Tag: horror

Memorial Valley Massacre (1989)

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Happy Memorial Day weekend, my Enemaniacs in the USA!

This week’s B-Movie Enema is going to take a look at a pretty obscure one that got a little bit of a boost from a fairly recent Blu Ray remastering at Vinegar Syndrome – Memorial Valley Massacre. This is a bit of a weird one for multiple reasons. But let me know if you’ve heard this one before… I first saw this a few times on everyone’s favorite Roku channel, Bizarre TV. That’s not the only time the word “bizarre” might come to mind in this article.

This movie is mostly known for kind of squirting out of the cinematic butthole that supplied video stores and cable with content. And when I say it’s known for that, it’s a pretty unknown movie that blended into the landscape of video store shelves and late night cable TV fodder. Some people who saw the names in the cast like William Smith or our great B-movie daddy in the sky, Cameron Mitchell, and those names might have been juuuust good enough to get people watch or rent it, but they would have likely been quickly turned off by it because it’s a horror film.

But… let’s back up to some of the most bizarre stuff about Memorial Valley Massacre.

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Graduation Day (1981)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

When you get to the month of May, and you’re in school (especially high school), you’re all about getting the hell out of there for a summer of goofing off and sleeping in. So, with this week’s B-Movie Enema review, let’s celebrate the impending graduation of the class of 2023 with a look at the 1981 slasher horror film Graduation Day.

This comes from director Herb Freed who made only about ten movies. In 1976, he made Haunts with everyone’s favorite B-movie star, Cameron Mitchell. Then, in 1980, just before making Graduation Day, he made another horror film called Beyond Evil. Now, what’s interesting is that Beyond Evil starred Linda Day George. when he made Graduation Day a year later, he cast Linda’s husband Christopher George as his lead. Interesting how that comes around. Then, in 1985, he made another kind of cult classic 80s film, Tomboy, starring Betsy Russell. However, by the end of the decade and into the 90s, it seemed that Freed then mostly made video store and cable type movies that have a bit of a reduced budget and lesser marketing.

So, yeah, we have Christopher George in Graduation Day. Now, we saw him previously in City of the Living Dead. This is definitely at the end of his career. He would die in 1983 from a heart attack at the age of 52. He’s not the only character actor to be found here in this movie, as we also have Michael Pataki. Pataki appeared in the Spider-Man TV movies of the late 70s as well as bit parts in Rocky IV and Halloween 4 where he appeared as Dr. Hoffman. Additionally, we have an appearance of Linda Shayne who as in classics of B-Movie Enema lore like Humanoids of the Deep, Screwballs, and Lovely But Deadly. Not only that, but we have Linnea Quigley who has been in too many of B-Movie Enema alumni films to list. Finally, we have the queen of gameshow letter flipping, Vanna White, in one of her seven feature and television film appearances.

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The House on the Edge of the Park (1980)

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This article was written, edited, scheduled, and completed prior to the unfortunate passing of supporting star Giovanni Lombardo Radice.

Welcome back for another B-Movie Enema review. This week, I’m taking a look at 1980’s The House on the Edge of the Park.

This is one, and let me know if you’ve heard this line before, that I remember catching a part of on Bizarre TV. I don’t remember anything that I saw, but I remember this movie’s lead star, David Hess. Hess is quite the recognizable guy if you’ve seen Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left. Let’s face it, most of you reading this blog have seen that one. But Hess would basically go down in “infamy” as Krug, the leader of a group of nogoodniks who kill two innocent girls just looking to score some weed before going to a rock concert.

Beyond that, Hess also would become best known for playing scuzzy villains. In House on the Edge of the Park and Hitch-Hike, he plays guys who either murder people or take them hostage… or, well, both. Most of the other movies that he appeared in just had him play bit parts as in the case of his reunion with Wes Craven in Swamp Thing. But he actually had other talents as well. He directed the Christmas slasher To All a Goodnight. Despite being recognizable for being the leader of a horrific gang of rapists and murders in The Last House on the Left, Hess actually was quite the singer and songwriter.

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Demonoid (1981)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

What is it that they always say – “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop?”

Yeah, that probably best sums up this week’s new B-Movie Enema review. We’re making a run for the border, and, no, it’s not for Taco Bell… unless you want me to have explosive diarrhea. Well, maybe you do, but I don’t want that for myself. No, it’s for Alfredo Zacarías and his supernatural thriller, Demonoid!

You know what’s great about that? This is the second time we featured a movie written and directed by Zacarías. Oh yeah, I covered him way back in 2018 with his nature-gone-wild epic, The Bees. Even though the reviews of this movie isn’t exactly kind, calling Demonoid a “tedious possession movie” and what have you, I know what I saw in The Bees. I could argue that one was also sort of tedious in how it was made, but goddammit if it wasn’t fucking bonkers at times too. That gives me a tad bit of hope that I could get something decent here in Demonoid.

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Lurkers (1988)

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What do you think? More Roberta Findlay? Sure! Why not?

Welcome to this week’s new B-Movie Enema review. I’m Geoff Arbuckle, and this is 1988’s Lurkers. Now, if you think back to 2019, I took a look at Findlay’s Prime Evil. That movie was okay for the most part. However, what I think everyone could agree on is how freakin’ awesome the devil creature that shows up is. The year before Lurkers and Prime Evil, Findlay also did Blood Sisters. That one was a little less than interesting but not without some fun.

The far more interesting elements of those movies, of course, is Roberta Findlay. I’ve mentioned about how Findlay worked with her husband, Michael, on films, but it wasn’t a great relationship. That said, she worked with him while they were separated. She did porn and horror… That’s about it. But that’s perfectly fine too. Most of her movies weren’t particularly high budget, but she often worked as both director and cinematographer on her films. The number of credits as either role on a film is fairly impressive considering she really only had a roughly 25 year career. My point is she kept busy making movies.

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Psychomania (1973)

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Biker flicks were pretty popular between the mid-50s to the mid-70s. But not like the hero rides around on a bike and is bad ass and saves a little town from, I dunno, Nazis or something. No, some of these movies featured down right psychopathic killers on bikes who come in, drink your beer, rape your women, and, I dunno, wore Nazi paraphernalia. Wait… Anyway, here, in America, bikers kind of represented this “take no shit from anyone” kind of attitude that screams conservo-libertarian “shove your rights up your ass, my rights are more important” mindset.

They were a menace to more normal sensibilities of the typical suburban set. So much so, it got to the point where if you wore too much denim or not enough sleeves and didn’t wash your long hair and beard often enough, people were probably thinking you were a biker and probably going to bust heads. Look, I know I’m kind of shot out of a cannon here for the start of this week’s B-Movie Enema review, but I’m catching up to the thread here again.

Okay, so the origins of the “outlaw biker” films go back to Marlon Brando’s The Wild One in 1953. That was the movie that kind of revealed the subculture of biker clubs that had existed for a few years prior. While the success of that film would lead to a lot more movies, and even a book by Hunter S. Thompson about the most famous gang, Hell’s Angels, it really was our ol’ buddy Russ Meyer who made Motorpsycho in 1965 and turned this into a more exploitation type of biker gang flick. By the 70s, biker flicks were exported to the United Kingdom. Maybe our most popular example is this week’s featured flick – 1973’s Psychomania (originally released as The Death Wheelers in the United States).

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Girly (a.k.a Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly, 1970)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema, my lovelies!

This week, we have a film from British cinematographer and director Freddie Francis – Girly. Now, this one was more commonly known as Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly in the United Kingdom. We’ll come back around to the utterly bizarre plot of Girly in a bit. First, we should talk about Freddie Francis.

Francis is best known for his work with Hammer Film Productions on films like The Evil of Frankenstein and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and from Hammer rival Amicus Productions on The Deadly Bees and Tales from the Crypt. But, in truth, Francis was a very keen cinematographer. He twice won Oscars for 1960’s Sons and Lovers and 1989’s Glory. Beyond those films, he has a ton of other significant films he shot like 1980’s The Elephant Man directed by David Lynch, Karel Reisz’s 1981 film The French Lieutenant’s Woman starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, and Martin Scorsese’s creepy as hell 1991 remake Cape Fear.

He also shot Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune, so… you know… they can’t all be winners.

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Hellmaster (1992)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema, my dearest of dear Enemaniacs!

These last few weeks have kind of turned into an adjunct Greatest Hits album for the blog. I covered a classic from the days gone by of Bizarre TV, a sleazy revenge flick, a sleazy women in prison film, and here we go again, but, this time, with a twist. I’m going waaaaay back to the early days of not just this site, but for B-Movie Enema: The Series, my hosting show you can find at here on the site, or on YouTube, or on Vimeo.

Let’s talk a litlte bit about John Saxon, star of 1992’s Hellmaster.

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