Carnosaur 2 (1995)

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It’s time to go back to the Jurassic Era for another dino-rific review at B-Movie Enema!

1993’s Carnosaur was a massive hit. Okay, well, maybe not as big as Jurassic Park, but still, it was a significant hit for Roger Corman’s New Horizons production company. To say that it was riding the coattails of JP is not even facetious. It had to have. Both were based on books and featured dinosaurs. One was getting a ton of attention because that Spielberg guy was directing it. Sure, it was riding coattails, but it worked. The movie made a modest amount of money at the box office and was popular on VHS and cable television.

So, two years later, New Horizons was at it again with Carnosaur 2, which is the movie we’re going to be talking about this week. Because the sequel was greenlit while the first was in production, John Carl Buechler, the effects artist who made the dinosaurs in the first film, could save what he made and take care of it while they got the script and pre-production stuff off the ground. Michael Palmer wrote a script and took a lot of inspiration from Corman acolyte James Cameron’s Aliens plot. Corman tapped director Louis Morneau, who, if we’re being honest here, is mostly known for making sequels and pretty bad movies like The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting, Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead, and the terrible Bats.

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Puzzle (1974)

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Welcome back to another review here at B-Movie Enema. It’s great to have you here. For real. I mean it. I am glad you’re here.

Anyway, let’s talk about murder!

Italian giallo is what’s on tap for this week’s movie. What exactly the first giallo is is somewhat debatable. Though I think most critics would name 1963’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Mario Bava as the first. That film starred John Saxon. Bava followed that up with 1964’s Blood and Black Lace starring none other than Cameron motherfuckin’ Mitchell! Throughout the 60s, gialli remained a little under the radar until the 70s when the genre would kick into hyperdrive. A few weeks back, I talked about Umberto Lenzi a little bit as he co-wrote Primal Rage. This week, we have another key Italian filmmaker to talk about.

1974’s Puzzle, the movie we’ll be figuring out this week, is directed by Duccio Tessari. Tessari’s career began as a writer. Starting around 1958, Tessari worked quite a bit as a writer for several years. He wrote some Hercules films, other peplum, and, of course, spaghetti westerns. In fact, it was one of his 1964 scripts that would kick off the massive popularity of those Italian western films. Yeah, Tessari wrote A Fistful of Dollars.

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Scared to Death (1980)

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AAAAAAHHHHHHH!

Wow, guys. I am really Scared to Death this week. Welcome to a new review here at B-Movie Enema.

If you would, think back to December of last year. I reviewed the movie The Deadly Spawn. That little 1983 sci-fi horror flick was quite fun. By absolute accident, the following week, I covered Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor. What I didn’t realize at the time I scheduled those two reviews to be done, months ahead of being published, was that they were from the same series. The Deadly Spawn was the original. Metamorphosis is a sort of sequel. Well, this year, while not scheduled back-to-back, I have scheduled two more films that are related to each other – 1980’s Scared to Death and the 1990 sequel Syngenor.

This time, they are much closer in connection.

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Invasion of Astro-Monster (1965)

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Goddamn, I love Godzilla…

And you do too. I know you do. Why? Because you’re here. There is no way in the world that the internet is used for people to only search for stuff they don’t like in order to find people to only affirm your negative thoughts on something, right?

Uh… heh… Um, right?

Anyway, welcome to a new review here at B-Movie Enema! I’m Geoff Arbuckle, your B-Movie Enema dude, and this week, I’m diving into the world of Godzilla for the very first time on this site with 1965’s Invasion of Astro-Monster (also known as Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, or, simply, Monster Zero in America). By 1965, Godzilla was a pretty big star in Japan. His first film, 1954’s Gojira, was a dramatic tale of how nature points out the folly of man. It was successfully imported into the United States, with added footage from the future Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, as Godzilla: King of the Monsters!, and, right away, an international superstar was born. After a sequel that isn’t exactly the best-received of the classic films from Toho, Godzilla blasted his way back into theaters after a seven-year hiatus with a showdown against American superstar monster, King Kong. From that point forward, Godzilla would appear almost every year between 1962 and 1975.

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Primal Rage (1988)

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Welcome to this animalistic new review at B-Movie Enema!

This week, we’re looking at one of those classic Italian movies that wants to be an American horror film, 1988’s Primal Rage. Those are fun, aren’t they? This one comes from a couple of names of pretty decent note. First, you have director Vittorio Rambaldi. He’s a bit of a nepo baby. His father, Carlo, was a two-time Academy Award-winning visual effects maestro. He won for 1979’s Alien and 1982’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestial. Carlo Rambaldi had a third nomination for 1976’s King Kong. By the way, that’s my very favorite King Kong too. Look at Jessica Lange, in her big screen debut, and tell me it’s not the most beautiful of all the versions of that tale.

While Carlo would go on to do the effects for the awful King Kong Lives, he would end his career on this film for his son. Interestingly, though, I can only think of one thing Carlo would create for this movie, but we’ll get there when we get there. The last name Rambaldi would not be the only major Italian name associated with this movie, though.

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The Unseen (1980)

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Welcome to a killer new review here at B-Movie Enema.

This week, we’re looking at an early 80s film that I think has a little underground cult appeal. We’re going to discuss 1980’s The Unseen from director Danny Steinmann. Steinmann is likely a name horror fans will recognize, even though, for The Unseen, he used the credit Peter Foleg. Like with last week’s movie, Carnosaur, which had special effects done by Friday the 13th Part VI: The New Blood director John Carl Buechler, Steinmann is also a Camp Crystal Lake alum. In 1985, he co-wrote and directed his final film, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. By far, that is Steinmann’s most famous movie, for better or worse.

I don’t envy the guy who had to make the only other movie without Jason Voorhees in the franchise after the character became the most defining part of the series.

After getting his start in the 70s in the adult industry, directing the porno High Rise in 1973, Steinmann didn’t really do much with film for another seven years when he crossed over into the mainstream with The Unseen. At least, he wasn’t in the director’s chair or writing scripts. He did work as an assistant on 1975’s The Man in the Glass Booth and a 1977 TV movie for Gene Roddenberry’s Spectre.

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Carnosaur (1993)

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Welcome back to another rip-roarin’ review at B-Movie Enema!

For pretty much all my life, dinosaurs were immensely popular. Moreover, they ignited a lot of children’s imaginations. In the 80s, not only were there movies like Baby: Secret of the Legend which came out at the exact age for me to not only want to see it but to also convince my mother to take me to a theater to see it. The same year, 1985, the Dinobots made their bow in The Transformers. Dinosaurs couldn’t have been more popular than that period of time. Later, a new generation would get the start of a looooong series of animated features with The Land Before Time. Even before that, for decades, dinosaurs were used in all sorts of sci-fi movies, especially the lower-budget ones.

But then came 1993.

I would argue 1993 was the pinnacle of dino-mania. You like that? Dino mania? I am 100% sure no one else has ever said that term before, and they definitely didn’t say it 32 years ago in 1993. Anyway, that’s when Steven Spielberg would have one of his very biggest years ever… maybe for any director in Hollywood history. He’d make two films that year. One, Schindler’s List, would win him the Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture. That was AFTER he released the year’s top-grossing film, and one of the biggest box office champs in the history of movies, Jurassic Park. But we’re going to look at the movie that made 1993 truly the greatest year at the box office for dinosaur movies – Carnosaur.

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Honorable Men (2004)

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Happy Independence Day, you dirty, dirty, dirty rebel Americans!

Okay, yes, I’m also an American, but I’m kind of trying to downplay that right now because, frankly, we’re kind of in our suck era, but whatever. That said, welcome to a new review at B-Movie Enema! This week, we have another film that was made somewhat infamous by the fine folks at RedLetterMedia. Those hacks and mega-single white boys have that show Best of the Worst each month, in which they feature bad movies and pick which one they find the most entertaining. Sometimes, they get one that’s fun. Sometimes, one of the movies is just utter shit. Sometimes, they are special.

That’s what we’re looking at today. That last one… The special classification. A couple of weeks ago, I looked at a movie that was a James Bond ripoff with a guy who has a partner who is a baboon. That was one that got featured on Best of the Worst. This week, we have one that would blow the balls off that James Bond ripoff and likely leave a lot of people staring blankly and saying, “Whoa…” if they took the time to watch it.

It’s a movie about guys, and girls, and cops, and bad guys… It’s Honorable Men.

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