EDITOR’S NOTE: Pretty Poison was on USA Up All Night as one of the third movies. I can’t find the date — do you know when it aired?

Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) wants a life of adventure, and he gets it.

On parole from a mental institution — he set the fire that accidentally claimed the life of his aunt — he works a menial job watching bottles go through the line at Sausenfeld Chemical Company. So when he sees the gorgeous Sue Ellen Stepanek (Tuesday Weld) march across the field in her majorette uniform, he brings her along into the games in his head, pretending to be a CIA agent and having some fun with a young and innocent teenager.

Except that Dennis goes from being the antagonist to the protagonist.

Directed by Noel Black (Private School) and written by Lorenzo Semple Jr. (the TV Batman, Flash Gordon) from the book She Let Him Continue by Stephen Geller, Pretty Poison spends so much of the movie making us think that Dennis is the same kind of killer that Perkins played in Psycho — the last film he was in before going back to the stage — and he’s really just a scared little boy being shocked by the evil inside a gorgeous young lady.

Semple told Shock Magazine, “It was very hard to cast. Tuesday was excellent for it, but Tony was much too obvious for it. We really tried to find somebody young to do it. We never could find a new, young actor the studio would go with.”

Weld had tremendous issues with Black. She told Rex Reed it was “The least creative experience I ever had. Constant hate, turmoil and dissonance. Not a day went by without a fight. Noel Black, the director, would come up to me before a scene and say, ‘Think about Coca-Cola.’ I finally said, ‘Look, just give the directions to Tony Perkins, and he’ll interpret for me.” She further hated the movie, saying, “I don’t care if critics like it; I hated it. I can’t like or be objective about films I had a terrible time doing.”

The movie largely disappeared from theaters, and any reputation it had stemmed from critics like Pauline Kael, who vilified Fox for its failure to market Pretty Poison effectively. 1968 was a strange year. However, it was a time when the country felt like it was falling apart, and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were both assassinated. A film that has a young woman gleefully accepting murder and even turning a gun on her mother (Beverly Garland) was going to have a hard time.

But wow — this movie. It really took me by surprise, and I loved the turn Perkins gives to his character; at the end, he is so frightened of Weld that he willingly goes to prison for her crimes. She’s learned nothing and is already moving on to her next victim, yet the end teases that parole officer Morton Azenauer (John Randolph) has figured her out. At one point, it seems like Dennis has all the answers, but when the world cracks on him, he becomes a child.

By the way, Dennis and Sue Ellen go to see The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, directed by Roger Corman.

EDITOR’S NOTE: My Chauffeur was on USA Up All Night on January 17 and December 20, 1997.

Deborah Foreman is my favorite 1980’s comedy girl. From Real Genius to Valley Girl, April Fool’s Day and Waxwork, she’s always dependable, always cute and always real. She’s the kind of girl that 80s dorks like me wish we’d get as girlfriends. And people noticed, with one critic comparing her to a “New Wave Carole Lombard crossed with early Shirley MacLaine.” Sadly, she never really broke through to the mainstream. She has said that My Chauffeur is her favorite film in which she has appeared and that it was the most fun she ever had making a movie.

In My Chauffeur, she plays Casey Meadows, a free spirit who somehow ends up working for the Brentwood Limousine Service, which brings her into conflict with the company’s manager, McBride (Howard Hesseman!). At first, the older drivers all treat her like dirt, but her plucky spirit and hard work soon win them over. Even when they set her up with nightmare client Cat Fight, a goofball, drugged-out rock star, she succeeds.

Casey soon starts driving around Battle Witherspoon (Sam J. Jones, Flash Gordon), the son of limo company owner Mr. Witherspoon (E.G. Marshall, Creepshow). She helps him through a breakup, but he’s a heel, a rich boy unable to be kind to anyone — until Casey breaks through.

However, she soon runs afoul of an oil sheik and a con artist who take her for a ride even more ridiculous than the band at the start of the movie. It turns out they’re wanted men, which results in Casey being fired. Penn and Teller play them, and this was at the very start of their career.

Battle becomes a better person, and he and Casey fall in love. He takes her home to meet her father, and when she is in her house, she has deja vu. That’s because her mother was a former employee, and she played in the house. And Battle’s dad is actually her real father. But whew — luckily for those who don’t want a Flowers in the Attic situation — Casey’s real dad was Giles, one of the other limo drivers. That means our young couple can get married and all ends happily.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Glitch! was on USA Up All Night on May 3 and 4, and December 14, 1991; September 11, 1992, and March 27, 1993.

Julius Lazar (Dick Gautier) and his secretary, Missy (Amy Lyndon), have finished planning his next movie, Sex and Violence, when they decide to get away for the weekend and go to Hawaii. She has no idea what she’s doing, so that allows T.C. (Will Egan) and Bo (Steve Donmyer) to break in at the exact same time as two of Lazar’s disgruntled employees, Paco (Fernando Garzón) and Lee (John Kreng). Luckily, Bo has a second personality named Simon who is super strong — look, you’re watching a Nico Mastorakis movie, these are the plot twists you grow used to — and he’s able to defeat the two of them, setting T.C. up as Lazar and himself up as a director as young and morally unencumbered actresses show up to become famous in the next big movie from Hollywood’s most popular exploitation director.

If you’re looking for a movie just for nubile and often nude women, well, Mastorakis knew what you wanted. There are ninety women in this, including Bunty Bailey (Dolls, a-ha’s “Take On Me), Teri Weigel (one of the few women to be both a Playboy Playmate and Penthouse Pet, as well as an adult movie star), Roxanna Michaels (Caged Fury), Penny Wiggins (who was The Amazing Jonathan’s assistant Psychic Tanya), Marjean Holden (Sheeva from Mortal Kombat Annihilation), Christina Cardan (Chained Heat) as a non-SAG actress, Kahlena Marie (Streets of Death) as a SAG actress, stuntwoman Laura Albert, Heidi Paine (Wizards of the Demon Sword), Debra Lamb (both Stripped to Kill movies), Jesae (who became adult actress Elise di Medici), Becky Mullen (who was Sally the Farmer’s Daughter in GLOW and is also in the Van Halen video “Poundcake”) and Donna Spangler (Amityville Witches).

While all the women are trying to get a part, DuBois (Ted Lange) shows up with several members of the mob to reclaim the money Lazar took from them for his new movie, Pink Thunder. There’s also Michelle Wong (Julia Nickson, Rambo: First Blood Part II), who comes to audition just to tell Lazar how much she hates his movies and ends up becoming T.C.’s dream woman.

This has so many ridiculous scenes, including gay bodyguard ninja Brucie (Dan Spreaker) beating up an entire collection of bad guys and Bo getting his brains back from a hypnotist (Ji-Tu Cumbuka). None of it is politically correct; much of it is goofy. Mastorakis shot this because he was looking for somewhere fun to live. He stayed in the mansion where this was shot for three weeks.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Caddyshack was on USA Up All Night on November 16 and 17, 1990 and October 12, 1991.

I ask you this: why did they keep making movies after Caddyshack? This is as perfect as film gets, quite literally a movie that you can drop into and out of at any time without damaging the timing or spirit of the film. It has never failed to lift my mood or improve my outlook on life. It is all that movies should endeavor to be.

It’s based on the memories of writer and co-star Brian Doyle-Murray, as he worked as a caddy at the Indian Hill Club in Winnetka, Illinois, alongside his brothers Bill and John. Director Harold Ramis had also worked as a caddy and even been hit in the genitals with a golf ball once, just like the film. Even better — that Baby Ruth candy bar in the pool came directly from Murray’s high school.

Is there a plot? Sure, Danny Noonan is supposedly the hero, and it’s all about how he wants to escape his huge family and attend college. But really, it’s the personalities that this movie is all about, like Ty Webb (Chevy Chase), the son of one of the club’s founders who has turned slack into zen. Then there’s, Judge Elihu Smails (Ted Knight), who is perhaps the best bad guy ever in a comedy. Or newly rich construction boss Al Czervik (Rodney Dangerfield) who is a buffoonish man out to annoy every , wealthy person in the club. And of course, there’s Carl Spackler, the groundskeeper who is at war with a gopher.

It’s also the only movie where Chase and Murray appear in a scene together. Famously brawling on the set of Saturday Night Live once, where Murray referred to Chase as “medium talent” before punching him — the best insult ever — they got along here and wrote a quick moment where Ty’s golf ball ends up in Spackler’s ramshackle hovel.

Murray’s dialogue in the film is completely unscripted, including his Cinderella scene. There, he was told only to act as if he were a child announcing his own imaginary golf moment. He was only on set for six days.

The constant improv really bothered Knight, an actor who prided himself on knowing his lines. Dangerfield never did the same take twice, so their continuous battling has its roots in reality. In fact, Rodney would never begin doing anything when Ramis yelled “Action!” Instead, he had to be told, “Rodney, do your bit.”

The original cut of this film was approximately 4.5 hours long, with Bill Murray’s Cinderella speech lasting around half an hour. No one was happy with the second cut, so the gopher was added at the last minute to give the movie some structure. It was shot on a soundstage, which is why the film stock in these scenes appears completely different.

Caddyshack was a commercial failure upon release and was widely disliked by critics. It’s gone on to show them all the error of their ways.

Sadly, writer Doug Kenney would never see this movie be embraced. At the press conference for this film, he drunkenly yelled at reporters, convinced it would be the end of his Hollywood career. A trip soon after to Hawaii with Chase lifted his spirits, but only for a brief time. He either slipped on a rock or jumped while there and was dead at 33, leaving behind work with the National Lampoon and the film Animal House, along with this one. You can learn more about Kenney in the movie A Futile and Stupid Gesture.