Tag: horror

The Deadly Spawn (1983)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome to a new review here at B-Movie Enema!

This week, I decided to go back to the first half of the 80s for a movie that was made on a really small $25,000 budget but turned out to be much better than most would expect on such a small amount of money. Let’s talk about 1983’s The Deadly Spawn. The origin of the movie came from producer Ted Bohus back in the late 70s. He got the idea after reading a National Geographic article about some seed pods that were found and recovered from the Arctic. Obviously, it sounds an awful lot like the all-time classic sci-fi movie The Thing from Another World, but this real life scientific discovery fueled Bohus and he got right to work on a creature design for an eventual movie.

Originally Bohus thought about a rubber suit that would be worn by an actor, but when John Dods, an associate producer and effects director for the movie, was brought in, his imagination was also put into overdrive. He came back with a bunch of alternate looks and the primary creature that would be used to spawn her deadly offspring that is in the movie. From that, the money was raised and they brought in director Douglas McKeown to bring everything to life.

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The Vampires Night Orgy (1972)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Happy Halloween and welcome to the annual tradition of the B-Movie Enema special Halloween review!

This year, the annual October theme that I always choose to celebrate not just the earliest days of B-Movie Enema but also the spooky season was 1970s Women-in-Peril films. Now, for the most part, the movies I choose each October will fit some kind of theme. Sometimes the Halloween special will follow the theme and sometimes they don’t. This is one of those years where it kind of doesn’t, but there’s a specific reason why I chose this movie to celebrate Halloween.

The Vampires Night Orgy was selected because it was a movie from the 70s but it’s not really a full-on women-in-peril type film like we’ve seen in weeks past. I selected this because it falls in line with a tradition that I’ve sort of halfway gestured at during the course of this month. If you’ve been around these parts for a while, you know that B-Movie Enema was started in 2014 as a way to do something with a whole bunch of movies that I had from various cheap-o 50-movie multipacks. A few years before that, I had wanted to work with some friends to create a horror host show. These movies let us know what basically was available to us at that time. When that fell apart, I felt I had to do something for a creative outlet and the idea of creating a blog was formed on a random night in September 2014. October 3, 2014, the first review was released – The Eerie Midnight Horror Show. That movie was found in one of these multipacks of movies.

It came from the same set that I looked to for this week’s movie review.

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The Wizard of Gore (1970)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

Welcome to a new review here at B-Movie Enema.

A guy I hadn’t yet covered at all to this point is Herschell Gordon Lewis. That’s a little bit of a surprise, isn’t it? This is B-Movie Enema. I’ve covered everything from Batman and Robin to a number of Russ Meyer films to freakin’ Bloodsucking Freaks. It would seem as though Herschell Gordon Lewis, the Godfather of Gore, would have shown up here before now. But, no, this week’s review, 1970’s The Wizard of Gore is his first go around here on the site.

If I am being kind of honest, I’m not entirely sure where I would have entered into the Lewis filmography. Sure, there are several of his movies that are known for his distinctive style (or lack of typical cinematic ability). Naturally, this movie is probably his crowning achievement as being one of the quintessential independent horror films that gave rise to the horror exploitation era of the 70s. Beyond that, there are other movies that are well known for being directed by Lewis like 1963’s Blood Feast and 1964’s Two Thousand Maniacs! While both of those films would have been good choices, they get talked about a lot. I suppose The Wizard of Gore has been too, but… eh. I had to choose something and this fit the criteria for this month of being women-in-peril and a 70s film. The last movie he made before a 30-year break from making films was 1972’s The Gore Gore Girls which was definitely in consideration for a review too.

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I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

Published on by Geoff ArbuckleLeave a comment

Welcome to the 450th review at B-Movie Enema!

It took a while to get here, folks, but here we are. Just over 10 years since starting this blog, I’ve knocked through major milestone after major milestone. But all the while there were a few movies that I hadn’t covered that I knew I would have to in some way or another. So, when it came to this year’s milestone, the 450th, I needed to cover one of those movies. In fact, when I came to the decision to cover the 1978 rape-revenge exploitation classic I Spit on Your Grave, I used that to help shape the entirety of this month’s October theme.

But why is this movie so famous, or infamous? Well, this is maybe one of the greatest examples of how it was received by critics as well as somewhat close-minded or ill-informed audiences when it was released in November 1978. For all my life until I saw the movie for the first time some years ago, I had two things about the movie relayed to me: 1) it was so disliked and balls-to-the-wall rapey that it almost comes across and something “dirty” to want to watch and 2) my older brothers would always talk about one particular scene concerning a girl, a guy, a knife, and a tub… oh, and that guy’s dick.

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The Last House on the Left (1972)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle8 Comments

Welcome to October, Enemaniacs.

October is a big deal here at B-Movie Enema. Ten years ago on October 3, the blog was created with the release of an Exorcist ripoff with a Rocky Horror-esque title from Italy, The Eerie Midnight Horror Show. I wouldn’t necessarily go back and read too many of those old reviews. They aren’t particularly great as the tone and the vibe of this blog were ever-shifting and evolving. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate milestones and the history of this blog.

To do so, and considering the 450th review is also due next week with a movie I’ve long been planning for such an occasion, we’re going to be celebrating Halloween a little grimier this year. This month, we’re going to dig deep into four 70s movies that encapsulate the harder-edged attitude of horror in the decade. So, look forward to things getting pretty trigger-warningly real over the next four weeks. And we also get a bonus Halloween review as per the usual around here. It all starts right here with one of the most famous, and highly-regarded, exploitation horror films of all time, Wes Craven’s debut film, The Last House on the Left.

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