Tag: thriller

Puzzle (1974)

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Welcome back to another review here at B-Movie Enema. It’s great to have you here. For real. I mean it. I am glad you’re here.

Anyway, let’s talk about murder!

Italian giallo is what’s on tap for this week’s movie. What exactly the first giallo is is somewhat debatable. Though I think most critics would name 1963’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much by Mario Bava as the first. That film starred John Saxon. Bava followed that up with 1964’s Blood and Black Lace starring none other than Cameron motherfuckin’ Mitchell! Throughout the 60s, gialli remained a little under the radar until the 70s when the genre would kick into hyperdrive. A few weeks back, I talked about Umberto Lenzi a little bit as he co-wrote Primal Rage. This week, we have another key Italian filmmaker to talk about.

1974’s Puzzle, the movie we’ll be figuring out this week, is directed by Duccio Tessari. Tessari’s career began as a writer. Starting around 1958, Tessari worked quite a bit as a writer for several years. He wrote some Hercules films, other peplum, and, of course, spaghetti westerns. In fact, it was one of his 1964 scripts that would kick off the massive popularity of those Italian western films. Yeah, Tessari wrote A Fistful of Dollars.

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The Unseen (1980)

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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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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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Madame Web (2024)

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Happy Thanksgiving Weekend, Enemaniacs!

And oh boy does B-Movie Enema have a feast for you this week. Yeah… Let’s hop into our little real-world time machine and allow me to take us back to Valentine’s Day 2024. Just, what, nine months ago? Oh god… Is this the baby that was conceived by my slutty indulgence in taking in a double feature at the AMC Indianapolis 17? No wonder my tummy got bigger and this week’s review feels like I’m giving birth to a butt baby. I AM giving birth to a butt baby!

Where was I? This review is already fucking off the rails. Anyway, back then, I took myself on a double feature date to the theater and left disappointed, but in different ways. This week’s review is focused on the first of the two movies I watched because the Bob Marley movie was just kinda bland and not at all like the movie being discussed today… Madame Web.

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And Soon the Darkness (1970)

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Welcome to another installment of B-Movie Enema and the continuation of this month’s women-in-peril theme.

The first week we saw an unbelievable terror for a pair of young women in New York. Last week, we celebrated 450 reviews on B-Movie Enema with a horrific and brutal attack on a New York woman in Connecticut. This week, we go trans-Atlantic to Europe where we follow a pair of ladies from Nottingham, England taking in a cycling holiday in rural France in Robert Fuest’s And Soon the Darkness.

I’m surprisingly well-acquainted with Mr. Fuest’s films. Some of his films I know well because I’ve seen them. Others I know because they are a sequel to a movie or TV show I’m familiar with. Another I’m aware of because it was a favorite of a family member starring someone I’m exceptionally familiar with.

Let’s start with the ones I’ve seen of his. In 1971, one year after the release of this film (and another I’ll be mentioning momentarily), he directed the Vincent Price classic The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Another year later, he directed the sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Then, in 1975, he directed William Shatner and Ernest Borgnine in the infamous film that had Anton LeVay himself as an adviser, The Devil’s Rain. Arguably, these are the films Fuest is best known for making.

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I Spit on Your Grave (1978)

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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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A Brilliant Disguise (1994)

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Ah… the 90s. Man, what a decade, right? Fuckin’ grunge music. Fuckin’ video stores. Fuckin’ Arnold Schwarzenegger is kicking ass all over the place. Cheers was followed by Seinfeld. I attended and graduated high school in the first half of that decade where it’s totally fair I peaked in life. I dunno… I’m sure there were other cool things going on.

One other thing that happened in the 90s was this movie that’s about to get the ol’ review treatment here at B-Movie Enema. 1994’s A Brilliant Disguise was a movie I vividly remember seeing in my days as a video store clerk in the mid to late 90s. I think it’s stark white cover with our lead character Michelle’s sunglasses reflecting some stuff, her black scarf, and her ruby red lips that were very easy to stand out on a shelf. It is certainly a movie that seems to be coming in the wake of the breakout 1992 smash hit Basic Instinct.

Erotic thrillers have been around for a bit, definitely if you think about movies like Body Heat, Body Double, Dressed to Kill, Fatal Attraction, and more. The genre, and the style that often spiced things up, were kind of the mature genre that titillated and frightened married couples who didn’t get into slashers but definitely liked looking at someone like Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas and feeling their naughty bits tremble on date night before ultimately going home and falling asleep while trying to pull out the sexy lingerie that’s collected dust for the past several years. But with Basic Instinct, the genre was back, it was a big deal, and a whole bunch of movies started immediately trying to get in on the piles of cash these sexy little murder tales could bring from cable (especially on late-night Cinemax and Showtime), video, and ticket sales. If there is something that I can say is the closest thing to “exploitation” in the 90s, it would be these erotic thrillers.

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