Tag: roger corman

Carnosaur 2 (1995)

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It’s time to go back to the Jurassic Era for another dino-rific review at B-Movie Enema!

1993’s Carnosaur was a massive hit. Okay, well, maybe not as big as Jurassic Park, but still, it was a significant hit for Roger Corman’s New Horizons production company. To say that it was riding the coattails of JP is not even facetious. It had to have. Both were based on books and featured dinosaurs. One was getting a ton of attention because that Spielberg guy was directing it. Sure, it was riding coattails, but it worked. The movie made a modest amount of money at the box office and was popular on VHS and cable television.

So, two years later, New Horizons was at it again with Carnosaur 2, which is the movie we’re going to be talking about this week. Because the sequel was greenlit while the first was in production, John Carl Buechler, the effects artist who made the dinosaurs in the first film, could save what he made and take care of it while they got the script and pre-production stuff off the ground. Michael Palmer wrote a script and took a lot of inspiration from Corman acolyte James Cameron’s Aliens plot. Corman tapped director Louis Morneau, who, if we’re being honest here, is mostly known for making sequels and pretty bad movies like The Hitcher II: I’ve Been Waiting, Joy Ride 2: Dead Ahead, and the terrible Bats.

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Carnosaur (1993)

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Welcome back to another rip-roarin’ review at B-Movie Enema!

For pretty much all my life, dinosaurs were immensely popular. Moreover, they ignited a lot of children’s imaginations. In the 80s, not only were there movies like Baby: Secret of the Legend which came out at the exact age for me to not only want to see it but to also convince my mother to take me to a theater to see it. The same year, 1985, the Dinobots made their bow in The Transformers. Dinosaurs couldn’t have been more popular than that period of time. Later, a new generation would get the start of a looooong series of animated features with The Land Before Time. Even before that, for decades, dinosaurs were used in all sorts of sci-fi movies, especially the lower-budget ones.

But then came 1993.

I would argue 1993 was the pinnacle of dino-mania. You like that? Dino mania? I am 100% sure no one else has ever said that term before, and they definitely didn’t say it 32 years ago in 1993. Anyway, that’s when Steven Spielberg would have one of his very biggest years ever… maybe for any director in Hollywood history. He’d make two films that year. One, Schindler’s List, would win him the Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture. That was AFTER he released the year’s top-grossing film, and one of the biggest box office champs in the history of movies, Jurassic Park. But we’re going to look at the movie that made 1993 truly the greatest year at the box office for dinosaur movies – Carnosaur.

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Candy Stripe Nurses (1974)

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They’ll give us fast-fast-fast relief!

That’s what the poster says for this week’s movie, and I bet they mean it too! Welcome to another review here at B-Movie Enema. Also, welcome to another review of a movie from Roger Corman’s New World Pictures! 1974’s Candy Stripe Nurses was part of the company’s “nurses cycle”. However, there’s a very specific reason why we’re starting with this one, which happens to be the final entry of the five-film, loose series.

I may have used Valentine’s Day last week to do My Bloody Valentine because it’s a movie that has the day right in its goddamn title (and, frankly, the movie was overdue to get coverage here), but I won’t deny that this movie was nearly chosen instead. Thankfully, last week did feature the triumphant return of Cynthia Dale, so there’s that. But the main reason why this almost won out over that movie for the Valentine’s Day review?

Two words: Candice Rialson.

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Beast of the Yellow Night (1971)

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Happy Friday the 13th, Enemaniacs!

For this week’s B-Movie Enema review, what better way to celebrate this once or twice-a-year occasion than to cover a movie about the one person who best embodies Friday the 13th? That’s right, we’ve got a movie featuring the Lord of the Flies himself, Satan! What… You thought I was gonna do that Jason fella? Well, you shoulda learned last October, the last time the 13th fell on a Friday, I’m gonna be a goof about this and always fuck it up. I’m saving Mr. Voorhees for another time.

No, for this week, I’m going to return to the filmography of Filipino director Eddie Romero. The last time we saw a Romero film was the kooky Beyond Atlantis movie. What we’re looking at today is the movie that preceded that movie by a couple years, 1971’s Beast of the Yellow Night. Like I said, this has a bit more… devilish flavor to it.

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Deathstalker II (1987)

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Welcome to the final B-Movie Enema article for June!

So we spent a lot of time this month catching up with sequels to movies I’ve covered before. We started June with introducing ourselves to a series I’ve wanted to dive into for a while – Deathstalker. In the interest of keeping up with the whole point of this month, we’re going to round things out with Deathstalker II. If you think this is going to just be more of the same from the first film, well, you’ll be surprised to hear it isn’t. This is actually more of a comedy.

There could be multiple reasons why this sequel, that came four years after the original that was a success, decided to go this route. First of all, this was the final sword and sorcery film made in the Roger Corman-Argentinian deal. (To find out more about that, hit that link the paragraph above to read the review of that first film.) Honestly, the window had closed on these types of fantasy films by 1987. So why not try doing something a little different? Maybe wink and nod at the audience that these movies are kind of silly. Bringing Jim Wynorski in as director of this sequel certainly changes the mood. Wynorski’s pretty good at infusing a little bit of cheeky self-deprecation into his films. But then also the film was fairly low budget.

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Deathstalker (1983)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle3 Comments

Welcome to B-Movie Enema, my friends! This month, we’re kind of setting aside time to cover two things. The first will be sequels to other movies we’ve covered in the past. The second is to cover the first movie and subsequent sequel in a series that I’ve been looking forward to dealing with for some time. It’s the latter that we are dealing with this week and the final week of June.

Hot off the heels of two quite successful sword and sorcery films in 1982, Conan the Barbarian (grossing somewhere near $80 million on a $20 million budget) and The Sword and Sorcerer (grossing around $40 million on a much more economic $4 million budget), audiences were hot for these types of movies. It’s kind of funny that the early 80s saw the rise in three distinct genres: fantasy, which sword and sorcery falls right smack-dab in the middle of, science fiction, thanks to Star Wars, and ninja action films. I think it’s safe to say that the fantasy genre lost the battle relatively quickly. More on that in just a moment.

It was thanks to Conan the Barbarian and The Sword and the Sorcerer that this week’s movie, Deathstalker, was made and was a modest hit, bringing in nearly $12 million against a $457,000 budget. This was brought to screens by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. This was the first of ten international co-productions with Argentina. I’m not being facetious here, but I can’t name any other U.S.-Argentina co-productions. But this was definitely Roger Corman doing Roger Corman things. He quickly jumped on the fantasy trend and loaded this full of tits.

God, I love Roger Corman.

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Stacey (1973)

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Take a ride on the wild side with Stacey. She’s fast!

That’s what the poster of the 1973 film says, and… yeah, I’m up for that ride. Welcome to this almost kind of special B-Movie Enema article this week as we meet in the middle of two things we like a lot around here – Andy Sidaris and Roger Corman.

Sidaris was already a sports photography superstar. He was the director of the earliest seasons of ABC’s Monday Night Football in the early 70s. Earlier than that, he worked on other ABC productions as part of their Wild World of Sports series. He worked on the 1968 Summer Olympics. He directed a World Heavyweight Boxing Championship match between Muhammad Ali and Oscar Bonavena. The guy did all sorts of stuff.

While he did work on a TV series called The Magic Land of Allakazam, his first foray into features was a 1969 racing documentary. Stacey would become his first full length narrative feature film.

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Vampirella (1996)

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In 1969 (heh heh), Forrest J. Ackerman, creator of the publication Famous Monsters of Filmland, and artist Trina Robbins created a new superhero of sorts in the shapely form of female vampire from the planet Drakulon named Vampirella. Vampirella’s origin would later be updated to have her become the daughter of Lilith. For those like me who never grew up with religiosity, Lilith was a demonic figure from Biblical Hebrew. She was Adam’s first wife before Eve came along. She’s become quite an icon in Wiccan belief and modern Occultism.

But we’re not here to talk about Lilith. We’re here to talk about her sort of, later, maybe baby daughter Vampirella!

Vampirella’s book was published by Warren Publishing who also published horror mags Eerie and Creepy. While she would feature and headline the comic in her own adventure, the book was actually an anthology. She would host other horror short stories to fill out the rest of the book. She would get various appearances and published by companies over the years and is currently among some of the cult followed figures that get regular appearances in various Dynamite Entertainment books.

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