Tag: action

Rolling Vengeance (1987)

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Welcome to B-Movie Enema. I’m Geoff Arbuckle and this is the blog you come to when you’re taking a shit, or looking for a website run by a guy you’re pretty sure you are far more cultured and smarter than, or, I dunno… you have nothing better to do on a weekend night with nowhere to go. Hmmm… Maybe I’m not doing a good job at promoting my site. Let’s see if I can do better.

The 80s! That’s the decade of Ronald Reagan, cocaine-fueled American exceptionalism running rampant, and bitchin’ music. But you know what else the 80s had? Fuckin’ monster trucks! Monster trucks rolled out of the late 70s trend of modified pickup trucks in various specialized motorsport competitions. By the end of the 70s, one truck in particular, named Bigfoot, was so modified from its original 1974 Ford F-250 that it became known as the world’s first monster truck. Following that, other popular monster trucks were USA-1, Bear Foot, and King Kong. These trucks became the star of various events like Monster Jam where they’d do high-flyin’ jumps and crushing beat-up cars under their giant wheels. If you were a little boy at the time Monster Jam started up, and word on the street is I was, or if you are a grown man, and people tell me that’s what I am, you LOVED the mayhem, the majesty, and the machinery of giant trucks smashing beaters under their tires.

Apparently, Canada was into it too because, in 1987, Steven Hilliard Stern made this week’s movie – Rolling Vengeance.

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Stunt Rock (1978)

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This week, B-Movie Enema goes down under for another Australian treat.

This week’s movie comes from Brian Trenchard-Smith. He’s someone we’ve seen around these parts a few times. The first movie of his I ever looked at was one he was only a co-producer on, 1982’s Blood Tide. However, I later took a look at two other films of his that are way better. The first was also from 1982, the dystopian, Most Dangerous Game-inspired Turkey Shoot. Then, I looked at the first of two sequels to one of my all-time favorite Halloween movies to watch, Night of the Demons 2.

I pretty much knew that Trenchard-Smith was someone I could cover a large portion of his filmography in a few different ways. Hell, 1983’s BMX Bandits features a teenaged Nicole Kidman in the early stages of her career. There was a trio of movies of his that we’ve looked at over at Film Seizure – Leprechaun 3, Leprechaun 4: In Space, and Dead End Drive-In. Those two Leprechaun movies could very easily appear here on this blog. But I decided to go a little more interesting for this week when it comes to Trenchard-Smith’s filmography. This week, I’m going to look at the mockumentary/action/musical Stunt Rock from 1978.

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The Beastmaster (1982)

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Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema!

This week, we’re traveling to the kingdom of Aruk for this 80s classic from Don Coscarelli. Now, the origin of The Beastmaster actually goes back to 1959. Andre Norton wrote the novel The Beast Master about a Navajo war veteran set in a futuristic and sci-fi setting. When writers Coscarelli and Paul Pepperman adapted the novel, Norton was unhappy. We’re going to come back around to Norton in just a moment, but Coscarelli would eventually sign on as director for the film and Pepperman then took the role of Producer alongside Lebanese producer Sylvio Tabet. Tabet was a producer on movies like Fade to Black and Evilspeak. Later, he was a producer on The Cotton Club and Dead Ringers. So he was not an unknown at the time.

Interestingly, the only film Tabet directed was 1991’s Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time.

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Gleaming the Cube (1989)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

Oh yeah, dudes and dudettes, it’s some more radical times ahead for this week’s B-Movie Enema review!

This week, we’re going to be Gleaming the Cube and… well, hopefully… trying to learn what that term even means because it was clearly important enough to name an entire movie around it. This movie comes to us in that sweet period in the 80s that was totally trying to ride the gnarly coattails of tubular fads to the max. We’ve talked about skateboarding before on here. For more grindage, check out my review of 1986’s Thrashin’ from David Winters.

I don’t think I have much more to say, but I will bring up three important people connected to Gleaming the Cube that are of note. The first is the screenwriter for this film, Michael Tolkin. Tolkin was still relatively new to the scene at this point. He had one screenplay prior to this movie, the 1982 unfinished film Gossip. Gleaming the Cube was his first film and he also served as Associate Producer as well. Frankly, this isn’t that bad of an accomplishment. Sure, the reviews weren’t great, but a lot of people my age and slightly younger really like this movie. However, his big splash came in 1992 when he wrote The Player for Robert Altman. This would garner Tolkin an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Later in the 90s, he wrote the blockbuster Deep Impact. More recently, he developed the very highly appreciated miniseries The Offer about the making of The Godfather.

Directing Gleaming the Cube is Australian Graeme Clifford who was at the helm for the 1982 drama Frances that racked up a pair of acting Oscar nominations for Jessica Lange and Kim Stanley. While his directing credits aren’t huge, his editing credits are. He directed the wonderful 1973 thriller Don’t Look Now. He followed that up in 1975 with the all-time cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Then, in 1976, he edited David Bowie’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. He finished out his editing career with Sylvester Stallone’s F.I.S.T. in 1978 and the 1981 remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice starring Jack Nicholson and, hey… Jessica Lange. I’m guessing that might have led to her getting the role in Frances.

Let’s be serious, though… The draw of Gleaming the Cube is the hot up-and-coming Christian Slater.

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Ninja in the Claws of the C.I.A. (1981)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and welcome back to me going through my backlog of movies that I’ve either picked up from conventions or, as is the case with this month, bought from Vinegar Syndrome.

I think we might have something of a special little movie this week. We’re going to be looking at John Liu writing and directing himself into Ninja in the Claws of the C.I.A. which was originally known as Sah shou ying as well as simply Claws of the C.I.A. and there’s even a version called Made in China. I really don’t know what I want to reveal to the people who haven’t seen this movie, so… I think we’ll just start by talking about John Liu.

When I went googling for John Liu, something really awesome happened. All I was getting were links, articles, and information on John Liu, Democratic member of the New York State Senate. Now, my brain is utterly shattered and broken in terms of being able to work properly. So I think it’s safe for you to bet that I was thinking that guy and the lead of this movie were the same dude. Then, I began thinking about him bringing legislation to the New York Senate floor by way of kicking motherfuckers’ asses. Like, he steps up to the podium, asks for time from the President of the New York Senate, and then after casually removing his tie, he just walks over to some Republican he beefs with and they just kung fu fight.

I wish that was what really happens in state senates and congresses across the country.

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General Commander (2019)

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Welcome to the final week of Steven Seagal Month here at B-Movie Enema.

Thank fucking Christ. Guys… I mean it. Sure, we’ve had some fun with week one’s Attack Force. That movie went through some crazy post-production rewrites. It’s a movie that was bad, but not the kind of shitty bad. I’d argue it’s not fun, but it’s got enough goofy stuff that makes it a halfway decent watch even though it sucks. Week the second was Urban Justice. That movie was, to my shame, enjoyable. I had a good time watching that movie. We don’t need to say much more there. Read that review. Last week’s Contract to Kill suuuuuucked. It was dumb. It was without any energy. It was a lot of Seagal mumbling, and, worse, it was boring.

Knowing Contract to Kill moved us from the 2000s to the 2010s, I knew we were going to be in some trouble. The closer you get to the present year, the shittier his movies get. That makes this week’s movie real dangerous waters for my personal desire to remain alive and breathing in this world. So, let’s talk about 2019’s General Commander.

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Contract to Kill (2016)

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Welcome to B-Movie Enema and the continuation of Steven Seagal Month!

And, oh boy… We’ve dodged a couple bullets already. Attack Force was a movie that was originally supposed to be about space vampires and was rearranged, reshot, and turned into a movie about a designer drug that gave people crazy superpowers that made them want to murder. Urban Justice was… actually entertaining. I enjoyed watching that one. There was a fairly straightforward plot and there were some moments I honestly had a good chuckle about.

But Steven Seagal Month moves into some pretty dicey waters with the 2010s. This week, we’re going to look at Contract to Kill from 2016. We’ve not only visited Seagal in his 2010s films before, but we’ve seen another of his films from the same year – Sniper: Special Ops. That movie was awful. In fact, I’d call it embarrassing. Seagal looked like he didn’t give two fucks. He was hardly in the movie that his name appeared above the title on the DVD box. He spent a lot of time sitting down with a high-powered sniper rifle on his lap while another person in his battalion was dying. It was bad. Like, bad bad.

Contract to Kill will likely be no better… or possibly worse.

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Urban Justice (2007)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

Welcome to week #2 of B-Movie Enema’s Steven Seagal Month!

This week, our large mound of pounding fudge rounds is doling out some Urban Justice. This comes to us from director Don E. FauntLeRoy. FauntLeRoy previously directed Seagal in Today You Die and Mercenary for Justimce. This would be his third and final collaboration with the actor. Aside from the trio of mid-00s Seagal action flicks, he also workj ed on the Anaconda series directing the thiyrd andm my z,a fourth films. He worked with Jason Connery, Sean’s son, on a superhero movie called Lightspeed which featured a character created bl Stan Lee.

Those directing credits aren’t too impressive, but he still has some impressive films on his resume. You see… FauntLeRoy’s real trade was as a cameraman. He worked behind the lens as an assistant early on in the 70s and 80s. He cut his teeth on TV before getting to be either an assistant cameraman or second unit cameramk,qan on films like Raging Bull, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, and The Goonies. Perhaps his biggest film on the list of films he worked on as a camera guy was in 1991 when e worked on Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

When he graduated to become the Cinematographer on films, he worked on cheap-o movies like Munchie, The Skateboard Kid, and Munchie Strikes Back. However, he did work on three episodes of Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero and eventually hooking up with Victor Salva on the first two Jeepers Creepers films. Maybe the less said about Salva the better, but the point still remains, it’s not like FauntLeRoy hasn’t done some notable stuff. It maybe bodes well that this movie might look decent at the very least.

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