Tag: horror

Madman (1981)

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Gather ’round the campfire, kiddos and Enemaniacs… This week’s B-Movie Enema review is going to tell you the harrowing tale of Madman Marz!

Welcome back to Camp Crappbuttawipe! This week, we go to 1981 for Joe Giannone’s Madman. This one is a very interesting movie. Madman has a split audience. On one hand, this movie sucks. Well, maybe not so much that it sucks as much as it has a dual legacy. Critics, of course, hated the movie, with some calling it unremarkable or inept. But, it also has a pretty serious cult following. I think a lot of it is because the Madman Marz character has a cool name, and the type of look Madman Marz has seems more reasonable for a killer that lives in the woods and will kill people at a camp or hanging out in cabins.

I think there are a few things that allowed Madman to grow that cult following. For one, it is one of only three films that starred Gaylen Ross. Ross came from good ol’ Indianapolis, Indiana, the home base of B-Movie Enema Industries. While Creepshow and Madman have their fans, I don’t think anyone would say that’s where they know Ross from. No, there is only one movie that you can link Gaylen Ross to, and that’s the greatest horror film ever made, George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. I already mentioned the character of Madman Marz, with his cool name and cool crazy look.

The third thing that might help this movie be a cult classic is the inspiration for this movie – the legend of Cropsey.

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Twisted Nightmare (1988)

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It’s week #8 of Camp Crappabuttawipe at B-Movie Enema!

I think we’ve been on a pretty good run over the entirety of this summer camp business we’ve had going on as of late. Okay, sure, you can potentially say the two Sleepaway Camp sequels are far behind the best of the best thus far in the theme season, but… They weren’t thaaaat bad, were they? Ernest Goes to Camp, while far from Shakespeare, and I mean Todd Shakespeare from Corydon, Indiana (who did you think I was referring to?), it was fun reliving a part of my beloved childhood before I grew up and realized the world kinda sucks shit.

Largely, we’re on a hot streak with the likes of Little Darlings being kind of a revelation, Marshmallow being an excellent micro-budget gem, Meatballs being a movie that gave the world of cinema Bill Murray and Harold Ramis working perfectly together, and Wet Hot American Summer.

Well, it’s time to fuck that shit up for a couple of weeks… Yeah, we’re in the back half of Camp Crappabuttawipe, and these long, hot summer days are starting to signal that feeling inside when you really just want to go the fuck home. You’re tired of archery. You’re tired of making wallets and other leather-working stuff. You’re fucking sick of that muddy-ass lake you toss yourself into without the knowledge of whether there are leeches waiting to grab hold of your scrotum. We need to dig deep and just power through because I’m starting to feel like I really frontloaded this theme series.

So, maybe appropriately, this week’s movie is 1988’s Twisted Nightmare.

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Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland (1989)

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TEENAGE WASTELAND, oh, yeah… TEENAGE WASTELAND!

Oh, hi, Enemaniacs. You’ve caught me singing along to one of my favorite songs from The Who, “Baba O’Riley.” And that brings us to week #6 here at B-Movie Enema’s summer-long theme of Camp Crappa Buttawipe! This week, we bounce back into the Sleepaway Camp franchise with Sleepaway Camp III: Baba O’Riley… er… I mean Sleepaway Camp III: Teenage Wasteland!

There’s not much more to say about the behind-the-scenes business that wasn’t covered last month when I talked about the first sequel. Both sequels were made back-to-back to save on overall production costs. The first of the two movies was the more expensive of the two, coming in at about a million and a half bucks. This movie used the rest of the $2 million that was granted to make the two movies. Both films were written by Fritz Gordon, and his appreciation for playing around with character names is still on display here. The last film used the first names of the Brat Pack and other young stars of the era. This film uses character names from sources like West Side Story, The Munsters, and The Brady Bunch.

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Marshmallow (2025)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle1 Comment

Welcome back to week #2 (heh) here at B-Movie Enema’s Camp Crappabuttawipe!

This week, we’re looking at something a little bit different… A horror movie taking place at a camp that is not just new, but more than just a generic slasher film. We’re reviewing 2025’s Marshmallow from director Daniel DelPergatorio and writer Andy Greskoviak.

I think we need to focus right there on that director’s name. Daniel DelPergatorio is a hell of a name for a horror director. That name sounds like he’s Danel of the Purgatory. And… well, what do you know? That’s actually how his name translates from Spanish. That’s fuckin’ rad. What’s also pretty fuckin’ rad is that I already know his work. He served as co-director for the 2009 animated short Tales of the Black Freighter that was released alongside Zak Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen. The Black Freighter story was interwoven into Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen story, but, for very obvious logistical reasons, would not be able to be added to the live-action film’s flow. Still, that’s pretty awesome that DelPergatorio worked on that as his directorial debut.

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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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Killdozer (1974)

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A new review at B-Movie Enema is KILLDOZING ITS WAY INTO YOUR COMPUTERS!

Hell yeah, brother! It’s time for this oddball made-for-television flick from 1974. Look out! It’s Killdozer! Killdozer was first released as a 1944 novella by Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon wrote a ton of reviews (somewhere around 400, which means I have written more, so take that, Mr. Killdozer), along with a bunch of short stories, and about 11 novels. He even ghost-wrote an Ellery Queen mystery novel. Ellery Queen was someone my oldest brother would read when I was a kid.

Sturgeon also wrote a couple of very popular Star Trek episodes in the 60s. The first was “Shore Leave” which featured members of an away team seeing a bunch of crazy visions like characters from Alice in Wonderland and damsels in distress. The second was a VERY popular one, “Amok Time.” This introduced the Vulcan mating ritual, pon farr, and the first time the phrase “Live long and prosper” was uttered. It was also the first episode to feature the Vulcan hand salute. Some other scripts he wrote that went unproduced introduced the concept of the Prime Directive, the doctrine that Starfleet and the Federation operated by when visiting new worlds.

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Fright (1971)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle4 Comments

Welcome to another FRIGHTening review here at B-Movie Enema!

Quick! What was the first slasher film? The one that created the subgenre that would dominate the horror section of 80s video stores and late night cable TV? I bet you’re thinking Halloween. Or maybe you muttered to yourself, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” If you really wanted to flex some horror muscle or just simply sound like a smarty pants, you might have mentioned Black Christmas. Hell, I think I just heard someone shout Hitchcock’s Psycho.

I don’t know if there is any one real answer, but I want to enter 1971’s Fright into the conversation.

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Afraid (2024)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

There’s a part of me wanting to ask ChatGPT to write this new B-Movie Enema review.

But I won’t do that, Enemaniacs! If there’s one thing I have, it’s my integ…rit..y? Sure, my integrity. I’m full of it. Anyway, this week, I’m reviewing 2024’s Afraid (or AfrAId) from director Chris Weitz. But before we talk about Weitz and his movie about artificial intelligence run amok, we should maybe say a few words about Jason Blum and Bumhouse Productions.

If I’m being honest, Blum is maybe the guy who deserves Roger Corman’s mantle of being a guy who knows how to make movies on the cheap, and quickly, knows when to spend a lot more money, and how to usually turn profits. He’s also had a stable of filmmakers who have gone on to do pretty great things after having success with a Blumhouse film. Jason Blum kind of knows that it doesn’t take hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie that will drive people to the theater. Each year, he’ll make a few films for less than $10 million, a few (like Afraid) for a little more, and then when to spend a lot more. It’s been a very, very long time since the company released a movie that made less than its production budget.

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