Category: 1990s

Quiet Fire (1991)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

Welcome to yet another review right here at B-Movie Enema.

This week, we return to the letter Q with a movie that didn’t quite make the cut for Quly but was a tad bit too juicy to just throw onto the stack to review too far off into the future, so let’s talk about it now! We’re going to be looking at 1991’s Quiet Fire. Quiet Fire was something I know quite intimately… This was a direct-to-video release. I’ve sort of talked about this before but back in the back half of the 90s, I worked at a video store. Because of that, I had a lot of insight about things I didn’t really understand until I got a little older.

One of those things I learned was that there were three genres that shone brightly for people looking to consume home entertainment. Now, I’m not including a very obvious one for men and kinky couples (that being porn) because that’s fairly obvious, as is the fact that people who didn’t want to go to the theater to watch a movie would later catch them on video. No, the three that I’m referring to are thrillers, particularly ones that starred beautiful women being chased by dangerous men (Shannon Tweed was a massive star in this genre), horror, particularly the ones that were kind of at the tail end of the slasher era, and action.

And that’s what we have here, a direct-to-video action flick.

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Barb Wire (1996)

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Welcome to yet another B-Movie Enema review!

Now, if you’ve been around this year, and you really should because what else do you really have to read while sitting on the toilet taking a morning shit, you might notice something I’ve kind of said a few times over the past few months. A big part of my plan for 2024 was to start knocking off stacks of movies obtained at conventions or through online sales on Vinegar Syndrome or Severin, and basically get through the backlog. This week, I’m pulling form the “bought this many years ago, planned to do it, never did, and now it’s time” pile. Oh yes, it is 1996’s Barb Wire starring Pamela Anderson.

Honestly, I bought this movie on DVD for, like, less than a buck back when Amazon used to do those incredibly low-cost Marketplace sales on things, particularly movies. I remember buying a used copy of something for a penny, paying the $3.99 shipping cost, and being happier than one of Pam Anderson’s boobs in a bustier. That’s something you just don’t see anymore on Amazon. I… I mean the practice on Amazon, not Anderson’s boobs in a bustier. Anyway, the reason why you don’t see those super inexpensive Marketplace listings anymore is likely due to a crackdown on the seller’s part to prevent too many items from being sold for less than Amazon’s actual cost for something. I doubt I paid more than a buck for this movie if I’m being honest.

And I should be honest because even back in 1996 when I was 19 and full of a lot of male hormones that led to a lot of bad thoughts and choices, I never really had any interest in seeing this movie. Pam Anderson was not someone who really represented my tastes in a woman. She’s pretty, sure, but I wasn’t as ga-ga over her as many people my age were. Plus, I was more of a superhero fan when it came to comic books. Aside from the Crow and a passing interest in Spawn when the HBO animated series ran, I liked the heroes from Marvel and DC. I wasn’t that much of an indie guy. No, I bought this movie because, for a while, I was trying to get all the movies that were being covered on the Earwolf podcast How Did This Get Made.

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The Quest (1996)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

Well hot damn, Enemaniacs! It’s the Fourth of July weekend! Here in the United States, we tend to use this weekend, and the next several weeks afterward (much to the dismay of dogs everywhere), to blow up whole ass chunks of our country with fireworks that are supposedly illegal but everyone can get their hands on them by way of going to a makeshift fireworks store, but I digress…

What was I talking about?

Eh, never mind. Anyway, It’s July and I decided to do something kind of clever for this month’s slate of reviews. I did a little housekeeping by looking at all the movies I covered over the past 435 reviews and came to a realization. I’ve covered a movie starting with 25 of 26 letters in the English alphabet. The only letter I haven’t touched yet? Q. Yeah, I had never covered a movie with a Q title. I mean, for shit’s sake, I have covered THREE movies beginning with X with a fourth planned for later this year!

So with that said, welcome to QULY! All four reviews this month will be a movie starting with the letter Q. To get things started, on this most sacred of sacred weekends in the US, let’s talk about a movie starring a Belgian martial artist in a movie that takes place in Tibet, and then premiered a week early in Turkey… The Quest!

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Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies (1992)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

Welcome to this week’s B-Movie Enema review. This week, we have ourselves a treat! Our movie this time around is the horror-comedy (and, at times, kind of sexy) Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies starring the always fun Karen Black.

Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies is yet another movie that I first saw on Bizarre TV some eight or nine years ago. I really can’t tell you how key Bizarre TV was in terms of the explosion of exploitation and obscure movies in my life. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: B-Movie Enema has so much to credit Bizarre TV for in terms of this site’s existence. I saw movies on that Roku channel that I had never seen or heard of before, and it sent me down rabbit hole after rabbit hole seeking out the movie and learning more about others like it. If it weren’t for my turning the channel on late one night in early March 2016 and waking up to this fascinatingly bonkers Mexican monster movie, this site would have never returned from the inactive state it had been in for over a year.

As for Auntie Lee’s Meat Pies, this is one of those movies that has the look, feel, and general attitude of a late night Showtime or Cinemax movie that guys who either just hit puberty or never matured past it would drool over and watch. It is a movie that is shot in southern California. It takes place in sunshine or in scenes washed in a primary color. It features a lot of Playmates. It treats sex and sensuality in a sort of comedic and old fashioned nudie cutie sort of way while being rather explicit at times in one way or another. It’s directed by a guy who mostly made sexploitation movies. That’s a perfect late night Showtime or Skinemax storm.

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Strangeland (1998)

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Gather ’round, kiddies. This week’s B-Movie Enema is going to tell you a tale about urban primitives and their desire to find transcendence via pain and all sorts of fucked up shit. Oh, and also, Dee Snider is here.

Yes, this week, we’re scouring the dusty shelves of the horror section at the video store to talk about 1998’s Strangeland, written by and starring Dee Snider. Snider rose to prominence in the 80s with his band Twisted Sister. He was a hard glam rocker who dressed in a gender-bending way. I’d go so far as to say it was a little gender-bending and a little pro wrestling in style, but it was purely 80s through and through. It was Twisted Sister’s third album, Stay Hungry, that featured two very popular singles, “We’re Not Going to Take It” and “I Wanna Rock”. “We’re Not Going to Take It” is one of those 80s anthems that still gets a lot of airplay and use in movies to this day.

Snider, along with a few other artists of the time, became a favorite target of the Parents Music Resource Center who wanted to bring a warning system to music albums and singles in the pearl-clutching hope that children would not be turned into murderers or something when they listen to “Darling Nikki” or something. Snider was joined by the likes of Frank Zappa and John Denver to speak out against censorship in music. This did lead to the creation of the Explicit Content label we saw on just about every cool ass album of the 90s.

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Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

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For the 400th time, welcome to B-Movie Enema, and, most importantly, allow me to extend to my Enemaniacs a very happy Halloween!

What better way to spend the greatest of all holidays, and this milestone review, than with that murderous monster Michael Myers? Well, you might want to table some of that excitement. That’s because it’s time to take a look at one of the most blasted entries in the entirety of the Halloween franchise. Yeah, we’re cursed, my dear readers. Let’s discuss 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

Alright, check it out… Let’s go back to September 29, 1995, the day the sixth Michael Myers epic hit theater screens. I was 18 years old and a high school graduate. Sure, you might think I should have been a freshman in college, but, well… You don’t realize how absolutely listless and lazy I was (and still am). I didn’t go to college right after high school, pffft. Hell, when I did go to college the following year, I only stuck around for, like, two years.

What was I talking about? Oh, yeah Halloween 6. I didn’t have that interesting story about that September night way back in my youthful days of 1995. But I was excited to see the new movie. I like Mikey Myers. I expected this sixth entry long before 1995. Six years had passed since the previous film’s release and that one ended on a cliffhanger. I had lots of questions about whether or not that would actually be picked up and continued with the Man in Black and Michael Myers being part of some sort of organized thing, hence the tattoo of the Thorn rune symbols on those two characters’ wrists.

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Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

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Spooky season continues at B-Movie Enema!

Welcome to this week’s review. Last week, I checked Leatherface off the list of horror icons that I haven’t checked in with for a long time. This week, it’s Freddy Krueger. Now, here’s what I think is likely a hot take. I don’t actually care much for the Elm Street franchise. Of all the slashers and serial killers, Freddy ranks pretty dang low. I know, I know… There are lots of Freddy stans out there.

I actually get it. The first film in the series, A Nightmare on Elm Street, is really the best slasher film of the 80s. It’s well-written and very well-acted. The first sequel is interesting but not truly a great movie. It’s great camp, so that puts it in another category. The third film is one of the best horror sequels of all time. In 1994, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is a very good new take on the series. I don’t care much for the other sequels much at all. So when it comes to the series itself, the first three films, to me, are pretty watchable. The last one is a completely different type of movie and should be kept separate from the other six. I never saw the remake. I didn’t care to. I already covered the fifth film in the franchise when things were truly and fully off the rails with Freddy’s over-the-top jokey personality.

And then there’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995)

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Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema review.

We’re celebrating Halloween this month with the traditional horror movie marathon each Friday. This year, I decided to return to some series that I had covered in the past. Now, with it being Friday the 13th today, you probably expected to see this movie covered for the spooky day in the spooky month. Yeah, Leatherface… He’s the Friday the 13th guy, right?

You know I’m just yanking your crank. Honestly, there’s not another Friday the 13th movie that I really want to cover on the blog. So, instead, I opted to go back to a series I haven’t covered in a long time and discuss Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. The only other time I looked at a movie starring the leatheriest of faces was way back in October 2017 when I reviewed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

This is a weird series. At least for me, it is. I love the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There’s a grittiness to it that makes you feel uncomfortable from the start. It’s grainy. It’s sweaty. It looks and feels like you’re right there with the characters. Then, there’s the scene where Marilyn Burns is captured where she is screaming her head off. It’s a moment that actually affects me on a physical level. I’ve been made queasy by that scene on more than one occasion. It’s effective as hell, and one of the most effective scenes in film history to me.

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