Tag: horror

The Uninvited (2009)

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Hello, Enemaniacs, and welcome to a new B-Movie Enema review!

This week, I’m going to be looking at a movie that would not have been on my radar if not for last year’s AMC Fear Fest, the October tradition of AMC playing horror movies pretty much all day and all night for the entire month leading up to Halloween. One of the things that I often find myself chuckling about when it comes to Fear Fest is that it seems like almost every time I turn on AMC on any random October day, Halloween 5 is usually playing. It’s almost without fail that’s what’s on when I tune in. The other thing that is almost a constant on Fear Fest is a whole slew of underwhelming 2000s horror.

And that’s where we pick up for this week’s review. 2009’s The Uninvited mostly slipped through just about every crack of the rickety dock over a dirty pond. For the most part, I only knew two things before I started watching it that fateful day on AMC Fear Fest. The first is that the trailer for this movie was before every single Friday the 13th movie DVD I had in the multi-pack I had before I upgraded to the Blu-Ray. Second, it starred that one girl who was in Zack Snyder’s shitty Sucker Punch movie.

Sucker Punch may be a review for another day…

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The Burning (1981)

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Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema review, and welcome to the official start of summer.

Yeah, you read the right, bitches. I say when summer starts. And it starts right now as we say goodbye to May this weekend and hello to June. With the warmer months, traditionally speaking, people start taking vacations in various ways. Families might plan trips to lakes to go boating and maybe fish or something. They may plan on going to Disney World. The days get longer and the movies get more fun and entertaining (for better or worse). Parents are ready, after a long, grueling school year dealing with piss poor report cards and parent-teacher conferences, to send their kids to a camp to get them out of their goddamn hair for a few weeks.

That desire to make your kids someone else’s problem gave birth to two very distinctly 80s subgenres in movies. The first were comedies like 1979’s Meatballs. The second, much more popular subgenre, was the slasher horror like 1980’s Friday the 13th. The latter is where this week’s featured movie, 1981’s The Burning, lies.

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Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (1995)

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Welcome to another B-Movie Enema review where we always watch the skies.

That’s Xtro 3: Watch the Skies. Now, we’ve been here, haven’t we? Whether it is yet another Xtro flick that has nothing to do with the original, another ill-advised sequel, or a sequel made because money is needed to live in a world mostly dominated by capitalism, this is nothing new to us around here. Alright, so not that long ago, I reviewed Xtro 2: The Second Encounter and, woof… It was pretty bad.

Creator of the original Xtro, Harry Bromley Davenport couldn’t really get any other work. He did own the rights to the title Xtro and was able to leverage that to Welsh and Canadian producers. He thought he could take the Xtro series and turn it into an anthology series about alien encounters. The first sequel was not an enjoyable experience for the British director, Bromley Davenport. Jan-Michael Vincent was barely functional. The script was kind of dumb and complicated.

This second sequel would be somewhat better for the Briton in some ways and a little more dangerous in others.

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Queen Crab (2015)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema, Brett Piper!

We have some favorites here at B-Movie Enema Industries. Last week, I talked about one of the final films I’ve not yet covered on the site from Norman J. Warren. This week, it’s time to talk about another fave around here, Brett Piper. Waaaaay back in 2016, I looked at his 2000 flick Drainiac. That’s one that is kind of looked down on, but I like it for various reasons. I also looked at it for an episode of B-Movie Enema: The Series too. There is a bit of nostalgia for me on it, but I also fully understand it is not everyone’s cup of tea, all things considered.

Later, in 2019, I celebrated 150 reviews on the site with 1996’s They Bite. Now, this is one that is definitely much more of a wink-and-a-nod type of comedy exploitation horror for the Cinemax set. It’s about a porn production being menaced by an actual fish monster, and not the fish monster in their fish monster porno movie. But then I went back to Piper’s earliest efforts with 1985’s Battle for the Lost Planet and 1988’s Mutant War. Both of these are incredibly charming, and I love them for what they are. These sci-fi flicks both feature a lot of stop-motion animation which also revealed that Piper prefers the monster effects far more than making the movie the effects appear in. The latter film also has a villainous Cameron Mitchell, so you know we love that around here too.

We return to Piper’s love of creating stop-motion style monsters with this week’s movie, 2015’s Queen Crab.

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Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (2006)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema and the final week of Troma Month!

This month has been a fun one, hasn’t it? Whether it’s a love letter to Kaufman’s appreciation of William Shakespeare in the romance Tromeo and Juliet, or the earlier Tromaville kids run amok horror Class of Nuke ‘Em High, or the most Troma film of them all, Terror Firmer… It’s been a good time visiting these classics from the 80s and 90s master of gross-out comedy, horror, and comedy-horror, Lloyd Kaufman. But now, we bring things to a close with another dark comedy-horror from the man himself. However, this time, we have a bit of a twist.

This time we have a musical.

Yes, it’s Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. This time around, Kaufman has a little uncredited help from one of the co-writers of the film, Gabriel Friedman. Friedman would go on to be a producer for specials for the cable channels E! and G4, as well as for online series like The IGN Show. In fact, he mostly worked on a lot of specials and behind-the-scenes stuff, including making-of documentaries for Troma films like Terror Firmer and Citizen Toxie. His writing credits are mostly for Troma films like this one, Make Your Own Damn Movie!, the aforementioned fourth Toxie flick, and Lloyd Kaufman’s most recent, #ShakespearesShitstorm.

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Terror Firmer (1999)

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Welcome back! It’s the third week of Troma Month here at B-Movie Enema and it’s time to go back, sorta, to the James Gunn well. This week, I’m gonna be talking about 1999’s Terror Firmer.

What do I mean about this sorta going back to the James Gunn well? That’s because, to a certain extent, Lloyd Kaufman, along with co-writers Douglas Buck and Patrick Cassidy, based this movie’s script, albeit loosely, on the 1998 book All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from the Toxic Avenger. That book was co-written by Kaufman and James Gunn.

I made the comment last week, in my review for Class of Nuke ‘Em High, that I kind of put Kaufman in the same camp as Roger Corman. Corman, back in the 50s and 60s, were cranking out cheap B-movies quickly. However, quickly those movies were, and however cheaply they were made, most (especially in today’s film culture) could not look at those movies and think they weren’t made professionally. Maybe the monster was kind of goofy, but you couldn’t argue that the cast was well-directed and doing their jobs professionally.

I bring up that commentary I made because Roger Corman wrote the introduction to the book this is sort of based on.

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Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle2 Comments

Welcome back to Troma Month here at B-Movie Enema!

Last week, it just so happened, the month started with a leadoff home run with Tromeo and Juliet, a movie that I believe, by the time we finish this month and I’ve increased my viewership of movies made internally by Troma, will be the best film ever released by the company. I know, I know… Toxie and what have you. There was just something special about Tromeo and Juliet that had my by the balls and shook me about until I cried out for my mommy to save me.

Wait…

Eh… anyway… This week, we’re going back to the 80s when Troma and their fictional hometown of Tromaville was in its infancy. We’re looking at 1986’s Class of Nuke ‘Em High. This horror/sci-fi/comedy was Lloyd Kaufman’s follow-up to his seminal 1984 classic The Toxic Avenger. This time, though, he wasn’t alone. Kaufman shared directing duties with Troma editor Richard W. Haines.

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My Bloody Valentine (1981)

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Like, no shit this week’s review is going to be My Bloody Valentine, right?

Happy Valentine’s Day, my Enamaniacs. This week’s new review here at B-Movie Enema is a bit overdue. 1981’s My Bloody Valentine is often cited as one of the better slashers of the 80s. Like with 1978’s Halloween, it seems as though there might be a little more going on with this movie. It certainly has more going on with characters and intersecting storylines than, say, Friday the 13th. More on this stuff as we go through the plot later.

George Mihalka is the director of My Bloody Valentine. He was born in the early 50s in Hungary. He was in his mid-20s when directing this film. For the most part, you really aren’t going to find much more interesting in his filmography. Generally speaking, Mihalka’s big claim to fame IS My Bloody Valentine. The same could be said about the screenwriter, John Beaird. Beaird did contribute some uncredited work on the script for Happy Birthday to Me from the same year. But other than that? Nothing really of major note. Sadly, Beaird died young at the age of 40 in 1993.

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