EDITOR’S NOTE: Summer Rental was on USA Up All Night on July 15, 1995 and April 12, 1996.

I never related to the teens in John Candy movies. Even when I was a kid, I knew how his characters felt, beat down by life, hangdog in expression. I get how his air traffic controller character Jack Chester feels, overwhelmed by his job yet doing it because he has to and always on the edge of everything flaming out.

Given five weeks off to chill out, Jack and his family — Sandy (Karen Austin) and children Jennifer (Kerri Green), Bobby (Joey Lawrence) and Laurie (Aubrey Jene) — leave Atlanta for Citrus Cove, Florida. They’re barely there when Jack makes an enemy of rich man and sailing champion Al Pellet (Richard Crenna), who forces the entire family out of a fancy restaurant and into the pirate-themed diner of Richard Scully (Rip Torn). The fight gets so bad between them — well, Jack does smash Pellet’s boat — that he buys their vacation home and tries to send them home.

As you can imagine, this ends with a snobs vs. slobs boat race at the Citrus Cove Regatta.

Directed by Carl Reiner and written by Mark Reisman and Jeremy Stevens, Candy felt that the movie was shot too fast. It’s funny but owes so much to National Lampoon’s Vacation. Yet every time I see Candy’s face, it makes me sad. Can you miss someone you never knew?

This was all based on a real vacation that producer Bernie Brillstein took to a beach house. According to Army Archerd, “He returned one night to find the house crawling with uninvited guests-invited by his client John Belushi, who, in soaking wet and sand-filled trunks, was sleeping in Brillstein’s bed.”

Brillstein himself said, “I have five children and I weigh 240 pounds. Being heavy in California is not a terrific thing. Being heavy on the beach is worse. The house on the left was occupied by two elderly sisters, one of whom had a 6-foot-4 inch mentally challenged son who was out of Arsenic and Old Lace. The house on the right was out of Death in Venice, occupied by a chic group of homosexuals who had 28-inch waists and wore peach sweaters.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Screwballs II was on USA Up All Night on January 10 and September 20, 1997.

The protagonists of this movie are Brad Lovett (Bryan Genesse), Marvin Eatmore (Jason Warren), Steve Hardman (Lance Van Der Kolk) and Hugh G. Rection (Alan Deveau) have been sent to Cockswell Academy with the hope that Principal Arsenault (Mike MacDonald) can calm them down.

They’re also misogynistic jerks who have a point score for each woman they sleep with. The ultimate girl for them is Mona Lott (Cynthia Belliveau, Blue Monkey) and they all keep failing. And there’s pretty much the movie.

Also called Loose Screws, this movie was directed by Rafal Zielinski (Hangman’s Curse, Spellcaster and the other Screwballs movies) and written by Michael Cory. Beyond stealing from itself — Screwballs is a ripoff of Porky’s so it’s like when you keep Xeroxing the same Xerox — it has the absolute, well, balls to have a strip club called The Pig Pen that looks just like, you guessed it, Porky’s.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m Dangerous Tonight was on USA Up All Night on June 20, 1992;  July 3, 1993 and June 24, 1994.

Based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich, this Tobe Hooper-directed movie first aired on USA on August 8, 1990. Bruce Lansbury and Philip John Taylor wrote the script.

Tiverton College professor Dr. Jonas Wilson is sent a sacrificial altar that has a carcass inside it that’s wearing a red cloak. Wilson decides to wear the cloak, which possesses him. He murders a security guard, kills his wife and then commits suicide.

Another teacher, Professor Gordon Buchanan (Anthony Perkins), uses Wilson in his lecture on animalism. One of his students, Amy (Madchen Amick) goes from his class to Wilson’s estate sale, where she buys the red cloak and decides to make it into a dress, but not before Eddie (Corey Parker)  — one of the students in a play — tries it on and nearly kills someone.

Amy’s life isn’t too great. Her parents are dead, she lives with her Aunt Martha (Mary Frann), cousin Gloria (Daisy Hall) and invalid grandmother (Natalie Schaefer, Lovey Howell!) who she is made to take care of. This usually keeps her from anything but class, yet she sneaks out to see Eddie at the dance and the red dress she’s made from the cloak compels her into nearly stealing away Gloria’s boyfriend Mason (Jason Brooks).

When she gets home, her grandmother somehow is able to tear the dress off her and tries to save her from it. She falls down the stairs and dies. Gloria, for some reason, now wants the dress. She thinks that Mason is going to propose to her but after they have sex, he tells her that he just got drafted to play in the NFL. She puts on the dress, kills him, rams into Amy and Eddie’s car while they make out and then drives off a cliff, dying in a gigantic fireball.

Wanda the coroner (Dee Wallace) finds the dress on Gloria’s body and it possesses her into killing people. Amy tries to find her, but Wanda finds her first — but not before killing her aunt — and forces her into the dress. Things get, well, as crazy as a made for cable movie can get. Actually, they get real crazy, because this was directed by Tobe Hooper.

Can a movie about a possessed dress be awesome? Yes. This one does it right. It’s a ridiculous idea but some of the most fun movies are, too. I also love when R. Lee Ermey shows up in a movie and he’s the cop on the trail of the dress.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Friday the 13th Part 2 was on USA Up All Night on August 13, 1993 and May 13, 1994.

Of course, there was going to be a sequel. Sean S. Cunningham refused to direct it because he was against the studio plan to bring Jason back from the dead. He said that it was too stupid and would never work. Hmm.

Beyond a plan to be an anthology of stories on Friday the 13th (which sounds a lot like the plans for Halloween), another thought was that Alice would be a reoccurring hero in this series, continually facing off against Jason again and again in sequel after sequel (again, think Halloween and Laurie Strode). Sadly, after was stalked by a fan, she said she wanted out (she even stayed out of acting for a long time).

That’s why this movie starts with her death. I always wondered why this happens, because it invalidates all of the emotional investment that you put into the last film!

So of course, everyone decides that re-opening Crystal Lake would be a great idea. We’ve got Ginny (Amy Steel, April Fool’s Day), Sandra, Jeff, Scott, Terry, Mark, Vickie and Ted, who sit around a campfire and listen to the legend of Jason. Even Crazy Ralph from the last movie shows up to warn everyone before getting killed.

Here’s my problem with this sequel: it rips a lot off. Jason doesn’t have his trademark hockey mask, so he steals the look of the Phantom of The Town that Dreaded Sundown. And then there’s the issue of taking two murders shot for shot from Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood. A machete to the face and a couple stabbed together by a spear? Attention director Steve Miner: Bava did it first and better. Miner would go on to direct Halloween H20, so his sins are many.

Just like Shakespeare, everyone dies. Except Ginny. She discovers Jason’s altar to his dead mother and ends up stabbing him in the should with a machete. And then the movie does another shock ending, making you think Jason survived. He, of course, did not. Or he did. You know how these things go.

My question is: Did Jason rise from the dead? Or was he alive in the forest all these years? And how did he learn how to use a telephone? Let’s just stop asking questions.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Invincible Obsessed Fighter was on USA Up All Night on August 31, 1990.

Directed by Kim Jung-yong and starring Elton Chong — which may be my favorite martial arts movie actor name other than Casanova Wong — this is the tale of Chuck, an expert in swords and the 13 Shaolin styles. Now, he must battle Eagle, the henchman of General Ching and the killer of his master Leon Chan.

Chong is a Jackie Chan clone, given to humorous over cranked fights and a lot of serious martial arts movies fans hate all of his movies. This also has zombies in it out of nowhere, zombies that rise out of maggots no less. Nobody really has a name, things just happen and, well, this was on third on USA Up All Night in the kind of timeslot where I can only imagine people were either post-coitus, post-drinking or the drugs were kicking in.

There’s a bad guy named Fat Ho and lots of discussion of Eight Chopper Fist as a fighting style.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Invincible Superguy was on USA Up All Night on July 27, 1990.

This movie was meant to be played in the middle of the night.

A pair of rapist thieves get hired to steal gold from a palace which brings in a girl dressed as a man who wants to stop them and Devil Man, a metal masked man with a zombie army and oh yeah, there’s someone named Superguy, as the title promised there would be.

Devil Man has a giant birthmark and you will be pleased that he knows that he needs to wear a mask. For some reason, Super Guy is in this for literally a few minutes. That’s it. He gets the title and shows up for basically a cameo, but it’s good work if you can get it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

I swear, I do watch movies that were made in the last twenty years or so. Actually, I just watched a whole bunch of them and figured that I should just get all my thoughts out at once.

Here we go:

Cobweb (2023): If Cobweb was 20 minutes long and was mostly about the opening, where Peter (Woody Norman) is afraid of his strange parents — Carol (Lizzy Caplan) and Mark (Antony Starr) — and then hears a voice that claims to be his sister (Debra Wilson from Mad TV) in the walls, it’d be great. But the problem with so much modern horror is that when it has to figure out what the reveal is and get to the end, it often has trouble sticking the landing.

That said, I enjoyed a lot of this, including Cleopatra Coleman as the concerned substitute teacher and the production design of the house itself. The ending is pretty solid as well, embracing darkness that I didn’t think that I’d see in a Hollywood movie, finishing on a very open and quite frightening concept for its survivor.

This was directed by Samuel Bodin and written by Chris Thomas Devlin. It’s a big leap from Devlin’s abysmal Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so that’s positive! I liked all the bully parts, as it built well, until the bullies became Purge-masked and then it turned into just another home invasion movie. Also: cinnamon is now triggering for me after that final dinner, so well done all.

Talk to Me (2022): I had someone literally barrage me in text form about this movie, telling me how it’s the most perfect film, how it has kept them up late at night and that they can’t shake it. I feel badly because I hate that I knew that I’d instantly judge this movie as a result and that I didn’t see the version of this movie that they did.

What I did see was fine — and let me make fun of myself, if it were shot on video in 1983 or was made by an Italian special effects artist in 1985 then distributed by Filmirage, I would have probably loved it a lot more, such is my madness — but at no moment did I lose a moment’s rest. That said, it does have some wild eye-related destruction and no small amount of gore. But it owes so much of itself to a computer-guided camera move that will seem as quaint as morphing in a few years. Directed by Danny and Michael Philippou (Danny also wrote the script with Daley Pearson and Bill Hinzman and no, that isn’t the maker of Flesheater no matter how much I want it to be), it revolves around a severed hand that allows people to see visions. The kids think it’s like drugs; as you can imagine, none of them have watched as many possession and occult movies as you or I, so they open the door to something horrible, as you do.

Mia (Sophie Wilde) is struggling with the death of her mother after an overdose and her father Max doesn’t help because he’s never been there and he’s since grown more distant. One night, she and her friend Jade (Alexandra Jensen) and Jade’s little brother Riley (Joe Bird) sneak out to a party hosted by Hayley (Zoe Terakes) and Joss (Chris Alosio). There, Mia holds the hand — ninety seconds only is the rule — and is shocked by the way that it makes her feel. Yeah, it’s like drugs. And you want more once you taste it.

The next night, they are joined by even more people and Jade refuses to allow the younger James and her brother Riley to try the hand. Mia, however, lets them use it when Jade leaves and Riley is possessed by Mia’s mother, trying to apologize to her. She disregards the time limit, which causes Riley to become overtaken and repeatedly slams his face into everything around himself, becoming so suicidal that he becomes a burden on his family, only able to survive in a coma.

Mia has taken the hand and keeps using it, discovering that Riley is in limbo being tortured, but she still needs to talk to her mother, even if the spirits begin to destroy her grasp on reality. Twist ending to wrap it all up and there you go.

Samantha Jennings, one of the co-founders of production company Causeway Films, produced this. She also was behind The Babadook, another movie that people tell me that I’d love. They were worse than right. Oh baby, they were wrong (sorry, I tried the hand and got possessed by the demonic form of Robert Evans).

There’s also a sequel — Talk 2 Me — and a prequel that is all on social media and screens coming out. Like all modern horror, this feels like a way of dealing with grief and that’s fine. I’m sure for some this really worked and like I said, I wish I could enjoy it without realizing everything several beats ahead. But hey, more movies like this and maybe I’ll finally see something like Hereditary as a good film.

The Boogeyman (2023): Based on a story of U of M grad Steve King, this was directed by Rob Savage, who made one of the worst movies I’ve seen in perhaps ever, Dashcam. He’s redeemed himself here, perhaps because it’s not a found footage or screenlife movie, two things I wish that I never had to watch again. The team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place, Haunt) wrote it with Mark Heyman and hey — it works. For the first part, as usual. The set-up — a disturbed man named Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) kills himself in the office of grieving therapist Will Harper (Chris Messina), who is just dealing with the death of his wife and raising daughters Sadie (Sophie Thatcher) and Sawyer ( Vivien Lyra Blair) — is really well crafted and the scares that move along the way are good.

At least Steve King, U of M grad, liked it. The director said, “When the movie tested so well, we decided it was time to get his input, so we rented out his favorite cinema in Maine. He knows what he doesn’t like and if we’d have f***ed up his story, he’d have told us. But he sent a lovely almost-essay about how much he enjoyed the movie. And then the next day I wake up and there’s an email in my inbox from Stephen King and he said he’s still thinking about the movie. He said a few more nice things and the nicest thing that he said was, “They’d be f***ing stupid to release this on streaming and not in cinemas.””

I mean, he also made Maximum Overdrive so consider the source. I kid!

Anyways, the culprit in this is a creature called The Boogeyman that feeds on fear, can sound like others and shows up when you ignore your children. At least everyone goes to therapy at the end, as one assumes this will all take some time to deal with.

It’s fine. But you know, I am looking for more than fine.

The problem with modern horror remains that they spend so much time and energy building the expectation and the tension, sometimes months earlier through trailers. And then, after all that build-up, they often have no idea how to either blow off that tension or properly deliver on it.

I keep on going to the movies because I don’t want to give up on horror. I don’t want to be someone — but I am, I get it, I am — the kind of person that keeps saying, “Back in my day.”

I will not think about any of these movies a day, much less decades later.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Las Vegas Weekend was on USA Up All Night on April 1 and September 18, 1989 and February 17 and September 7, 1990.

Dale Trevillion wrote They Call Me Bruce and directed a whole bunch of erotic thrillers with titles like Heart of Stone, Timeless Obsession and Play Time. He was once married to Sharon Farrell and looks a lot like Michael “PS” Hayes.

This is all about Percy Doolittle (Barry Hickey), a nerd who comes to Vegas with a card-counting system. Then, as the tagline says, “When the dice are hot and the women sizzle you’re in for a wild … Las Vegas Weekend.” Anyways, Ray Dennis Steckler kicks Percy out of college and he heads out for adventure and acting like Eddie Deezen. I mean, they should have just hired Eddie Deezen.

Do you think when Joseph Campbell put together his thoughts on the Hero’s Journey that he knew that I’d be applying it to this movie? Because all the money changes Percy and he loses the kind of sort of crush that he had and all his money and then has to get it back together in the last act.

Man. even the poster for this movie makes me angry. I struggled through this one, I have to be honest. Just look at that poster and how smug that guy is.

You can watch this on Tubi.