EDITOR’S NOTE: Backfire was on USA Up All Night on November 10, 1995, July 20, 1996 and February 21, 1997.

In a city where firefighters are traditionally women, Jeremy Jackson (Josh Mosby) tries to follow in the steps of his mother (Edie Falco!) and sister (Mary McCormack, Howard Stern’s movie wife), who are firefighting heroes. Yet at the same time that he starts, toilets start to explode all over the city.

This film parodies Backdraft with elements of Falling Down, Cliffhanger, and Aladdin, as well as MST3K-style shadows that appear to comment on the movie at one point. The cast is something I would have picked: Telly Savalas as the bad guy in his last film, Kathy Ireland as a firefighter, and Shelley Winters as an older firefighter, Lt. Shithouse and Robert Mitchum as Marshal Marc Marshall. I almost forgot to mention that Kristen Johnston is in it.

Filemed back-to-back with Cyber Vengeance, this was nearly a sequel to another film written by J. Chris Ingvordsen, Firehouse. It was directed by A. Dean Bell. There’s a scene where a Middle Eastern terrorist asks someone for directions to the World Trade Center in this. That would be offensive in 1995, when two years ago the building was bombed, but outrageous after 9/11. Even weirder, the tagline is “A bonfire of the insanities,” which references a movie that people who would watch this would never see.

I wish this had the budget for the KISS song “Firehouse,” which is when Gene breathes fire and features the lyrics, “She’ll adore you and she’ll floor you / With her wisdom and her vision / And you’ll love it and think of it / Till you lose all intuition, c’mon.” It may be too intelligent for this movie, which somehow gathered great talents and made something beneath them.

You can watch this on Tubi.