Tag: thriller

Girly (a.k.a Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly, 1970)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema, my lovelies!

This week, we have a film from British cinematographer and director Freddie Francis – Girly. Now, this one was more commonly known as Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly in the United Kingdom. We’ll come back around to the utterly bizarre plot of Girly in a bit. First, we should talk about Freddie Francis.

Francis is best known for his work with Hammer Film Productions on films like The Evil of Frankenstein and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and from Hammer rival Amicus Productions on The Deadly Bees and Tales from the Crypt. But, in truth, Francis was a very keen cinematographer. He twice won Oscars for 1960’s Sons and Lovers and 1989’s Glory. Beyond those films, he has a ton of other significant films he shot like 1980’s The Elephant Man directed by David Lynch, Karel Reisz’s 1981 film The French Lieutenant’s Woman starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, and Martin Scorsese’s creepy as hell 1991 remake Cape Fear.

He also shot Lynch’s 1984 version of Dune, so… you know… they can’t all be winners.

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Tomcats (1977)

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Welcome back to B-Movie Enema.

I suppose I should give a little bit of a content warning to this review as our feature, Tomcats, is one of those 70s exploitation flicks that deals with some pretty gross stuff. You’ve got a situation where a group of ne’er-do-wells, okay, I guess I can call them “thugs”… Anyway, you’ve got this group of nogoodniks who gang-rape and kill young ladies. They get off on a technicality so it leads to one of the victims’ brothers deciding to go on a good old fashioned revenge tear to get the justice he was robbed.

So, yeah, content warning on this episode. These are unsavory situations to be sure. I do want to say that this does feel a little like a mix of movies we’ve seen before like Steel and Lace and the all-time classic revenge film I Spit on Your Grave. If I’m being fair, I’ve long wanted to do I Spit on Your Grave, but considering how dark that second act gets, I’ve yet to really go for it. So, instead, we’re giving Tomcats a try.

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Savage Streets (1984)

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This one is a long time coming…

Welcome to this week’s B-Movie Enema. When I say this was a long time coming it’s because I’ve known of this movie for a long time, had a copy of it, and have always wanted to find some way to talk about it because it exists in a peculiar time of exploitation in the movies – the 1980s. In addition to that, it also has some not insignificant people in the cast. This week, I’m going to be digging into the Danny Steinmann film Savage Streets starring Linda Blair.

I’ve been looking for a way to cover this movie somehow. I got it with the possibility of it being featured either here at B-Movie Enema or as part of a theme month of movies with the word “Savage” in the title over at Film Seizure. However, considering I have an extensive backlog of movies to feature here, I decided I needed to pull the trigger and clear this one off the list. By the way, A LOT of next year is going to be clearing backlog, but I digress. Let’s start looking at the people involved with this movie, beginning with director Danny Steinmann.

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Mommy (1995)

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Happy Mother’s Day weekend, Enemaniacs.

It’s not too often that I actually do themed articles based on calendar dates. Sure, I try to do something horror related for Friday the 13th (keep your eyes peeled for that for next week, my lovelies). I try to be mindful of Christmas and New Year’s, and I definitely ALWAYS do something related to Halloween and October as a whole usually being focused on horror. When it comes to Fourth of July or St. Patty’s Day or Arbor Day… Well, I kind of drop the ball.

So, with this week’s article, this is the very first time I’m doing something Mother’s Day related with the 1995 thriller Mommy!

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Circle of Power (aka Brainwash, 1981)

Published on by Geoff Arbuckle4 Comments

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema. This week, I’m going to talk about that thing we all love to do in our free time – training retreats! Woot woot! How exciting! Yaaaaayyyy – being forced to give up a perfectly good weekend to be bored out of our minds at a seminar!

Yeah, this movie goes by a few names, but the most common are either the original title, Brainwash, or Circle of Power. It also had the names Mystique and The Naked Weekend. This was based on a narrative nonfiction book called The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled. That book was written by Gene Church and Conrad D. Carnes and was published in 1972. Basically, it’s about the practices that went on during a four-day training weekend for executives run that involved folks from companies run by one William Penn Patrick. More on that later.

After this movie came out, the writers did a follow up called Brainwash – likely in conjunction with the film’s title. The appeal was that there was this brand new phenomenon called “encounter group training” that began to crop up in the 60s and 70s. This could help people with various business skills or interpersonal communication or even with relationships. Oftentimes, these were kind of viewed as someone, who was seen as something of a guru, trying to train others to think and react the same way to situations. In a lot of ways, this not only evolved for business practices into the 80s but, for personal stuff, think of your Tony Robbinses or other self-help folks who ran seminars.

The book helped expose some practices. This movie came out during a huge explosion of controversy that dropped at a particular event. These things will be covered here in just a moment, but let’s start by talking about our star of the movie – the recently departed Yvette Mimieux.

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