EDITOR’S NOTE: Friday the 13th was on USA Up All Night on August 13, 1993 and May 13, 1994.

After the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween, every studio wanted a piece of the horror pie, which to this point had been exploitation fodder. Paramount Pictures was first. Sure, critics salvaged the film, but after $40 million in profit, no one really cared.

Produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham (Last House on the Left), this movie was envisioned as a roller coaster ride. The script came from Victor Miller, a soap opera scribe. And spoilers — but this movie doesn’t even really have Jason in it!

The movie starts in the summer of 1958 at Camp Crystal Lake, where two counselors sneak off and have sex before being killed. This sets up one of the many rules of slasher films: never fuck in the woods.

The camp closes for 21 years, but on Friday, June 13, 1979, that’s all about to change. That said, no one in the town wants it to happen. When Annie Phillips arrives in town, everyone treats her strangely or acts like Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney, who shows up in the next film and was the narrator for Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood). She lasts for about five minutes, as she gets killed after her third hitchhike of the day. I’d say this is more of a warning against hitching in the late 1970s than I would serial killers in the woods.

The other counselors — Jack (Kevin Bacon!), Ned, Bill (Harry Crosby III, son of Bing), Marcie, Alice and Brenda (Laurie Bartram, The House of Seven Corpses) — and owner Steve Christy all show up to get the camp ready. This is where you’ll notice just how different fashion is. Becca and I have seen this live several times in a theater now and everyone laughs as soon as Steve shows up in his short shorts and bandana.

Ned is killed pretty quickly, then Jack is killed with an arrow and Marcie takes an axe to the face. Brenda is murdered as she responds to the voice of a child. Steve gets killed on the way to camp. Before you know it, Alice and Bill are the only ones left, but Bill lasts pretty much seconds. Then we have another future slasher trope: every body is discovered, hung like trophies.

Now, we have our Final Girl: Alice, who ends up meeting Mrs. Vorhees, who tells the tale of how her son Jason drowned and the horrible counselors who allowed it to happen. Much like the giallo/pre-slasher film Torso, the movie now focuses on the battle between Alice and the real killer. Alice ends up beheading her and sleeping in a canoe. As the police arrive, she has a dream that Jason rises from the water to kill her. This scene wasn’t in the script, but special effects king Tom Savini thought a Carrie-like ending would be more powerful.

Another way that the film pays sort of homage to Italian filmmaking is in the snake scene. It was another Savini idea after an experience he had in his own cabin during filming. The snake in the scene? Totally real, including its on-screen death — someone alert Bruno Mattei!

Some trivia: the film was shot just outside Lou Reed’s farm. The rock star performed for the cast and even hung out with them! Sweet Jason?

To me, the film works because of how great Betsy Palmer is as Jason’s mom. It’s a fine film, but nowhere near the excesses that the series would grow into. This was also the start of critics really hating on slasher films. Gene Siskel was so upset about Betsy Palmer being in the film that he published her address in his column and encouraged people to write her and protest. Of course, he published the wrong address.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Kickboxer 4 was on USA Up All Night on July 12, 1997 and January 17, 1998.

Kickboxer 3 seems like a walk in the park compared to this movie, which seemingly compounds all of the tragedies of David Sloane and presents a world where martial arts masters can take over entire towns. As if you didn’t know, Albert Pyun knew how to make amazing low budget movies and this blows away any of the movies in this series other than the first film.

David (Sasha Mitchell) writes a letter to his wife Vicky (Deborah Mansy) as exposition for us. After the events of Kickboxer,  the dreaded Tong Po (Kamel Krifa) killed his brothers Kurt and Eric, he hunted him down — Kickboxer 2 — but after he successfully beat Tong Po, instead of fighting in the ring, he was set up and arrested for selling drugs. Then again, Vicky knows all of this, as Tong Po also kidnaps her and makes her his sex slave in the Mexican town where he has become one of the world’s biggest drug dealers.

At least Po is kind enough to send him naked photos of his wife while he’s behind bars.

There’s hope. Yes, even now. Po is hosting a martial arts tournament at his private compound. the winner will get a match against him and a million dollars. DEA Agent Casey Ford (Nicholas Guest, Christopher’s brother) can get David into the tournament where he will fight as Jack Jones. To get there, he has to get into some street fights and get seen by Brubaker (Nicholas Anthony), Po’s fight scout.

Now, I ask you, won’t Po immediately recognize his arch enemy?

David makes his way to Mexico, a lawless land where he immediately rescues diminutive martial artist Megan Laurence (Michele Krasnoo) from bikers and then has to fight her in the first round. He’s also hit on by one of Po’s many women, Darcy Cove (Jill Pierce) and recognizes an old student named Lando Smith (Brad Thornton) who will be his backup.

All David wants to do is rescue his wife and he nearly gets both of them killed. To get more info, Lando starts sleeping with Darcy and that ends up with him tortured and her killed in front of him.

On the last day of the tournament, all the rules change. Every fight will be to the death and Po’s guards shoot anyone who won’t compete. He also offers every fighter $500,000 for killing David, who he blames for the death of his wife Sian, who was killed in a DEA drug raid. David defeats Thomas (Burton Richardson), one of the best fighters, and wins. Finally, the fighters rally against Po who escapes, leaving so many dead fighters behind.

The weirdest thing about this movie is that Kamel Krifa has a bald cap and makeup on to look like Michel Qissi. He appears to be wearing wax on his face and I love that he looks nearly inhuman. He’s also a famous record producer and plays the sitar, which is the kind of thing that only Pyun could work into a movie and make sense.

The fighting may not be great but that’s the beauty of Pyun. He starts with a noir intro, has an edge to this and was able to complete a movie that had so many scenes ruined by being overexposed, pretty much finishing this movie in the edit.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Kickboxer 3 was on USA Up All Night on June 7, 1996; March 22 and July 12, 1997 and January 7, 1998.

Frank Lane (Richard Comar) is running a white slavery ring in Brazil, just as kickboxing champion David Sloan (Sasha Mitchell, Cody from Step by Step who somehow has taken over from JCVD after Tong Po killed his brothers shortly after Kickboxer; yes, your happy ending was ruined in the sequel) and his trainer Xian (Dennis Chan) arrive in Rio de Janeiro for a championship bout. He’s nearly robbed by a street kid named Marcos (Noah Verduzco) but he ends up becoming friends with him and his sister Isabella (Alethea Miranda).

Lane is the manager of Eric Martine (Ian Jacklin), the Muay Thai fighter that David is defending his belt against. He destroys a young fighter in an exhibition, turning the fight into the grudge match you’d hoped that it would be. Of course, Isabella gets kidnapped and the whole thing becomes a fight for her life, but any movie that ends with a cute street urchin stabbing an evil white guy in the stomach is OK with me.

This was directed by Rick King, who also made Prayer of the Rollerboys and was a writer of Point Break. On the amazing Hidden Films, he spoke about how rough this movie was to make and how hard Mitchell was to deal with.

“The guy was a nutjob,” King said plainly. “The crew hated him and liked me. One of the grips was a cop, and he said, “If that guy ever touches you, I’m gonna arrest his ass and throw him in the nastiest Brazilian jail you’ve ever seen.””

Writer Dennis A. Pratt also wrote Leprechaun 4: In Space.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Roommates aired on USA Up All Night on June 18 and December 11, 1993 and February 24, 1995.

Carla (Marki Bey, Sugar Hill herself!), Heather (Pat Woodell, The Big Doll House) Beth (Roberta Collins, Eaten Alive, Unholy Rollers), Brea (Laurie Rose AKA Misty Dawn, the wife of John Holmes) and Paula (Christina Hart, The Stewardesses) take a summer vacation together on Lake Arrowhead. This would seem to be a very Corman nurse movie from the surface, but the tagline — “Which will die in the class of ’73?” — points to a very frightening story.

Is it too soon to talk about 1972?

Of course, all the men in this movie are horrible, like Martin (Ken Scott), the owner of the motel who sleeps with Heather and was the man who took her virginity when she should have been doing her driver’s test. And then there’s the death of Alice (Connie Strickland), stabbed a hundred times and left in the woods so close to where the girls sleep.

Whodunnit? Socks the biker (John Durren, who wrote the movie)? His girlfriend (Paula Shaw, The Centerfold Girls, Pamela Vorhees in Freddy vs. Jason)? Creepy Harold (Greg Mabrey)? Don the handyman (Kipp Whitman)? Just about any guy in this movie? And why would Heather throw a big party when, you know, there’s been a murder?

I’m making this sound more like it has an actual story and less than a vehicle for female nudity, as each of the leads gets their clothes off as do the guest stars, which include Connie Strickland, Uschi Digard, Lindsay Bloom (H.O.T.S.), and Juanita Brown. When your movie starts with a medical school orgy, you know how it will go.

Arthur Marks also directed Detroit 9000, Bonnie’s Kids, Linda Lovelace for President, the way better than any of those movies J.D.’s Revenge, Friday Foster and uncredited work on Solar Crisis. Durren also came up with the idea for the Mickey Rooney movie The Manipulator and wrote Devil Times Five.

I like the ramshackle narrative of this movie, but this one really shows you just how good Corman’s crew was at making their girls movies.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Skin Deep was on USA Up All Night on August 19, 1995; October 11, 1996 and April 19, 1997.

I don’t understand myself. I will defend absolute scumbags like Joe D’Amato and Jess Franco as artists but feel like I need a shower every time I watch a Blake Edwards movie. This has the plot of nearly every one of his movies that I’ve ever seen: Zachary “Zach” Hutton (John Ritter) is an author who has a weakness for alcohol and beautiful women. Hijinks ensue.

The movie starts with his mistress (Denise Crosby) catching him in bed with his hairdryer and they’re all caught by his wife Alex (Alyson Reed). What follows is basically Zach getting laid and nearly killed by a whole bunch of women, including the deranged Molly (Julianne Phillips) who hooks him up to a skin-treatment electro-therapy machine that gives him spasms, a glow-in-the-dark condom sex scene with Amy (Chelsea Field) and being carried to bed by bodybuilder Lonnie Jones, who is played by Raye Hollitt, Zap of American Gladiators. She comes off as the most positive and fun of all the women, despite him clearly being worried that she has such obviously masculine qualities. In fact, she dwarfs Zach who says that he feels like Mrs. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Ritter is fine in this but the role was written for Dudley Moore. Dudley Moore in mind. Moore felt the part was too similar to 10 so he turned it town. This led to a rift between him and Edwards. That may be why the original title was 11. This also feels like IMDB BS to me.

At the very least, Vincent Gardenia is good in this.

Seriously, for all the lessons that Zach is supposed to learn, he really doesn’t learn much. We are in his corner only because he is the hero of the movie and at times, I wasn’t in his corner in the least. What a waste of the charming Ritter, as Edwards keeps making movies about white upper class men ruining their lives through drinking and women only to lose nothing. They’re still running their world at the end, no matter what.

At least in D’Amato movies, the rich are shown to be snuff film watching maniacs and are outsmarted by a gorgeous sex positive woman of color.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Private School was on USA Up All Night on October 1, 1991; May 29, 1992; May 29, 1993; January 7 and July 23, 1993; April 15 and July 14, 1995; August 2, 1996 and May 23 and August 7, 1997.

I honestly can’t get my head around the fact that the same Noel Black who made the intense and upsetting Pretty Poison also made Mischief and Private School. Life’s odd.

Christine “Chris” Ramsey (Phoebe Cates) and Jim Green (Matthew Modine) keep trying to lose their virginity while his friend Bubba Beauregard (Michael Zorek) somehow hooks up with Betsy (Kathleen Wilhoite) and Jordan Leigh-Jensen (Betsy Russell). Chris and Jordan hate each other over Jim too, so there’s that.

Once Private Lessons did well, this was easy to get made. It doesn’t have anything to do with that movie other than bring back R. Ben Efraim as a producer, Dan Greenburg as screenwriter and that movie’s star Sylvia Kristel, who is reduced to playing a cameo as a new character.

Speaking of cameos, Martin Mull is a druggist, Paula Abdul is a cheerleader — she also choreographed the routine — and Brinke Stevens is in the shower scene.

But this is, at heart, a movie where the guys dress as girls Bosom Buddies style to sneak into the girl’s dorm and where sex acts are played over loudspeakers to humiliate people. The Cherryvale Academy for Women and the Freemount Academy for Men basically exist so that horny young men can look at bare breasts. The women are unfulfilled, the men go home to masturbate, such would be 1983.

At least this has a fun soundtrack. “You’re Breaking My Heart” by Harry Nilsson, “The American Girl” by Rick Springfield, “Rock This Town” by The Stray Cats, “Nasty Girl” by Vanity 6, “I Want Candy” by Bow Wow Wow, “Da Da Da” by Trio, “Li’l Red Riding Hood” by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs and Phoebe Cates, performing two songs and not just starring in the movie.

Efraim was a big believer in market research and literally tested every single thing about Private School down to the title. He loved the word private in his movies and he also produced Private Resort.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Orca was on USA Up All Night on December 16, 1995.

If you read comic books in the summer of 1977, there’s no way you didn’t know about Orca. Despite everything that nature — and SeaWorld — could teach us, it was time to meet a predator even more deadly to man than the great white shark. To quote Neko Case: “You know they call them killer whales.”

Orca raises the Jaws rip-off stakes: if the name Orca can be Quint’s boat, here, it can be an entire movie. Dino De Laurentiis called writer Luciano Vincenzoni (he also wrote The Good, The Bad and the Ugly) in the middle of the night and told to find a fish tougher and more terrible than the great white to make a movie that could go up against Spielberg’s. Vincenzoni’s brother told him all about the killer whales and the rest is scumtastic movie history.

Directed by Michael Anderson (Logan’s Run, Doc Savage), Orca is the kind of movie that critics have assaulted for years. I’m here to tell you that every single one of them is wrong. It’s a completely ridiculous film, a shameless reboot of both Jaws and Moby Dick, but by no means is it not entertaining as hell. And it has an incredible Ennio Morricone score, something that so many fish films could only wish they aspired to.

Captain Nolan (Richard Harris, who nearly died doing his own stunts and also would grow enraged if anyone dared compare this movie to any other film) catches fish and marine animals so that he can pay off his boat. His crew is looking for a great white, which comes after crewmember Ken (Robert Carradine, Lewis from Revenge of the Nerds). An orca saves Ken and Nolan decides to repay its kindness by capturing it. After he harpoons the whale, he learns that he’s killed its mate, which miscarries and drops a fetus onto the deck of the ship that the callous captain hoses off into the ocean while our titular hero/villain/sea mammal screams in anguish. This is when you wonder: how did this movie get a PG rating?

Novak (Keenan Wynn, The Dark, Piranha), another crew member, cuts the female loose and its mate drags her dead body to shore. The villagers all rise up against the crew, who demand that Nolan kill the orca, who has gone wild and is ruining local fishing. When Nolan refuses to put the fish out of its misery, it retaliates by sinking all of the fishing boats and breaking all of the town’s fuel lines, because of course killer whales can hold grudges.

That’s what brings Dr. Rachel Bedford (Charlotte Rampling), a whale expert, into the movie. She believes that orcas are like humans, a fact that Nolan can understand. He sees himself as one of the whales, as his wife and unborn child were killed by a drunk driver. He promises not to fight the whale, but it kills Novak, attacks Nolan’s house and then bites off the leg of his injured worker, Annie (Bo Derek in her film debut).

Nolan and his crew, including Paul (Peter Hooten, who was also in Derek’s first actual filmed movie, Fantasies, as well as the 1970’s Dr. Strange TV movie and Just a Damned Soldier with Mark Gregory), all take off after the orca, along with Native American Jacob Umilak (Will Sampson, the magical Native American in films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Poltergeist II). That’s when the orca goes buckfutter and wipes out nearly everyone by either grabbing them, biting them, crushing them and tossing icebergs at the boat.

The orca throws Nolan all the lace like a ragdoll, killing him, but leaving Bedford alive. We watch as Nolan sinks into the water in a crucified pose and the killer whale decides to swim under the ice. Now, there’s some conjecture here: is the killer whale trapped or has it decided that with its revenge complete, all it can do is die when faced with the path or revenge that it has wrought? I can see the poetry of this thought, but then I realize that I’ve just watched a film filled with no subtlety whatsoever, so perhaps the orca swam on, discovered a new mate and remains ready to wipe out all of humanity at a moment’s notice.

Orca is everything I love about movies: it’s big and dumb and bloody. It’s the kind of movie a fine actor like Richard Harris chews the scenery with just as much viciousness as a killer whale devours one of Bo Derek’s shapely gams. It also takes shark films to the next level. Every single one of the humans in this movie are amongst the dumbest people ever, doomed by the fact that they even know Captain Nolan. The moment he hoses Orca’s son into the icy waters, he’s sealed his fate. This is one of the few films where you root for the beast and savor its revenge.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll be amazed at Bo’s bloody stump. I want more people to love this movie even a fourth as much as I do.

You can download the host segments from this episode on the Internet Archive.

EDITOR’S NOTE: My Mom’s A Werewolf was on USA Up All Night on July 31, 1992; Septmeber 18, 1993 and April 22, 1994.

You may have asked, “Did the director of Death Spa make anything else?” I’m here to answer that affirmatively, with My Mom’s A Werewolf, an oddity that somehow unites some of my favorite disparate stars and plops them into a late 80’s comedy. This movie is ridiculous, yet it got me right from the beginning, thanks to plenty of cheesy synth and MTV era rock — I have a weakness for bands that only got their songs into one movie no one has ever heard of — as well as its loving depiction of a horror movie convention.

Leslie Shaber (Susan Blakely, who between Capone, The Lords of Flatbush, The Concorde … Airport ’79 and Over the Top is all over our site; she’s also Cherry Diamond in Dream a Little Dream) is a suburban mom who has a boring life and a husband named Howard (John Schuck, forever Sgt. Charles Enright from McMillan & Wife, as well as the 80’s version of Herman Munster, the robotic cop from short-lived 70’s series Homes & Yoyo and the Klingon Kamarag, one of the few Star Trek characters to appear in more than one more of the films).

Her daughter Jennifer (Tina Caspary, who makes appearances in tons of 80’s favorites like Can’t Buy Me Love, Teen Witch, Mac and Me and Annie) worries that her parents will get divorced, but she continually gets sidetracked by her horror movie loving friend Stacey (Diana Barrows, who would end up in a horror movie herself, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood). I mean, this girl loves movies so much that she has Prime Evil, Deathrow Gameshow and Galaxina posters up in her room. In fact, this movie mentions Galaxina more than anyone ever has.

They meet a fortune teller (Ruth Buzzi, of course), who tells Jennifer that she has the mark of the pentagram on her face and that soon, she’ll fight an unholy evil.

After being ignored by her husband while he watches football, Leslie goes shopping for a flea collar. The owner of the story, Harry Thropen (John Saxon, who is perhaps my favorite actor of all time) offers her a free flea collar while he eats a mouse. Seriously, he has the dirtiest and scariest pet store you’ve ever seen. So, of course, she falls for him and he ends up biting one of her toes, changing her.

This movie strangely treats the powers of werewolves like vampires, but hey, if you wanted to see Saxon shirtless, this movie is all for you.

This movie turns into sight gag city, with Jewish deli jokes, singing werewolves, a riff on the dentist scene from Little Shop of Horrors (the dentist is Geno Silva, who was the silent killer The Skull in Scarface) and the wolfen mom seeing John Saxon everywhere she goes.

It ends up being daughter against werewolf lord, complete with knowledge straight out of Fangoria. Oh yeah — Solid Gold host Marilyn McCoo and Marcia Wallace, who was the secretary on the original The Bob Newhart Show and Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons also is in here. Keep an eye out for Kimmy Robertson, who was Lucy on Twin Peaks too.

If you go into this expecting nothing to be serious and John Saxon quite literally chewing everything he can, then you’ll enjoy this as much as I did.

You can watch this on YouTube.