Tag: exploitation

Black Belt Angels (1994)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome to another week and another review here at B-Movie Enema.

Martial Arts… I’m not entirely sure exactly how popular they are for kids these days, but I’m of the age, being someone born in the late 70s, who knows how freaking massively popular the idea of having kids go to a karate dojo or some other martial arts studio and learn the act of either kicking someone’s ass into oblivion or knowing how to defend one’s self by way of kicking someone’s ass into oblivion was. The phenomenon of the general interest people had in martial arts had to come with the popularity of both Bruce Lee in the 60s and 70s and the entire action subgenre of the kung fu flicks coming from the East. By the mid to late 70s, martial arts were even more popular with the rising popularity of the American actor Chuck Norris. It wouldn’t take long for people to see a couple of uses for learning martial arts for themselves.

The first of these reasons centers around the general exercise and getting a little bit of a workout from doing the various gestures, the movements, and the mental workout of the sort of meditative state that could come from practicing the arts and doing the workouts. The second reason was more to give people some sort of ability to defend themselves if they were attacked by a crazed gang member or some sort of Middle Eastern terrorist that would generally roam the streets of every city, town, and village in the United States. Well, at least I was told by Chuck Norris and Cannon movies that these types of people could be lurking behind every tree and under every rock when I was a kid.

This week, we’re going to be punching deep into the 1994 film Black Belt Angels. Now, admittedly, I thought that title evoked something that would be something a little more like Ninja Cheerleaders that I covered many, many moons ago now. However, I was disappoin… I mean SURPRISED to find out this was a family film from co-writer and director Chi Kim. More on Kim and his co-writer in just a moment. This does sprinkle in something that I mentioned previously. If various martial arts were being taught to people for self-defense purposes, that usually means these studios were attractive to both bullied kids AND women who needed to be able to take care of themselves now that they could be working jobs that got them out of the safe zone of the suburban homelife.

Continue reading “Black Belt Angels (1994)” →

Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

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

You know… It’s 2025. That means we’re soon a full 80 years since Nazi Germany was bumped off in the incredibly high-stakes game of Real Life Risk. We should feel really good about the concept of a pretty shit ideology like fascism or Nazism is long gone, right? I mean, I’m glad I can lay my head down on my pillow each and every night knowing that, as an American, I will never have to worry about some sort of terrible natural disaster hitting California and leaving it open to still operating Neo Nazi and far-right agitators to run amok. It sure is great to be 80 years removed from those possibilities, right?

What’s this I see in the news and on social media sites everywhere? California is consistently on fire and always open for a possible cataclysmic earthquake… The government is being run by people with fewer scruples than brain cells… The richest man in the world sure looks like he gave a Nazi salute behind a podium featuring the Presidential Seal of the United States of America… There seems to be no real response or much resistance from a pretty damn weak and limp-wristed Democratic Party in the face of this rising tide of extremist policy and pretty bad actors now running the government…

Well, FUCK. Anyway, here’s a review for 1987’s Surf Nazis Must Die.

Continue reading “Surf Nazis Must Die (1987)” →

Faces of Death (1978)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

Welcome to another B-Movie Enema review!

Over the last few months or so, it feels like I’ve waxed poetic over going to the video store or a sleepover with your dumb friends and being enticed by a particular movie. Maybe it was a movie that had box art that stood out. Hell, I talked about that just a couple of weeks ago about how enticing and striking the poster for My Bloody Valentine was to me as a kid. But I’m not even really talking about just horror either. Sometimes there was a sexy cover… but when you’re in, like, the fifth or sixth grade, maybe you don’t want to admit you really want to rent that Shannon Tweed thriller just because you felt tickles in your underpants from Ms. Tweed… BUT YOU HAVE TO WATCH THAT MOVIE!

But maybe the most enticing movies that would get you to watch them with your friends at a sleepover were what I called the “dare” movies. These are movies that had a certain reputation about them that made them near taboo in terms of legendary. These were movies like I Spit on Your Grave or Cannibal Holocaust. They didn’t necessarily have to advertise their own legendary status. Another was so proud of being both legendary and taboo that not only did every kid know of this movie and its sequels, but it wanted to make sure you knew it was proud of being kind of hated. It had it splashed across the corner of the VHS box: “BANNED! In 46 Countries!”

Yeah, let’s talk Faces of Death.

Continue reading “Faces of Death (1978)” →

Candy Stripe Nurses (1974)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

They’ll give us fast-fast-fast relief!

That’s what the poster says for this week’s movie, and I bet they mean it too! Welcome to another review here at B-Movie Enema. Also, welcome to another review of a movie from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures! 1974’s Candy Stripe Nurses was part of the company’s “nurses cycle”. However, there’s a very specific reason why we’re starting with this one, which happens to be the final entry of the five-film, loose series.

I may have used Valentine’s Day last week to do My Bloody Valentine because it’s a movie that has the day right in its goddamn title (and, frankly, the movie was overdue to get coverage here), but I won’t deny that this movie was nearly chosen instead. Thankfully, last week did feature the triumphant return of Cynthia Dale, so there’s that. But the main reason why this almost won out over that movie for the Valentine’s Day review?

Two words: Candice Rialson.

Continue reading “Candy Stripe Nurses (1974)” →

Galaxina (1980)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading “Galaxina (1980)” →

Spaced Out (1979)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading “Spaced Out (1979)” →

Best Friends (1975)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading “Best Friends (1975)” →

Twister’s Revenge! (1988)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading “Twister’s Revenge! (1988)” →