EDITOR’S NOTE: Joy of Sex was on USA Up All Night on June 17, 1994; February 11 and October 27, 1995 and February 17 and April 12, 1996.

Did everybody’s parents have a copy of Dr. Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex? What a frightening book that was, what with its Chris Foss (Flash Gordon, Guardians of the Galaxy, Jodorowsky’s Dune) illustrations of incredibly hairy flower children engaging in all manner of marital congress.

Paramount Pictures thought that with the name of the book, they’d have a big movie, too. They spent all kinds of money to get the right and then paid Charles Grodin — who was told the movie could be about anything — to write the script. So he wrote a script about writing the script. That movie was eventually made as Movers & Shakers.

Next, John Hughes was to write a script that Penny Marshall would have directed and John Belushi would have starred in, but then Belushi died. That would have been a National Lampoon movie, and the studio tried to keep their name on the film before the publisher, Matty Simmons, made a huge deal of the Lampoon having nothing to do with the film.

Finally, Paramount was running out of time, with just four months left on its option. They went to TV producer Frank Konigsberg, who said, “They knew that in television you do things quickly. We threw together a script. They wanted me to use director Martha Coolidge, who’d just made Valley Girl. It was a job. We just had to get it done. I didn’t think it was a successful movie at all. It was awful. Martha hated it. I hated it.”

As for Coolidge, she would say, “Paramount insisted on topless girls running down the hall because they thought the formula demanded it, and it was totally gratuitous. I hated putting them in for no reason and argued against it. But when the film was previewed, the audience, particularly young women and girls, hated the nudity, so Paramount then asked me to cut as much of it out as I could!”

She described that experience as miserable, telling her official site, “We were under constant pressure and scrutiny to do the impossible, we had eight days of prep, 20 days to shoot, and my A.D. quit because he was so angry.”

By the end, she applied for an Alan Smithee credit for her directing. However, her name stayed on. She’d follow it up with Real Genius, which I hope was a more rewarding experience (It was — despite turning it down twice, once it was rewritten, she came around to the film and really got into it after producer Brian Grazer told her, “Making a movie should be fun!” She said that he ended up being “supportive, great to be around and knowledgeable about comedy and film production.”).

As for the movie, it’s all about high school senior Leslie Hindenberg (Judy from Revenge of the Nerds, who left acting to practice Zen Buddhism), who gets a mole checked and learns she only has six months to live. That leaves her with one goal in life: to lose her virginity.

There’s a good cast with Cameron Dye (Valley Girl, Out of the Dark) as the love interest and Christopher Lloyd as Leslie’s gym teacher dad, plus Colleen Camp, Ernie Hudson, Darren Dalton and Canadian scream queen Lisa Langlois (Happy Birthday to Me, Deadly Eyes).

But otherwise, if you were expecting something better, this isn’t it. I don’t blame Coolidge for this film’s failure.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Barbarella was on USA Up All Night on January 23 and October 9, 1993 and November 19, 1994.

Shot directly after Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik, this Roger Vadim-directed movie is based on the comic book of the same name by Jean-Claude Forest. The film stars Vadim’s then-wife Jane Fonda as Barbarella, a United Earth agent sent to find scientist Durand Durand, who has created a weapon that could destroy humanity.

Vadim was hired to direct this film after producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the rights. This led to Vadim looking to cast several actresses in the title role, including Virna Lisi, Brigitte Bardot (that’s who the character was originally based on) and Sophia Loren before ending up picking his wife.

In case you’re wondering why this movie is such a mess, Charles B. Griffith was the last writer to work on it, saying that he had done uncredited work on the script after fifteen other writers — including Terry Southern — worked on the movie.

This film is packed with fashion, amazing sets — you can credit Bava’s film for some of that, and great characters, like John Phillip Law (who used the break in shooting to be in the aforementioned Danger: Diabolik) as Pygar the angel, Anita Pallenberg (Performance) as the Black Queen, Milo O’Shea as Durand-Durand, Marcel Marceau in a rare speaking role as Professor Ping, David Hemmings (Deep Red) as Dildano and even cameos from Fabio Testi and Antonio Sabato (who was originally to play the role that Hemmings ended up doing).

So yeah. This is a gorgeous film that makes no sense whatsoever. Is that such a bad thing? I first watched this as a child on HBO and I think when the part came in which the birds tear apart Barbarella’s clothes, my parents decided that it was time for me to go to bed. I was hooked on movies that were seen as being wrong for me to watch and Italian-shot films.

A sequel was planned with producer Robert Evans called Barbarella Goes Down, but it never happened. Nor did a 1990 remake, a Robert Rodriguez idea or a potential project with Nicolas Winding Refn, who moved on to other projects, saying, “…certain things are better left untouched. You don’t need to remake everything.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jocks was on USA Up All Night on November 3 and 4, 1989; April 7 and November 17 and 24, 1990; June 8 and October 4 and 19, 1991; April 4, May 22, September 12 and October 9, 1992; April 19 and August 3, 1996 and April 4, 1997. Someone at USA liked this movie or maybe they just owned it.

Yes, there are two movies named Jocks. There’s this one — a ripoff of Revenge of the Nerds down to even having Donald Gibb in the cast — and the Italian disco movie. Guess which one I would have rather watched?

Well, anyway, Richard Roundtree is the coach of the wackiest tennis team you’ve ever seen, led by The Kid (Scott Strader, in his last movie), who is the kind of person who would be the villain in any other teen movie. The real star of the team is Jeff (Perry Lang, who became a director).

The team is made up of all manner of madcap characters — can you guess how many Porky’s and Police Academy films and their rip-offs I’ve watched — like Chito (Trinidad Silva), whose entire character is that he’s Mexican and the aforementioned Gibb, who plays Ripper, who is really just Ogre. That said, I don’t think anyone expects Gibb to do anything other than to show up in a sleeveless shirt with iron-on letters and scream unintelligible nonsense at the screen before burping and farting.

Somehow, this maelstrom of a movie catches so many talented people in its wake, like Mariska Hargitay in her third role (she was in Ghoulies and Welcome to 18 before this, but who’s counting?), character actor R.G. Armstrong, Stoney Jackson (that’s right, Phones from Roller Boogie), Tom Shadyac (the director of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), Katherine Kelly Lang (Evilspeak) and perhaps most improbably, Christopher Lee. Yes, Sir Christopher Lee as a college dean.

Director Steve Carver also made the American parts of The Arena, as well as Big Bad Mama, An Eye for an Eye and Lone Wolf McQuaid. Roundtree, Armstrong and Lee all did this movie as a favor for him, which is nice, but man, that’s asking so much.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Blade Master was on USA Up All Night on June 15, 1989 and March 3, 1990.

Joe D’Amato wanted to make a prehistoric movie like Quest for Fire called Adamo ed Eva that read a lot like 1983’s Adam and Eve vs. The Cannibals. However, once he called in Miles O’Keefe to appear in the film, the actor said he couldn’t be in it for moral and religious reasons. One wonders why he was able to work with Joe D’Amato, a guy who made some of the scummiest films around.

Born Aristide Massaccesi, this man of many names had his paws in everything from being a camera operator on Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World to cinematography on What Have You Done to Solange? before directing his own films like Death Smiles on a Murderer, Beyond the Darkness, Antropophagus, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Endgame, and so many more. He also worked with porn stars like Rocco Siffredi on Tarzan X – Shame of Jane before being an early innovator of porn-based parodies/cover versions of other works of art, such as Shakespeare porn (Othello 2000), mythology (Hercules – A Sex Adventure), famous icons (Scarface, Amadeus) and, of course, plenty of looks into the deviance of the Roman Empire.

This time around, Aristide Massaccesi is known as David Hills, for those keeping score.

Akronos has found the Geometric Nucleus and is keeping its secret safe when Zor (Ariel from Jubilee) and his men attack the castle. The old king begs his daughter, Mila (Lisa Foster, who starred in the Cinemax classic Fanny Hill and later became a special effects artist and video game developer), to find his student, Ator (O’Keefe).

Mila gets shot with an arrow pretty much right away, but Ator knows how to use palm leaves and dry ice to heal any wound, a scene which nearly made me fall off my couch in fits of giggles. Soon, she joins Ator and Thong as they battle their way back to the castle, dealing with cannibals and snake gods.

Somehow, Ator also knows how to make a modern hang glider and bombs, which he uses to destroy Zor’s army. After they battle, Ator even wants Zor to live, because he’s a progressive barbarian hero, but the bad guy tries to kill him. Luckily, Thong takes him out.

After all that, Akronos gives the Geometric Nucleus to Ator, who also pulls that old chestnut out that his life is too dangerous to share with her. He takes the Nucleus to a distant land and sets off a nuke.

Yes, I just wrote that. Because I just watched that.

If you want to see this with riffing, it’s called The Cave Dwellers in its Mystery Science Theater 3000 form. But man, a movie like this doesn’t really even need people talking over it. It was shot without a script to compete with Conan the Destroyer. How awesome is that?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Great Alligator was on USA Up All Night on April 13, 1990.

Sergio Martino directed some of my favorite films of all time, such as The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, All the Colors of the Dark, 2019: After the Fall of New York, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key as well other completely out there films like Hands of Steel, Torso, American Tiger, The Mountain of the Cannibal God and The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail. Throw in a script co-written by one of my favorite Italian scuzzfest actors and directors, George Eastman, and you have the recipe for a movie that should blow my mind.

The Great Alligator should be, well, great. And there are moments where it feels like it’s going to be, as it attempts to be a mash-up of Jaws and Cannibal Holocaust, which again, seems like a great idea. Throw in the gorgeous Barbara Bach before she married Ringo Starr, Claudio Cassinelli (Murder Rock) and Mel Ferrer — who went from the A-list and marrying Audrey Hepburn to appearing in some of the most crazed films, like The Visitor, Nightmare City and Eaten Alive! to name but three — and you have a cast ready to make it happen. And the central theme of the movie — tourists anger the god of a resort island who then becomes a giant alligator and eats them all — is great, too.

Turns out that Kuma, that river god, doesn’t like how Mel Ferrer runs Paradise House and wants none of his native people to work with the whites any longer. The natives then wipe out anyone that works there, no matter where they come from, and Cassinelli and Bach must climb the waterfall that Stacy Keach fell off of in The Mountain of the Cannibal God to find the only person who may be able to save them, Prophet Jameson (Dr. Menard from Zombi 2).

That said, once the face-painted natives and a giant alligator attack everyone, burning down Paradise House and menacing screaming tourists, who survives and what will be left of them is up for grabs. Look for appearances by Bobby Rhodes (the pimp from Demons), Romano Puppo (Trash’s father from Escape from the Bronx) and Sylvia Collatina (Mae Freudenstein, the ghost girl of The House by the Cemetery)!

The huge body count, numerous alligator attacks and attempts to be something more than a Spielberg clone — aside from the way the attacks are filmed and Ferrer keeping everything a secret so tourists keep coming — make this a movie I enjoyed on some level. But much like Martino’s post-giallo efforts, I keep wishing he’d go from simply good to flat-out amazing. The ideas are there. The execution, however, is not.