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.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Beach Balls was on USA Up All Night on August 30, 1991; February 22 and September 25, 1992; May 1 and July 2 and 24, 1993. 

Charlie Harrison (Phillip Paley, Cha-Ka from Land of the Lost) wants to be a rock star, so he puts his own concert together. He has Christian parents, a sidekick named Scully (Steven Tash and a girl he wants that’s out of his league, Wendy (the late Heidi Helmer). He’s also on probation for driving drunk, which was less of a big deal in 1988. Our hero introduces her to the lead singer of Severed Heads In A Bag, Keith (Douglas R. Star), which is not the way to get the girl. Maybe if he gets his own guitar, he can win her back.

Director Joe Ritter wrote The Toxic Avenger and is a Steadicam guy now. This is the only film David Rocklin wrote.

The band in this is the D.R. Starr Band, led by Douglas Randall Starr. Yes, the guy who plays Keith., They were known for jazz-infused rock and glam metal. If you went to Gazzarri’s on the Sunset Strip in the 1980s, you might have seen them. Apparently, Steve Vai contributed to some of the songs on this album.

One of the punks, Mollusk, is Gary Schneider, Bozo from The Toxic Avenger.

This is a more innocent teen comedy than most. The artwork for it promises, well, beach balls. You get none.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Kill, Kill, Overkill was on USA Up All Night on August 7, 1993; February 25 and November 5, 1994; August 4 and November 4, 1995.

Also known as Twisted Fate, this was directed by Donald G. Jackson and has brothers Luther (Troy Fromin) and Peter Paul Fate (Bill Black, mostly a sound and effects person, not the 1990s All Japan Pro Wrestling gaijin who teamed with Joel Deaton) stalking Brenda (Nancy Jury), Roxanne (Suzanne Solari, Sister Sharon from the Roller Blade movies) and Amy (Julie Nine, not the only actress in this movie who is also in Class of Nuke ‘Em High Part II). Jody (Susan Deemer, Slash Dance) shows up on a motorcycle and saves them.

One of the writers, Randall Frakes, plays Jody’s cheating boyfriend, who also gets his destroyed.

Vince is played by adult star Johnny Ringo, who has appeared in films such as Coming Out Bi and A Brother’s Desire. Speaking of porn, Tiffany Million plays a hitchhiker. She was Tiffany Mellon, one of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling and directed several movies, including Jailhouse Cock. She’s also licensed to be a private investigator in California and had a reality TV show, Wife, Mom, Bounty Hunter.

This is not good. But you can usually tell when I spend most of one of these talking about the porn stars in the movie that I didn’t like what I watched, and I’m trying to at least find something I liked in it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Forever Evil was on USA Up All Night on May 19, 1990;  December 6, 1991 and February 15, 1992.

Three couples party in a cabin; Holly (Diane Johnson) ends up dead in a shower, her stomach and baby torn out. Marc (Red Mitchell) is the only survivor of the red-eyed zombie and tree which attack the house as if this were Evil Dead. To make things worse, he gets hit by a car and ends up barely alive in a hospital.

There’s a tarot card reader named Brother Magnus, a psychic named Ben who looks just like him, a cop — Leo (Charles L. Trotter) — and a woman — Reggie (Tracey Huffman) — who survived a similar attack. A book entitled The Chronicles of Yog-Kothag and The Necronomicon. Mean dogs. Quasars. A date to The Jet Benny Show. A god trapped on a quasar. Nash (Howard Jacobson) is an evil real estate agent. A woman ripping a baby out of herself. Love confessions. Marc is becoming a zombie but fighting Nash. And by the end, the void and we hear Yog-Kothag.

Directed by Roger Evans, which explains Jet Benny being in this, as he made that movie, and written by Freeman Williams, who was Maggot in The Jet Benny Show and the voice of the preacher in Terror at Tenkiller, this is a delirious mess and I love it for that. It has dialogue like this, when Marc and Reggie try to kill the zombie:

Marc: Get the gas.

Reggie: But I hit it with the fucking car!

Marc: I got hit with the car once, I am still alive! Get the gas!

Shot with no sound and dubbed later, this has a dreamy quality and, because it’s on 16mm, appears grainy and imperfect. Diane Johnson was a close friend of the writer, and she was an exhibitionist, so that’s why she has so many nude scenes before she’s killed. She was fully nude for the close-up death scene, and sure, the camera only showed her from the chest up, but that’s how movies get made.

Shot in Houston, it features a hero who invents a grappling hook wrist device, like an even nerdier Peter Parker, before fighting a string-tie-wearing zombie. This was precisely what I needed today: something I’d never seen, that while kind of familiar, is just strange enough to keep me alive. Forever Evil!

You can watch this on YouTube.