Galaxina (1980)

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Welcome to B-Movie Enema, and let’s all say goodbye together to 2024.

I’m sure by now, people have made the final decision if 2024 was good, bad, or meh. I’m also guessing we’ve already made the determination that 2025 has to be better, right? Well, to send Old Man 2024 out, I figured it was high time to talk about the 1980 sci-fi comedy Galaxina.

Now, obviously, there’s an elephant in the room when it comes to this movie. We’ll talk about her in just a moment. First, what I find kind of interesting about this movie is that the movie is not without a great deal of imagination and fun with more than a hint of camp. But it wasn’t cheap. The movie cost $4 million. That’s a mid-range budget in 1980. What’s even more peculiar is that this is a mid-range budget movie that was originally supposed to be shot in three weeks. What’s more, is that it took LESS than 20 days to shoot because of bad weather. So, we have ourselves a multi-million-dollar picture that was supposed to be shot in less than three weeks, only for it to be shot in even less time, and just to get the movie out, scenes were cut so it leaves the movie sort of incomplete.

You gotta love these types of Hollywood lore.

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Spaced Out (1979)

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Since this is the holiday season, Enemaniacs, I figured I deserve a bit of a gift. After all, Metamorphosis was so lacking in charm and good vibes, that I kind of need something. So, for this week’s B-Movie Enema review, and with Christmas just around the corner, I’m gifting myself the return of a favorite around these parts, Mr. Norman J. Warren.

Hell yeah, guys, gals, and non-binary pals, Norman J. Warren is back!

One of the things I’ve always loved about our friend Norman is that he doesn’t seem to ever make the same movie twice. Certainly, if you go through his filmography, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any two movies that resemble each other in succession. That’s what we have here with 1979’s Spaced Out. In the 60s, Warren made sex comedies but decided to move into horror in the 70s. In three consecutive years, he directed Satan’s Slave, Prey, and Terror. All three of those have been covered here, and all three are quite different in terms of horror films. Spaced Out would be a return to his old form, as it were, with a comedy.

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Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor (a.k.a. The Deadly Spawn II, 1990)

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Howdy Enemaniacs!

This here is what I like to call a “happy little accident” around here at B-Movie Enema. Last week, I reviewed the cult classic sci-fi horror The Deadly Spawn. This week, I’m looking at the 1990 sort of sequel Metamorphosis: The Alien Factor, which is also known as The Deadly Spawn II. This was ABSOLUTELY NOT INTENDED!

If you’re a regular reader here, I’ve mentioned how I was scheduling out the remainder of this year with a bunch of movies that were either in need of a review because they’ve been lying in wait for a long time or they came from the multi-packs of movies I had that played a crucial role tot he start of this blog 10 years ago. The Deadly Spawn was a movie that I wanted to review for a while. Metamorphosis was a movie in one of those packs. I scheduled them next to each other not realizing they were connected.

So, yeah… A happy little accident.

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The Deadly Spawn (1983)

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Welcome to a new review here at B-Movie Enema!

This week, I decided to go back to the first half of the 80s for a movie that was made on a really small $25,000 budget but turned out to be much better than most would expect on such a small amount of money. Let’s talk about 1983’s The Deadly Spawn. The origin of the movie came from producer Ted Bohus back in the late 70s. He got the idea after reading a National Geographic article about some seed pods that were found and recovered from the Arctic. Obviously, it sounds an awful lot like the all-time classic sci-fi movie The Thing from Another World, but this real life scientific discovery fueled Bohus and he got right to work on a creature design for an eventual movie.

Originally Bohus thought about a rubber suit that would be worn by an actor, but when John Dods, an associate producer and effects director for the movie, was brought in, his imagination was also put into overdrive. He came back with a bunch of alternate looks and the primary creature that would be used to spawn her deadly offspring that is in the movie. From that, the money was raised and they brought in director Douglas McKeown to bring everything to life.

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Madame Web (2024)

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Happy Thanksgiving Weekend, Enemaniacs!

And oh boy does B-Movie Enema have a feast for you this week. Yeah… Let’s hop into our little real-world time machine and allow me to take us back to Valentine’s Day 2024. Just, what, nine months ago? Oh god… Is this the baby that was conceived by my slutty indulgence in taking in a double feature at the AMC Indianapolis 17? No wonder my tummy got bigger and this week’s review feels like I’m giving birth to a butt baby. I AM giving birth to a butt baby!

Where was I? This review is already fucking off the rails. Anyway, back then, I took myself on a double feature date to the theater and left disappointed, but in different ways. This week’s review is focused on the first of the two movies I watched because the Bob Marley movie was just kinda bland and not at all like the movie being discussed today… Madame Web.

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Best Friends (1975)

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Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema review.

You know what? As we rush headlong into the holiday season across most of the world (and, let’s face it, America IS the rest of the world, am I right?), this is a time in which we should be thinking about our loved ones. Are they well? Are they sheltered from the incoming cold weather (stop it, Australia and New Zealand and wherever else… America is the center of the world, okay?)… Can they provide a warm meal or presents to their family during this time of year? You get what I’m saying.

Well, I don’t really know where I’m going with that opening paragraph, aside from some parenthetical American exceptionalism, but I do know that we’re going to be talking about the 1975 drama Best Friends. This movie comes from director Noel Nosseck. Nosseck actually had a decent career despite having no page on Wikipedia. Best Friends would be his first feature film, but prior to this, he worked on educational films about the dangers of heroin, LSD, and VD. He spent the remainder of the 70s after Best Friends doing pretty well for himself and getting some decent work. If you are a fan of the Cinema Snob, you might recognize one of Nosseck’s movies he directed in the 70s, Dreamer, one of the Snob’s Patreon poll winners that happened to be a lame bowling melodrama sort of in the vein of Rocky.

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Twister’s Revenge! (1988)

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Hot diggity god dang!

Welcome to another B-Movie Enema review. I’m Geoff. Nice to meet ya. Been here before? Yeah? Then, I’m glad you came back. This week, we return to the filmography of one Bill Rebane. We previously talked about his bonkers horror-thriller Blood Harvest starring Tiny Tim. This is actually his follow-up. We’re going to the redneck part of Wisconsin for a little Twister’s Revenge!

You know this movie is serious as shit because it has an exclamation point at the end of the title… TWISTER’S REVENGE!

Anyhow, Rebane was actually born in Latvia and came to the States in 1952 while still a teenager. As a kid, he went to school in Germany and was conversationally fluent in German, Russian, and the language of his parents, Latvian and Estonian. He learned English by watching American movies. I find that kind of interesting because it’s not uncommon for people who grew up in Eastern Europe to have learned English this way. I believe Mila Kunis also was one of those people who learned English through entertainment.

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Portrait of a Showgirl (1982)

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Well well well… Look at what the cat dragged in… You guys! I love you guys!

Welcome to another review here at B-Movie Enema. This week, we’ve got ourselves a TV movie. Not only that but a TV movie that is also a Primetime Emmy nominee from 1982! This week, I’ll be talking about Portrait of a Showgirl. Now, check it out… Somewhere along the way, this movie also got titled Portrait of a Stripper. My guess is that the second title there was a little sexier and so it became marketable. I’m not sure if the movie could have been aired on network television as Portrait of a Stripper back then. However, could it have been named that for home video or a cable release? It would certainly be a tiny bit more provocative and attract a little more attention.

Either way, the movie stars some pretty recognizable folk who I’ll talk about here shortly. Directing this TV movie is a director who did a bunch of them. In fact, it’s not even the first time I’ve brought him up. Steven Hilliard Stern made this movie four years after directing the season five finale of B-Movie Enema: The Series – The Ghost of Flight 401. Wait… did I say I talked about Steven Hilliard Stern? I’m sorry, that episode was hosted by Geoff Bob Buckle, that smooth-talkin’ film enthusiast from possibly Texas. I sometimes forget that I took that week off. I do know that he was also the director of the bitchin’ Rolling Vengeance that was about a kid customizing his own revenge death machine. I guess you could say that it was a good year for Steven Hilliard Stern here at B-Movie Enema. As for his career, in just under 30 years, he racked up over 60 credits with a vast majority of those being either episodes of TV shows or TV movies like the one we’re looking at today.

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