Tag: comedy

Little Darlings (1980)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back for another entry in this year’s Camp Crappabuttawipe at B-Movie Enema.

You know, summer camp isn’t just running for your life from a crazed killer. Nah, it’s also a place where coming-of-age comedy-dramas can be told too. That’s kind of what we have here with 1980’s Little Darlings. This movie comes to us from first-time director Ronald F. Maxwell. He was only 30 years old when this film went into production. However, he had already been a professional working in television since the mid 70s. Maxwell followed this up with another film starring one of the stars of this movie, The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (along with Dennis Quaid and Mark Hamill in between Star Wars sequels). Later in his career, Maxwell shifted to Civil War epics, the largely appreciated Gettysburg in 1993 and the largely despised Gods and Generals in 2003.

As for our leading ladies in this movie, the other one who would work with Maxwell follow-up is Kristy McNichol. McNichol was already a veteran of television shows from her teenage years. She was a regular nominee for Emmys in the late 70s for the drama series Family. Later in her career, she would appear in 100 episodes of the comedy Empty Nest. With Little Darlings, McNichol would follow that up with the aforementioned The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia along with a Golden Globe-nominated performance in Neil Simon’s Only When I Laugh. Unfortunately, her appearance in the 1982 comedy The Pirate Movie (a movie absolutely slaughtered by critics upon release) probably harmed her ability to keep up the momentum her earlier film appearances granted her.

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Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

The summer is upon us, campers, and to celebrate, B-Movie Enema is spending the next three weeks camping in the great outdoors.

While movies set at summer camps are largely a horror thing, there are comedies, dramas, and kids’ flicks we can pull from over the next 13 weeks. Some are pretty crappy. Some are pretty funny. One is just for me. It’s gonna be a good time. So, with that, I want to welcome all my Enemaniacs to what I’m calling:

Here at Camp Crappabuttawipe, we aren’t on stolen land. No, we paid for it, and it was surprisingly expensive too. But we’ve got lots of activities for the Enemaniac looking to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday, modern life. We’ve got slasher killers, crazy hulking killers, and… um… legends of crazy slasher killers. But wait! There’s more! We’ll have raft races against other cabins. We’ll probably play a little grab ass here and there. We’ll even try to reconnect with our actress mother, who was known as a scream queen in her career before her tragic death. It’s gonna be fun!

And it all starts with the long-awaited return of a horror franchise to B-Movie Enema – Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers.

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Can’t Stop the Music (1980)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

Do the milkshake, the milkshake, my Enemaniacs.

Guys… I… I’m not sure how to even start this review. Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and yet another review on this web zone. Boy oh boy do we have a doozy for you this week. 1980’s Can’t Stop the Music isn’t just a box office bomb. It isn’t just a critical disaster (to the exception of one movie reviewer’s very odd opinion), It isn’t just a movie about the disco group Village People, a group that, themselves, are kind of a massive dose of campy pop culture jokes. It also helped pave the way for a Hollywood tradition that is very hit and miss with me.

The movie was kind of meant to be about the formation and near-overnight success of Village People. Village People were formed in 1977 by Jacques Morali (played by Steve Guttenberg in his film debut) and his business partner, Henri Belolo. They were hitmakers in Europe and came over to New York City to break into the American music market. The first member to join the band was Victor Willis, who was the cop character in the group. Willis wrote most of their hits and was the lead singer of the group. He was the only performer on the first Village People album. To find other stage performers to mostly dance on stage to Willis singing, Willis first handpicked Alex Briley who portrayed the G.I. of the group and remained with the group for 40 years, and Morali chose Felipe Rose, who wore the Indian costume during performances. Rose was found in a local gay BDSM club with a name that is every bit as gay as it is awesome – The Anvil.

When the record proved to be a major hit, the rest of the band was formed by way of putting out an ad in a theatre trade paper. Glenn Hughes was added as the leatherman. Randy Jones saddled up as the cowboy. David Hodo built his entertainment foundation as the construction worker character. 1977’s Village People and 1978’s Macho Man were okay sellers, but later in 1978, Cruisin’ proved to be a MASSIVE hit, and it was followed by another hit album, 1979’s Go West.

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Howard the Duck (1986)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

Oh boy, Enemaniacs… This week and next is gonna be a doozy at B-Movie Enema.

Near the end of 1973, the 19th issue of Marvel Comics’ anthology series Adventure into Fear, writer Steve Gerber introduced a new character that was a parody of what were once referred to as cartoon funny animals (what we would call anthropomorphic animals today). This character was cynical. He chomped cigars and was a bit ill-tempered. A little over a decade later, for some reason, largely unknown producer George Lucas… Wait… Let me double-check that. Oh… I meant to type “one of the most powerful producers, George Lucas.” My bad.

Sorry about that. But anyway, for whatever reason, one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood thought his follow-up to ending the phenomenon that was the Star Wars Trilogy should be a movie based on this character whose popularity might not exactly be as widespread outside the comic spinner racks. The movie proved to be one of the greatest missteps in film history. The movie was 1986’s Howard the Duck, directed by Willard Huyck and co-written by Gloria Katz.

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Drive Me Crazy (1999)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

We’ve made it, my dear Enemaniacs. It’s the final week of Melissa Joan Hart Month at B-Movie Enema. And this is the headliner for sure.

1999’s Drive Me Crazy has a bit of a story behind it. Very clearly, this was Melissa Joan Hart’s movie. It was released by 20th Century Fox, but with 90s teen movies doing pretty well, and she doing pretty well on ABC’s Sabrina the Teenage Witch, it was impossible to think there wouldn’t at least be an attempt to get her into a movie. In a way, this was accomplished the year before when she made a brief, near cameo appearance in one of the most beloved cult classic teen flicks of the 90s, Can’t Hardly Wait. That was less an attempt to get her onto the big screen and more of a “Hey, we’ve got every young up-and-coming actor in this movie, and the Kid from Dick Tracy, so… Get the teenage witch girl!” thing.

No, Drive Me Crazy was specifically for Melissa to spread her wings a bit and give the movie thing a real try. While the movie had its struggles with critics, it wasn’t that big of a flop when it came to the box office. It cost about $8.5 million and brought in nearly $23 million. Not too bad in terms of the teen movies of the era. While nowhere near the box office darling as 1995’s Clueless or 1999’s She’s All That, Drive Me Crazy turned a profit where Can’t Hardly Wait and Empire Records, both beloved cult films, did not.

I think the problems came with the reviews, and one other very big confusion for audiences that came in the form of Britney Spears.

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The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie (1989)

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This week’s B-Movie Enema review gets… biblical?

Eh, sure. Anyway, not long back, I covered The Toxic Avenger Part II, the long-awaited sequel to the smash Troma hit from 1984. Filmed at the same time was a second sequel, and the topic of this week’s review, The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie. That title should give a hint to a couple of things in this movie. First, Toxie is going to be tempted by a deal with the devil, specifically the devil that Toxie knows – Apocalypse, Inc. Second, I think the title was likely inspired not just from the 1988 Martin Scorsese film The Last Temptation of Christ, but probably more by that film’s pop culture popularity while both of these Toxic Avenger sequels were being filmed.

The Last Temptation of Christ wasn’t just a well-reviewed film for Scorsese, but it really was a hot-button topic during late 1988 and early 1989. No foolin’, the film created a BUNCH of controversy. There were terrorist attacks, death threats, and a whole lot of protests from upsetty Christians and Catholics because the film depicted a scene in which Christ, played by Willem Dafoe, and Mary Magdalene, played by Barbara Hershey, consummated their love for one another. When it comes to canonical religious texts, that’s not something the Jesus folk like to hear about. They like to think that the Christ was above earthly passions and/or Magdalene was a whore.

But I definitely digress because I ain’t no religious guy so I can’t speak to too much gospel.

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Feeding Frenzy (2010)

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The calendar flips to 2026 and, of course, B-Movie Enema is there for you, my lovely Enemaniacs!

So… 2025, huh? That sure was a… year, wasn’t it? There was that one thing that happened. There was that other thing. You know the one. Yeah. That one. But there were, like, one or two good things that happened too, right? The Washington Commanders were only 33 points and one more win away from a sixth Super Bowl appearance in franchise history. That was exciting for exactly 20 minutes of that late afternoon. I got to interview Tjardus Greidanus, the director of the great 1990 thriller The Final Sacrifice. So, on balance, 2025 sucked, but a couple of fun things happened.

To kick 2026 off, I call upon an influence of B-Movie Enema… RedLetterMedia. This is also the first of two times I’ll call upon those fucking hacks from Milwaukee this year. In order to really honor them, I should start with their 2010 feature film, Feeding Frenzy, featuring the media group’s mascot, the psychotic elderly man, Mr. Harry S. Plinkett.

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Terror Eyes (1989)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and the second chapter in my two-part Vivian Schilling adventure!

Last week, I looked at the movie that is Schilling’s best-known movie, Soultaker. The popularity gained by the movie is mostly thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000. That is a tad unfortunate because the popularity also gave it a reputation… not a good one at that. It’s not that bad of a movie, but the riffs from the Satellite of Love often wire viewers’ brains to think that the uncut movie is every bit as bad as the comedy of MST3K’s writers want you to think it is for their jokes to work. Don’t think that’s me saying that MST3K is bad or anything. There would be nothing more opposite than that. It’s just how things are.

This week, we have a movie from Schilling’s filmography that is even earlier in her timeline than Soultaker. This week, I’m going to review the horror/comedy anthology Terror Eyes.

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