EDITOR’S NOTE: Almost Hollywood was on USA Up All Night on February 9, 1996.

After this movie, Crown International Pictures took nine years off. I will tell you that that is not because this is a good movie and they felt they’d done all they could do. Quite the opposite. However, in my endless quest to watch every single film they ever released, as well as my slavish addiction to Mill Creek box sets (and now revising it for this month of USA Up All Night), I find myself here, struggling to watch this supposed satire on Hollywood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNqh7Rj0Hmg

This is all about a producer of exploitation and sex videos who suddenly is accused of killing one of his star’s boyfriends and his mistress. It’s a wacky sendup of what I can only assume it was like to make movies in 1994.

I mean, this is a movie that pokes fun at the erotic thriller genre, with the character Abdu clearly an analog of Ashok Amritraj, Menaham Golan and Yorum Globus, played by Greg Rhodes from Ghosthouse and Deadly Manor as a filmmaker who is pretty much making post-porn Gregory Dark movies. Except this makes me wistful for Gregory Dark movies.

In a meta move, India Allen, who was Playboy Playmate of the Year in 1988, as well as ian actress in movies like Silk Degrees and Wild Cactus, plays herself.

Michael Weaver, who wrote and directed this, also shot Dark Eyes and The Sender. He also directed two segments in the movie Night Terror before heading off to do TV work, working as the DP on Pushing Daisies and directing episodes of Californication and Good Girls.

I’ll do anything for Crown International and Mill Creek (and USA Up All Night), I guess. Even this.