Tag: fantasy

Soultaker (1990)

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This review of B-Movie Enema will claim your very soul!

This week and next, I’m going to review a couple of movies tied to writer, director, producer, and actress Vivian Schilling. I don’t expect too many people to immediately see that name and think, “Oh, yes… Vivian Schilling. I am intimately aware of her work.” Generally speaking, she has not really worked in film for nearly 15 years. However, she has a few movies in her filmography that are definitely worthy of coverage. This week’s is likely her best-known film. That’s because the fine folks on the Satellite of Love lampooned this movie on the final season of the original run of Mystery Science Theater 3000. That’s right, it’s 1990’s Soultaker starring Schilling, Joe Estevez, and Robert Z’Dar.

As for Vivian Shilling, the co-writer and star of this film, she was born in 1968 in Wichita, Kansas. She went to study acting in New York City at the famed Lee Strasberg Theater Institute. In 1986, at the age of 18, Schilling appeared in The Adventures of Taura: Prison Ship Star Slammer. Not only is that a title that just rolls off the tongue, it’s a movie that I could see myself reviewing on this very site, but it also appeared on one of this year’s episodes of Best of the Worst from RedLetterMedia. Her first taste of actual scripting and leading a film is going to be the focus of next week’s review. It would really be Soultaker that would likely be her most famous movie.

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American Rickshaw (1989)

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Welcome to B-Movie Enema!

This week, we’ve got a sort of strange one. American Rickshaw, also known as American Tiger, was released in 1989 as an Italian/American co-production filmed in Miami. The film was directed and co-written by Sergio Martino. Martino was a major figure in Italian giallo films of the 70s. His films All the Colors of the Dark and Torso are A+ stuff in the genre. While he continued to make gialli and other styles of horror films throughout his career, he also dabbled quite a bit in comedies and crime thrillers, known as poliziottesco films.

Despite his mastery on display in All the Colors of the Dark and Torso, Martino faded somewhat quickly. He still had a few 80s films that I’ve heard of. Most notably, he directed 1982’s The Scorpion with Two Tails, 1983’s 2019: After the Fall of New York, and 1986’s Hands of Steel. But each of the latter two films really come off as fairly cheap dystopian/post-apocalyptic types of movies. By the end of the decade, when American Rickshaw was released, Martino seemed to be making mostly cheap content for home video rentals.

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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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Krull (1983)

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Happy Thanksgiving weekend, Enemaniacs! I’ve got a bit of a feast for you for this week’s B-Movie Enema review.

In the early 80s, there were a couple of phenomena going on. The first was the re-emergence of the sword and sorcery or sword and sandal movies. That was mostly due to the popularity of 1982’s Conan the Barbarian but I would also count 1981’s Clash of the Titans as also being an inspiration for the genre of fantasy action films. The other big phenomenon was the adventure sci-fi genre thanks to the huge success of 1977’s Star Wars and 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back.

If you really think about it, Star Wars isn’t really science fiction. More accurately, it would be called space opera. That means it’s a little more fantasy than true science fiction. Star Trek is the more true action science fiction type of movie where it both features some action and adventure but also tackles other concepts that are more sci-fi in nature. The advancements made in special effects also made for movies that could feature more lasers and spaceships and different types of creatures, though maybe the last one would be more due to advancements in makeup effects and artistry. That brings us to this week’s topic, 1983’s Krull.

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Yor, the Hunter from the Future (1983)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

We had ourselves a rough one last week, my dear Enemaniacs. The only way to make up for that? Reb Brown.

Oh yes, save us all, Reb! We need salvation from shitty robot ladies who weren’t robots but also maybe brainwashed but weren’t brainwashed. We need something Italian. We need something French. We need something Turkish. We need Yor, the Hunter from the Future!

Welcome to this looooong overdue review for B-Movie Enema. I picked up this Blu-Ray when it was released several years ago with the intention for this to be covered here. I don’t know what kept me from fulfilling that promise the day it arrived, but here we are.

This movie is, indeed, an Italian-French-Turkish co-production. I’ve only once before delved into the world of Turkish cinema, but know they like making movies. They really like making movies that look and play out like American films. But you know the Italians like doing that too. With the Italian side of the production comes director Antonio Margheriti. Margheriti did a lot of lower-budget stuff and was mostly doing the typical Italian genres of crime action films, science fiction, spaghetti westerns, and horror. Notably, Margheriti made films like Castle of Blood starring Barbara Steele, Cannibal Apocalypse starring John Saxon, Death Rage starring Yul Brynner in his final role, and several action movies with David Warbeck.

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Deathstalker II (1987)

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Welcome to the final B-Movie Enema article for June!

So we spent a lot of time this month catching up with sequels to movies I’ve covered before. We started June with introducing ourselves to a series I’ve wanted to dive into for a while – Deathstalker. In the interest of keeping up with the whole point of this month, we’re going to round things out with Deathstalker II. If you think this is going to just be more of the same from the first film, well, you’ll be surprised to hear it isn’t. This is actually more of a comedy.

There could be multiple reasons why this sequel, that came four years after the original that was a success, decided to go this route. First of all, this was the final sword and sorcery film made in the Roger Corman-Argentinian deal. (To find out more about that, hit that link the paragraph above to read the review of that first film.) Honestly, the window had closed on these types of fantasy films by 1987. So why not try doing something a little different? Maybe wink and nod at the audience that these movies are kind of silly. Bringing Jim Wynorski in as director of this sequel certainly changes the mood. Wynorski’s pretty good at infusing a little bit of cheeky self-deprecation into his films. But then also the film was fairly low budget.

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Deathstalker (1983)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

Welcome to B-Movie Enema, my friends! This month, we’re kind of setting aside time to cover two things. The first will be sequels to other movies we’ve covered in the past. The second is to cover the first movie and subsequent sequel in a series that I’ve been looking forward to dealing with for some time. It’s the latter that we are dealing with this week and the final week of June.

Hot off the heels of two quite successful sword and sorcery films in 1982, Conan the Barbarian (grossing somewhere near $80 million on a $20 million budget) and The Sword and Sorcerer (grossing around $40 million on a much more economic $4 million budget), audiences were hot for these types of movies. It’s kind of funny that the early 80s saw the rise in three distinct genres: fantasy, which sword and sorcery falls right smack-dab in the middle of, science fiction, thanks to Star Wars, and ninja action films. I think it’s safe to say that the fantasy genre lost the battle relatively quickly. More on that in just a moment.

It was thanks to Conan the Barbarian and The Sword and the Sorcerer that this week’s movie, Deathstalker, was made and was a modest hit, bringing in nearly $12 million against a $457,000 budget. This was brought to screens by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. This was the first of ten international co-productions with Argentina. I’m not being facetious here, but I can’t name any other U.S.-Argentina co-productions. But this was definitely Roger Corman doing Roger Corman things. He quickly jumped on the fantasy trend and loaded this full of tits.

God, I love Roger Corman.

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Hercules (1983)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

Here’s the first of two more movies I’ve wanted to cover on B-Movie Enema for quite some time – 1983’s Hercules. This is Luigi Cozzi’s update of the 50s and 60s tradition of the Italian sword and sandal movies that ran from 1958 to 1965. You might think that, oh, there were only five or six or so Hercules movies released in that time frame. NO! there were a total of NINETEEN Italian Hercules films starring a handful of various American stars with bodybuilder Steve Reeves being among them.

Yeah, the Italians loved them some Hercules. It kind of makes sense. These movies were almost like comic book style movies. You have a beefy hero, scantily clad (and absolutely gorgeous) women, and high action and adventure. It basically offered something for everyone. They were badly dubbed when brought over here and they were kind of goofy. After all, a few of them would be lampooned on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Still, they were popular enough to continue to be made with multiple movies released each year.

Hercules, the movie character and Italian cinema was so well tied together, I’m honestly shocked that it took 18 years between the last of the Italian produced Hercules movies to this one released by… OH BOY… Yup, this is a Cannon Films flick.

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