EDITOR’S NOTE: Student Affairs aired on USA Up All Night on November 1, 1996 and September 20, 1997.

Directed by Chuck Vincent, who co-wrote the script with Craig Horrall, Student Affairs is about the making of a movie with the same name, so any write-up that says that this is a 50s movie like Porky’s is missing that part of the overall story.

It’s also got a pretty strong cast playing the cast within, well, a cast. Louie Bonanno, Jim Abele and Beth Broderick are joined by adult stars Tracey Adams and Veronica Hart — who always has great roles in Vincent’s movies — to play the young and hopefuls. I like that Vincent always found roles for adult actors and didn’t just have them playing nude extras. Adams also shows up in The Lost Empire and Vincent’s Wimps (as does Bonanno and Hart). As for Ms. Hart, you can find her in plenty of mainstream movies — often under the name Jane Hamilton — like Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh, Bedroom Eyes II and many, many more. At 67 years of age as of this writing, she’s still showing up in non-sex roles in several adult films to this day.

The director of the movie in this movie, Ron Sullivan, is really Henri Pachard, who knows a thing or two about directing. He made over 360 adult films in his career. And the character of Mr. Evans is David F. Friedman, who partnered to make several nudie cuties with Herschell Gordon Lewis like The Adventures of Lucky Pierre and Goldilocks and the Three Bares before pretty much inventing the roughie with Scum of the Earth and the gore movie with Blood Feast, Color Me Blood Red and Two Thousand Maniacs!, again along with Lewis. He also produced, co-wrote and even acted in movies like A Smell of Honey, a Swallow of Brine and The Erotic Adventures of Zorro. As hardcore overtook the adult film, he left the industry, coming back in the early 2000s to work with Lewis again.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Return of the Killer Tomatoes aired on USA Up All Night on June 10 and October 28, 1989; March 30 and 31, 1990; March 23 and October 21, 1991 and May 26, 1992.

Directed by John De Bello, who co-wrote the script with Costa Dillon and Stephen Andrich. De Bello, Dillon and J. Stephen Peace started making movies together in high school and worked together not only on this movie, but on the original short and movie versions of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, as well as Killer Tomatoes Strike Back!, Killer Tomatoes Eat France! and the animated series, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. In fact, in the 90s, Mattel released an entire line of toys based on the cartoon series. There were even two video games!

Set ten years after Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which characters refer to as the Great Tomato War, we find that tomatoes have been outlawed in the United States. Wilbur Finletter (Steve Peace) — who was in the first movie — is a hero of the Great Tomato War and now owns the tomato-less Finletter’s Pizzeria, employing his nephew Chad Finletter (Anthony Starke) and Chris’ roommate Matt Stevens (George Clooney).

Professor Mortimer Gangreen (ohn Astin) and his assistant Igor (Steve Lundquist) were the ones who started the last Tomato War and they’re back for another one. Barely defeated by the song “Puberty Love,” he vows that this time, music will be part of his plot for revenge. That means that he is making Miami Vice tomato people, Michael Jackson pomme d’amour and seductive female tomate, as well as an army of rock music-obsessed tomatillos. His big goal is to break out Jim Richardson (Rick Rockwell) and make him the new President.

There’s also a female tomato human named Tara (Karen Mistal) who falls for Chad just at the point that movie runs out of money and breaks the fourth wall, adding product placement to every scene. Tara is also hiding a mutated tomato named FT — Fuzzy Tomato — that she keeps like a pet. In a world that hates and fears tomatoes — not to mention the carrot soldiers on the rise — can their love survive?

In the scenes with Clooney and the Playboy Playmates, look for Teri Weigel. She was the Playboy Playmate for April 1986. She was also only the second Playmate to appear in Penthouse — after Ursula Buchfellner who was in Jess Franco’s Devil Hunter and Sadomania — appearing in the November 1985 issue. After working at the Bunny Ranch Nevada and a car accident that broke her neck and back ruined her family’s finances, she became one of the first Playmates to openly do adult films and trade on her popularity from the magazine. She was also in plenty of mainstream movies, like Cheerleader Camp, Savage Beach, Night Visitor, Marked for Death and perhaps most famously, in the beginning of Predator 2.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Night Shift aired on USA Up All Night on February 17, 1995.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eldon Glen is a horror fanatic/part-time reviewer.

Two sisters, Celeste (Felice Jankell) and Isa (Erica Midfjäll), tried to change their lives with a self-help record from the 70s that was supposed to stop stress and create a calming sense of self thanks to self-hypnosis. The problem is that it creates a doppelganger of the listener that grows strong enough that it eventually replaces the person who let it into the world. Only one person can save Celeste and Isa: hypnotist Lena Carlsson (Christina Lindberg!), the voice of the album who created it with her father, who worked at the Stockholm Institute for Magnetic Research and who believed that magnetism is the only way for people to reach their full potential.

Directed by Adrian Garcia Bogliano (Here Comes the Devil, Late Phases), Black Circle is a movie that I have been waiting to watch for some time. I loved the look of this movie, one that tries to mess with your senses from the very beginning and continues playing with time and space as the record overtakes minds.

I could have maybe done without the straight-up X-Men expansion of the story with telepathic psychics Victor (Johan Palm) and Selma (Hanna Asp) who have been sent by The Supreme to help destroy the doppelgangers. What I did love was the idea of the darkness that is coming for Celeste and Isa, one of their own making, because when it seems like it’s so simple to fix your life, it may only be the way to make it much worse.

Also: Christina Lindberg needs to be in more movies. I’m so excited to see her in this, a film deserving of the queen of They Call Her One Eye. My time spent counting the days until I could see this were worth it.

The Synapse blu ray release of Black Circle comes with the soundtrack on compact disc, audio commentary with director Adrian Garcia Bogliano, the teaser trailer, a short entitled Don’t Open Your Eyes, an interview with Adrian Garcia Bogliano and Christina Lindberg, a behind the scenes feature and a stills gallery.

You can get this from MVD.