We’re getting back to some good old blaxploitation with this week’s B-Movie Enema. Penitentiary was written, produced, and directed by Jamaa Fanaka.
Fanaka was part of the L.A. Rebellion from the late 60s and into the late 80s. This was a movement of black filmmakers whose whole intent was to make films that offered an alternative to what most deemed “classical” Hollywood films. This was mostly influenced by Latin American and Italian cinema, but also from an emerging African cinema.
You see, the 1960s was a particularly turbulent time. After a series of events like the Civil Rights Act, Affirmative Action, and the Watts Riots, society shifted and evolved very quickly. Affirmative Action allowed for many more black students to attend colleges – and particularly at UCLA which got urged to create an ethnographic studies program to allow black filmmakers to tell more of their story and stories that would expose their struggles. Continue reading “Penitentiary (1979)”
Last week, I checked in on site favorite Norman J. Warren. This week, it’s time to check in with another favorite of the site, 
It’s a new B-Movie Enema and, this time, Don’t Answer the Phone!
I like to think of this subgenre, particularly in the 1980s, an American tradition. Certainly it was nothing new to either the United States or other countries before the decade or even to this very day, but there was something pretty special about the American landscape of both horror and comedy in the 1980s. It was the decade of slashers and Porky’s ripoffs. But, maybe more important, it all falls back onto an idea I’ve discussed numerous times before – you had to stock video store shelves and late night cable TV time slots.
It’s another week here at B-Movie Enema and I think I worried I went too long before covering another Vinegar Syndrome release.
Happy Bloody New Year (a few days late), my Enemaniacs!
Ah… Religion, iconography, and moral panic. Welcome back to B-Movie Enema all you nutty, repressed, goofballs!
Every now and then a movie suddenly finds its audience. Take The Rocky Horror Picture Show, for example. Sure, it didn’t find that audience immediately, but within a couple years of release, the mega fans were showing up at midnight showings in costume and so forth. With the advent of home video and the explosion of home entertainment via cable and a video rental store in almost every strip mall as well as even grocery stores, movies that didn’t do so well in theaters suddenly had a second life.