Mission Kill (1987)

Just when you didn’t think David Winters Winter could get any better, things heat up with this mid-80s action spectacular with an all-star cast!

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and the third week of this theme month celebrating the man, the myth, and the legend, David Winters! This week, I’m looking at 1987’s Mission Kill. Hoo boy do I have lots to talk about with the cast of this movie. However, I guess we should talk a little bit about the date of release for this movie.

I have put 1987 as the year of this movie and referred to it as 1987’s Mission Kill. If we want to get a little pedantic about this, I guess I could say it’s 1985’s Mission Kill. That’s what IMDb has it listed for. That’s what will show up in everyone’s filmography, but it really kind of is 1985 when this movie was originally released. It played in France at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 1985. It then went to West Germany 13 months later. Another 13 months later, it was in Japan. It wasn’t until December of 1987 before it got released on video in the United States. Is it possible it played here in either 1985 or 1986 in theaters? Maybe. But we’re going with that 1987 date, okay? Okay.

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Thrashin’ (1986)

After finishing out 2022 with Get Crazy, I decided it wasn’t time to leave the radical 80s behind quite yet.

So to kick off 2023, B-Movie Enema is going to look at a quartet of 80s David Winters movies in a theme month I’m calling David Winters Winter! We aren’t really doing this in any kind of timeline or chronological order. Nah, I don’t think we really need to do that. BUT what I did want to do is look at movies of Winters’ that came from different genres. We get things started with his teen skateboarding drama, Thrashin’!

This comes during a time in which skateboarding exploded. Skateboarding had been around as a relatively popular activity for kids at least back to the 70s when my brothers were kids. By the 80s, it became something of a lifestyle. Skater fashion would eventually kind of take over from the late 70s/early 80s punk fashion before being replaced by more hip hop fashions by the end of the decade and going into the 90s.

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The Farmer (1977)

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema. This week, I’m going to look at the 1977 action crime drama, The Farmer. Now, there’s little about this movie that I have the resources or time to really dig too deep into. That said, there’s a whole other thing about this movie that is a real deep rabbit hole that I can kind of traipse around.

But to get started, David Berlatsky directed the movie. It’s his only directing credit. His actual trade was as an editor. He was decent enough at it to get nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for the 1978 mini-series, King. But he also did a lot of other stuff. For example, he edited 1977’s The Deep for director Peter Yates. He also edited 1973’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid for Sam Peckinpah.

In the 80s, he edited a couple episodes of the short-lived, 1984, Glen Larson series Automan. What’s Automan? It’s about a computer-generated superhero. That superhero can also computer generate a car to drive around in. How does computer-generated things become physical objects? Who knows and who cares. He also edited the first season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Haven”. Which one is that? That’s the one that introduced Counselor Troi’s horrifically annoying mother and had something to do with a ship of diseased people closing in on a planet that would be wiped out by said disease.

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Enforcer from Death Row (1978)

We’ve come to the end of a loosely connected, months-long, trio of reviews that featured the late, great Leo Fong.

Welcome to B-Movie Enema. This week, I’m going to take a look at 1978’s Enforcer from Death Row. This film comes pretty early in Fong’s career as an actor. While we are accepting the fact that this movie was released in 1978 and was called Enforcer from Death Row, the film is also listed on IMDb as Ninja Assassins with the date of 1976. Some of this can be explained by a couple factors at play with this movie.

First, the 70s were kind of known for a couple things when it came to film distribution. You had independent studios cranking out low budget movies and then shopping them for distribution. That distribution, especially for movies like these kung fu/exploitation/low budget action flicks would land the films either at drive-ins or in grindhouse theaters. Second, this was a movie made in the Philippines. That was kind of a southeast Asian haven for films to be made quick and on the cheap in the late 60s and 70s. There are some very fine, if not extremely simple, movies that came out of the area during this time.

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Savage Streets (1984)

This one is a long time coming…

Welcome to this week’s B-Movie Enema. When I say this was a long time coming it’s because I’ve known of this movie for a long time, had a copy of it, and have always wanted to find some way to talk about it because it exists in a peculiar time of exploitation in the movies – the 1980s. In addition to that, it also has some not insignificant people in the cast. This week, I’m going to be digging into the Danny Steinmann film Savage Streets starring Linda Blair.

I’ve been looking for a way to cover this movie somehow. I got it with the possibility of it being featured either here at B-Movie Enema or as part of a theme month of movies with the word “Savage” in the title over at Film Seizure. However, considering I have an extensive backlog of movies to feature here, I decided I needed to pull the trigger and clear this one off the list. By the way, A LOT of next year is going to be clearing backlog, but I digress. Let’s start looking at the people involved with this movie, beginning with director Danny Steinmann.

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Steel and Lace (1991)

Third review in a week? That’s right! This is one of those years where we get a regular B-Movie Enema review, followed by a Halloween special review, and then, just a couple days later, it’s back to the regular Friday release day!

For this first Friday in November, it’s time to start digging into some of the backlog I’ve accumulated. Most of what’s coming for the rest of 2022 will be made up of movies that I’ve been wanting to get around to, watch, or just write about for some time. So we start by one of the many movies I’ve bought from one of the regular Vinegar Syndrome sales that occur each year, 1991’s Steel and Lace.

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Silent Rage (1982)

It’s been a minute since B-Movie Enema did anything with Chuck Norris, hasn’t it?

Yeah, in fact, it’s kind of surprising that this blog hasn’t done even more with the kung fu, karate chopping, 80s superstar. In the six and a half years of this blog being kind of a constantly running thing, this week’s movie, Silent Rage, is only the fourth movie I’ve covered starring the man with the plan, Chuck motherfuckin’ Norris.

Before we get into the movie, let’s talk a little bit about the man, the legend, the omnipresence that is Carlos Ray Norris.

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