Category: Theme Months

Ganja & Hess (1973)

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Welcome to spooky month here at B-Movie Enema!

This year, I decided to do something a little bit different. Throughout the history of B-Movie Enema, and you should be aware of this if you’ve been around here for a bit, I hope I’ve been able to properly state that I love October and I love blaxploitation. For this year’s theme, I thought to myself, “Why not mix the two?” So, yeah… Welcome to Black Horror Halloween!

Now I might have used the term “blaxploitation” in the previous paragraph. I have five movies selected, and I would say that I think three of the movies selected can fall into that subgenre of blaxploitation. The other two can leave a lot of room for debate, that they should not be simply called (or for some, dismissed) as “blaxploitation.” I think director Bill Gunn would say our opener should simply be called a black film. Join me for the vampire horror of Ganja & Hess.

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Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and the final week of Troma Month!

This month has been a fun one, hasn’t it? Whether it’s a love letter to Kaufman’s appreciation of William Shakespeare in the romance Tromeo and Juliet, or the earlier Tromaville kids run amok horror Class of Nuke ‘Em High, or the most Troma film of them all, Terror Firmer… It’s been a good time visiting these classics from the 80s and 90s master of gross-out comedy, horror, and comedy-horror, Lloyd Kaufman. But now, we bring things to a close with another dark comedy-horror from the man himself. However, this time, we have a bit of a twist.

This time we have a musical.

Yes, it’s Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. This time around, Kaufman has a little uncredited help from one of the co-writers of the film, Gabriel Friedman. Friedman would go on to be a producer for specials for the cable channels E! and G4, as well as for online series like The IGN Show. In fact, he mostly worked on a lot of specials and behind-the-scenes stuff, including making-of documentaries for Troma films like Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie. His writing credits are mostly for Troma films like this one, Make Your Own Damn Movie!, the aforementioned fourth Toxie flick, and Lloyd Kaufman’s most recent, #ShakespearesShitstorm.

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Terror Firmer (1999)

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Welcome back! It’s the third week of Troma Month here at B-Movie Enema and it’s time to go back, sorta, to the James Gunn well. This week, I’m gonna be talking about 1999’s Terror Firmer.

What do I mean about this sorta going back to the James Gunn well? That’s because, to a certain extent, Lloyd Kaufman, along with co-writers Douglas Buck and Patrick Cassidy, based this movie’s script, albeit loosely, on the 1998 book All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger. That book was co-written by Kaufman and James Gunn.

I made the comment last week, in my review for Class of Nuke ‘Em High, that I kind of put Kaufman in the same camp as Roger Corman. Corman, back in the 50s and 60s, were cranking out cheap B-movies quickly. However, quickly those movies were, and however cheaply they were made, most (especially in today’s film culture) could not look at those movies and think they weren’t made professionally. Maybe the monster was kind of goofy, but you couldn’t argue that the cast was well-directed and doing their jobs professionally.

I bring up that commentary I made because Roger Corman wrote the introduction to the book this is sort of based on.

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Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

Welcome back to Troma Month here at B-Movie Enema!

Last week, it just so happened, the month started with a leadoff home run with Tromeo and Juliet, a movie that I believe, by the time we finish this month and I’ve increased my viewership of movies made internally by Troma, will be the best film ever released by the company. I know, I know… Toxie and what have you. There was just something special about Tromeo and Juliet that had my by the balls and shook me about until I cried out for my mommy to save me.

Wait…

Eh… anyway… This week, we’re going back to the 80s when Troma and their fictional hometown of Tromaville was in its infancy. We’re looking at 1986’s Class of Nuke ‘Em High. This horror/sci-fi/comedy was Lloyd Kaufman’s follow-up to his seminal 1984 classic The Toxic Avenger. This time, though, he wasn’t alone. Kaufman shared directing duties with Troma editor Richard W. Haines.

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Tromeo and Juliet (1996)

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It’s Troma Month here at B-Movie Enema!

Heck yeah, this is looooong overdue. I think the best thing I need to do to start things off here is to admit something. I don’t really have a great deal of history with Troma. I like Lloyd Kaufman. I like what he does to inspire new filmmakers. I like the general absurdity with the Troma films, particularly the ones that they create and make in-house. Sure, I’ve seen a handful of them. Of course, I’ve seen The Toxic Avenger. I grew up with Mother’s Day. Troma’s War? Yeah, I’ve seen it. But I had a little more experience seeing movies distributed by Troma as opposed to the movies they made themselves.

That said, Lloyd Kaufman’s personality is so larger than life that it feels like I’ve seen more from him than I have. So, this month, I wanna fix that. Let’s take a look at some of Troma’s catalog. I think I picked four pretty popular films from Kaufman specifically. We kick things off with his 1996 Shakespeare parody, Tromeo and Juliet.

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Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984)

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Welcome to the final entry in B-Movie Enema’s Pia Zadora Month.

1984’s Voyage of the Rock Aliens, believe it or not, pretty much ended Pia Zadora’s film career. There are still a few film credits in the ten years following this movie, but in only one of those did she ever play a character. That came in John Waters’ 1989 camp musical Hairspray where she played a “Beatnik Chick”. The other three film credits were all playing herself. Perhaps the most notable of those films in which she appeared as herself was in 1994’s Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.

Fittingly, in that, she is performing at the Academy Awards.

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The Lonely Lady (1983)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle4 Comments

What up, Enemaniacs?

Welcome to week #4 of our five-week trek through the film library of the diminutive starlet Pia Zadora here at B-Movie Enema. This week is the one that you could argue the entire month was built around. It’s one that would end up wracking up something like 11 Razzie nominations and winning six. It’s 1983’s The Lonely Lady.

On paper, The Lonely Lady might have had a chance to work. The movie was based on a novel of the same name written by Harold Robbins. Robbins wrote slightly more lurid novels that had a seedier side. He wrote a few books that either were directly about the underbelly of Hollywood’s film industry or kind of circled that drain. Several of his books were adapted into big-budget films. These included The Carpetbaggers which got adapted into a 1964 film with an all-star cast, A Stone for Danny which was turned into the big-time vehicle for Elvis, King Creole, and 1970’s The Adventurers.

Maybe most notable is that Harold Robbins’ name is often dropped as a joke in terms of an extremely popular writer who writes more lurid pulp than great American novels. His name is often linked to Jacqueline Susann who took inspiration from Robbins when she wrote Valley of the Dolls. For most of my life in pop culture, I had known Robbins and Susann’s names thanks to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Kirk is describing the types of vernacular, often laced with colorful metaphors, used in the late 20th Century to Spock who is trying to understand why Kirk is and a lot of other people in 1986 San Francisco are using curse words. Kirk mentions Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann as notable authors of the time. Spock then calls them “the giants” of literature.

In fact, the novel by Robbins this is based on is rumored to have been something of a recounting of memories Robbins had of Susann.

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Pajama Tops (1983)

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Welcome back to another review here at B-Movie Enema!

January 2025 has been dedicated to Pia Zadora. Right here in the middle of the month dedicated to the lil’ starlet is not a feature film shown on the big screen. We’re going to look at the 1983 TV movie Pajama Tops. This “movie” was directed by Robert Iscove. Iscove has a whole lot of credits on his filmography. This includes a LOT of TV stuff. He directed episodes of Wiseguy, Star Trek: The Next Generation, 21 Jump Street, The Flash, American Playhouse, Great Performances, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

However, Iscove then made two kind of famous movies. One is famous for being one of those 90s movies that gained a huge fanbase and the other is kind of infamous. The one with the fanbase is 1999’s She’s All That. Yeah, everyone loves She’s All That, right? Rachel Leigh Cook, Freddie Prinze Jr., and Paul Walker! Yeah! We love those guys. However, the other film that isn’t so well-liked is 2003’s From Justin to Kelly. That’s the movie that starred the winner and runner-up of the very first season of American Idol – Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini.

Can you believe American Idol is still going?!?

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