Category: Theme Months

Night of the Demons 2 (1994)

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In the greatest season of the year, there lies the greatest month of the year, and, within that, is the greatest weekend of the year. Oh yeah, it’s Halloween weekend, Enemaniacs! B-Movie Enema has not one, but TWO reviews for you in just four days. We get things started today with this week’s new article that revisits a favorite movie to watch during this time of the year.

Remember back to 2018. In a five-day stretch, I covered the classic 1988 Night of the Demons. I followed that up with the 2009 remake for Halloween Eve, right? Well, it’s time to go back to the Angela shenanigans for this 1994 sequel to that original class, Night of the Demons 2. And since we’re talking about going back to the well for this movie, I find it interesting that it was actually even made to begin with.

I kind of mean it. Six years passed between Night of the Demons and this first sequel. That’s right, there were two sequels made. I’m guessing there was some attempt to cash in on the original’s popularity for being a cable TV flick and an oft-rented horror masterpiece. So, a sequel was made and sold to Republic Pictures and Paramount for a brief theatrical run and video release by the respective companies. Since this is a movie all about the aftermath of a Halloween party gone wrong and a new Halloween party taking place, it only makes perfect sense that Night of the Demons 2 was released on May 13, 1994.

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Jack-O (1995)

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Welcome back to our Halloween and October spooktacular celebration right here at B-Movie Enema!

This week, we’re going to the video store and renting one of those classic direct-to-video horrors that would dump into stores every fall to give everyone that good ol’ creepy feelings for Halloween. We’re going to look at the 1995 slasher Jack-O! Not only is this a video store classic, but it’s also a Fred Olen Ray-produced indie thriller. It also had one of those video boxes that you’ll always remember as the primary monster of the movie, a pumpkin-headed creature named, appropriately Jack-O-Lantern, stares menacingly at you while carrying his scythe.

Jack-O was also directed by Steve Latshaw. Latshaw did direct a few movies, but was probably best known for being the writer who cranked out several scripts from the late 90s until about 10 years ago for the likes of the aforementioned Ray, as well as for Jim Wynorski. It’s his relationship with Ray that is most interesting.

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Hack-O-Lantern (1988)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema!

We’re celebrating the wonderful month of October with a whole slate of Halloween-themed movies. Last week, we got things started with my first (and likely only) trip into the Madea Cinematic Universe with Boo! A Madea Halloween. This week, we’re going to do a whole lot better. I’m going to delve deep into the 1988 slasher/satanic panic/Halloween classic Hack-O-Lantern.

What’s really interesting about this movie is that it’s still fairly obscure. Yet, there are two very popular shows that featured this movie at different times that should have made this movie a lot more popular. First, it was featured on RedLetterMedia’s Halloween 2017 episode of Best of the Worst. That’s one of the better episodes of Best of the Worst too. Then, it was featured on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs for that show’s 2020 Halloween episode. Hell, it was even featured on an October 2012 episode of The Cinema Snob.

It was also the movie in question during an episode of The People’s Court surrounding a rights issue that ends up being a whole other story due to potential muddy ownership and how a show like The People’s Court actually works (meaning something that was supposedly a slam-dunk case against the streamer only for it to be taken out of civil court and into a television court space), but I digress.

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Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016)

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You know? I feel like it was only a matter of time before Madea came to B-Movie Enema. And, sure, maybe I could have started with the beginning of the MCU (no, not that one – the Madea Cinematic Universe), but screw it. It’s time for Halloween and dagnabbit, this seems to be oozing with potential to begin with. So, here it is… Welcome to the blog, Tyler Perry, and let’s talk about Boo! A Madea Halloween.

Damn… There’s a lot to unpack here, but I think we should do some seasonal stuff first.

October is kind of a special time for me. It’s the centerpiece of my favorite season, fall, and a month that I love getting bundled up with the lights out and watching horror movies. It was also the month in which B-Movie Enema was born. Way back in 2014, B-Movie Enema began, but it also ended shortly afterwards. However, once it was resurrected in early 2016, October has been a whole thing here. This month, I’m doing all movies that have a very specific Halloween slant to them. We begin with Mr. Tyler Perry and his Madea character.

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Phantasm: RaVager (2016)

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We’ve come to the end, my dear Enamaniacs. Phantasm: RaVager is today’s feature and B-Movie Enema will finally complete Phantasm Sequels Month.

This one is interesting. I saw this at the Centerbrook Drive-In in Martinsville, Indiana in October of 2016 with a trio of friends. It played as part of a doubleheader with the original movie. It was the first time in a looooong time I had visited a drive-in, so that part was pretty awesome. It’s always fun to watch the original Phantasm. So that was pretty awesome too.

Then Ravager started. I ain’t gonna lie… The first time I saw this I was confused. I was not too happy about the movie. It felt really, really weird. In fact, I would argue that this movie, the only film in the franchise NOT directed by Don Coscarelli, though he did co-write it with director David Hartman, is maybe the most divisive one of the bunch. It’s got a lot of references to past movies, with even a returning character most would have no idea who she is if they hadn’t been watching the series recently just prior to watching this one. It’s not told in a very linear way. It jumps between at least two realities. It’s a strange movie.

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Phantasm: OblIVion (1998)

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Here we go again with another installment of Phantasm Sequels Month here at B-Movie Enema.

We’re up to the fourth entry that goes by a few titles – Phantasm IV: Oblivion, Phantasm: Oblivion, or, my personal favorite, Phantasm: OblIVion. Yeah, stylize that shit! Anyway, believe it or not, after the last two entries getting budgets of something around $3 million, Oblivion would only get about $650,000. However, I should also state there is more to it than just a severely slashed budget.

You see, this movie actually began life as something else. It actually began as this epic script by Roger Avary. If that name rings a bell, that’s because he’s Quentin Tarantino’s writing partner on 1994’s Pulp Fiction. They won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for that movie. Avary is a self-professed Phantasm superfan. He wrote a sequel to Phantasm III that would have seen a major post-apocalyptic world that continued on from that previous entry and would have even brought Bruce Campbell on as a co-star – or so the story goes.

Fundraising for that project fell through.

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Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)

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Welcome back to Phantasm Sequels Month here at B-Movie Enema!

Phantasm II, to put it mildly, didn’t perform as well as hoped. Sure, it brought in a little more than double its budget. That’s not bad, but it was hard to necessarily say Universal was all that happy. Goddammit, they wanted a franchise like those Jasons and Freddys.

However, Universal still had a little bit of a hold on the franchise. It would go on to distribute the next film, and this week’s featured entry, Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead on VHS. Things get a little sideways here though. Phantasm III played a very limited, couple week run in movie havens Baton Rouge, Louisiana and St. Louis, Missouri. That may feel like places out in the middle of no-frickin’-where for a movie to get a limited, two-week release, and you’d be right.

It also saw Phantasm III become the highest grossing movie of that two-week run in both markets.

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Phantasm II (1988)

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As promised, here we are at Phantasm Sequel Month on B-Movie Enema.

Earlier this year, I went deep into what I felt the themes of the first Phantasm from 1979 were. I tied it a lot to loss and dealing with death as a teenager, the time in which most people feel pretty invincible and don’t have to deal with the specter of death looming closely behind them. It was pretty clear that Mike had some unresolved issues with the loss of his parents and was scared of losing his brother Jody as well. Naturally, Jody would be lost, so were the events dealing with the Tall Man all in his head or was there some sort of other other-worldly, inter-dimensional, metaphysical thing going on?

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Did the movie scare you? Did you have a good time watching the movie? That’s all that Don Coscarelli was going for. Okay, sure, maybe he had themes and ideas he was exploring, but he made the movie he wanted to show audiences plain and simple. No one was asking for a sequel. It maybe didn’t need one.

Then, on July 8, 1988, Phantasm II arrived.

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