EDITOR’S NOTE: The Falling was on USA Up All Night on June 29, 1990.

Also known as Mutant 2 and for having the tremendous extraterrestrial balls to call itself Alien Predator, this was directed by Drew Sarafian, the son of Richard C. Sarafian (Vanishing Point) who went on to make Interzone and Death Warrant.

Damon (Dennis Christopher, Fade to Black), Michael (Martin Hewitt, Killer Party) and Samantha (Lynn-Holly Johnson, Where the Boys Are ’84) are traveling through Spain in a van.

The Falling was owned by Film Ventures International before Edward Montoro took that million dollars and disappeared. It was picked up by Trans World Entertainment. The sheer hell of making it was why producer Carlos Aured quit making movies. Yes, the same man who directed Horror Rises from the Tomb and Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll.

Aured wanted the filmmakers to be more professional and the Spanish crew was very laid back, which meant that this went way over budget and he had to pay for that. This was shot at the same time as Monster Dog. A lesser film lover would say something like, “When a Claudio Fragasso movie is better than this,” but I can’t lie. I love Fragasso.

Anyways…

Aliens from all the way back on the Apollo 14 Moon Mission and SkyLab have infected animals that have come to Earth and are now killing human beings.

But really, this is an RV movie where two young men love the same woman. There are aliens, yes, but we’re here for the love as well as Dennis Christopher doing horrible impressions. I mean, there are effects — Mark Shostrom makes some really gross stuff — but so much of this is a hangout movie which is frankly why I like it so much.

Sarfian was working as a script doctor/movie fixer at this point — according to Matty at the essential Schlock Pit he fixed up Young Warriors — but he was hoping to make his own movies. The Film Ventures International deal — working with Eduard Sarlui — producer of She, Jailbird Rock, Killer Klowns from Outer Space and I, Madman — was going to package this movie with Mutant and a sequel to Scared to Death that finally became Syngenor.

As Sarlui formed Trans World Entertainment with Moshe Diamant, he was so shameless that he took the art from Creature to make the poster for this movie.

This movie may not be the Alien clone that you want it to be, but it’s something else. Something much stranger.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Carla (Alondra Delgado) has pretty much raised herself in Mexicali. She’s pushed herself way further than anyone would think possible and is so close to becoming a doctor. But when her brother is killed for being an informant, she goes on the run, but gets caught between the safehouse of the CIA, rat informants and the cartel, which will kill her just because of who her brother was.

The problem is that Carla has somehow ended up in the United States as she runs, as an abandoned tunnel leads her across the border into the deserts of the Imperial Valley. She might be a prisoner of a CIA safe house for now, but she’s too smart to be trapped by anyone.

Director and writer Paul Street also made the movies Borderland and Apache Wife. He’s probably best known for the 1998 Ford Puma commercial that recreated Bullitt.

In between all of the intensity of this film, it doesn’t forget to have moments of humanity, even if it comes in conversations that happen in cars racing between locations. It’s definitely something unlike many of the Tubi originals in its look, feel and quality.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning was on USA Up All Night on November 13, 1992; May 14, 1994 and January 13 and October 13, 1995.

Presenting the scummiest, vilest Friday of them all — a film packed with more kills (22!), more nudity and more drugs behind the scenes than several of the other films combined!

Years after killing off Jason, Tommy Jarvis has nightmares that the man he killed has returned. That’s why he’s in Pinehurst Halfway House, where Pam Roberts and Dr. Matt Letter (Richard Young, who gives young Indy his fedora in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) are trying to help him to get over his violent past and the death of his mother.

But are there a bunch of teens to get killed? Sure there are. There’s Reggie, Tommy’s roommate whose grandfather George works there as a cook. Plus, we have Robin (Juliette Cummins, Slumber Party Massacre 2), Violet (Tiffany Helm, O.C. & Stiggs, Reform School Girls), Jake, Vic (Suicide from Return of the Living Dead), Joey, Eddie and Tina (Debi Sue Voorhees, no relation). There’s also rich neighbors Ethel Hubbard and Junior, who want the halfway house closed down.

What follows is a bit of a mystery movie, at least for a bit. Is one of the kids the killer, like Vic, or has Jason come back from the dead? Even the end of the movie leaves that up in the air, to be honest. It’s kind of a mess, but along the way there’s a ton of blood and gore.

Danny Steinmann is the director here, perhaps better known for The Unseen and Savage Streets. Well, maybe not by most people, but by me? Of course. He also broke into movies by directing and writing the adult film High Rise and probably would have created more films in the Friday the 13th saga, but a bicycling accident and long recovery meant that this would be the last film that he would direct. The working title for this film was Repetition. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Fertilize the Blaspheming Bombshell was on USA Up All Night on July 18, 1992 and January 22, July 23 and August 27, 1993.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Airplane II: The Sequel was on USA Up All Night on March 12, 1994 and March 4 and October 6, 1995.

While most of the cast came back and Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker were involved in the early stages of development, the ZAZ team decided to distance themselves from this movie and worked with Leslie Neilsen on Police Squad! instead.

The movie went ahead without their permission. They have refused to watch a single frame of it upon its release and still have never watched it.

They made the right move.

It’s not that Airplane II: The Sequel is bad. It’s that such a high bar was set that it’s impossible for any movie to be even close.

It was directed and written by Ken Finkleman, who in 1982 either had the biggest challenge or the largest balls. In the same year, he wrote not only this sequel, but also Grease 2. Again, the risk to reward was so astronomical; Ken Finkleman was flying too close to the sun on wings of wax.

That said, this movie does get more serious actors playing themselves in the way they’ve always acted but in a comedy, including Richard Jaeckel, Chad Everett, Rip Torn, Kent McCord, William Shatner and Raymond Burr while finding roles for some of my favorites like Chuck Connors, Laurene Landon and Sandahl Bergman.

It’s supposedly more science fiction based, but at no point does this movie point to the almost insane devotion to old movies that the original does. Then again, the matte painting from Logan’s Run showing up is pretty funny, as is the fact that Lloyd Bridges is in a mental hospital because his character thinks that he’s Lloyd Bridges.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Airplane was on USA Up All Night on March 12, 1994 along with Airplane II.

If you combined Zero Hour! with Airport 1975, you get Airplane, a movie that changed lives. Seriously.

The ZAZ team — Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker — were part of the Kentucky Fried Theater and they’d often record late night TV and watch the tapes to get ideas. They recorded Zero Hour!  and thought that it was the perfect structure for them to do jokes around. Originally calling the movie The Late Show, their script borrowed so much got the rights to create the remake from Warner Bros. and Paramount for about $2,500.  They couldn’t get it sold but learned how to make movies when they made The Kentucky Fried Movie with John Landis.

Eventually, the script found its way to Paramount through Michael Eisner. They made the ZAZ team shoot it in color instead of black and white and on a jet instead of a plane. If they followed those rules, they would be allowed to cast serious actors for the film rather than comedy performers.

The ZAZ casting is what changed lives. Or careers, really.

David Zucker said, “The trick was to cast actors like Robert Stack, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves and Lloyd Bridges. These were people who, up to that time, had never done comedy. We thought they were much funnier than the comedians of that time were.”

It wasn’t easy. To get Stack to play the role the way they wanted, they showed him a tape of John Byner impersonating the actor, so in effect, Stack was doing an impression of John Byner doing an impression of Stack. While Bridges’ children advised him to take the part, Graves rejected the script at first, as he thought so much of it was tasteless.

As for Neilsen, his career has been serious leading roles but he wanted to work in comedy forever. He was just looking for a film to help in the transition. For years, he had pranked actors with a fart machine on set and he took to being in the film quite well. He’s lucky Christopher Lee turned the role down to be in 1941.

That’s why this movie works. No one is acting like it’s a comedy, no matter how ridiculous it gets. Even the Elmer Bernstein score gets the joke and plays its part.

It’d be stupid to just recount the movie and every joke, but let me tell you, this is a movie I can watch from any point and just not be able to stop watching. I think I watched it hundreds of times as a kid and my love of stupid humor comes from this. Any time Stephen Stucker was on screen, I’d laugh like a maniac, the same as everything Bridges does.

In fact, my love of the original Airport movies comes directly from how much I adore this movie.