Tag: thriller

The Candy Snatchers (1973)

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Welcome to the 299th B-Movie Enema article!

This week, we have something that isn’t too common a thing around these parts – a movie loosely based on a real life event. The Candy Snatchers is a 1973 exploitation cult classic about a trio of kidnappers who snag a girl and ultimately bury her alive while waiting for their ransom to be paid. We’ll go into more about the actual movie in just a moment. First, I want to talk about the real world connection this movie has.

In 1968, college student Barbara Mackle was sick during the 1968 flu pandemic at a motel in Georgia waiting for her mother to pick her up so she could care for her at the family home in Florida. Someone knocked on the door of the motel wearing a policeman’s cap. This man claimed her boyfriend (and later husband), was in a terrible car accident and was injured. Mackle let the “officer” in, but it was actually Gary Krist and accomplice Ruth Eisemann-Schier (posing as a man). The couple kidnapped Mackle and buried her in a ventilated box outside Duluth, Georgia while they attempted to collect ransom. After three days of being buried alive, Mackle was recovered after Krist left a tip with vague directions on how to find her. Aside from pretty bad dehydration, Mackle was alive and went on to show no other ill effects of being kidnapped. Krist and Eisemann-Shier were both arrested later, Esimann-Schier was deported to her native Honduras after spending 4 years in prison and Krist spent the next 40+ years in and out of prison.

While there is much more to learn about the Barbara Mackle kidnapping, one more item of note, Ruth Eisemann-Schier was the first woman to ever appear on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list.

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Olivia (1983)

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Last week, we talked about an Italian actor-turned-director’s film, this week, we have a German actor who turned into a rather notable director.

1983’s Olivia comes to us from Ulli Lommel. Lommel was an actor in the 60s. In fact, one of his earliest films was one of Russ Meyer’s – Fanny Hill. But he would work many times over with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who was a particularly controversial filmmaker himself. Fassbinder made a lot of avant garde films and passed away young due to a drug overdose. However, Lommel produced a 1970 movie of Fassbinder’s called Whity a surreal western about a mixed race servant who kills the family he works for and runs away with his prostitute lover. Whity won many awards in the German equivalent of the Oscars.

By the end of the 70s, Lommel moved to America to make American movies permanently. By 1980, he jumped into the slasher craze with The Boogeyman. While the reviews were mixed, and there were many comparisons made to John Carpenter’s Halloween, the movie was a huge success. It was banned in the United Kingdom as a Video Nasty, and was later re-evaluated as a movie that seems to utilize a lot of Lommel’s own fears he had as a child. Boogeyman II was released a few years later. Like the infamous Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2, the sequel uses many flashbacks to the first to help fill its runtime. Boogeyman II is pretty much unilaterally disliked.

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Turkey Shoot (1982)

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It’s been a little while since I covered anything from the Ozploitation era of Australian filmmaking. I think it’s the perfect time to check back in with our friends Down Under! This is one that I questioned whether or not it fits properly on B-Movie Enema. It’s not so much because it seemed like a crazy dystopian “Most Dangerous Game” sort of scenario. Mostly it’s because of this movie featuring Olivia Hussey, an actress that I’d say has a considerable amount of standing in the world of acting in the 70s and 80s.

When I do my research for these movies to see what I can do to punch up the start of one of these articles, I’m usually curious what the reviews were. That’s when I realized Brian Trenchard-Smith’s Turkey Shoot would not disappoint. I think it might be best to talk about Trenchard-Smith first.

He is an English-Australian director, producer, writer, etc. that has a filmography that could cover a buttload of B-Movie Enema articles for months. He was a producer on a past movie featured here that came out the same year as Turkey Shoot – Blood Tide. He did Dead End Drive-In, BMX Bandits (with a very young Nicole Kidman), Night of the Demons 2 (a sequel to a favorite Halloween movie of mine), and even two Leprechaun movies – Leprechaun 3 and Leprechaun 4: In Space. These are all things I know a thing or two about. In fact, I have BMX Bandits on my shelf. I may have to look into scheduling that for an article.

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The Hot Nights of Linda (1975)

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It’s still Lina Romay Month here at B-Movie Enema and this week, it is time for to put away the Marquis de Sade and all the really weirdo sex stuff for something that has a bit more in the way of lesbianism (ooh!), murder (okay, you have my attention)… incest (uh oh)… and sadism.

Goddamn it.

Well, I did mention previously that Jess Franco is a bit of a weird dude. I don’t know if he was more interested in mixing sex into these various other ideas, up to and including stuff by Marquis de Sade, or if he was truly a sex pervert. Either way, his filmography has all sorts of erotic thrillers and fairly depraved shit from the 70s through the 90s. This week’s featured movie, The Hot Nights of Linda, is no different.

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Huntress: Spirit of the Night (1995)

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Okay, so here we are in the third week of Full Moon Fever II: Torchlight Diaries and we’re done with the space babes for the month, but we’re not done with another reference I’ve been making all month long.

This week, I’m gonna take a look at Huntress: Spirit of the Night from 1995. This is about a family curse, some aristocratic family, and it appears to be about some mood. Now, that said, it’s still a mid 90s erotic thriller from Full Moon, so you can bet your ass that we’re gonna get a lot of sexy with that heaving mounds of mood. Oh yeah… That reference I said I would be making…

The film is directed by Mark Manos. Now, early on in his career he directed some episodes of Freddy’s Nightmares. In fact, he’s done a shitload of TV shows even as recently as the new MacGyver show and Interrogation. So that’s not for nuthin’. He did a handful of Full Moon’s horror movies, including their pseudo-superhero film Dark Angel: The Ascent, which I covered last fall. So he was a bit of Full Moon bullpen kind of guy.

But what else did he do?

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