Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016)

You know? I feel like it was only a matter of time before Madea came to B-Movie Enema. And, sure, maybe I could have started with the beginning of the MCU (no, not that one – the Madea Cinematic Universe), but screw it. It’s time for Halloween and dagnabbit, this seems to be oozing with potential to begin with. So, here it is… Welcome to the blog, Tyler Perry, and let’s talk about Boo! A Madea Halloween.

Damn… There’s a lot to unpack here, but I think we should do some seasonal stuff first.

October is kind of a special time for me. It’s the centerpiece of my favorite season, fall, and a month that I love getting bundled up with the lights out and watching horror movies. It was also the month in which B-Movie Enema was born. Way back in 2014, B-Movie Enema began, but it also ended shortly afterwards. However, once it was resurrected in early 2016, October has been a whole thing here. This month, I’m doing all movies that have a very specific Halloween slant to them. We begin with Mr. Tyler Perry and his Madea character.

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Old (2021)

You know what sucks? Getting Old.

Yeah, being 45 sucks. That’s absolutely true. Once upon a time, I used to be young, virile, and hot shit, man. Now I’m just cold diarrhea. I’ve passed out of the realm of being listened to. I’m no longer marketed to – for anything important. Don’t get me wrong. Transformers and G.I. Joe and everything just slathered in 80s nostalgia are being marketed to me like tits to the man with all the one dollar bills on amateur night.

I don’t know what that means.

Anyway, Yeah, aging sucks. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about getting a copy of M. Night Shyamalan’s 2021 thriller Old. At some point I knew I was going to be doing this on B-Movie Enema. Here’s the thing, though… Once upon a time, I never really expected to do one of this guy’s movies. Let’s get into it.

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The House by the Cemetery (1981)

Alrighty, here we are, dear Enemaniacs – the end of B-Movie Enema’s trip through Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy.

The House by the Cemetery is a peculiar flick. It is the type of movie that either you love it or you hate it. However, here’s the thing… You could say that about all of Fulci’s stuff. A lot of his films are very stream of consciousness or dreamlike in structure. The House by the Cemetery is one that I think that love/hate kind of reaction is quite severe.

There aren’t many people in the middle who kind of shrug and say, “It’s alright.”

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Phantasm: RaVager (2016)

We’ve come to the end, my dear Enamaniacs. Phantasm: RaVager is today’s feature and B-Movie Enema will finally complete Phantasm Sequels Month.

This one is interesting. I saw this at the Centerbrook Drive-In in Martinsville, Indiana in October of 2016 with a trio of friends. It played as part of a doubleheader with the original movie. It was the first time in a looooong time I had visited a drive-in, so that part was pretty awesome. It’s always fun to watch the original Phantasm. So that was pretty awesome too.

Then Ravager started. I ain’t gonna lie… The first time I saw this I was confused. I was not too happy about the movie. It felt really, really weird. In fact, I would argue that this movie, the only film in the franchise NOT directed by Don Coscarelli, though he did co-write it with director David Hartman, is maybe the most divisive one of the bunch. It’s got a lot of references to past movies, with even a returning character most would have no idea who she is if they hadn’t been watching the series recently just prior to watching this one. It’s not told in a very linear way. It jumps between at least two realities. It’s a strange movie.

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Phantasm: OblIVion (1998)

Here we go again with another installment of Phantasm Sequels Month here at B-Movie Enema.

We’re up to the fourth entry that goes by a few titles – Phantasm IV: Oblivion, Phantasm: Oblivion, or, my personal favorite, Phantasm: OblIVion. Yeah, stylize that shit! Anyway, believe it or not, after the last two entries getting budgets of something around $3 million, Oblivion would only get about $650,000. However, I should also state there is more to it than just a severely slashed budget.

You see, this movie actually began life as something else. It actually began as this epic script by Roger Avary. If that name rings a bell, that’s because he’s Quentin Tarantino’s writing partner on 1994’s Pulp Fiction. They won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for that movie. Avary is a self-professed Phantasm superfan. He wrote a sequel to Phantasm III that would have seen a major post-apocalyptic world that continued on from that previous entry and would have even brought Bruce Campbell on as a co-star – or so the story goes.

Fundraising for that project fell through.

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Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead (1994)

Welcome back to Phantasm Sequels Month here at B-Movie Enema!

Phantasm II, to put it mildly, didn’t perform as well as hoped. Sure, it brought in a little more than double its budget. That’s not bad, but it was hard to necessarily say Universal was all that happy. Goddammit, they wanted a franchise like those Jasons and Freddys.

However, Universal still had a little bit of a hold on the franchise. It would go on to distribute the next film, and this week’s featured entry, Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead on VHS. Things get a little sideways here though. Phantasm III played a very limited, couple week run in movie havens Baton Rouge, Louisiana and St. Louis, Missouri. That may feel like places out in the middle of no-frickin’-where for a movie to get a limited, two-week release, and you’d be right.

It also saw Phantasm III become the highest grossing movie of that two-week run in both markets.

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