Tag: blaxploitation

Black Snake (1973)

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Welcome to the penultimate week of Russ Meyer Month II here at B-Movie Enema! We move from the 60s Russ Meyer sex comedies and romps to his 70s bigger budgeted and slightly more interesting films. This week, I’m reviewing 1973’s flop Black Snake.

This one is an interesting entry in Meyer’s filmography. I labeled it a flop. It was. Meyer was not unaccustomed to making a movie that wouldn’t perform well. Sure, maybe not all of his 60s films scored well with critics, but almost none of them were outright flops. As the 70s dawned, though, Meyer’s films would change. This would mostly be due to 20th Century Fox calling on Meyer to make actual studio-backed films. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was the first and it was a hit – despite critics not really appreciating it. The next film for Fox was assigned to him after the original director had to back out. That film would be an adaptation of the book The Seven Minutes. Meyer’s friend, Roger Ebert, would write that the latter was not well-suited to Meyer’s affection toward eroticism. After all, it was a drama about law and freedom of speech. While the central thing in the movie did evolve around an erotic novel a teenager bought, it’s not really Meyer’s realm, even if the studio felt it was right for him based on the movies he made in the past and how he championed the abolishment of censorship.

The Seven Minutes was, by far, Meyer’s most expensive movie and it didn’t do well. In the end, it just didn’t work out. He would only complete one of the three films he was contracted to make for Fox after Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. The end was maybe on the horizon anyway. Black Snake would be his next movie and the first of the final five films he would ever make. While his next three would recoup some of his past magic, this film would prove to be a massive disappointment and bomb.

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Penitentiary II (1982)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Let’s go back to the story of Martel “Too Sweet” Gordone for this week’s new B-Movie Enema.

Some time ago, I covered the first story in Too Sweet’s trilogy. This week, we pick up where the last left off with Penitentiary II. As seen at the end of the first film, Too Sweet won the prison boxing tournament and was released. However, there’s a bit of a caveat with that freedom as we’ll see in this week’s sequel.

As with the first, Penitentiary II is written and directed by activist and leading member of the L.A. Rebellion, Jamaa Fanaka. Fanaka would ultimately make three films in the saga of Too Sweet Gordone. However, this film has a couple other notable actors appearing in it.

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Disco Godfather (1979)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

In the history of comedy, there is probably no one whose cadence and timbre is more recognizable than Rudy Ray Moore. He’s loud. He’s crude. He’s insulting. He’s hilarious. He’s extremely likable. He also made a lot of really fun movies to watch.

Whether you know him by way of his blaxploitation movies of the 70s, especially Dolemite, or you know him through some of the recordings he made, or you even actually know him as “the Godfather of Rap”, or you only just learned of him through Eddie Murphy’s marvelous portrayal of him in Dolemite Is My Name, he’s someone that once you become aware of him, Moore never really leaves you.

I’ve wanted to do a Rudy Ray Moore movie for some time on the site. There are four primary choices I could have made. I settled on Disco Godfather to be the one that brings Rudy Ray Moore to my humble little website. Before we get into the movie proper, let’s talk about Moore a little bit and what makes him such a fun and interesting character.

And yes, I said “character” and not “person” because I think that’s how Moore lived most of the last 40 years of his life.

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Sheba, Baby (1975)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

After last week with The Apple, I needed a reprieve. I need a palette cleanser. I need some blaxploitation. Thank fucking god William Girdler is here to help me out – and he’s brought Pam Grier!

This is Girdler’s 1975 action flick Sheba, Baby!

Now, I’ve talked about William Girdler twice before – once on Film Seizure’s Monster Mondays show (which some asshole with the same name as me hosts… wait, I’M the asshole). First up, I did The Manitou for Monster Mondays. That was a fascinating Exorcist rip-off centered around some Native American lore. That was neat. Then, over here, just this past October, I wrote about the blaxploitation Exorcist rip-off Abby. That one was fun too. He’s an interesting director. Sadly, he was killed scouting locations in Manila, Philippines for his 10th film.

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Abby (1974)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

B-Movie Enema’s October 2020 theme of Exorcist Rip-Off Month is back, and this time we got a pretty well-regarded one.

This week’s film is Abby, and it’s best described as one of the handful of blaxploitation horror films alongside Blacula, Blackenstein, Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde, and Ganja and Hess.  This was part of a trio of blaxploitation films by William Girdler.  One of those, Sheba, Baby, will someday be on this blog because I LOVE blaxploitation.  I’ve talked about Girdler before, though.  He’s probably best known for making Grizzly in 1976.  However, his final film, The Manitou, dealt with Native American themes and was something I covered over at Film Seizure on my Monster Mondays show earlier this year.

Abby isn’t without some prestige, though.  It stars Carol Speed who was in several exploitation films of the 70s, and Blacula himself, William Marshall!  It also has Academy Award nominated actress Juanita Moore.  So it is not at all lacking in talent here. Continue reading “Abby (1974)” →