April 28: Alan Smithee — IMDB has 115 movies credited to the Alan Smithee pseudonym, which was created by the Directors Guild of America for use when a director doesn’t want their name on a movie.

This movie’s Alan Smithee is the combination of Terry Windsor, who had only directed Party Party when this was made, and his replacement Paul Aaron, who was unhappy with the final movie. Arron also wrote The Octagon and directed A Force of One, which doesn’t prepare one for comedy.

Morgan Stewart (Jon Cryer) is the son of Republican Senator Tom Stewart (Nicholas Pryor) and has spent most of his childhood at a boarding school while his mother Nancy (Lynn Redgrave) manages the family life, all with a plan of increasing the elder Stewart’s chance to be President. Yet when the Senatorial race gets hard, the idea of a son looks good in the media, so Morgan comes back home.

Morgan is really into horror movies, wearing a shirt for The Undead and putting posters for House of Wax, Dial M for Murder, The Mole People and Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Curse of Frankenstein, Attack of the Puppet People, Psycho and Tales of Terror up in his room. I mean, he even has a Zombie poster, a Day of the Dead shirt and goes to the mall to meet George Romero. We never see George’s face, he seems too small and he doesn’t have on a giant fishing vest, so I think it’s not him.

Seeing how Tom’s campaign manager is played by Paul Gleason, you know that something bad is going to happen. It’s pretty rote, but I mean, what did you expect?

But Morgan seems pretty cool. He has a Tobe Hooper-signed chainsaw, right? I was kind of hoping he’d use it on his mother after she takes down and tosses all his amazing posters. But man, even in today’s world where women go to horror conventions — I’m married to a lovely one! — the fact that Morgan meets Emily (Viveka Davis) while waiting to get The Zombies That Ate Pittsburgh: The Films of George A. Romero signed seems a bit like a science fiction film.