The Unseen (1980)

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

This week, we’re looking at an early 80s film that I think has a little underground cult appeal. We’re going to discuss 1980’s The Unseen from director Danny Steinmann. Steinmann is likely a name horror fans will recognize, even though, for The Unseen, he used the credit Peter Foleg. Like with last week’s movie, Carnosaur, which had special effects done by Friday the 13th Part VI: The New Blood director John Carl Buechler, Steinmann is also a Camp Crystal Lake alum. In 1985, he co-wrote and directed his final film, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. By far, that is Steinmann’s most famous movie, for better or worse.

I don’t envy the guy who had to make the only other movie without Jason Voorhees in the franchise after the character became the most defining part of the series.

After getting his start in the 70s in the adult industry, directing the porno High Rise in 1973, Steinmann didn’t really do much with film for another seven years when he crossed over into the mainstream with The Unseen. At least, he wasn’t in the director’s chair or writing scripts. He did work as an assistant on 1975’s The Man in the Glass Booth and a 1977 TV movie for Gene Roddenberry’s Spectre.

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The Burning (1981)

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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My Bloody Valentine (1981)

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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Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

For the 400th time, welcome to B-Movie Enema, and, most importantly, allow me to extend to my Enemaniacs a very happy Halloween!

What better way to spend the greatest of all holidays, and this milestone review, than with that murderous monster Michael Myers? Well, you might want to table some of that excitement. That’s because it’s time to take a look at one of the most blasted entries in the entirety of the Halloween franchise. Yeah, we’re cursed, my dear readers. Let’s discuss 1995’s Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.

Alright, check it out… Let’s go back to September 29, 1995, the day the sixth Michael Myers epic hit theater screens. I was 18 years old and a high school graduate. Sure, you might think I should have been a freshman in college, but, well… You don’t realize how absolutely listless and lazy I was (and still am). I didn’t go to college right after high school, pffft. Hell, when I did go to college the following year, I only stuck around for, like, two years.

What was I talking about? Oh, yeah Halloween 6. I didn’t have that interesting story about that September night way back in my youthful days of 1995. But I was excited to see the new movie. I like Mikey Myers. I expected this sixth entry long before 1995. Six years had passed since the previous film’s release and that one ended on a cliffhanger. I had lots of questions about whether or not that would actually be picked up and continued with the Man in Black and Michael Myers being part of some sort of organized thing, hence the tattoo of the Thorn rune symbols on those two characters’ wrists.

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Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)

Happy Halloween Weekend, my dearest of Enemaniacs!

If you’ve been around here for a while, you know that October is a big deal with B-Movie Enema. It was in October 2014 that the blog was started. When the blog returned in 2016, I always tried to have some sort of theme (be it loose or a tight theme) each October. I’ve also treated Halloween itself as a kind of big deal. In fact, that SERIES has been visited and revisited a few times over. It started in 2016 when I covered the absolute worst of the series. Then, in 2017, I talked about the one that gets the most misunderstood hatred in the series.

After 2017, I took it kind of easy on the franchise, but last year, I returned to the series with the movie that brought ol’ Mikey Myers back to the franchise after that misunderstood entry. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers wasn’t just a return to the series after six years of the franchise being completely left in the past, but it also kicked off a trilogy of sorts. Today, we follow that up with that movie’s direct sequel and the middle chapter of this sort-of trilogy with Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.

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Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991)

Spooky season continues at B-Movie Enema!

Welcome to this week’s review. Last week, I checked Leatherface off the list of horror icons that I haven’t checked in with for a long time. This week, it’s Freddy Krueger. Now, here’s what I think is likely a hot take. I don’t actually care much for the Elm Street franchise. Of all the slashers and serial killers, Freddy ranks pretty dang low. I know, I know… There are lots of Freddy stans out there.

I actually get it. The first film in the series, A Nightmare on Elm Street, is really the best slasher film of the 80s. It’s well-written and very well-acted. The first sequel is interesting but not truly a great movie. It’s great camp, so that puts it in another category. The third film is one of the best horror sequels of all time. In 1994, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare is a very good new take on the series. I don’t care much for the other sequels much at all. So when it comes to the series itself, the first three films, to me, are pretty watchable. The last one is a completely different type of movie and should be kept separate from the other six. I never saw the remake. I didn’t care to. I already covered the fifth film in the franchise when things were truly and fully off the rails with Freddy’s over-the-top jokey personality.

And then there’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.

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Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995)

Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema review.

We’re celebrating Halloween this month with the traditional horror movie marathon each Friday. This year, I decided to return to some series that I had covered in the past. Now, with it being Friday the 13th today, you probably expected to see this movie covered for the spooky day in the spooky month. Yeah, Leatherface… He’s the Friday the 13th guy, right?

You know I’m just yanking your crank. Honestly, there’s not another Friday the 13th movie that I really want to cover on the blog. So, instead, I opted to go back to a series I haven’t covered in a long time and discuss Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. The only other time I looked at a movie starring the leatheriest of faces was way back in October 2017 when I reviewed The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.

This is a weird series. At least for me, it is. I love the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There’s a grittiness to it that makes you feel uncomfortable from the start. It’s grainy. It’s sweaty. It looks and feels like you’re right there with the characters. Then, there’s the scene where Marilyn Burns is captured where she is screaming her head off. It’s a moment that actually affects me on a physical level. I’ve been made queasy by that scene on more than one occasion. It’s effective as hell, and one of the most effective scenes in film history to me.

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