Category: 1980s

Dr. Caligari (1989)

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It’s December here at B-Movie Enema Industries, and that means things are getting a little cold. But I’ve got something to warm the bones. By that, I mean something really weird. This week, I’m looking at the avant-garde 1989 Dr. Caligari.

I don’t want to say this is a remake of the German expressionism classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but let’s try to sort all this out. That original version I just mentioned was released in 1920. This was during a time of massive film experimentation in post-World War I Germany. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the most influential early films in history. While 1922’s Nosferatu is a more influential monster film, Caligari twisted the way a story could be told. That wasn’t just a clever way of using the word twisted to describe the look of the film. There are multiple reads about how the narrative plays out.

Dr. Caligari, in the original that is, was a man who went from town to town and did sideshow-like performances with his somnambulist, Cesare, who is forced to obey his every command. Cesare is Caligari’s instrument of revenge against those who wronged him. It turns out that the character who is telling this story is actually a patient in an asylum. Caligari is actually the head doctor there. The other main characters, Cesare, and the girl whom Cesare falls in love with, Jane, are also inmates. It’s an early example of a twist ending and an unreliable narrator in a film.

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Krull (1983)

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Happy Thanksgiving weekend, Enemaniacs! I’ve got a bit of a feast for you for this week’s B-Movie Enema review.

In the early 80s, there were a couple of phenomena going on. The first was the re-emergence of the sword and sorcery or sword and sandal movies. That was mostly due to the popularity of 1982’s Conan the Barbarian but I would also count 1981’s Clash of the Titans as also being an inspiration for the genre of fantasy action films. The other big phenomenon was the adventure sci-fi genre thanks to the huge success of 1977’s Star Wars and 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back.

If you really think about it, Star Wars isn’t really science fiction. More accurately, it would be called space opera. That means it’s a little more fantasy than true science fiction. Star Trek is the more true action science fiction type of movie where it both features some action and adventure but also tackles other concepts that are more sci-fi in nature. The advancements made in special effects also made for movies that could feature more lasers and spaceships and different types of creatures, though maybe the last one would be more due to advancements in makeup effects and artistry. That brings us to this week’s topic, 1983’s Krull.

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Yor, the Hunter from the Future (1983)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

We had ourselves a rough one last week, my dear Enemaniacs. The only way to make up for that? Reb Brown.

Oh yes, save us all, Reb! We need salvation from shitty robot ladies who weren’t robots but also maybe brainwashed but weren’t brainwashed. We need something Italian. We need something French. We need something Turkish. We need Yor, the Hunter from the Future!

Welcome to this looooong overdue review for B-Movie Enema. I picked up this Blu-Ray when it was released several years ago with the intention for this to be covered here. I don’t know what kept me from fulfilling that promise the day it arrived, but here we are.

This movie is, indeed, an Italian-French-Turkish co-production. I’ve only once before delved into the world of Turkish cinema, but know they like making movies. They really like making movies that look and play out like American films. But you know the Italians like doing that too. With the Italian side of the production comes director Antonio Margheriti. Margheriti did a lot of lower-budget stuff and was mostly doing the typical Italian genres of crime action films, science fiction, spaghetti westerns, and horror. Notably, Margheriti made films like Castle of Blood starring Barbara Steele, Cannibal Apocalypse starring John Saxon, Death Rage starring Yul Brynner in his final role, and several action movies with David Warbeck.

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Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

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Happy Halloween Weekend, my dearest of Enemaniacs!

If you’ve been around here for a while, you know that October is a big deal with B-Movie Enema. It was in October 2014 that the blog was started. When the blog returned in 2016, I always tried to have some sort of theme (be it loose or a tight theme) each October. I’ve also treated Halloween itself as a kind of big deal. In fact, that SERIES has been visited and revisited a few times over. It started in 2016 when I covered the absolute worst of the series. Then, in 2017, I talked about the one that gets the most misunderstood hatred in the series.

After 2017, I took it kind of easy on the franchise, but last year, I returned to the series with the movie that brought ol’ Mikey Myers back to the franchise after that misunderstood entry. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers wasn’t just a return to the series after six years of the franchise being completely left in the past, but it also kicked off a trilogy of sorts. Today, we follow that up with that movie’s direct sequel and the middle chapter of this sort-of trilogy with Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.

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Unmasking the Idol (1986)

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Enema… B-Movie Enema.

That sounded a lot better in my head than it looked on the page. Hmm. Anyway, I’m a huge James Bond fan. When I was little, I remember getting my first looks at the Bond films on TV. At that time, I seem to remember more of the Roger Moore-era movies playing regularly than the Connery films, but I caught up with those older entries by the end of the 80s. It was then that I definitely remember ABC playing the movies on Sunday or Monday nights during the summer. What I didn’t see on TV, I’d rent from the video store.

This was around the same time as Licence to Kill hitting theaters and the first time I saw one of the movies in a theater. It was that summer that I became a huge Bond fan. I never looked back. Starting with GoldenEye in 1995, I started going to see each new Bond film in the theater with my father. I have a single tattoo on my body. It’s of a silhouetted James Bond in the famous gun barrel with his 007 logo under it.

So, when there is a movie like the one I’ll be reviewing this week, Unmasking the Idol, I’m immediately curious about it.

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Dark Tower (1987)

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Welcome to yet another B-Movie Enema review! This week, I’m looking at Dark Tower. Now, before you connect that title to another thing from Stephen King, just know this is a 1987 film that used that same title and set in Spain. Interestingly, though, this movie comes from a pair of directors I’ve talked about before.

The original director was Ken Wiederhorn. Wiederhorn is best known for horror. In particular, he directed Shock Waves in 1977 which features Nazi zombies. Then, in 1981, he did the quite good Eyes of a Stranger with Jennifer Jason Leigh in an early role. The year after this movie’s release, he did Return of the Living Dead II. He originally wanted to be a documentary director, but once he broke in with horror, he says none of the reputable news organizations wanted to work with him. To be fair, it probably has a lot to do with the spectacularly bad Animal House ripoff King Frat which I watched as part of the second season of B-Movie Enema: The Series.

Wiederhorn was replaced during filming. His replacement was Freddie Francis. Francis appeared recently on the site with 1970’s Girly which turned out to be quite a good movie that uses some salaciousness to draw someone in, but then turns out to be a really interesting movie about a messed up family and arrested development. Francis wasn’t the only replacement piece for this movie. Original leading lady Lucy Gutteridge was replaced by Jenny Agutter. Original leading man Roger Daltrey was replaced by Michael Moriarty.

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Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

Welcome to B-Movie Enema. This week, we’re going to the mid-80s for the slick-looking horror flick Maximum Overdrive. It’s kind of impossible to talk about this movie without mentioning three things a lot of people who know about it knows (and possibly the main reasons that draw them to it). The first is that this movie bombed fairly hard and was almost unilaterally disliked by critics and a whole lot of the audience. Okay. Fine. The second thing was that this featured a pretty bitchin’ soundtrack from the Australian rock superstar group AC/DC.

But, come on… The third is the biggest reason why most watch this movie. That would be Stephen King. By 1986, King was about as big of a name in American literature as anyone else. In 1974, he released his first novel, Carrie, which was immediately brought to the screen in 1976 by Brian De Palma. With each subsequent novel released, ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, The Dead Zone, and so forth, King was selling like hotcakes. Most of his novels up to this point were adapted into movies as well. King hasn’t often had a great deal of appreciation for the movies made from his movies. Notably, he hated Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining.

At the height of his power, King decided he wasn’t going to write a book and then sell the rights to someone only for them to make a movie he wasn’t satisfied with. Instead, he would make his own film. This was the only film King ever directed. He does admit that he had no idea what he was doing and he was railing on cocaine most of the time anyway, so he barely even remembers anything about the production.

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Deathstalker II (1987)

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Welcome to the final B-Movie Enema article for June!

So we spent a lot of time this month catching up with sequels to movies I’ve covered before. We started June with introducing ourselves to a series I’ve wanted to dive into for a while – Deathstalker. In the interest of keeping up with the whole point of this month, we’re going to round things out with Deathstalker II. If you think this is going to just be more of the same from the first film, well, you’ll be surprised to hear it isn’t. This is actually more of a comedy.

There could be multiple reasons why this sequel, that came four years after the original that was a success, decided to go this route. First of all, this was the final sword and sorcery film made in the Roger Corman-Argentinian deal. (To find out more about that, hit that link the paragraph above to read the review of that first film.) Honestly, the window had closed on these types of fantasy films by 1987. So why not try doing something a little different? Maybe wink and nod at the audience that these movies are kind of silly. Bringing Jim Wynorski in as director of this sequel certainly changes the mood. Wynorski’s pretty good at infusing a little bit of cheeky self-deprecation into his films. But then also the film was fairly low budget.

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