Category: 1980s

Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987)

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Well, this is very much overdue, but here we are – a return to the world of Andy Sidaris.

Almost five whole years ago, B-Movie Enema took a ride on the Malibu Express. It was always my intention to start plowing through the Sidaris filmography, but there was an issue right away. This week’s movie, Hard Ticket to Hawaii, is very, very well covered – which is funny because the girls in this movie are hardly covered at all (note to self: insert rimshot). All kidding aside, Hard Ticket to Hawaii is the one movie in the Sidaris library that pretty much everyone knows.

Between being covered by RedLetterMedia on one of the very earliest episodes of Best of the Worst, it already having been covered by the gang at How Did This Get Made, and having been featured in just about every possible podcast that ever pod casted, it’s not one that has much more room for commentary. Shit, in 2014, Paste Magazine called it THE best B-movie of all time. High praise indeed. But, alas, here I am. If I had acted sooner, I wouldn’t have had to keep putting it off because of its popularity, but I had so many other things to cover back in those early days of this blog. What… Did you think the 1968 William Shatner/Adam West version of Alexander the Great was going to cover itself?

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Turkey Shoot (1982)

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It’s been a little while since I covered anything from the Ozploitation era of Australian filmmaking. I think it’s the perfect time to check back in with our friends Down Under! This is one that I questioned whether or not it fits properly on B-Movie Enema. It’s not so much because it seemed like a crazy dystopian “Most Dangerous Game” sort of scenario. Mostly it’s because of this movie featuring Olivia Hussey, an actress that I’d say has a considerable amount of standing in the world of acting in the 70s and 80s.

When I do my research for these movies to see what I can do to punch up the start of one of these articles, I’m usually curious what the reviews were. That’s when I realized Brian Trenchard-Smith’s Turkey Shoot would not disappoint. I think it might be best to talk about Trenchard-Smith first.

He is an English-Australian director, producer, writer, etc. that has a filmography that could cover a buttload of B-Movie Enema articles for months. He was a producer on a past movie featured here that came out the same year as Turkey Shoot – Blood Tide. He did Dead End Drive-In, BMX Bandits (with a very young Nicole Kidman), Night of the Demons 2 (a sequel to a favorite Halloween movie of mine), and even two Leprechaun movies – Leprechaun 3 and Leprechaun 4: In Space. These are all things I know a thing or two about. In fact, I have BMX Bandits on my shelf. I may have to look into scheduling that for an article.

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Penitentiary II (1982)

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Let’s go back to the story of Martel “Too Sweet” Gordone for this week’s new B-Movie Enema.

Some time ago, I covered the first story in Too Sweet’s trilogy. This week, we pick up where the last left off with Penitentiary II. As seen at the end of the first film, Too Sweet won the prison boxing tournament and was released. However, there’s a bit of a caveat with that freedom as we’ll see in this week’s sequel.

As with the first, Penitentiary II is written and directed by activist and leading member of the L.A. Rebellion, Jamaa Fanaka. Fanaka would ultimately make three films in the saga of Too Sweet Gordone. However, this film has a couple other notable actors appearing in it.

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Blood Debts (1985)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema!

This week, it’s time to do a truly dumb bonkers of an action flick – Teddy Page’s Blood Debts. Teddy Page is a Filipino film director who wrote from time to time. He is mostly known for working on low budget action flicks for Silver Star Film Company. The primary claim to fame for Silver Star Film Company is that they made very, very low budget movies. Page, whose real name is Teddy Chiu, would get hired to crank out these cheap-o movies, but he would get a little bit of an ace in the hole from producer K.Y. Lim’s Silver Star – he’d get some established actors.

Chief among them in a few early Page films was Richard Harrison. He was a former Spaghetti Western and Sword and Sandal star who racked up over 130 credits. A whole bunch of these credits, like Blood Debts, came in the 80s. This was considered a real low point in his career. What didn’t help him much was when he reunited with Chinese filmmaker Godfrey Ho. By this point in Ho’s career, he would make these cut-and-paste type of ninja movies. He’d get the rights to a film already made, cut them in half, hire actors to make another full movie, cut them in half, and create these full movies. Harrison didn’t so much mind getting work, he did end up being in WAY more movies than he signed up for, thus making him frustrated and an unwilling star of twice as many really low-grade movies.

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Night of Open Sex (1983)

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As 1983 dawned, Jess Franco was a man on a mission… He was going to make 16 movies.

Let that set in. SIXTEEN MOVIES. Quentin Tarantino won’t make 16 movies in his career. Okay, sure, one or two of them were not directed by him, but he produced and/or wrote them. What the fuck ever. He was making more than one movie a month. Okay, sure, most of them didn’t have much of a budget, or much of a costuming department, or a story. What the fuck ever. He was plowing through movies on his way to his most productive year in his incredibly productive career.

So, in February of 1983, he released one of those 16 flicks in Spain – Night of Open Sex. This is our fourth entry in Lina Romay Month here at B-Movie Enema, and this one might be a doozy. You see, Night of Open Sex isn’t quite like the previous entries this month. Oh no. This movie is actually a Eurospy thriller comedy caper. How does any of that work? I dunno, but here we are.

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Sinfonia Erotica (1980)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

Well, last week’s launch of Lina Romay Month was bonkers, huh?

Well, buckle up, kiddos… This week’s B-Movie Enema is Sinfonia Erotica. Another Jess Franco/Lina Romay joint. Another Marquis de Sade story turned into a filthy little Spanish movie. However, what are we looking at in terms of “filthy”?

Will this be like last week? Well, that’s hard to say. In Cries of Pleasure, about half the movie was full of our main sex weirdos completely nude and doing various sex with each other. I’m pretty close to 100% sure there was actual sex being performed during the filming. While we didn’t see the actual penetration like we did in some of the past adult films I’ve covered on here before, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

What might be key to note here is the year in which Cries of Pleasure or Sinfonia Erotica were release.

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Cries of Pleasure (1983)

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This month, B-Movie Enema is going to dive into some Lina Romay movies. Ms. Romay was kind of interesting in her own right. Maybe made more interesting by the man she served as muse to – Jess Franco. Now, I’ve covered one of their movies before – Two Female Spies with Flowered Panties. We’re doing it again with this week’s look at 1983’s Cries of Pleasure. I delved into a little bit of their relationship with Two Female Spies, but I think it might be a good idea to review that as we jump into this month that features a bunch of stuff from them.

Franco had been inspired by (and infatuated with) Soledad Miranda in the late 60s. The pair made a few movies and he saw her as the only possible star for his films. She tragically died in an automobile accident in 1970. A destroyed and heartbroken Franco would soon find his new leading lady in the teenaged Lina Romay. She was married at the time, as was Franco, but as they continued to work on numerous projects and spent much time together, they soon were inseparable. By the end of the 70s, Franco and Romay were living together, and would until the end of her life in 2012. Franco passed away about 14 months later.

The duo made dozens of movies together during his heyday of the 70s, through his downturn in the 80s, and even some of his adult films in the 90s.

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He Knows You’re Alone (1980)

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Just a couple weeks ago, I did an article on Savage Weekend. That’s a much maligned slasher that often gets a bad reputation for being a poor horror film with bad characters. I didn’t have that same opinion. In fact, I rather liked it.

Or, rather, there was one particular person in the movie that I rather liked – Caitlin O’Heaney.

In the world of horror, this week’s featured flick, He Knows You’re Alone, is the one Ms. O’Heaney is best known for. She has an interesting life. She was a trained and schooled as a stage actress. She eventually landed on television in mostly guest star roles and a handful of smaller roles in film. However, before all that began, she did receive an offer from Salvador Dali to model for him for a particular project, but Dali’s wife would ultimately poo pooed the project and it was canceled. She’s also a supporter of environmental and animal rights issues. She’s also a designer of fragrances. She ultimately designed a fragrance that has some not-so-insignificant fans (including the likes of Paula Abdul and Terri Hatcher).

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