Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and spooky month 2025’s theme, Black Horror Halloween!

This week, I’m not entirely sure how much I want to talk about this movie before diving right in. To get this out of the way, I’ll be reviewing 1975’s Welcome Home Brother Charles. Generally speaking, this month was intended to kind of highlight blaxploitation and horror. This movie is probably technically neither. I will talk a little more about what I think the actual horror of this movie is directed at, but why it’s hard to frame this as a blaxploitation movie is due to the writer/producer/director, Jamaa Fanaka.

Fanaka is back for his third time on this blog. Previously, I covered Penitentiary and its sequel, Penitentiary II. Brother Charles would be his first commercial film. In 1972, before making this movie, he made a short called A Day in the Life of Willie Faust, or Death on the Installment Plan. That was his student film made at UCLA, which was received fairly well. It was about a heroin addict. When I covered those two Penitentiary films, I made mention that Fanaka was keen to not have his films be called blaxploitation by audiences or critics. He felt the term was a little reductive or dismissive of his attempts to portray life for black men.

Continue reading “Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975)” →

Sugar Hill (1974)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Let’s raise the dead on this week’s new review at B-Movie Enema!

It’s the second week of my little theme month exploring some gems of 70s blaxploitation horror films. This week, I’m digging into 1974’s Sugar Hill from director Paul Maslansky. First and foremost, don’t confuse this with the 1994 movie of the same name starring Wesley Snipes. While both of these movies have a crime element, the earlier film takes place in Houston, while the Snipes vehicle takes place in the Harlem neighborhood of Sugar Hill.

Also, Maslansky’s Sugar Hill deals with voodoo.

Continue reading “Sugar Hill (1974)” →

Ganja & Hess (1973)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading “Ganja & Hess (1973)” →

Loving Feeling (1968)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

B-Movie Enema carries on with the first of another 500 reviews!

This week, we’re returning to the early days of our friend, our grandpa, the man we miss, and the guy who we have covered nearly all of his filmography – Norman J. Warren. Some time ago, I watched the 1968 Warren film, his debut as a feature filmmaker, Her Private Hell. This week, we’re looking at his second film, the other 1968 film on his filmography, Loving Feeling. As a fan of this man’s work, will I get that loving feeling from this movie?

Continue reading “Loving Feeling (1968)” →

Dangerous Men (2005)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

What is it with these damn movies with “Men” in their titles?

Welcome to the 500th review at B-Movie Enema. Holy shit, 500! That’s the number of miles they go at the Indianapolis 500, or half the number of miles I would walk to be the man who falls down at your door! That’s how many dollars it would take to get me to… I dunno… visit Delaware or something. Nah, I’m just messin’ with ya, Delawarians.

Anyway, 500 reviews and it’s time to tackle one of the all-timers when it comes to being batshit insane – 2005’s Dangerous Men. This movie was mostly under the radar for a very, very long time. In fact, it had to because it took 21 years to make it! Production started in 1984 when director-producer John S. Rad (the pseudonym for Jahangir Salehi Yeganehrad) decided to try his hand at making movies. Yeganehrad/Rad was from Iran and worked as an architect on films. He came to the United States during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Five years later, he began to audition actors for his first American film.

Continue reading “Dangerous Men (2005)” →

Trapped (1982)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

You can’t say we don’t get around here at B-Movie Enema.

Over the last month and a half or so, we’ve gone from outer space by way of Japan to the sewers under Los Angeles before we hopped across the Atlantic to hang out with crooks in Italy to a top secret facility out in the American desert lousy with dinosaurs to New Zealand to Tromaville, back to Japan, and here we are… headed to Canada for some thrills and chills. We are definitely piling up the frequent flyer miles. Anyway, this week, B-Movie Enema is reviewing a 1982 film that has a few different titles. We’re going to refer to it, as seen above in this article’s headline, as Trapped. The other titles it is known by are The Killer Instinct and Baker County, U.S.A. The latter is one I’ve either seen at a video store or heard of somewhere along the way (as well as being the title given to the film by IMDb).

Trapped has some returning folks that we’ve talked about before. The director of this flick is William Fruet. Fruet directed 1986’s Killer Party, which is a VERY old review here dating back to, like, 2017. Fruet also worked on the 1983 Peter Fonda/Oliver Reed horror film Spasms, which is definitely one I remember from the video stores thanks to an eye-catching box. Seriously… was I supposed to be looking at the naked girl screaming in the shower or the monster-faced man below her?

The answer was “yes.”

Continue reading “Trapped (1982)” →

The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back to another trip to Tromaville, New Jersey, for a brand new B-Movie Enema review!

Back for Christmas 2022, I took a trip to everyone’s nuclear waste-ridden town to discuss Lloyd Kaufman’s original superhero, The Toxic Avenger. That 1984 breakout hit for Kaufman’s Troma Entertainment was brash, offensive, slapdash, but brilliant in many ways. The sheer irreverence in Kaufman’s style of comedy is in full display here. That wasn’t Lloyd’s first film he directed, and it certainly was not his first comedy, but this was the one that skyrocketed Troma into the vocabulary for all those exploitation, trash cinema fans scouring the video store shelves looking for some depraved weekend entertainment in the 80s.

Funny enough, Lloyd Kaufman’s sex comedies between 1979 and 1983 all had titles with exclamation points: Squeeze Play!, Waitress!, Stuck on You!, and The First Turn-On! You gotta love Lloyd’s commitment to the schtick. Then again, considering how bombastic his mannerisms and the way he speaks, I have to assume he shouted the titles he wanted to put on his movies, and the guy who made the title cards just thought that was part of the title.

Eh… Anyway, considering a bigger budget remake of the original The Toxic Avenger is now hitting theaters across the country, starring a for-real Emmy Award-winning actor, Peter Dinklage, I figured it’s time to revisit the world of Toxie. This week, we’re going to look at the 1989 sequel to the original, The Toxic Avenger Part II.

(Oh, and my official review of the new Toxic Avenger movie? It’s a lot of fun and has a surprising amount of heart but keeps the counterculture vibes of Lloyd’s original intact. 4 out of 5 stars!)

Continue reading “The Toxic Avenger Part II (1989)” →

Death Warmed Up (1984)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

It’s time for another shambling review here at B-Movie Enema!

We don’t cover New Zealand enough around here, if I’m being honest. The islands that make up the southern hemisphere nation have made quite a splash in film over the last 40+ years. While it’s unfair to tie New Zealand’s film legacy to Australia’s, it might be fair to say that after the rise of Australian cinema in the 70s, New Zealand was able to follow suit and offer its own blend of plots, concepts, and quirks to film audiences.

What’s kind of interesting, this site has been full of Kiwi products over the last year and a half. In March of last year, I looked at Peter Jackson’s adult take on The Muppet Show, 1989’s Meet the Feebles. The wonderful 1985 science fiction drama, The Quiet Earth, came to the site in the form of a review in July. Then, in August of last year, the 70th episode of B-Movie Enema: The Series hopped in our Battletruck to watch Warlords of the 21st Century. All three of those movies have their own qualities that are fun, thought-provoking, or just outright weird. Now, it’s time to discuss another Kiwi film of note – David Blyth’s 1984 sci-fi zombie flick, Death Warmed Up.

Continue reading “Death Warmed Up (1984)” →