Candy Stripe Nurses (1974)

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They’ll give us fast-fast-fast relief!

That’s what the poster says for this week’s movie, and I bet they mean it too! Welcome to another review here at B-Movie Enema. Also, welcome to another review of a movie from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures! 1974’s Candy Stripe Nurses was part of the company’s “nurses cycle”. However, there’s a very specific reason why we’re starting with this one, which happens to be the final entry of the five-film, loose series.

I may have used Valentine’s Day last week to do My Bloody Valentine because it’s a movie that has the day right in its goddamn title (and, frankly, the movie was overdue to get coverage here), but I won’t deny that this movie was nearly chosen instead. Thankfully, last week did feature the triumphant return of Cynthia Dale, so there’s that. But the main reason why this almost won out over that movie for the Valentine’s Day review?

Two words: Candice Rialson.

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My Bloody Valentine (1981)

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Like, no shit this week’s review is going to be My Bloody Valentine, right?

Happy Valentine’s Day, my Enamaniacs. This week’s new review here at B-Movie Enema is a bit overdue. 1981’s My Bloody Valentine is often cited as one of the better slashers of the 80s. Like with 1978’s Halloween, it seems as though there might be a little more going on with this movie. It certainly has more going on with characters and intersecting storylines than, say, Friday the 13th. More on this stuff as we go through the plot later.

George Mihalka is the director of My Bloody Valentine. He was born in the early 50s in Hungary. He was in his mid-20s when directing this film. For the most part, you really aren’t going to find much more interesting in his filmography. Generally speaking, Mihalka’s big claim to fame IS My Bloody Valentine. The same could be said about the screenwriter, John Beaird. Beaird did contribute some uncredited work on the script for Happy Birthday to Me from the same year. But other than that? Nothing really of major note. Sadly, Beaird died young at the age of 40 in 1993.

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Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1991)

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Welcome to another B-Movie Enema review descending down from the stars!

In 1983, Xtro came out to little fanfare and a lot of negative reviews. It found itself on the infamous Video Nasties list in its home country, the United Kingdom. But over time, the movie would get a little bit of a following. This is probably thanks to cable and video stores here in the United States, but it is very likely the movie really never did much in terms of success to warrant a sequel (let alone two sequels).

Here’s where the backstory of how we have two Xtro sequels begins. Director Harry Bromley Davenport was in need of a job in the movie-makin’ biz. Well, somewhere along the way, he discovered that while he had no ownership of his 1983 film, he actually legally owned the title “Xtro”. So, this gave Bromley Davenport the idea to create an anthology series of sequels about other alien shenanigans. And that begins with 1991’s Xtro II: The Second Encounter.

But things will take yet another twist…

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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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Fake-Out (a.k.a. Nevada Heat, 1982)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and another entry in January’s Pia Zadora Month!

Alright, so check this shit out… Last week’s movie, Butterfly, was directed by Matt Cimber. I had mentioned that we had already seen one of his movies (The Candy Tangerine Man) and that it was highly unlikely we would never see him again on this blog. Well, I wasn’t just whistlin’ Dixie. He’s already back! Yeah, Matt Cimber made two films in 1982 and both starred Pia Zadora!

That brings us to Fake-Out. At times, this movie was also released under the title Nevada Heat. I actually know it was called that because that was the name on the box we had at the video store I worked at in the 90s. Anyway, whereas Butterfly was a James M. Cain-adapted crime drama, Fake-Out sticks with the crime part of the genre, but it’s also a comedy. But it also gives Zadora a chance to be on film and sing too.

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Butterfly (1982)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

Happy New Year, Enemaniacs!

B-Movie Enema kicks off 2025 with a whole month dedicated to the pint-sized starlet Pia Zadora. Why? Because why not! She’s spunky and cute and she happened to make some pretty bad movies. But where do we start? Santa Claus Conquers the Martians? How dare you think I would stoop so low to pick this low-hanging fruit! No, like lil Pia herself, I’m going for the fuckin’ gusto. This month is gonna be wild, my friends, but we’re kicking things off with 1982’s Butterfly.

Now, I can hear you already… “What’s Butterfly? Why are you rizzing this up so much already? Is this really the gusto?”

Holy shit, yes it is, and I will explain why in a bit. First and foremost, we’ve got ourselves a returning director, Matt Cimber. Cimber did The Candy Tangerine Man. This will definitely not be the last time you will see his name on this blog in January. And I promise you Mr. Cimber has a whole lot more I could cover on this blog between his sexploitation, blaxploitation, and his fantasy film Hundra. Anyway, this guy was mostly known for lower-budget fare but he might be best known as being the ex-husband of Jayne Mansfield. He and Mansfield divorced about a year before her untimely death in 1967.

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