On this week’s episode of B-Movie Enema: The Series, B-Movie Proctologist Geoff Arbuckle and Nurse Disembaudee get a visit from Juan Simone Piquer’s Extra Terrestrial Visitors as well as the movie’s star!
Category: 1980s
B-Movie Enema: The Series Episode #34 – Alien Private Eye
When a mysterious disc arrives in the clinic, B-Movie Proctologist Geoff Arbuckle and Nurse Disembaudee investigate while watching Alien Private Eye.
City of the Living Dead (1980)
Fulci is back yet again on B-Movie Enema. Why? Because ol’ Lucio needs more attention if I’m being honest. Sure, I’ve covered many of his movies in the past, but there are oh so many more that I could cover. What better place to dig into more of his filmography than with the Gates of Hell trilogy of his?
So, here we are. I’ve packed my bags, bought my plane tickets, and have landed in the City of the Living Dead. This is Fulci in what’s likely his prime. He’s not too far off from his major success of Zombie (known in Italy as Zombi 2, but I’m not going to get into all that Italian titling business). That pretty much wrote a check for Fulci to do whatever he really wanted. He first stopped off with a crime action flick, Contraband, but started developing the idea of City of the Living Dead. This film was greenlit while he was working on the action flick, so, he took off and left Contraband under the direction of his assistant to get to work on City of the Living Dead.
It’s wild to think that a director can just leave a production to start his next, but Italy is a wild place, man.
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Blood Street (1988)
Earlier this year, we lost the action star and director Leo Fong at the age of 93. Fong gained some notoriety over the last handful of years due to RedLetterMedia’s coverage of some of his films on their show Best of the Worst. A lot of it is that Fong always looked like a guy who is almost the opposite of what you’d expect an action star to look like. But, he was a pretty accomplished martial artist and friend of Bruce Lee.
Leo Fong would appear in Filipino martial arts films in the 70s. He then got into making his own films through the 80s and that’s where we would really know him best. Waaay back in 2016, I covered his Low Blow film. This week, I’m going to cover not the next film he made after Low Blow, but the actual direct sequel to Low Blow, Blood Street.
But what happened in Low Blow?
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B-Movie Enema: The Series Episode #32 – Jaws of Satan
Snakes alive! This week’s episode goes to Eutaw, Alabama for the surprisingly dull Jaws of Satan!
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
I think we all knew this would happen some day. After all, B-Movie Enema likes slasher movies from the 80s. I like Jason movies in particular. Twice before, I’ve tackled the exploits our of maniacal hockey fan. In October 2017, I wrote about my favorite of those exploits when I covered, Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Then, three years later, on November 13th, 2020, I looked at the little movie that could, the fan-made (by teenagers I remind you) Friday the 13th Part X: To Hell and Back.
I think I proved I like the undead modern monster. But now… Oh yes, my lovelies. It’s time to tackle one of the two films in the Friday the 13th franchise that sticks in a lot of people’s craws. The time has come to look at Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan.
Yup… That one with the promise to be truly fun and interesting, but settled on a misleading title instead.
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Circle of Power (aka Brainwash, 1981)
Welcome back to B-Movie Enema. This week, I’m going to talk about that thing we all love to do in our free time – training retreats! Woot woot! How exciting! Yaaaaayyyy – being forced to give up a perfectly good weekend to be bored out of our minds at a seminar!
Yeah, this movie goes by a few names, but the most common are either the original title, Brainwash, or Circle of Power. It also had the names Mystique and The Naked Weekend. This was based on a narrative nonfiction book called The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled. That book was written by Gene Church and Conrad D. Carnes and was published in 1972. Basically, it’s about the practices that went on during a four-day training weekend for executives run that involved folks from companies run by one William Penn Patrick. More on that later.
After this movie came out, the writers did a follow up called Brainwash – likely in conjunction with the film’s title. The appeal was that there was this brand new phenomenon called “encounter group training” that began to crop up in the 60s and 70s. This could help people with various business skills or interpersonal communication or even with relationships. Oftentimes, these were kind of viewed as someone, who was seen as something of a guru, trying to train others to think and react the same way to situations. In a lot of ways, this not only evolved for business practices into the 80s but, for personal stuff, think of your Tony Robbinses or other self-help folks who ran seminars.
The book helped expose some practices. This movie came out during a huge explosion of controversy that dropped at a particular event. These things will be covered here in just a moment, but let’s start by talking about our star of the movie – the recently departed Yvette Mimieux.
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Aenigma (1988)
Luci Fulci is back… Or, as I suppose the bumper stickers and various other memes would say, “Fulci Lives!”
Welcome to B-Movie Enema. This week, we’re looking Fulci’s 1988 Carrie-esque thriller, Aenigma. 1988 was a curious year for Fulci. That was the year that his sort of sequel Zombie 3 was released. But Zombie 3 wasn’t really his movie. He got very ill at the start of filming and had to leave and directing duties shifted to Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso. The result? Well, it was kind of goofy, but mostly worked. If for nothing else, it was a fun watch.
Fulci would recover and ended up making Aenigma. He would say this was one of his more favorite films in some time. Fulci’s body of work is curious because, while I like most of his films for various reasons, he is good in spurts and spots. I love Zombie. I love his “Gates of Hell” trilogy. The Devil’s Honey is phenomenal. But this movie, this was the director’s own pick for his favorite during the latter part of his career.
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