EDITOR’S NOTE: Cemetery High aired on USA Up All Night on May 10 and October 5, 1991; July 25, 1992 and January 29, 1993.

Gorman Bechard can always be counted on to give you a movie that’s not expected, like his undervalued slasher Disconnected.

So what happened here?

Co-written with Carmine Capobianco, Cemetery High is every woman on man revengeomatic that you’ve seen, except that there’s a horn when nudity happens and a ring when violence is about to befall someone. So yes — a rape revenge comedy, if that can be a thing. Maybe in 1988, right?

Produced by Charles Band, this had the title Assault on Killer Bimbos which was taken for the movie we know that as today. And the dark movie that Bechard made was not the comedy that this was turned into.

Back in 2009, the director wrote on IMDB, “I detest this film.

Long story short: it was originally called Assault of the Killer Bimbos. It was a black comedy. We filmed it as written. Charlie Band, who ran Empire, called me the day after we wrapped and said he just read the script and it was too dark for his liking. He was taking away the title (because I had gotten such great publicity, including People Magazine), and keeping only half of what I shot. He was having his staff write some back story.

Thus my story about girls who offed scum bags just because they knew they could…now became a story about girls who were abused, etc. and so on. But it was the film that was ultimately abused (and I’m using a nice word) by Band.

I talk about this at length on the commentary of the new Psychos In Love DVD release. (Of course, if I had seen what they did to Galactic Gigolo in post prior to filming this, I would have never made a second film for Band.)

Rent Psychos. Avoid this piece of crap.

And if you’re a filmmaker, and an idiot with money tries to tell you what to do with your film…I don’t care how badly you want it…WALK AWAY.”

Anyways, the cast has Debi Thibeault, who shows up in both versions of Assault of the Killer Bimbos, as well as Galactic Gigolo, Psychos In Love and Death Collector, the only film in her resume not connected to Bechard. It also has Karen Nelson, Simone Reyes (who is the girl reading Popular Science in the Beastie Boys’ “(You Gott) Fight for Your Right (to Party!), Lisa Schmidt and Ruth Collins, who is also in Witch Academy, Hellroller, Lurkers, Blood Sisters, Prime Evil, Doom Asylum, Firehouse and Joe D’Amato’s Eleven Days, Eleven Nights 2. She’s also the lead dancer in the Beastie Boys video for “No Sleep till Brooklyn.” I wonder what the connection with all the New York exploration talent and Beastie Boys videos is? That last one also has Vic Noto, Bronson from Street Trash, in it.

So yeah. The movie stinks. But maybe having Rhonda Shear as hostess made it go down better.

,You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Boy from Hell aired on USA Up All Night on June 7, 1991, January 2, 1992 and September 1, 1993.

Also known as Bloodspell, this is all about Daniel (Anthony Jenkins), who has been sent to Saint Boniface, a home for troubled teens by his mother Jane to protect him from his father Luther who is — surprise! — a demon who just wants to use his son’s body to kill people and add souls to Hell. Will anyone believe another resident, Charlie (Aarin Teich) who knows exactly what is happening?

Of all the things I love about this movie — I mean it ends with God hitting Luther with lightning — the music over the credits feels like it could come from the schmaltziest of 80s comedies where we all learned a life lesson about our parents and not that they can be demons who possess us.

Maybe Jenny Marlowe (who is played by Twink Caplan, which is an awesome name) and Tony Montana — yes, that’s the character’s name in this, you’d think they’d maybe think that over — who is played by Edward Dloughy can save everyone.

Director Deryn Warren also made Black Magic Woman and Dead of Night, which gets watched in this movie to add a little meta without hurting the budget. This was written by the same writer as those films, Gerry Daly, who also wrote Witchcraft III and Crystal Force. Also: I never watched 7th Heaven but I have been told that’s the house from that show in the beginning of this movie. Also also: Woodchipper finger terror.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Adventures In Babysitting aired on USA Up All Night on October 14, 1995 and August 23, 1996. I’m kind of windblown that this more family-friendly movie played the show, doubling with Summer Job and Wild Malibu Weekend. 

The directing debut of Christopher Columbus, this stars Elisabeth Shue as Chris Parker, a 17-year-old who is forced to babysit the neighbor, Sarah Anderson (Maia Brewton) when her friend Brenda (Penelope Ann Miller) runs away from home and calls in a panic from the bus station. That means that Chris, Sarah, her brother Brad (Keith Coogan) and his friend Daryl Coopersmith (Anthony Rapp) must all head downtown to rescue her. But after a flat on the road, their two truck driver “Handsome” John Pruitt (John Ford Noonan) driving them to confront his cheating wife and being part of grand theft auto of a Cadillac thanks to car thief Joe Gipp (Calvin Levels), this is anything but a normal night.

And it’s just getting started, because soon a mob boss (John Chandler) and his henchman (Ron Canada) is after them too.

This is a movie packed with people, like Bradley Whitford, Lolita Davidovich and Vincent D’Onofrio, all in small roles. It’s also one of the first appearances of Thor, long before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as Sara wants to be the God of Thunder. Columbus had wanted to draw comics before getting into movies.

Or maybe it’s for another reason.

According to Jon Mikl Thor — yes, the star of Rock ‘n Roll Nightmare — in an interview with Vice, “Years ago, I got a part in Adventures In Babysitting. Then the part was taken away from me at the last moment and given to Vincent D’Onofrio, who played Gomer Pyle in Full Metal Jacket. They paid me off and everything, but I would’ve rather have had that mainstream shot in movies.”Screenrant also dug up the fact that the Thor love in this movie was originally for He-Man and Teela, but it was changed by Columbus to be about Marvel, which wasn’t as big a deal back in 1987.

Jon Mikl also told Angry Metal Guy that “Stan Lee wanted to make a Thor movie so my management company set up a meeting and I entered Stan Lee’s office at Marvel Productions in NYC  blowing up a hot water bottle. Then the bottle exploded, knocking all these books and comics off his shelves and then he shouted out “Excelsior! You are more Thor than Thor himself!””

In case you wonder why get to see Halloween on the TV in one scene, other than being a great mnemonic for a joke, it’s because this was produced by Debra Hill.

EDITOR’S NOTE: 976-EVIL II aired on USA Up All Night on February 22 and April 26, 1997.

By writing Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time and House IV and directing Sorority House Massacre II, Deathstalker II (which he also wrote), Big Bad Mama II, Ghoulies IV, The Skateboard Kid 2, Body Chemistry IV: Full Exposure, Friend of the Family II, Sorceress II: The Temptress, The Escort III, The Bare Wench Project 2: Scared Topless, The Bare Wench Project 3: Nymphs of Mystery Mountain, The Witches of Breastwick 2, Bare Wench Project Uncensored and Bare Wench: The Final Chapter, Jim Wynorski may be the king of the sequels. Let’s add 976-EVIL II, a movie that somewhat continues the story begun in the Robert Englund 976-EVIL.

Also known as 976-EVIL II: The Astral Factor, this movie is all about Spike, a leather jacket-wearing loner from the first film, again played by Patrick O’Bryan, and final girl Robin battling Professor Grubeck, who is in full command of astral powers and a Satanic horoscope phone line.

“Out of the darkness and into the light comes your horrorscope on this dark and stormy night.”

There are two great reasons to watch this. The first is Brigitte Nielsen, who did this movie for scale after losing a pool game bet to Wynorski. And the other is a bravura sequence that combines the two best-known public domain movies of all time, Night of the Living Dead and It’s A Wonderful Life, as one of the girls becomes stuck between the two films and ends with Zuzu Bailey transforming into Kyra Schon and stabbing the girl with a trowel. It’s an astounding piece of filmmaking, one that comes out of nowhere (the script had the girl absorbed by a video game and the budget couldn’t handle it) and delivers.

You also get appearances by Philip McKeon (TV’s Alice) and George “Buck” Flower, as well as some great lighting and usage of budget.

This movie is way better than it has any right to be. Seriously, you should check it out right now, because I can’t believe this hasn’t received a high end re-release yet.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Caged Fury aired on USA Up All Night on December 18, 1992; February 13 and November 26, 1993 and August 13, 1994. This movie is by request of Mike Justice, who said, “Please tell me you’re gonna cover that one. I caught that one night, and for years I’d describe it to people (girls escape from prison and find out they were being held under Hollywood blvd) and nobody believed me. I literally thought I’d made it up.”

At one point in this movie, the female inmates begin to fight and Crazy Daisy (Tiffany Million, once a GLOW girl and later an adult star) says, “I seen this in Chained Heat!”

Yes, you sure did.

While Cirio H. Santiago also made a movie called Caged Fury just six years earlier, this one — directed and written by Bill Milling (who also wrote Silent Madness and Savage Dawn; he also directed adult films under the name Philip Drexler Jr. (A Scent of Heather), G.W. Hunter (Heart Throbs), Craig Ashwood (All American Girls), William J. Haddington Jr. (When A Woman Calls), Chiang (The Vixens of Kung Fu (A Tale of Yin Yang), Jim Hunter (Up Up and Away), Luis F. Antonero (Temptations) and Bill or Dexter Eagle (Virgin Snow).

Wikipedia claims that Fernando Fonseca (The Unholy) and one of my obsessions, Philip Yordan, wrote this, but I see no other evidence anywhere. Fonseca only wrote one other film, South Beach Dreams, and Yordan and Cannon never worked together, which is a fact that still makes me sad.

Kat Collins (Roxanna Michaels) is living out the first stanza of Poison’s “Fallen Angel:”

“She stepped off the bus out into the city streets

Just a small town girl with her whole life

Packed in a suitcase by her feet

But somehow the lights didn’t shine as bright as they did

On her mama’s TV screen

And the work seemed harder

And the days seemed longer

Than she ever thought they’d be”

After kissing her daddy (Michael Parks) goodbye and leaving Utah for Hollywood, she meets Rhonda Wallace (April Dawn Dollarhide) who gets her work with a photographer named Buck (Blake Lewis). After posing, the girls head off for the Sunset Strip and get into it with some bikers, which seeing as how this is a 1990 direct-to-video movie gets rapey and then they get saved by good guy bike enthusiast Victor (Erik Estrada) and American Combat Karate school leader Dirk (Richard Barathy).

Buck then introduces the ladies to a porn director, but that ends up setting them up as prostitutes and sent off to Honeywell Prison, which is where this movie really gets going. You know exactly all of the women in prison moments you’re going to receive and the guards are as bad as you’d think they’d be. They’re led by Spyder (Gregory Scott Cummins, former San Diego Chargers punter) and include Pizzaface (Ron Jeremy), Paul Smith remembering everything he once did years ago in a similar role in Midnight Express and Mindi Miller (Sugar from Penitentiary III) as Warden Sybil Thorn, an S&M catsuit wearing evildoer named for two WIP legends: Sybil Danning from Caged Heat and Dyanne Thorne, who forever will be Ilsa.

So while Roxanne is getting indoctrinated into white slavery, her sister Tracy (Elena Sahagun) figures that the best plan is to do the exact same things her sister did and get put in the same prison. She’s also helped by giallo-level policework from Detective Randall Stoner (James Hong). Of course, Estrada and Barathy have to rescue her, but Estrada catches a bullet, so the white kung fu expert has to fight his way out of this lingerie hell, which magically releases them right in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater.

This movie is also replete with adult stars as prisoners, including Kascha using her more mainstream name Alison LePriol, Janine Lindemulder — who knows a little something about the big house after serving a six-month federal prison sentence for tax evasion — as Lulu (you may recognize her, if you didn’t watch adult movies, as being on the cover of Blink 182’s Enema of the State album cover or for her relationship with Jesse James) and Julia Parton (yes, a relative of Dolly and once the publisher of High Society).

As for the bad guys putting this all together, there’s Jack Carter as the big bad Mr. Castaglia, as well as Beano, who you may remember from Deathrow Gameshow, as Tony “Two A Day” Tarentino. This movie feels like it knows way too much about the dark side of Los Angeles, what with Jeremy in the cast and Big G being played by Bill Gazzarri.

So Gazzari’s…

The three hundred feet or so on Sunset Boulevard that started at Gazzarri’s and ended at the Rainbow and the Roxy Theatre was where rock and roll lived in the 90s (although the place was hot from the 60s on, with The Doors being a house band and the Miss Gazzarri’s Dancers counting Catherine Bach and Barbi Benton as alumni). When Gazzarri died in 1991 and the club closed down in 1993, it was damaged in an earthquake and went through many name changes before becoming the nightclub 1 Oak. If you want to see the club, I recommend The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years. Nearly every major metal band played Gazzarri’s, including longtime house band Van Halen, Ratt, Cinderella, Quiet Riot, Mötley Crüe, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Warrant and Faster Pussycat, as well as bands you may not know if you didn’t read Hit Parader and Rip! like Shark Island, Hurricane and, if you saw the aforementioned Decline, Odin.

This movie is pure sleaze. I mean, it’s a women in prison movie. Would you want it any other way? Why are you watching it if you’re just going to judge me? You’ve read this far. You’re complicit.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: 976-EVIL aired on USA Up All Night on November 21, 1992; May 7 and October 29, 1993; January 26 and August 17, 1996.

Spike and Hoax (Stephen Geoffreys from Fright Night) are cousins who live under the overly watchful eye of Hoax’s super religious mother Lucy (Sandy Dennis, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, God Told Me To). They couldn’t be more different. Hoax is a nerd afraid of everyone while Spike is a motorcycle-riding bad boy with the girl of his cousin’s dreams, Suzie (Lezlie Deane, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare).

Both boys start using the novelty phone number 976-EVIL, which reads them creepy-themed fortunes for a few dollars. The real truth is quite sinister: Satan uses the line to find people to give them what they want in exchange for their souls. There’s a great scene here where a religious investigator goes to the home of 976-EVIL, After Dark, Inc. There is room after room of people, Santas, phone sex women and so much more, but in one dusty, cobwebbed closet lies the machine that powers this foul enterprise.

By the end of this movie, the cousins’ power dynamic has shifted and the literal gateway to Hell appears in front of their home. The way there is littered with 80’s cliches and a tone that is never sure if it fully wants to be comedic or horrific.

Still, this movie is not without its charms. The Deftones wrote the song “Diamond Eyes” about the film and it was popular enough to bring Spike back for the direct-to-video sequel 976-EVIL II: The Astral Factor. And England met his wife, set decorator Nancy Booth, while directing this movie. She would sneak R+N into the backgrounds of scenes that he would discover each day while watching the dailies. And hey, how many movies have uber religious old women get devoured by cats?

PS – There’s an entire chapter about this film in the book Satanic Panic: Pop Culture Paranoia in the 1980’s that is must reading.