night starring Meg Tilly!

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