Reviews – Page 40

Night School (1981)

Published on August 6, 2021August 12, 2021 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Kevin Hart. What a funny little fella. He gets up on screen, bugs his eyes out when he’s tellin’ jokes, screams… He seems like an overall pretty good dude. Tiffany Haddish is someone I find quite attractive too. She’s known for being pretty funny as well. What on Earth are they doing on this blog? What could they have possibly done to draw an article on B-Movie Enema?

Wait. Hang on a second. I’ve got some new information coming across my desk about this week’s article. Oh. Okay. I see. Gotcha.

Looks like I watched the wrong Night School. Well son of a bitch. I watched the 2018 comedy starring Hart and Haddish. I should have been watching the 1981 slasher directed by Ken Hughes. One moment while I go and rectify this shit.

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Frankenhooker (1990)

Published on July 30, 2021August 6, 2021 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

It’s the long awaited return of stone cold babe Patty Mullen and the even longer awaited bow for horror-comedy maestro Frank Henenlotter!

Henenlotter is best known for his Basket Case trilogy along with this week’s B-Movie Enema feature, Frankenhooker. Henenlotter was inspired by the exploitation films of 42nd Street in his home town of New York City. He loved these films growing up and he copied a lot of the camp and the gore of those films while also not passing up the opportunity for a little bit of sex.

After making a third Basket Case movie in the early 90s, he turned his love of the offbeat and oft-forgotten films of 42nd Street and get involved with the new boutique video releasing company Something Weird Video. He set about becoming an expert historian of exploitation and gory horror and was instrumental to the restoration of those long trashed movies of his youth. Shortly after returning, he began making documentaries. Herschell Gordon Lewis: The Godfather of Gore, one of the documentaries he made shortly after returning to film, is a goddamn treat. I recommend that to any fan of schlock filmmakers and movies.

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Olivia (1983)

Published on July 23, 2021July 29, 2021 by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

Last week, we talked about an Italian actor-turned-director’s film, this week, we have a German actor who turned into a rather notable director.

1983’s Olivia comes to us from Ulli Lommel. Lommel was an actor in the 60s. In fact, one of his earliest films was one of Russ Meyer’s – Fanny Hill. But he would work many times over with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who was a particularly controversial filmmaker himself. Fassbinder made a lot of avant garde films and passed away young due to a drug overdose. However, Lommel produced a 1970 movie of Fassbinder’s called Whity a surreal western about a mixed race servant who kills the family he works for and runs away with his prostitute lover. Whity won many awards in the German equivalent of the Oscars.

By the end of the 70s, Lommel moved to America to make American movies permanently. By 1980, he jumped into the slasher craze with The Boogeyman. While the reviews were mixed, and there were many comparisons made to John Carpenter’s Halloween, the movie was a huge success. It was banned in the United Kingdom as a Video Nasty, and was later re-evaluated as a movie that seems to utilize a lot of Lommel’s own fears he had as a child. Boogeyman II was released a few years later. Like the infamous Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, the sequel uses many flashbacks to the first to help fill its runtime. Boogeyman II is pretty much unilaterally disliked.

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The Beast in Heat (1977)

Published on July 16, 2021July 22, 2021 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Well, I guess it was only a matter of time before ol’ B-Movie Enema returned to the world of 70s nazisploitation.

This week, we’re talking about the 1977 Italian flick The Beast in Heat. Now, try to keep up here. The movie was originally called La Bestia in calore which is the Italian translation of The Beast in Heat. I point this out because you can look and see that the director on this is “Ivan Kathansky”. That name makes you think, “Ooh! It’s a Russian director! This is either extra spicy because it is a movie about a Nazi monster made by a damn, dirty Commie, or… Or…” I don’t know how to end that sentiment other than to make sure you understand that I’m thinking this is a Commie Nazi movie.

However, the director is actually Luigi Batzella, which now makes me think of a giant monster bat tearing apart a Japanese town. Kathansky is not the only pseudonym of Batzella’s, but that’s notable because critic Tim Lucas of Sight & Sound stated that this film is so reprehensible that there’s not a single real name associated with anyone in the movie. Exactly how true that is, I don’t know, but with a reputation like that, B-Movie Enema had to come calling.

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The Black Cat (1981)

Published on July 9, 2021February 15, 2024 by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

I love cats. Guys, I don’t mind saying it. I’m not a dog person. In fact, for the vast majority of the last 29 years, I’ve lived with at least one cat, and very often with two. These cats are as good as kids from my perspective. Most of those cats have been partners in crime with me. So, I guess you can say I have something in common with our lead in this week’s movie, The Black Cat.

However, this is only very loosely based on the Edgar Allan Poe short story by the same name. In that, it’s about a man and his wife who love animals. In particular, he seems to have a special bond with a large, black cat. When he develops an addiction to the sauce, the cat decides he doesn’t really like the guy anymore which is only made worse by the drunk man torturing the cat by removing its eye, and even hanging the cat from a tree.

This 1843 story has been the inspiration, suggestion, or basis for many a film version. Universal Studios twice made movies “suggested” by the story, but neither held any kind of similarity outside having a black cat in them. Multiple times, Italians have made adaptations of this like Sergio Martino’s Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (a title that just rolls off the tongue) in 1971, Dario Argento’s version in the anthology film Two Evil Eyes, and then Fulci’s version that we’re going to talk about today.

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Nightmare Sisters (1987)

Published on July 2, 2021February 15, 2024 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

We’ve got ourselves a trio of sexy scream queens for this week’s B-Movie Enema!

This week’s movie, Nightmare Sisters is one of only two films that featured all three of the 80s main ladies of b-movie horror – Linnea Quigley, Michelle Bauer, and Brinke Stevens. The other movie? Well, that was Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. It should be noted that not only do those two movies featuring every teenage boy’s trio of preferred prom dates appear together, both movies were directed by our good friend David DeCoteau.

Now… Last time we saw ol’ Dave around here, it was the very disappointing Beach Babes 2: Cave Girl Island. It was very clear to me that there was hardly a script and hardly any budget. This time around I know there is hardly a script and zero budget. In fact, this movie was filmed in only four days. When you know these things going into your succubi movie, you’re going to view the movie through a much sharper lens. I mean, I expected a great deal out of Beach Babes 2. However, this time, knowing this is a weekend project and, well, having seen this movie before, I know what to expect.

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Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987)

Published on June 25, 2021July 2, 2021 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

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)

Published on June 18, 2021June 24, 2021 by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

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.