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.
Also known as Heavy Metal Summer, this movie seems to be about Johnny Rocket and drummer Louis, who are on their way to Los Angeles to be part of the Sunset Strip hair metal scene in the three years they have left before “Nevermind” comes out.
It’s also about Eve (Kim Myers, A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2) trying to win the Weewankah Wilderness Challenge so she can go to college. She’s helped by Linnie (Jennifer Inch, Screwballs) and Marsha (Isabelle Mejias, Julie Darling in the flesh!), but more. importantly, those two just want to hook up with guys.
This movie from Screwballs director Rafal Zielinski, who also made Last Resort, the one with the Coreys, not the one with Charles Grodin, and Recruits. Somehow, he was able to get Ted Nugent to show up for this movie, which shows how close Detroit and Canada really are. Actually, the movie is set in Michigan, despite being filmed up north. And by up north, I don’t mean Northern Michigan.
Man, that’s a joke you’d only get if you were from Michigan, which may be another reason why this movie isn’t so well known.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Clan of the White Lotus was on USA Up All Night on June 13, 1992.
It kind of blows my mind when a Shaw Brothers movie finds its way to USA Up All Night. Released as Fists of the White Lotus in the U.S., this is the sequel to Executioners from Shaolin (AKA Shaolin Executioners and Executioners of Death) and Abbot of Shaolin (AKA Shaolin Abbot and Slice of Death).
A white eyebrowed priest named Pai Mei battles brothers Hung Wei Ting (Gordon Liu) and Wu Ah Biu (King Lee King-Chu) and the fight costs him his life. However, Pai Met also had a brother, the monstrous White Lotus (Lo Lieh, who directed this movie) who shows up and murders Wu Ah Biu. Hung Wei Ting must study new techniques and learn how to fight a man who is stronger than anyone else in the world.
Perhaps the Tiger and Crane styles and more male-oriented martial arts can’t function against White Lotus. Hung Wei Ting is inspired by his sister-in-law Mei Ha (Kara Hui) to study her style, which she calls Embroidery Fist.
Now, two men who have lost their brothers to one another must finally face off in combat. This fight also involves acupuncture, which is almost the most awesome part of the Lau Kar Leung choreography but then I forgot that this has more nut punches than twp episodes of America’s Funniest Home Videos.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Vice Academy 2 aired on USA Up All Night on July 13 and December 27, 1991; August 14 and 15, 1992; May 22 and December 31, 1993; November 11, 1994; June 10, 1995 and October 19, 1996.
In this sequel, Honey Wells (Ginger Lynn) and Didi (Linnea Quigley) are back to battle Spanish Fly, who is about to dose the city with, well, Spanish Fly.
Miss Thelma Louise Devonshire is back as well. She’s played by Jayne Hamil, who was in all of these movies but the third one. The actress would go on to write for The Nanny and Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures, which seems quite far from Vice Academy.
Teagan — yes, the very same Teagan who was Alienator — is in this as BimboCop, who Honey dislikes so much that she blows up the cyborg cop and goes to jail at the end of the movie, just in time for Didi to graduate and leave Vice Academy behind.
Rick Sloane directed this one again. If you haven’t seen these, imagine a 1980s VCA film with all the lead up to the sex and none of the actual sex. It’s the best we could do before the internet, when all we had was USA Up All Night.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Hell Comes to Frogtown aired on USA Up All Night on June 24 and September 29, 1989; February 3 and July 28, 1990; January 11, May 11, July 19 and July 27, 1991.
Donald G. Jackson sure made a lot of post-apocalyptic films. Roller Blade, Roller Blade Warriors: Taken by Force, The Rollerblade Seven, The Legend of the Rollerblade Seven, Return of the Rollerblade Seven and three different movies in the Helltown series. He also made I Like To Hurt People, a movie all about pro wrestling. These things would all come together to create this film, where “Rowdy” Roddy Piper plays Sam Hell, the last fertile man on Earth.
In the post-apocalyptic wasteland of this film, atomic fallout has led to men and women being unable to breed. The government seeks out those that can make children and uses them to keep the human race alive. Meanwhile, frogs have become able to walk and talk like humans, all while falling for human women.
Sam Hell (Piper) has been located by the government as they followed the trail of pregnant women left in his wake. They wanted to use him to breed their collection of fertile women, but it turns out that the frogs took all of them. So now, he must use his fighting skills to break into Frogtown and rescue the women, then knock every single one of them up.
The team behind this operation — Spangle (Sandahl Bergman, who was also in the near-perfect post-apoc film She) and Centinella (Cec Verrell, Hollywood Vice Squad) — outfits Hell with a codpiece that will cause his junk to explode if he tries to run off.
Of course, hijinks ensue. A Frog lady named Arabella (Kristi Somers, Savage Streets, Girls Just Want to Have Fun) falls for Hell. Spangle is drugged and ensures the Dance of the Three Snakes for the Frog leader Commander Toty. And Nicholas Worth — serial killer and necrophiliac Kirk Smith from Don’t Answer the Phone— shows up as a Frog who tortures Hell.
This film is worlds better than I ever imagined that it could be. The part of Sam Hell was written with Tim Thomerson in mind, but New World wanted Daniel Stern. The final two actors considered for the role came down to Piper and Ed Marinaro. I think they made the right choice.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Ellie aired on USA Up All Night on February 1 and October 19, 1991 and August 7, 1992.
If there’s a hicksploitation hall of fame, Shelley Winters should probably be in it. She’s in one of the movies that defines so many of the genre’s themes, The Night of the Hunter, as well as some of its best — and most exploitative examples — films, such as Bloody Mama and Poor Pretty Eddie. She also plays a housekeeper Katy who has also had a space baby sometime in the past in the astounding 70s blast of odd called The Visitor.
Somewhere in the Deep South, this is all about barefoot farmer’s daughter Ellie (Sheila Kennedy, Penthouse Pet of the Month for December 1981 and the 1983 Pet of the Year) getting revenge for her father’s murder at the hands of her stepmother (Winters) — who killed the kindly old man while she chowed down on fried chicken.
She only has one weapon. Her body. And she knows how to use it.
George Gobel, Edward Albert and Pat Paulsen all show up, but the main thrill of the film is its rampant nudity. Somehow, this movie is also a version of the Greek myth of Elektra, if you can wrap your mind around that.
Director Peter Wittman was also behind exactly one other movie, Play Dead, where a woman kills with her brain and her dog. It’s not great or even good, but it’s the kind of movie that you stayed up to watch on a Friday night on Cinemax. If you never did that, you’re probably going to hate this. If you did, you have a near-limitless capacity for enduring boring films. Not that I would know or anything.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cat People aired on USA Up All Night on September 17, 1993 and July 29, 1994.
Producer Milton Subotsky — all hail Amicus! — bought the rights to Cat People from RKO and began developing a remake, with the rights going to Universal eventually. Roger Vadim was going to be the director with Alan Ormsby and Bob Clark — all hail Children Shouldn’t Play With Death Things — working on several versions of the script.
Paul Schrader ended up making this, making a movie that is way more sexual — man, understatement of the year — than the film that inspired it.
Irena (Nastassja Kinski) and Paul (Malcolm McDowell) Gallier have been separated since their parents died. He’s now involved in a church in New Orleans and lives with his housekeeper Female (Ruby Dee), but has gone missing.
Of course, panther attacks start happening — look out Lynn Lowry (I Drink Your Blood, The Crazies) — and zoologists Oliver Yates (John Heard), Alice Perrin (Annette O’Toole) and Joe Creigh (Ed Begley Jr.) are on the case. They capture the panther, who Irena finds herself attracted to. If you think that this is the end of the animal and human sexual attraction in this film, well, stay tuned.
Joe ends up getting mauled by the panther, which disappears just as Paul reappears to make a Flowers In the Attic move on his sister. Oh yeah — that’s when we find out that his basement is filled with the remains of people, so everyone thinks the big cat belongs to him.
Oh man — where do we go now? We find out that in the mythology of this movie, any time one of these catpeople do the horizontal mambo with a human they turn into a cat and can only become human again by killing another person. Mama and papa Gallies were siblings because werecats are ancestrally incestuous and — oh yeah — only aardvarking between two catpeople doesn’t cause a transformation. So Paul tries to get with his sister again, just in time for Oliver to save her and her to shoot her brother.
This movie ends in perhaps the most insane way possible. Irena begs to be with her kind, so Paul ties her up and dips the stinger in the honey, as it were, until she transforms back into a panther, at which point he donates her to the zoo.
Holy cow, movies were absolutely insane in 1982. Wow and the soundtrack! Bowie and Giorgio Moroder? You can not get more absolutely 80’s than that. Oh yeah — and another RKO movie was remade in 1982. The Thing. Both failed at the box office, but only one is remembered quite so fondly.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Angel 4: Undercover aired on USA Up All Night on August 16, 1997.
Molly “Angel” Stewart is still a photographer, but now she does it for the police. And she’s portrayed by the fourth actress in as many movies to play her, Darlene Vogel.
One of her old street girlfriends is in town, touring with a band and of course, ends up dead before we’re all that long into this movie. After photographing the body — it’s her job — Molly goes back to being Angel and goes undercover as a groupie.
A sequel in name only, this was directed by Richard Schenkman. Strangely enough, the Miramax site lists George Axsmith as the director, another name* that Schenkman would use.
Stoney Jackson, who was Phones in Roller Boogie, is in this, as are Samantha Phillips (Phantasm II) and Roddy McDowall, who deserves so much better more than anyone has ever deserved so much better.
That said, this ends up being a movie about a troubled musician more than Angel, but such is life when you’re watching the fourth movie in a sequel series that is basically unconnected. Maybe a producer somewhere wants to know about my idea, Angel vs. Vice Academy.
*On his website, the director says, “For decades I said that The Pompatus of Love was my first movie, but close friends have long known that two years before Pompatus, I directed Angel IV: Undercover aka Assault with a Deadly Weapon. Why the obfuscation? Simply, I didn’t want my official “first film” to be a dreadful, low-budget B-movie I didn’t write, although I was very grateful for the chance to learn-by-doing and make my mistakes on a project less close to my heart. But in all fairness, even this was supposed to be a better movie – a “rock n’ roll murder mystery” – and it was, until the producer demanded that we shoot an “alternate version” of several scenes, enabling him to position the film as an Angel sequel in “a couple of Eastern European markets.” Naturally, only the Angel version ever saw the light of day. Still… I got to work with a good number of dear friends, plus the iconic Hollywood legend Roddy McDowall, as well as the brilliant, much-missed Kevin Gilbert, who did the songs and score.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Girl That I Want aired on USA Up All Night on January 4 and 5 and September 6, 1991; April 11, 1992; April 2 and November 6, 1993.
Director David DeCoteau is made for USA Up All Night. In this movie, he’s showing us all about Amy (Elizabeth Kaitan, Vice Academy 5, Silent Madness), a high school girl who feels like she isn’t as pretty as the other girls. Only in an 80s teen sex comedy could Elizabeth Kaitan be the not attractive girl. She gets Teri (Linnea Quigley) and Lisa (Karen Russell, Vice Academy) to make her over and yes, when you have to compare the relative attractiveness of these women, you regress to being a teenage boy and are overcome by just how brain wrecking each is, but let’s be honest, Linnea Quigley forever.
At the same time, her boyfriend Scott (Steven Craig Daugherty) is failing school so he needs to study hard for a test, so hard that his father (Burt Ward) thinks that his son is gay because he spends so much time with his friend Hubie (Marcus Vaughter). That’s kind of amazing that this movie has so many homophobic moments seeing that DeCoteau was directing it. Then again, it’s all in fun, I guess.
Maybe not. The name he used on this movie was Ellen Cabot, which he told Draculina was the name of a girlfriend he had a bad breakup with in high school. Whenever he made a bad movie, he used her name. However, he has changed this story to say that it was a pseudonym to cover up his homosexuality.
The cast is fun with Lyle Waggoner as the coach, Kitten Natividad as a Spanish teacher and Deanna Lund as Amy’s mom. Yes, the mom from Elves. I will never not mention that movie.
For some reason, this movie has a lot of heart. I wish there were more movies where the stars of Murder Weapon did makeovers for shy high school girls who really love their boyfriends. It seems like it should be a total teen sex comedy but it ends up being so sweet.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Vice Academy aired on USA Up All Night on March 23 and 24 and October 20, 1990; July 13 and December 27, 1991; August 14 and 15, 1992; May 22, 1993; November 11, 1994; January 12 and May 17, 1995; October 19, 1996; March 29, April 25 and November 29, 1997.
Are you ready for the movie that won USA Networks’ B-Movie Awards for Best Picture and has the honor of being their highest-rated late-night film when it first aired on cable television?
How about a Police Academy ripoff with Ginger Lynn and Linnea Quigley? Are you prepared for that?
What if I told you that RIck Sloane, the maker of Hobgoblins, was the creator?
Yeah, you’d watch that.
Holly Wells (Ginger Lynn, the one-time queen of VHS adult films) goes legit, teaming with scream queen Linnea Quigley, who plays Didi, to enter a vice school where cops learn how to bust adult movies and prostitution.
Tamara Clatterbuck, who is also in Hobgoblins and was a dominatrix in UHF, is Tinsel while Jean Carol is the evil Queen Bee. Karen Russell also shows up and you remember her from films like Hellbent, Phoenix the Warrior, Dr. Alien and Shock ‘Em Dead.
Jayne Hamil also makes the first of her five appearances as vice academy teacher Miss Thelma Louise Devonshire. And hey! The actress using the name Christian Barr who plays Cherry Pop is actually Allison Barron, who we all know as Helen from Night of the Demons.
Ginger Lynn isn’t the only adult star in this. The late Viper, a former ballet dancer who eventually left the adult industry and became a phlebotomy technician is here too.
This is a movie so cheap that the girls all wore their own outfits and Ginger drives her own car in the opening. Are clothes and cars why you’re watching this? I dare say no.
You can watch this on Tubi or grab the blu ray set of the first three films from Vinegar Syndrome. It features interviews with Lynn and Quigley, as well as commentary Rick Sloane.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Invasion of the Bee Girls aired on USA Up All Night on June 8 and September 1, 1990 and March 8 and September 21, 1991.
This was the first movie that Nicholas Meyer ever wrote. Yes, the same guy who wrote The Day After, Time After Time and the two good Star Trek films (two and four, if you’re playing at home) started right here. One day when he left to visit his parents, the script was altered and young Mr. Meyer wanted to take his name off of the project, but was convinced by his manager that he needed a credit.
Neil Agar (William Smith, Grave of the Vampire) is a special agent for the State Department sent to investigate the numerous deaths at government-sponsored Brandt Research.
It turns out that the scientists there are more obsessed with sex than their research to the point that some of them are literally getting balled to death. By the way, I’m on a quest to get the word balling and ball used in the vernacular again. Please help me.
The truth is the women of the research lab have all become Bee Girls through self-induced mutation. Now they have eyes that allow them to see like insects and the instincts of using and destroying men, several of whom totally welcome the end.
The main reason to watch this is Anitra Ford as Dr. Susan Harris. You may remember her from The Big Bird Cage and being a model on The Price Is Right. She’s in one of my favorite movies, 1972’s Messiah of Evil. If you haven’t seen that, you should probably just stop reading this right now and get on that.
Victoria Vetri plays the heroine, Julie Zorn. Using the name Angela Dorian, she was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for September 1967 and 1968’s Playmate of the Year. When Apollo 12 went to the moon, a photo of her and Playmates Leslie Bianchini, Reagan Wilson and Cynthia Myers was there, inserted into the activity astronaut cuff checklists.
She also appears in Rosemary’s Baby and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. In 2010, nearly a quarter-century into her marriage to Bruce Rathgeb, Vetri was charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting her husband at close range after an argument. She received nine years in prison on a charge that was finally reduced to attempted voluntary manslaughter. Her husband claimed that she had been saying, “No more Charlie, no more Charlie,” as she’d been convinced that Charles Manson wanted her dead ever since her friend Sharon Tate was killed. In fact, the gun that she used was given to her by Roman Polanski, who her husband claimed that she often slept with along with Tate. Vetri is in a halfway house now and working on making her way back to society.
This movie is also known as Graveyard Tramps, which has nothing to do with what it’s really about. You should watch it anyway.
Here’s a drink recipe.
Invasion of the Bee’s Knees
2 oz. gin
.75 oz. lemon juice
.75 oz. honey syrup
1 oz. egg white
Dash of honey
Place all ingredients in a shaker, then shake vigorously.
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