EDITOR’S NOTE: The Giant Behemoth was the second movie to ever be on Chiller Theater on Sunday, September 15, 1963 at 11:10 PM. It also aired on the show on January 11, 1964; June 26, 1965 and December 2, 1967.

While the stop-motion animation special effects by Willis O’Brien — the man who made King Kong alive — were shot in a Los Angeles studio. The rest of the footage, filmed in London, was optically integrated with the effects. The distributor wanted this to be a clone of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and they got exactly what they asked for, nearly scene for scene and word for word.

Scientist Steve Karnes (Gene Evans) tries to warn everyone about the dangers of nuclear radiation. Before he even goes back to the U.S., thousands of dead fish are washing up and a fisherman’s last words point to the existence of a giant monster. Dr. Sampson (Jack MacGowran) identifies it as a Paleosaurus, a water-friendly dinosaur that has electrical powers like an eel. Oh Dr. Sampson. That kind of power only exists in this story.

Prof. James Bickford (Andre Morell) and Steve have a plan. You see the dinosaur is already dying from all the radiation, so they decide to give it even more radiation. This is where, as a kid, I would grow enraged at humanity and despise them for the way they have turned the world. I still feel like that as an old man. I wish that the monsters would win in these movies.

One of the reasons that this is so close to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is that they share the same writer, Daniel Lewis James, who was blacklisted and wrote this as Daniel Hyatt. Years later, his confidence ruined by the blacklist, he would use the name Danny Santiago. His novel Famous All Over Town won awards and was to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The book became a major work of Chicano literature and Hispanic teens saw its main character, the Danny Santiago who wrote the book about his life, as a role model. They didn’t know that it was really a white man who had grown up in Kansas City and was an assistant director on Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. His agent, Carl Brandt, had no idea who he was and had never seen him in person. He also wrote Gorgo.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Brain from Planet Arous was the first movie to ever be on Chiller Theater on Saturday, September 14, 1963 at 3 PM. It also aired on the first Chilly Billy Halloween show on October 31, 1964 and on September 24, 1966.

Directed Nathan Juran was the brother of Joseph M. Juran, a man who introduced Japanese and American companies to improve their work and also created the Juran trilogy, an approach to cross-functional management that is made up of three managerial processes: quality planning, quality control, and quality improvement. His theory, in short, is that without change, there will be constant waste; during change there will be increased costs, but after the improvement, margins will be higher and the increased costs will make up for the losses.

Nathan had a pretty great career of directing films, including The Black Castle, The Deadly Mantis, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, First Men In the Moon, Jack the Giant Killer and The Boy Who Cried Werewolf.

He was unhappy with this movie, so instead of his real name, it’s credited to Nathan Hertz.

Stephen King even credited it with some of his initial success, telling Playboy, “Carrie, for example, derived to a considerable extent from a terrible grade-B movie called The Brain from Planet Arous.”

Gor (spoken for by Dale Tate) is an alien criminal shaped like a human brain who has come from a planet named Arous. He possesses scientist Steve March (John Agar) and begins to take over the world. Luckily, Vol (also the voice of Tate) has come to Earth to save us from Gor and is inside a dog that belongs to March’s fiancee Sally Fallon (Joyce Meadows).

If the story of a space cop chasing a criminal to Earth who can jump bodies sounds familiar, well, they took it from the book Needle by Hal Clement. You know who else did? The filmmakers who brought you The Hidden.

The giant brain in this often gets made fun of, but you know, it works for the time that it was born in. It played double features with Teenage Monster and, obviously, as a TV favorite. After all, it’s the first movie that Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater would ever air. When the show came back on the air in September of 2023, it also was the first film shown.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan was on USA Up All Night on January 14 and October 13, 1995; September 13, 1996; June 13 and October 4, 1997.

Just like a band that continually says that they are going to retire, this was also intended to be the final film in the series. It takes Jason out of his element and features probably one of the greatest horror movie trailers ever:

It’s just so ridiculous that you have to see the film, you know?

Well, it’s not the last film in the series, but it’s the last one that Paramount would produce until 2009, as New Line Cinema would take over after this. And the working title? Another Bowie song, Ashes to Ashes.

The movie starts with a teenager playing a prank on his girlfriend, dressing like Jason. But the boat they are on reanimates him and he kills them both.

Soon, the SS Lazarus is setting sail from Crystal Lake to New York City to celebrate the graduation of the senior class. Along for the ride are biology teacher Dr. McCulloch and his niece Rennie, English teacher Colleen Van Deusen, J.J. (Saffron Henderson, the voice of Kid Goku and Kid Gohan on Dragonball Z), boxer Julius Gaw, popular girls Tamara and Eva (Kelly Hu, The Scorpion King) and video student Wayne. Oh yeah! And Toby the dog!

Everyone but McCulloch, Van Deusen, Rennie, Julius, Toby and Sean are killed, so they escape aboard a life raft to New York City, where Jason stalks them in the Big Apple.

This movie is packed with some audience-pleasing moments, like J.J. getting killed by her own guitar, Julius’ head getting punched into orbit after trying to outbox Jason, a gang that gets Rennie high and makes her even more freaked out by Jason, her uncle getting killed after it’s revealed that he tried to drown her as a child…oh man, this one is packed with greatness. And then Jason drowns in a sewer.

Due to the box office results of this film, Paramount sold the series to New Line. We’d have to wait 4 years for the results. That said — this movie made $14,343,976 with a budget of $5,000,000. That’s not horrible numbers.

The poster art on this post comes from Vile Consumption. Buy it!

EDITOR’S NOTE: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood was on USA Up All Night on March 13 and 14, 1992; May 14, 1994; January 13, 1995; September 13, 1996 and June 13, 1997. It usually played with Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning or Friday the 13th Pari VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan. 

Associate producer Barbara Sachs helped dream up several concepts for this film and according to writer Daryl Haney, “She wanted it to be unlike any other Friday the 13th movie. She wanted it to win an Academy Award.” GQ ran a great article on this film.

Originally intended as a crossover with Freddy Krueger, the logline for this film was, “What if Carrie fought Jason?” What ended up happening was one of Becca’s favorite films in the series.

Directed by John Carl Buechler (Troll, The Dungeonmaster), who also contributed to the special effects, this film establishes the definitive Jason. This is also because it’s the first appearance of Kane Hodder in the role.

Jason is still at the bottom of Crystal Lake, but as Tina Shepard watches her alcoholic father abuse her mother, her mental powers emerge and she drowns her father.

Fast forward and she’s a teenager (Lar Park Lincoln, House II) whose mother (voiceover artist Susan Blu) and Dr. Crews (Terry Kiser, Bernie from Weekend at Bernie’s!) have taken her back to that house to study (exploit) her powers.

Dr. Crews bedside manner is, in a word, the shits. He screams at Tina until her powers start working. She gets upset and runs outside, wishing that she could bring her father back from the dead. The only problem? She brings Jason back instead.

There is also — can you even be surprised at this point — a house of teens throwing a party for Michael (William Butler, the 1990 Night of the Living Dead). They include Russell, Sandra (Heidi Kozak, Slumber Party Massacre 2), Kate, Ben, Eddie (Jeff Bennett, the voice of Johnny Bravo), David, Maddy, Robin (Elizabeth Kaitan, who was in the Vice Academy movies), Nick and Melissa.

Tina can foresee that they will all die and Jason lives up to her visions. She’s the Final Girl and has to lose everything, even her mother. As she fights back with her powers, she pulls the mask off his face, revealing it to be decayed and near demonic. Finally, her father rises from the dead and drags Jason back underwater. Yet even after all of that, we can still hear the theme song as someone finds the killer’s mask.

The working title for this film was Birthday Bash, but the original script was even titled Jason’s Destroyer. There were 9 different cuts sent to the MPAA to avoid an X rating, which is still amazing to me. Even more upsetting is that Paramount threw away all of the cut footage, so there’s little to no chance that an uncut version will ever be seen. I still think that the rumored 1989 Dutch release on VHS, which includes all the gore, is an urban legend.

A cool bit of trivia for Friday the 13th fans: the narration in the beginning of the film is by Walt Gorney, who played Crazy Ralph in the first two films.

Kane Hodder really proves why he should be Jason here, as he almost died in a stunt where he fell through the stairs and achieved the record for the longest uninterrupted on-screen controlled burn in Hollywood history at 40 seconds.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Abducted II: The Reunion was on USA Up All Night on July 29, 1995; February 16 and December 14, 1996 and September 5, 1997  — always teamed up with the original.

Directed and writer Boon Collins is back in the world of Abducted and if you thought that movie was strange — even if it was based on the real-life story of Olympic biathlon athlete Kari Swenson — this time he’s getting even weirder.

Yes, nine years later, Boon would bring back Lawrence King-Phillips as the evil Vern, Dan Haggerty as his father Joe and co-writer Lindsay Bourne to tell us what happened after Joe shot his son, knocked him off a bridge and smashed him into some rocks.

And you thought he was dead.

Actually, you probably never saw it.

Maria (Raquel Bianca), Sharon (Debbie Rochon) and Ingrid (Donna Jason, Undefeatable, Honor and Glory) decide to have a reunion in the woods of Harmony Lake National Park, learning nothing from Mother’s Day, and get drunk in a tent, act rude to the locals and make plenty of noise, which as you know is exactly how to die in a slasher. Sharon and Ingrid soon escape — the latter goes full feral and says that she can think like Vern now — and make a plan to save Maria.

Since the last movie, Joe (Haggerty) has pretty much sold out and given up. He’s being paid by rich hunter Brad Allen (Jan-Michael Vincent) to guide him on a stone sheep hunt. The same sheep that his son has been protecting. Meanwhile, his son — How is he still alive? Does Joe know? — is watching his new captive give herself a sponge bath.

I mean, Vern died by crashing on rocks and he doesn’t seem to have any supernatural powers like a Vorhees or Myers. Could the power of sheer horniness be keeping him alive? He’s also wearing fur and deer antlers, as if he’s cosplaying Tom Drury from Don’t Go In the Woods…Alone! 

This is a film filled with magic, like how Ingrid escapes from Vern by cartwheeling through the woods or when Brad’s helicopter appears and Sharon yells, “It’s a plan!” before she takes off her shirt and uses it to get his attention like a flag. Or maybe it’s Debbie Rochon’s breasts that get all the notice. There’s also a moment where Vern asks Maria about her first time and the film flashes back to an actual sex scene, which is the kind of filmmaking I depend on from Canadian direct-to-video movies and director Boon Collins.

Also: two of the girls may be in a couple, which is pretty progressive for 1985.

The end of this movie teases a third movie and man, I want that to happen even if nobody but me would care.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Strangest Dreams: Invasion of the Space Preachers was on USA Up All Night on March 1 and 2 and October 18, 1991 and June 20, 1992.

Directed and written by Daniel Boyd (Chillers), this is the story of dentist Walter Bennett (Jim Wolfe) and accountant Rick Lowery (Guy Nelson) who have gone on a vacation to the mountain cabin of Truman Gator (John Marshall). They want to prove that they’re real men, but all they find are rednecks in the wild and wonderful woods of West Virginia, the House of Dung, a rockabilly icon named Johnny Angel (John Riggs), his groupies Dreama (Stacy Weddington) and Rhonda (Piper Thayer), more rednecks that want some Gray Poupon — which I thought was fancy and beyond my family’s means as a kid only to learn that it only costs $3.99 a jar today — as well as a pond filled with nudists, two old people who have adopted a small adult as their child, a survivalist named Vic 20 (Jesse Johnson), Jimmy Walker (yes, the actor, playing himself) and Reverend Lash (Gary Brown), a radio evangelist whose sermons play 24 hours a day.

There’s also a spaceship that has crash landed. The alien survivor asks to be taken somewhere to rest and when the shell that covered the creature breaks away, it ends up being Nova (Eliska Hahn), who is more attractive as a female. The Reverend is also an alien with an army of bad guys that she has flown here to stop.

Boyd didn’t have much experience here and it shows. There are some ideas — as you can see above — but he’d get much better from this as Chillers is pretty fun. But even though this is rough, there’s just enough to keep it entertaining, like the idea of Elvis living in the Appalachians.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night Eyes II was on USA Up All Night on October 5, 1996 — with Night Eyes 3 — and March 14, 1997.

Will Griffith (Andrew Stevens) is back and after the events of Night Eyes, he’s been hired to protect the mansion and life of South American diplomat Héctor Mejenes (Richard Chaves, Poncho from Predator). This being Will Griffith, he’s again thinking without his head and instead his crotch, as Mejenes’ wife Marilyn (Shannon Tweed) seduces him.

Directed by Rodney McDonald, who also made Night Eyes Four: Fatal Passion, and written by Simon Levy, Simon Louis Ward and Michael Levy from a story by Stevens — the supervising producer, too, taking charge of his erotic thriller career — this also has roles for the future Tuvok Tim Russ, Skull from Scarface Geno Silva and John O’Hurley.

Shannon Tweed probably pushed more boys into puberty when this ran on Cinemax and USA Up All Night than any sex symbol I can think of. The raspberries scene in this probably ruined just as many bedsheets when those boys grew up to be, well, boys and thought that that scene was the height of eroticism.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Marilyn Diaries was on USA Up All Night on October 23, 1993 and July 8, 1994.

Ernest G. Sauer — using the name Eric Drake here — also made Breakfast In Bed, another Marilyn Chambers-starring softcore film that shares the same writing team as this movie, Don Shiffrin and Gary P. Conner. Sauer, Shiffrin and Chambers also teamed for Bedtime Stories, New York Nights, Bedtime Fantasies, Bikini Bistro, Fantasies Vol. 1 (Debbie Rochon is in that), Desire (Amy Lynn Baxter is also in that), Little Shop of Erotica (which has witchcraft and Veronica Hart), Naked Fairy Tales (again with Hart and 80s adult actress Raven) and Sex and the Girl Next Door. Sauer and Shiffrin also made Broadcast Bombshells (with Baxter and Rochon), Affairs of the Heart (which has New York Blue‘s Robin Byrd in it), Web of Desire (an early cybersex-themed softcore movie with Baxter), while Sauer on his own made Marilyn Chambers’ All Nude Peep Show, Incredible Edible Fantasies (Chambers and Juli Ashton from Night Calls is in that), Lusty Busty Fantasies (Chambers and Rochon), All My Best, and the Chambers-less The Naked Detective and Beauty School (which has Sylvia Kristel and Hart).

As you can see, the 80s and 90s were a big era for Marilyn Chambers to do movies that could play on Cinemax, Showtime and USA Up All Night. These movies often have similar casts and crew, like John Altamura, who was also the Toxic Avenger in the second and third movies. He’s also in Party Girls, the Chambers movie that gets reused in every one of her movies or so it seems.

In this movie, ex-lovers Jane (Tara Buckman) and Jim (Michael Rose) have reunited to look for the author (Chambers) of an erotic diary. This would be the part where the fog comes in and the sax solo begins.

Seriously, not a single person has written about this movie on IMDB or Letterboxd, it’s not available on any DVD or blu ray that I can find, it’s not streaming and it took a long time to even find a video to watch. Why would I spend so much time on it? Because, well, Tara Buckman was also in Night Killer and a host of Italian movies, so I’m fascinated by her. She was in a ton of TV shows to start her career (Buck Rogers, Quincy, Hart to Hart), the TV movie Death Car On the Freeway and then her big break in The Cannonball Run where she played Jill Rivers and drove the Lamborghini Countach with Marcie Thatcher (Adrienne Barbeau). She’s also in Silent Night, Deadly Night, Never Too Young to Die, Xtro II: The Second Encounter and two Joe D’Amato movies, Blue Angel Cafe and High Finance Woman. She was one of the last contract players Universal had, appearing in their TV series in the 70s and also having a regular role in the second season of Lobo. She finished up her acting career after making the Nico Mastorakis-directed Terminal Exposure, which has a cast that I love: John Vernon, Joe Estevez, and Hope Marie Carlton (Taryn from the Sidaris movies).

The cinematographer for this movie had quite the career. Larry Revene had more than a hundred camera operator and cinematographer credits, including Barbara Broadcast, Hot T-Shirts, The Devil In Miss Jones Part II, Hollywood Hot Tubs, Doom Asylum, Deep Throat II, Young Nurses In Love, Slammer Girls, New York’s Finest, Bedroom Eyes II, the Joe D’Amato movie The Crawlers and Charlton Heston Presents the Bible. He also directed Wanda Whips Wall Street.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Young Nurses In Love was on USA Up All Night on January 18 and 19 and August 10, 1991; April 10 and October 3, 1992; May 28 and November 20, 1993 and November 19, 1994.

As I near the end of USA Up All Night month, I felt that one more Chuck Vincent movie was needed. Young Nurses In Love takes its name directly from the 1982 movie Young Doctors In Love and references the poster art, but otherwise it is very much its own movie.

Nurse Ellis (Jeanna Marie, Deadly Impact, Prime Evil) is really a Russian spy here to steal the sperm of Edison and Einstein, much less Abraham Lincoln and George Washington — how did they keep sperm from the past cold so long? — and use it to make Russia smarter. Yet she falls in love with Dr. Reilly (Alan Fisler) all while the hospital seems to be falling to bits, including Dr. Spencer (Jamie Gillis!) giving a mob boss breasts in a screwed up plastic surgery.

There’s also an appearance by Toxic Avenger John Altamura, sex goddess Annie Sprinkle plays a character named Twin Falls and because this is a Chuck Vincent movie, Veronica Hart is in it.

This is a silly movie of hijinks and people having sex all over a hospital. It’s kind of like, well, The Hospital made by adult movie vets which I find hilarious because that film has cachet and a budget and this has Jamie Gillis being ridiculous.

You can watch this on Tubi.