EDITOR’S NOTE: Doctor Detroit was on USA Up All Night on January 1, 1994; July 8, 1995; August 10, 1996.

I have no idea why my parents let me watch this on HBO, but I thought Doctor Detroit was a pirate. No idea what a pimp was.

Well, a pimp named Smooth Walker (Howard Hesseman) needs to get out of town, as Mom (Kate Murtaugh) has lost her patience with him. He invents a new pimp, Doctor Detroit and convinces Professor Clifford Skridlow (Dan Aykroyd) to take up this character. A night with all of Smooth’s girls — Monica (Donna Dixon), Jasmine (Lydia Lei), Karen (Fran Drescher) and Thelma (Lynn Whitfield) — convinces him to take the role, despite his needing to focus on getting a new endowment from wealthy CEO Harmon Rauseh (Andrew Duggan).

Directed by Michael Pressman (The Great Texas Dynamite Chase, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze) and written by Bruce Jay Friedman (Stir Crazy), Carl Gottlieb (Jaws) and Robert Boris (who directed Steele Justice), this movie is good because of the efforts of Akyroyd, in his first movie — and first solo lead — since the death of John Belushi. There’s also a James Brown cameo and the promise of a sequel that never got made, Doctor Detroit II: The Wrath of Mom.

Donna Dixon and Akyroyd married soon after making this.