EDITOR’S NOTE: Bikini Summer was on USA Up All Night on September 26, 1992; March 19 and August 7, 1993; May 20 and June 3, 1994. 

Chester Marley (David Millbern) is supposed to paint the beach house of Mr. and Mrs. Patterson (W. Dean Grey and Katherine Victor, who played Batwoman in The Wild World of Batwoman, Car-Driver Spider Woman in Mesa of Lost Women, and Sheila Frankenstein von Helsing in Frankenstein Island (before working in animation), while they’re on vacation. Instead, he and his friends Richard (Alex Smith), Jazz (Shelley Michelle, Julia Roberts’ body double in Pretty Woman), Mad Dog (Kent Lipham) and Cheryl (Melinda Armstrong) transform it into a party house.

Director Robert Veze came from porn, and it shows. This does not shy away from breasts unless you watched it on USA Up All Night. He wrote it with Nick Stone, who also wrote Sunset Strip. Strange enough, this has a lot of environmental concerns in it, as well as wanting to save a beach, but mostly, you know, tits.

There are three of these films. You can download them from the Internet Archive.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Frogtown II was on USA Up All Night on October 18, 1996 and August 30, 1997.

Directed and written by Donald G. Jackson, this is the sequel — one of many that he made — to Hell Comes to Frogtown. This doesn’t have the low budget of the first one. It’s even lower. It also replaces Roddy Piper with Robert Z’Dar.

Captain Delano (Charles Napier) sends Sam Hell Frog Town to rescue Texas Rocket Ranger John Jones (Lou Ferrigno), who can transform into a frog person, just like he’s back on CBS, due to operations from Professor Tanzer (Brion James) and Nurse Cloris (Linda Singer), who are being forced to do this by Czar Frogmeister.

Dr. Spangle (Denice Duff) is back as well, but I miss Sandahl Bergman. Working with Brandy Stone (Don Stroud), she and Sam Hell have to rescue Jones before the Texas Rocket Rangers are destroyed. USA Up All Night fans will be happy to see Ehonda Sheer in this as Fuzzy, the communicator for the good guys.

Somehow, this feels way longer than it is, and I can’t even think of how much slower it was when it had late-night commercials. But hey — mutant frogs against the chin of Z’Dar. You can do worse.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Love at Stake was on USA Up All Night on June 11, 1992; September 17, 1993; August 13, 1994; December 15, 1995.

John C. Moffitt directed episodes of Not Necessarily the News, Mr. Show, Fridays and more. This is one of his few films, and it was written by former SNL writer Lanier Laney and Terry Sweeney, who was the first openly gay SNL cast member.

Miles Campbell (Patrick Cassidy) is a recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School who has come back home to Salem to work as a parson’s assistant. Another thing that brought him back was Sara Lee (Kelly Preston), whom he had been sweet on for years, not just for her baking.

At the same time, Judge Samuel John (Stuart Pankin) and Mayor Upton (Dave Thomas) are accusing people of witchcraft so that they can get their homes, destroy them and build the Puritan Village Mall. Parson Babcock’s (Bud Cort) mother (Audrie J. Neenan) is a big supporter of this. So is Faith Stewart (Barbara Carrera), a real witch from England, who wants Miles for herself and accuses Sara of doing magic.

Yes, another Barbara Carrera as a witch movie that would be a great double feature with Wicked Stepmother.

This cast is insane. There’s The Shirts frontwoman Annie Golden, David “Tackleberry” Graf playing her husband, Anne “Mama Fratelli” Ramsey, voice of Caspar the Friendly Ghost Norma MacMillan, Dr. Joyce Brothers as herself and Juul Haalmayer as The Executioner. He was an SCTV technician and appeared as a dancer on the show.

Originally called Burnin’ Love, this was made for DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, which went out of business, leaving this on the shelf. It’s a very sight gag movie, but it has so many great comedic actors that it’s a fun watch.

You can watch this on Tubi.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Darklands tells the story of a newspaper reporter lured into a conspiracy of pagan rituals and human sacrifice whilst investigating the death of a steelworker. 

With Darklands, director Julian Richards delivers a riveting fright-fare mashup of traditional U.K. folk horror and set pieces with a postindustrial vibe. The result is an intriguing work that feels like an elevator pitch of “The Wicker Man (1973)  meets The Road Warrior/Mad Max 2 (1981).”

The film also boasts noir elements as journalist Frazier Tuck (Craig Fairbass) assists newly assigned cub reporter Rachel Morris (Rowena King) in investigating the workplace death of her brother, which seems suspicious to her despite what the local authorities say. This leads him down a deadly path filled with conspiracy theories, modern-day Celtic pagans, nationalist political figures, and men of the cloth, to name but a few of the characters, with a super supporting cast on hand.

Twenty-nine years on, many of the elements seem familiar — some obviously did so as soon as the film was originally released — but there’s plenty of interest here for scare-fare aficionados to warrant a revisit or a first-time watch. 

The remastered Director’s Cut of Darklands, from  Jinga Films, has been released worldwide on multiple streaming platforms including Amazon, Sky, Apple TV, Plex, Google, Fandango, Tubi, Fawesome, and Philo.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Hot Splash was on USA Up All Night on September 28, 1991; February 14 and September 5, 1992; April 9, 1993.

Sometimes I think about the people who took things from me and how they sleep well at night, and here I am, writing about a teen sex comedy in the middle of the night, unable to visualize being able to rest because I have so many of these films to discuss. They can never take that from me. They don’t want to.

Directed by James Ingrassia, Hot Splash is shot in Florida and has Woody (Richard Steinmetz), Jennifer (Andrea Thompson, Detective Jill Kirkendall on NYPD Blue) and Jimbo (James Michael Hall) getting ready for a surfing contest, but then Jimbo angers gangster  T.J. Caruso (Jeremy Whelan). He gets kidnapped, and the surfing kids have to save him.

Then they surf, and you realize that the waves in Florida aren’t like the ones in the California beach movie. They’re pretty small. There are also two scenes at an Arby’s that go on so long that you start to understand that the filmmakers followed the ways of another man who made movies in Florida, Herschell Gordon Lewis, who got KFC to feed every film he made down there. So yeah. Arby’s. This movie will make you hungry for a French Dip and potato cakes.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Danger Zone 4: Mad Girls, Bad Girls was on USA Up All Night on January 9 and August 20, 1993; May 28, November 25 and December 11, 1994.

My wife always picks the best time to come down and see what I’m watching. She walked in during this, saw all the nudity and said, “What’s this called?” I paused it, she saw the title and stared me down and said, “Mad girls. Bad girls.” It was as if I got caught as a child doing something wrong.

Just look at this sell copy: “Jason Williams (Flesh Gordon) again plays Wade Olson the Harley riding renegade cop. This time, Olson finds himself deep in the Danger Zone when seven angry women kidnap him and take him into the desert away from the law. Sex is their weapon, and revenge is their motive. Mad Girls Bad Girls join them for a wild ride into the Danger Zone.”

Seven women take Wade out to the desert to kill him for jailing their biker men. But who gets to be the one who murders him? Whoever turns him on the most. Most of the movie has Lisa (Amerika, who was also a sex worker in The Kung Fu Mummy), Samantha (Kelly Brown, Brad from Hey Dude), Natalie (Linda Comers), Barbie (Jean Stewart, Nurse Pony in Class of Nuke ‘Em High Part II: Subhumanoid Meltdown) and Jessie (Beverly Trachtenberg, Fortress of Amerikkka) attacking the old man, making fun of his lack of erection and then, weirdly, all trying to have sex with him. The fact that Williams was involved creatively and monetarily may be the reason why.

This was directed by Gregory Vernon Jeffery, who also made Death Riders, and written by Williams with Gregory Poirier, who directed Tomcats and wrote Danger Zone III: Steel Horse War. He also wrote the story for National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which frankly ruined me for the rest of the day. How did he go from this to that?

The other movies in this are 1987’s The Danger Zone, 1989’s Danger Zone II: Reaper’s Revenge, 1990’s Danger Zone III: Steel Horse War and 1994’s Death Riders, all of which have Williams as Olsen and Robert Random as Reaper, other than the last movie, which has Robert Brand (and Leatherface R.A. Mihailoff). Who needed five of these movies when this one is so padded, where we see each biker’s man getting killed in flashbacks from the other movies? And Death Riders is just a compilation and is also called Valley of the Cycle Sluts. 

23 people watched this on Letterboxd before me. Let this knowledge guide your watching.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Body Waves was on USA Up All Night on January 18 and September 26, 1997.

Body Waves has the same poster — close, I guess — to Beach Balls. They are not the same movie.

Director P.J. Pesce had Scorsese and De Palma for teachers and this was his first film. He’d go on to make From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter, Sniper 2, Smokin’ Aces 2, Lost Boys: The Tribe and a lot of TV. This was co-written with Bo Zenga, who wrote Soul Plane and directed and wrote Stan Helsing.

Rick Matthews (Bill Calvert) is inheriting. his father’s (Dick Miller) hemorrhoid cream company, as long as he makes some money. He and his friends, Dooner (Jim Wise), Squirrely (Michael McDonald), Joe (John Crane) and Larry (Marc Grapey) end up inventing a cream that makes people want to have sex. I mean, maybe women want to have sex. Dudes never have issues with that.

Rick also has a girlfriend, Stacy (Leah Lail), who is dealing with Himmel (Larry Linville), a right-wing commentator out to take down her radio station and use it to spread his message.

IMDB BS: “Sherrie Rose said producer Roger Corman tried to pressure her into having her shirt get accidentally ripped off and exposing her breasts during the pool table scene. She argued against it, saying it made no sense, and he finally backed down.”

Actually, I totally believe that. At least he didn’t ask her to be sexually attacked by a worm. Corman would use her in other projects, including as Professor Ursula Undershaft/Aftershock in the Black Scorpion movies and TV show.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Deadly Illusion was on USA Up All Night on September 20, 1996.

Hamberger is not a Def Comedy Jam comedian. No, he’s Billy Dee Williams, and he’s a detective. Alex Burton (John Beck) comes ot the deli where Hemberger gets jobs and offers him $100,000 to kill his wife Sharon (Morgan Fairchild). He helps her get away and takes $25,000 of the money; Sharon shows up dead, and Hemberger’s hembergerprints are all over the hembergerweapon.

Like a Giallo, the dead body isn’t even the woman Hemberger met. Now, he discovers the bad side of modeling — “I guess I just had my first taste of the filthy side of this business” — and gets attacked by a dude with a scythe. Who does that?

Larry Cohen wrote the film as a semi-sequel to I, the Jury. He was fired from that film, so he reworked the idea into Deadly Illusion, and then he got fired from this movie. William Tannen, who directed Hero and the Terror, finished the film.

I have no idea why Hemberger does anything other than be happy that he has Rina (Vanity) for a girlfriend. Come on, dude. You did it! Then again, he also makes sweet Colt 45 love to Morgan Fairchild, so you know. Also: Joe Spinell has a cameo and they misspelled his name in the credits.

But yes — Morgan Fairchild in a black wig. I’m easy.

You can watch this on YouTube.