EDITOR’S NOTE: The Van aired on USA Up All Night on July 7 and 8 and November 25, 1989; June 15, 1990 and October 4, 1991.

The song in this movie, “Chevy Van” by Sammy Johns*, is a lie, because the protagonist of The Van, Bobby (Stuart Goetz), drives a 1976 Dodge B200 Tradesman customized by George Barris.

As for me, I grew up with two Ford Custom vans, one a basic panel van that I used to be a landscaper and the other a fully customized one with tables and chairs and shag carpeting. Yeah! 9 miles to the gallon!

Crown International Pictures took what worked for American-International Pictures and their beach party movies and added sex and drugs. This movie comes from the days before AIDS, before women truly being characters with agency in movies (well, not all the time) and even before Porky’s.

What it does have is Danny DeVito as Bobby’s friend Andy. And such well-known vans that two of the automobiles from this movie, Straight Arrow and Van Killer, were released as toy cars.

Bobby wants Sally (Connie Hoffman) but she’s already dating tough guy Dugan (Steve Oliver). So he tries to get with Tina (Deborah White), who is way too good for him, before racing Dugan and rolling his van. He survives and moves on vanless.

Director Sam Grossman only directed this film. Writer Robert J. Rosenthal also wrote The Pom Pom Girls, Malibu Beach and Zapped! while Celia Susan Cotelo was also a writer on Malibu Beach.

If you liked this, I can also recommend Van Nuys Blvd. and, of course, Supervan.

*Nine other songs by the artist are in this: “Early Morning Love,” “Jenny,” “Rag Doll,” “Hang My Head and Moan, “Country Lady,” “You’re So Sweet,” “Peas in a Pod,” “Bless My Soul” and “Hey, Mr. Dreamer.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Swinging Cheerleaders aired on USA Up All Night on November 10 and 11, 1989; May 4 and October 27, 1990 and April 11, 1991.

The fact that a movie called The Swinging Cheerleaders (AKA Locker Room Girls and H.O.T.S. II) is so good rests on the fortune that this was co-written and directed by Jack Hill. It’s a movie that promises cheerleaders and sex. Sure, it delivers that. It also gives you a crime story, a tale of journalism and a wife so enraged by her husband’s infidelity that the one scene she shows up for is volcanic, ending with her screaming that she plans on carving her name into a girl’s anatomy.

Kate (Jo Johnston in her one-and-done role) is writing an article for the college newspaper about how cheerleading demeans women, so she joins the squad. Yet she soon finds herself bonding with the girls.

There’s Mary Ann (Colleen Camp), who wants her boyfriend Buck to stop sleeping around and marry her. Lisa (Rosanne Katon) is the one having an affair with a married professor. And Andrea (Rainbeaux Smith!) just can’t go all the way.

But there are bigger problems. All of the adults are betting on the football games, including the dean, the coach and Mary Ann’s dad, a local businessman. They’re willing to do anything it takes to keep their scam going, too.

Strangely enough, when this movie and The Student Body played a Dallas drive-in, Randall Adams and David Harris were in attendance and used the film as an alibi when they were investigated in the murder of Dallas police officer Robert W. Wood. When Adams said that he had to leave as he didn’t feel comfortable with the content, it led to his conviction. You can learn more in the documentary The Thin Blue Line.

I saw someone on Letterboxd say that “If Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was about college cheerleading, this would be that movie.” What a great way to explain this.

It’s totally not the teen sex romp you think it is, yet it has a scene where multiple people in a row all punch a security guard in the face, which should be a moment in every film.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Pretty Smart aired on USA Up All Night on March 25, 1989; February 9 and 10 and September 21, 1990 and March 30, 1991.

Give director Dimitri Logothetis some credit. Not only did he make this movie, but he also directed Slaughterhouse Rock and Kickboxer: Retaliation.

Daphne “Zigs” Ziegler (Tricia Leigh Fisher,* Stick, C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D) has defeated every way that her parents try to tame her. As she works in a bank, a criminal comes in and tries to get her to give up all the cash. She responds by jumping on top of the counter and stripping off her goth outfit, which is one way to get out of getting shot by a bank robbery.

Her parents decide to send ZIgs and her fraternal twin sister Jennifer (Lisa Lörient) to Greece’s most elite boarding school, Ogilvy Academy. Soon, they find themselves in two different social groups, as Daphne becomes one of the Subs — along with Zero (Patricia Arquette), Yuko (Kimberly B. Delfin, Body Rock) and Torch (Paris Vaughan) — and Jennifer becomes a Preen and starts hanging out with mean girls like Samantha Falconwright, who is played by Julie K. Smith, one of only four women to be in both Playboy and Penthouse,**  where she was Pet of the Month for February 1993. She also trained with Stella Adler and is in so many movies that I’ve watched intently, including the works of Andy Sidaris (she’s Cobra in The Dallas Connection, Return to Savage Beach and Day of the Warrior) and Jim Wynorski (The Bare Wench Project, The Witches of Breastwick).

The girls have one problem that brings them together and that is the dean of the school, Mr. Crawley (Dennis Cole) who is taking nude photos of all of them with hidden cameras when he isn’t sneaking drugs on them and using them to move weight.

Writer Jeff Begun also did the script for Neon City and Saturday the 14th while the other writer, Dan Hoskins, was the writer of Chopper Chicks In Zombietown. It’s a strange movie that at the same time wants to be empowering and then you have Julie K. Smith doing nude scenes, but then it’s girls working together and discovering the power of playing in synth bands. I think the film’s third writer, Melanie J. Alschuler, may be why it feels so much less a teen sex comedy and more a coming of age film. She went on to be an assistant to the Olsen Twins on their Our First Video and The Olsen Twins Mother’s Day Special.

*Her sister Joely Fisher is also in this and to my amazement, they’re both half-sisters of Carrie Fisher.  Their dad is Eddie and their mom is Connie.

**It says this on Julie K. Smither’s IMDB page, but I know that only Alexandria Karlsen, Linn Thomas, Victoria Zdrok were both Playmates and Pets. Teri Weigel was the April 1986 Playmate and was in Penthouse — but not as a Pet — in November 1985 before acting in Cheerleader Camp, Glitch!, Savage Beach, Predator 2, Return of the Killer Tomatoes and adult movies. Ursula Buchfellner was the October 1979 Playmate and German December 1977 Playmate before appearing in Penthouse — but not as a Pet — also in November 1985. She also is in Devil Hunter and Sadomania for Jess Franco. None of these magazines or their titles matter anymore.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: State Park was on USA Up All Night on December 21, 1991; August 1, 1992; April 23 and October 16, 1993 and January 10, 1997.

I love saying the name of the director of this movie. Boon Collins.

He also directed Spirit of the Eagle, Abducted II: The Reunion, The Protector and Sleepover Nightmare. But he also wrote the story and screenplay of Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker, so wow, you know? He wrote this, too, along with Lindsey Bourne, who also wrote the sequel.

Renee (Roberta Weiss) is a city girl trying to jog in the Canadian Rockies who is being chased by a crazed mountain man named Vern (Lawrence King-Phillips) who finally takes her to his cabin in the middle of nowhere. But Vern didn’t count on the fact that his father Joe (Dan Haggerty) would help Renee escape.

Based on a true story, well, Joe eventually gets hurt, Renee loses her pants and Vern goes shithouse. Actually, I buried the lead because it’s totally based on a true story, the one about Kari Swenson, a pretty major athlete who was a bronze medal winner as a member of the 1984 U.S. relay team competing in the first women’s Biathlon World Championships in Chamonix, France.

Following the 1984 biathlon season, Swenson took a job at a Big Sky, Montana ranch where she could also Also our country doesn’t do enough for our Olympic athletes. That said, one day as she was training, she was abducted by Don Nichols who wanted to make her his son Dan’s wife. As twenty people searched for her, Don warned that he would shoot anyone who tried to take her. When they got close, Swenson yelled to warn the searchers away. Don Nichols ordered his son to shut her up and shoot her. He did and she survived — thanks to her breathing abilities as a runner — when the bullet collapsed her lung.

Swenson hated how the men were presented in the media as mythical mountain men, as she only saw them as criminals. There was another movie, The Abduction of Kari Swenson, made for NBC with Tracy Pollan in the lead and Swenson as a technical advisor.

She returned to training, earning a spot on the United States Biathlon team again and competed in the 1986 biathlon competition in Oslo, Norway. She finished fourth, retired and became a veterinarian.

I really have to see the sequel because it gets supernatural and has Jan-Michael Vincent and Debbie Rochon in it.

Directed by James Ford, who also directed Hip Hop Youngstown, and co-written by Art Institute of Pittsburgh graduate Melanie Clarke-Penella, What Happens In the Dark is the story of Trevor Evans (Hakeem Sharif), a real estate businessman who has his fingers in many pies, including the drug game and some of his co-workers, all things unknown to his wife Ava Parker Evans (Adriana Alphonso). She wants to have a baby with him. He’s struggling to stay alive when he borrows too much from the wrong people.

The movie starts with Trevor in a big pine box — I mean, if you’re going to get buried alive, at least this one seems somewhat roomy — and thinking about how he got here. Well, when you take more than you make and think that your street product is always going to be in demand, that may be how. It’d help if he treated anyone well, but Trevor is all for Trevor. When one of his old friends Mook (Demaris Harvey) borrows a ton of money from him and starts ducking him — a fact that Mook’s lady Kiesha (Jayda Jones) calls him out on — he goes into his friend’s bar the Kulture Ultra Lounge (which is a real place in Cleveland Heights, OH) and they struggle over a gun and tragedy happens.

Speaking of Ohio, this is the second Tubi original that I’ve seen shot in Youngstown — the other is The Housekeeper — and it’s so strange to see places where I grew up show up on my Tubi.

As you can imagine, Trevor ruins everyone’s life and is horrible from the start with absolutely nothing redeemable about himself. There’s no hero’s journey, just what happens to a bad person when he meets worse ones. This movie lives up to the line that inspires it: “What’s done in the dark always comes to the light.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Northern Kicks, Southern Fists aired on USA Up All Night on September 28, 1990.

Xin nan quan bei tui was also released in the U.S. as The Secret Rivals 3 and Assignment to Kill. It has “Northern Kick” Shao Yi-Fei (John Liu) is looking for the murderer of his younger brother and his friend “Southern Fist” Shen Yin-Wai (Alexander Rei Lo) is the killer. They must work together to find out who really did it — he’s played by choreographer Robert Tai — which means ninety minutes of fights.

Directed by Hsin-Yi Chang and Sung Yee Cheung and written by Chien-Chi Chang, this really has nothing to do with Ng See-yuen’s 1976 movie Nan quan bei tui AKA Secret Rivals AKA Northern Leg, Southern Fist AKA Silver Fox Rivals.

This movie feels like it would be more at home on USA’s Kung Fu Theater which I may have watched just as much as USA Up All Night.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Vice Academy 3 aired on USA Up All Night on August 15, 1992; December 31, 1993; June 10, 1995; February 23, 1996 and November 28, 1997.

The girls of Vice Academy are back again. Linnea Quigley’s Didi gets may be gone and Ginger Lynn’s Holly is in prison, but there’s a whole new environmental issue to deal with and the threat of Malathion (Julia Parton, who did many an adult magazine photoshoot and is the cousin of Dolly), who is out to ruin Earth Day — a holiday created by a murderer (for real).

Luckily, Didi’s little sister Candy (Elizabeth Kaitan, Robin from Friday the 13th Part 7: The New Blood) has joined the force. Jayne Hamil does not appear as Devonshire with Jordana Capra taking over the role.

I watched all three of these movies one after the other and my brain is completely mush. Thank you, Rick Sloane.

According to the IMDB’s Parents Guide, this movie only has mild sex and nudity with the examples being “female topless nudity in three scenes, including an extended sequence which takes place in a strip club” and “a man’s bare buttocks are seen briefly when two women walk in on him changing.”

I thought I was being so scummy when I watched it as a teenager on USA Up All Night.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Starhops aired on USA Up All Night on June 2, 1989; June 1, 1990 and April 26 and 27, 1991.

Stephanie Rothman was studying at UC Berkeley when The Seventh Seal made her want to become a filmmaker. She was the first woman to be awarded the Directors Guild of America fellowship, which was one of the reasons why Roger Corman hired her as his assistant (selecting her over another applicant, the woman who became his wife Julie).

She directed It’s a Bikini World, which was not the kind of movie she wanted to do and was semi-retired until working on the film Gas-s-s-s. She then directed The Student Nurses, an exploitation film that she was not aware was an exploitation film, as she had carte blanche to explore political and social issues in the film that interested her.

She said, “I went and did some research to find out exactly what exploitation films were, their history and so forth, and then I knew that’s what I was doing, because I was making low-budget films that were transgressive in that they showed more extreme things than what would be shown in a studio film, and whose success depended on their advertising, because they had no stars in them. It was dismaying to me, but at the same time I decided to make the best exploitation films I could. If that was going to be my lot, then that’s what I was going to try and do with it.”

She wasn’t interested in making a sequel to The Student Nurses or making The Big Doll House, but her next movie was The Velvet Vampire. Moving to Dimension Pictures, she directed Terminal Island, The Working Girls and Group Marriage.

However, attempts to go mainstream were stigmatized by the films that she had made. Before ending her movie-making career, the rumor was that she reshot some scenes in Ruby and definitely wrote Starhops before taking her name off it, as it was not the film she wanted it to be.

It is, however, directed by Barbara Peeters, the only other female director from New World Pictures. She famously warred with Corman over the additions to Humanoids from the Deep and directed favorites like Bury Me an Angel and the TV series The Powers of Matthew Star.

But what about the movie itself? Well, it’s a trifle, about three waitresses, Danielle, Cupcake and Angel, who all work together to stop their fast food restaurant from going broke. Of course, Dick Miller shows up, as this is a Roger Corman-associated film.

What’s interesting about Angel is that she’s played by Jillian Kesner-Graver, who was not only Fonzie’s girlfriend Lorraine on Happy Days, but worked with her husband Gary to preserve the films and legacy of Orson Welles.

Starhops isn’t really funny. Or sexy. It’s just kind of there. But sometimes, you watch a bad movie and learn about some interesting people.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Cavegirl was on USA Up All Night on July 14 and 15 and December 15 and 16, 1989; April 6 and May 19, 1990; March 15 and 16, 1991; January 3, March 7 and June 27, 1992; April 23 and August 21, 1993; February 18 and May 21, 1994; July 12, 1996 and November 1, 1997.

As you stared across the shelves of Prime Time Video — or whatever the mom and pop in your town was called — as closing time grew near, you knew that you had to pick a movie. Cavegirl feels like one of those movies that was always there when you needed a rental.

Take it from someone who has seen enough cave and jungle girl movies to do nearly an entire week of them — this is no Caveman* with Ringo Starr. It is no 10,000 B.C. with Raquel Welch. Hell, it’s not even George Eastman in Ironmaster.

Daniel Roebuck, who always gets parts on Rob Zombie and Don Coscarelli movies, is our hero, such as it is. His name is Rex and he goes back in time “25,000 ago to the Stone Age” even though the Paleolithic period really was 3.3 million years ago. But that’s a minor quibble when this movie has a magic crystal that sends him back to the past. And when he gets there, all he wants to do is aardvark with Eba (Cynthia Thompson, Tomboy, Body Count), the Ayla of our story.

Seriously, that’s it. Instead of worrying about screwing up the history of the world, Rex is trying to teach her how to say, “I want you to sit on my face.” He may be evolved, but his definition of consent isn’t. Also, at this stage of evolution, Rex and Eba bam-bamming in the ham is pretty much bestiality.

Stacey Q is in this movie. Yes, the girl who sang “Two of Hearts.” She contributes a song to the soundtrack, “Synthicide,” which is probably the best reason to watch this, unless you’re a fan of direct to video actresses like Ms. Thompson. Actually, that’s a good reason to watch this, I guess.

Director David Oliver Pfeil made the music video for Steely Dan’s “Aja,” the credits for Knight Rider and made the titles for movies like Star Trek VI, Innerspace and Footloose. This was his one and only full movie and he went all out, writing, producing, doing the cinematography and even the aerial camera work for it. He should have realized he was making a movie for Crown International Pictures, who demanded that he insert the locker room scene in the beginning to ensure that his passion project had enough bare breasts.

*That said, in Spain, this movie is known as Cavegirl: Cavernicola 2, making it seem as if it were a sequel to Caveman.

EDITOR’S NOTE: One Million Years BC was on USA Up All Night on December 6, 1996 and September 27, 1997. 

Don Chaffey also directed Pete’s Dragon and Jason and the Argonauts, as well as Persecution AKA The Graveyard. Shot in Lanzarote and Tenerife in the Canary Islands as well as Elstree Studios, the real star of this movie is the image of Racquel Welch wearing a bikini that predates so much of our world’s history.

A remake of the 1940 movie One Million B.C., this movie is only sixty million years or so off from humans and dinosaurs living together. Then again, Ray Harryhausen, who did the stop motion effects, said that he wasn’t making this movie for professors who probably don’t go to see these kinds of movies anyway.

It starts with these words: “This is a story of long, long ago, when the world was just beginning… A young world, a world early in the morning of time. A hard, unfriendly world. Creatures who sit and wait. Creatures who must kill to live. And man, superior to the creatures only in his cunning. There are not many men yet. Just a few tribes scattered across the wilderness. Never venturing far, unaware that other tribes exist even. Too busy with their own lives to be curious. Too frightened of the unknown to wander. Their laws are simple: the strong take everything.”

We first meet the Rock tribe and Chief Akhoba (Robert Brown), who has two sons at one another’s throats, Tumak (John Richardson) and Sakana (Percy Herbert). Actually, everyone fights everyone as Tumak even goes after his dad over the fair share of the meat of a warthog. He gets banished into the wild lands filled with prehistoric beasts and nearly dies before being saved — and saving — Loana (Welch) of the Shell tribe.

However, Tumak is always trouble and when he fights for his spear, he is kicked out of the Shell tribe. Loana follows him home, where his brother has replaced his father who is a broken man. This is a movie filled with battles between dinosaurs — a Triceratops versus a Ceratosaurus made me go crazy as a kid and those same miniatures are in The Valley of Gwangi — but adult me is more interested in Welch and Martine Beswick going hand to hand.

Then a volcano made of wallpaper paste, oatmeal, dry ice and red dye kills nearly the entire task and forces the Rock and Shell people to stop fighting and become one tribe.

I dig what Harryhausen was going for here, using real animals in some scenes, including a vulture, a python, a green iguana, the warthog mentioned above, a Loaghtan (a type of sheep) and a tarantula. He thought that if people saw some real animals, they may think that everything was an actual animal.