Category: 1970s

Girly (a.k.a Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly, 1970)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema, my lovelies!

This week, we have a film from British cinematographer and director Freddie Francis – Girly. Now, this one was more commonly known as Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly in the United Kingdom. We’ll come back around to the utterly bizarre plot of Girly in a bit. First, we should talk about Freddie Francis.

Francis is best known for his work with Hammer Film Productions on films like The Evil of Frankenstein and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and from Hammer rival Amicus Productions on The Deadly Bees and Tales from the Crypt. But, in truth, Francis was a very keen cinematographer. He twice won Oscars for 1960’s Sons and Lovers and 1989’s Glory. Beyond those films, he has a ton of other significant films he shot like 1980’s The Elephant Man directed by David Lynch, Karel Reisz’s 1981 film The French Lieutenant’s Woman starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, and Martin Scorsese’s creepy as hell 1991 remake Cape Fear.

He also shot Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune, so… you know… they can’t all be winners.

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Escape from Women’s Prison (1978)

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Well, well, well… Last week I did one of those rape revenge exploitation films from the 70s. The week before, I revisited a horror film I once saw on Bizarre TV. Now, I’m looking at a good ol’ fashioned women in prison films. It’s like I’m on a greatest hits of B-Movie Enema tour.

Yes, it’s time to take a look at 1978’s Escape from Women’s Prison. You know what other box this movie ticks? Oh yeah… It’s Italian, baby! This movie was written and directed by Italian actor Giovanni Brusadori. In the director credit, he’s actually credited as Conrad Brueghel, but whatever. Brusadori was best known for appearing in the Laura Gemser Emanuelle: Queen of the Desert in 1982. For whatever reason, he decided to make a movie this time around. Now, supposedly, George Eastman, star of Anthropophagus, Erotic Nights of the Living Dead, and Porno Holocaust, co-wrote this movie on (though without credit).

I guess what I’m getting at is that these types of late 70s and early 80s Italian sleazefest movies were all made by a small group of people so it shouldn’t surprise anyone to see George Eastman involved in some way.

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Tomcats (1977)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema.

I suppose I should give a little bit of a content warning to this review as our feature, Tomcats, is one of those 70s exploitation flicks that deals with some pretty gross stuff. You’ve got a situation where a group of ne’er-do-wells, okay, I guess I can call them “thugs”… Anyway, you’ve got this group of nogoodniks who gang-rape and kill young ladies. They get off on a technicality so it leads to one of the victims’ brothers deciding to go on a good old fashioned revenge tear to get the justice he was robbed.

So, yeah, content warning on this episode. These are unsavory situations to be sure. I do want to say that this does feel a little like a mix of movies we’ve seen before like Steel and Lace and the all-time classic revenge film I Spit on Your Grave. If I’m being fair, I’ve long wanted to do I Spit on Your Grave, but considering how dark that second act gets, I’ve yet to really go for it. So, instead, we’re giving Tomcats a try.

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The Farmer (1977)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema. This week, I’m going to look at the 1977 action crime drama, The Farmer. Now, there’s little about this movie that I have the resources or time to really dig too deep into. That said, there’s a whole other thing about this movie that is a real deep rabbit hole that I can kind of traipse around.

But to get started, David Berlatsky directed the movie. It’s his only directing credit. His actual trade was as an editor. He was decent enough at it to get nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for the 1978 mini-series, King. But he also did a lot of other stuff. For example, he edited 1977’s The Deep for director Peter Yates. He also edited 1973’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid for Sam Peckinpah.

In the 80s, he edited a couple episodes of the short-lived, 1984, Glen Larson series Automan. What’s Automan? It’s about a computer-generated superhero. That superhero can also computer generate a car to drive around in. How does computer-generated things become physical objects? Who knows and who cares. He also edited the first season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Haven”. Which one is that? That’s the one that introduced Counselor Troi’s horrifically annoying mother and had something to do with a ship of diseased people closing in on a planet that would be wiped out by said disease.

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Supervixens (1975)

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Ah, yeah… Russ Meyer.

It’s been a long time coming to bring ol’ uncle Russ back to the blog. I know next year we need to do a lot more, but for this week, I’m going to take a look at 1975’s Supervixens. The star of this film is the boobtacular Shari Eubank. She appeared in two films in her career. This one and Chesty Anderson, USN. I… I just looked at the poster for that Chesty Anderson flick. I need to see it. Also, it saddens me that she was only in two movies because she is beautiful and incredibly likable in this movie.

Anyway, the origin of this movie came from Meyer’s previous two films, the much more serious The Seven Minutes and the blaxploitation Blacksnake (look for that come to the blog, say, oh, September 2023), were box office failures. It was at this point in time that you had to go back to 1970’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls for Meyer’s last hit. On top of that, he wanted to make a movie with his then wife, Edy Williams, but that fell apart. Yet another thing that came along was a Supreme Court decision coming down about pornography that was confusing and created a little chaos at the time.

The point is Meyer was having a hard time of it in the first half of the 70s.

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Enforcer from Death Row (1978)

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We’ve come to the end of a loosely connected, months-long, trio of reviews that featured the late, great Leo Fong.

Welcome to B-Movie Enema. This week, I’m going to take a look at 1978’s Enforcer from Death Row. This film comes pretty early in Fong’s career as an actor. While we are accepting the fact that this movie was released in 1978 and was called Enforcer from Death Row, the film is also listed on IMDb as Ninja Assassins with the date of 1976. Some of this can be explained by a couple factors at play with this movie.

First, the 70s were kind of known for a couple things when it came to film distribution. You had independent studios cranking out low budget movies and then shopping them for distribution. That distribution, especially for movies like these kung fu/exploitation/low budget action flicks would land the films either at drive-ins or in grindhouse theaters. Second, this was a movie made in the Philippines. That was kind of a southeast Asian haven for films to be made quick and on the cheap in the late 60s and 70s. There are some very fine, if not extremely simple, movies that came out of the area during this time.

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